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Hackintosh section

roadbloc said:
All this 'its illegal' stuff is moot. Nobody is going to get arrested over it so why should anybody care?
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Its very probable that no one will be arrested over SLA violations, but MacRumors wants to been seen, as best as possible, as a business with sound ethics. We don't want to become a place where we're seen as one of the dark Internet sites where illegal and unethical things transpire.

Would you like it if someone, or many thousands of people took your literary work, plagiarized it and sold it for a profit for themselves? The chances of someone getting arrested for that are also slim.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
Would you like it if someone, or many thousands of people took your literary work, plagiarized it and sold it for a profit for themselves? The chances of someone getting arrested for that are also slim.
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Well if someone did that I (and my publishers) could sue them. So could Apple if somebody was foolish enough to attempt to sell Hackintoshes. I doubt anybody is selling Hackintoshes and if they are, they deserve to get into trouble. Most people who make a Hackintosh are doing it for themselves. For personal use.

If somebody was to buy the Kindle version of my book, decided to print it out and put their own cover and name on it for their own bookshelf, then that is their prerogative. Hell, I couldn't care less if people buy copies of my book just to burn. A sale is a sale and it is their right to do what they wish with their book after they've bought it. As long as they don't go plagiarising or making money on my work.
 
roadbloc said:
Well if someone did that I (and my publishers) could sue them. So could Apple if somebody was foolish enough to attempt to sell Hackintoshes. I doubt anybody is selling Hackintoshes and if they are, they deserve to get into trouble. Most people who make a Hackintosh are doing it for themselves. For personal use.

If somebody was to buy the Kindle version of my book, decided to print it out and put their own cover and name on it for their own bookshelf, then that is their prerogative. Hell, I couldn't care less if people buy copies of my book just to burn. A sale is a sale and it is their right to do what they wish with their book after they've bought it. As long as they don't go plagiarising or making money on my work.
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Perhaps, as you say, you don't care how people use your book for personal use, but Apple cares, and cares enough that they put it into an SLA. The staff at MacRumors is going to do our best to honor that SLA and remove posts and threads that seem to violate it.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
Perhaps, as you say, you don't care how people use your book for personal use, but Apple cares, and cares enough that they put it into an SLA. The staff at MacRumors is going to do our best to honor that SLA and remove posts and threads that seem to violate it.
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Its a reasonable reason but a shame none the less. At least there are other forums out there.
 
roadbloc said:
Its a reasonable reason but a shame none the less. At least there are other forums out there.
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The other forums are better for hackintoshing, especially when it comes to getting tips and support. Hackintoshes are more enthusiast based, there's a degree of competence required and patience - and fun!

MR isn't about building community and sharing ideas to the largest benefit. This place is more about being politically correct. For example, legally, the Apple SLA has nothing to do with discussing topics on a forum but MR seems to think that discussing the topic is the same thing as building, buying, and selling an Apple product that violates the SLA. The only way this would be a conflict is if Apple and MR are associated in any way.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself if it's worth putting up a fight with that mentality. I know the view here is incorrect regarding the interpretation of the SLA but I don't think having a hackintosh section on MR would be better than the ones on the other sites so I've never seen a reason to press the issue over here :apple:
 
BenTrovato said:
...For example, legally, the Apple SLA has nothing to do with discussing topics on a forum but MR seems to think that discussing the topic is the same thing as building, buying, and selling an Apple product that violates the SLA. The only way this would be a conflict is if Apple and MR are associated in any way.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself if it's worth putting up a fight with that mentality...
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I don't think it has to do with being politically correct, staying on Apple's good side or anything like that. This is a privately-owned site, and as such the policies in place are the policies the owner and his team choose, for their own reasons.

No one is saying that discussion of Hackintosh-related issues is the same as "building, buying, and selling an Apple product that violates the SLA", and in fact maflynn has already pointed out that there are Hackintosh threads, just not enough sustained interest for an entire subforum. We recognize that there are other forums out there especially well-suited for that.

But I agree the in the end, each member needs to decide for himself if the rules on this particular forum are something he finds acceptable. We hope members enjoy themselves, stay, and contribute, but we understand that there are lots of other forums to choose from.
 
OSx86 topic closures

maflynn said:
Hackintosh threads are permitted …
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Thanks, I wondered about that whilst drafting a response to https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20516409#post20516409 – I recall reading various OSx86-oriented posts (probably scattered across a variety of topics) in recent months.

Neither https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/search?query=osx86 nor https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/search?query=hackintosh finds help …

… so I proceeded to seek topics by title, in the Yosemite area then in the OS X area, and found some topics were closed.

Eventually, through the closures, I found https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4958453#post4958453 (2008-02-13), which seems clear …

… but https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/453164/ was closed a month later and (unless I'm missing something) there was no violation of rules. I see something like "if we write x to allow you to perform action y it will be a violation" but there's nothing x-like. At a glance I'd guess that the topic was closed because someone assumed something that was not written. That sort of thing leaves me confused.

Help

Maybe add something to the help section?

Thanks
 
grahamperrin said:
Maybe add something to the help section?
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I'm confused - what exactly are you asking? If you have a question regarding a hackontish computer, then search for an existing thread, failing that, start a new thread asking your question.

I'm not sure what you mean by adding something to the help section.

As for the locked thread, it was done almost 6 years ago and probably has no bearing on today. If you wish to question the locking of the thread, please use the contact us link.
 
I built a hackintosh to act as a media server. While I used dedicated hackintosh forums to educate myself on what to do, a dedicated forum here would be nice. It may not guarantee expertise, but it'll allow for discussion.
 
maflynn said:
I'm confused - what exactly are you asking …
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Sorry. Maybe the best way to describe this … one of the very rare occasions when I could not quickly and easily find authoritative advice about what's permitted; and I could not guess whether removal was a cause of topics being not found.

I don't wish to query the closure of that old topic (or others that I found closed); it just happened to be on screen when, eventually, I found the old post from arn.

It may be not a frequently asked question, but it's unusual for me to seek something in the help area and not find an answer there; even more unusual to not find authoritative advice elsewhere soon afterwards.

(At the moment I can think of only one other 'grey area' that's not covered in the help area. That's OT from OSx86 and can wait until another day.)

Happy Christmas …
 
I'd be 100% up for a Hackintosh sub-forum here. As helpful as tonymacx86 is I spend the majority of my forum-browsing time here, and browsing here is really a lot more personal than the other Hackintosh forums dotted around the web.

Surely it's not a far cry from when you added an 'iOS Alternatives' sub-forum?
 
Liking the sub-forum suggestion for OSx86

Goftrey said:
… a Hackintosh sub-forum here. …
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That idea seems reasonable.

A sub-forum, in which focused topics can have good subject lines, would be more attractive than (say) the 115-page generic topic. Easier to search, by topic title, and so on.

A sub-forum, with just one pinned/stuck topic to:
  • draw attention to a handful of the most popular/effective OSx86 forums beyond the MacRumors domain
  • make clear what's not permissible in this domain (e.g. no links, or veiled steering, to pirated full installers for the operating system).

arn said:
… The MacRumors culture also tends to frown upon the EULA violation that is the installation of Mac OS X on non Apple hardware. As a result, threads frequently get derailed …
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The less derailing, the better. I reckon, derailing of that nature will be less likely if there's a dedicated sub-forum.
 

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Funny, I was asking myself the same question before I saw this thread as the most recent one. I think a Hackintosh section would be completely relevant here, and I'm really surprised there isn't one already. At least much more relevant than the sections on iOS alternatives and... politics.

As for the complaints about Hackintoshes violating the EULA, so does jailbreaking I believe. We've got a section on jailbreaking. We've also got front page news both about jailbreaking and about Hackintoshes.
 
We generally see them in the OS X forum and perhaps we can add the term Hackintosh to the forum description.

I think a separate forum dedicated to hackintohes will be too much trouble then its worth imo and I agree, I'm not sure there's enough interest to justify a separate forum
 
arn said:
If the culture has changed, and there is enough interest in Hackintosh discussion, but then it wouldn't be out of the question, but I'm not sure there's enough interest in it right now. Can't we just put it in a specific existing forum?
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In the past when I made a hackintosh related thread, I got some bickering about it (mine was a media centre, so I stuck it in the Apple TV Home Theatre forum).

Where would be the best place? If I stuck it in the OS X thread, and asked folk about bugs with Yosemite and a hackintosh, there'd be even more bickering. At least a dedicated forum would stop bickering.
 
Would it be possible to create such Hackintosh sub-forum and test drive it for a month or until the migration perhaps and see how much interest that sub-forum gets and what kind of discussions are held there?

And if that test does show, that there is not enough interest to have such dedicated sub-forum, you can take it away again and move the threads to the archive or the ones with more interest to another sub-forum.


There are 66 or so dedicated fora and sub-fora on here.
One could say it is already crowded, but if there are dedicated sub-fora for jailbreaking and programming, topics initially probably not discussed that often, a 67th sub-forum dedicated to Hackintoshing will have a slow start too but once it establishes itself, and even if only as jumpgate to Tony or the Insanes, it might help declutter the other fora a tiny bit.

And if you decide to test drive it, maybe post a small FAQ no one will read as a sticky in there for explaining the purpose of this sub-forum and make some guidelines on how much traffic or posts are needed to see, that there is enough interest and how long this test does take.
Or the sub-forum name could have an addendum to it like (Test trial demo something - 256 days left).

Example:
We need at least one separate unique thread per day on average for the 90 days trial.
We need at least 25 separate and unique posts per day on average for the the 90 days trial.
We need at least 100 different members having interacted during the 90 days trial.

I do not know, if you can measure the last automatically, but if I am still around then, I volunteer to do a head count if the former two criteria are met.

In other words, there is never just one answer.
 
As this discussion is occurring and there are members who want a forum for this, it has not been an overly active discussion here in MacRumors.

Doing a search, for hackintosh, in the title. I got back 30 hits for a search. (The search was limited to this year.) We seem to be averaging 2 to 3 threads a month with the term hackintosh in the title among the entire site of MacRumors.

Most of the threads returned from the search seem be centering around buying decisions, i.e., should I get a Mac Mini or a hackintosh. Threads dealing with the technical aspect of building, configuring, troubleshooting a hackintosh are much much lower. Out of the 30, I counted 10 threads that could be considered more along the lines of dealing with hackintoshes as opposed to buying decisions or comparisons.

While this is not conclusive and does not include the word hackintosh in posts (that returns a higher yield), it does indicate its a subject that does not get discussed here much.

I question the value of creating a forum which will average 2 to 3 new threads a month.
 
Distributed Computing had twenty-two non-sticky topics in the past year. Fair enough; it's a special interest.

An OSx86 sub-forum might be more chatty:
  • OSx86 mentioned in 32 topics in the past year
  • hackintosh mentioned in 842 topics in the past year
  • hackintosh switch mentioned in 720 topics
  • hackintosh switch mentioned in 76 topics in the past year.

Looking only at subject lines, I randomly picked a topic that might have been begun by someone with an interest in OSx86: 'I like iMacs... but not enough to buy one'. As things turned out, the opening poster (Wirbowsky) thought that OSx86 would be too time-consuming; the person who suggested OSx86 (Jonx) agreed that it can become a bit bothersome. All very polite √ so it wasn't a derailing.

Coincidentally there was the deliberately mis-spelt word 'Hackint0sh'. I wonder whether Jonx wrongly imagined that discussion of hackintosh is generally frowned upon in MacRumors.

tonymacx86

The route to basics is reasonably basic but on the few occasions when I felt the need to seek advice, I felt somewhat out of my depth. Anecdotally there are twice as many geeks as normal Joes/Janes who like to tinker.

(In MacRumors, which is naturally more Mac-oriented and so on, I'd feel less out of my depth.)​

Apple News & Rumors there … an OSx86 forum here might be thought of as returning the compliment :)

Rules – no asking about AMD, and so on.

(Discussion in a MacRumors sub-forum could cover a broader range of hardware.)​
 
Why steal OS X when you can buy the disc and install it that way? When I had a PC, all the tutorials at one point encouraged paying for OS X rather than pirating it.

I suppose you're violating Apple's EULA by installing OS X on non-Apple hardware, but that's not really fair anyways.

You can install Windows on non-Windows hardware. As long as you pay for it, I don't think Apple or Microsoft care really. Why don't you think the hammer has come down on Hackintosh websites anyways?
 
joshlalonde said:
Why steal OS X when you can buy the disc and install it that way? When I had a PC, all the tutorials at one point encouraged paying for OS X rather than pirating it.
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OS X has not been sold on optical discs for a while, it is a download only option and since Mavericks it has been free, thus there is no stealing involved.
And even if one would use Mountain Lion or Lion, the TonyMac Unibeast installer
checked if those installers were purchased instead of torrented.

I suppose you're violating Apple's EULA by installing OS X on non-Apple hardware, but that's not really fair anyways.
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The current EULA seems to be not that specific anymore, but I do not speak legalese that well.
http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1010.pdf


You can install Windows on non-Windows hardware.
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There is no Windows hardware.

As long as you pay for it, I don't think Apple or Microsoft care really.
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Microsoft does care and OS X is free.

Why don't you think the hammer has come down on Hackintosh websites anyways?
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Because the X86 scene does not make money with their modifiers and/or sells hardware with OS X preinstalled on.
 
joshlalonde said:
Why don't you think the hammer has come down on Hackintosh websites anyways?
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Free advertising too. People using OS X who'd never have bought a Mac, then may end up buying a Mac (can't beat a Mac laptop's trackpad and keyboard).

Apple could make things more difficult but they don't because if they did they'd lose more OS X users to Windows.
 
OneAnswer said:
OS X has not been sold on optical discs for a while, it is a download only option and since Mavericks it has been free, thus there is no stealing involved.
And even if one would use Mountain Lion or Lion, the TonyMac Unibeast installer
checked if those installers were purchased instead of torrented.


The current EULA seems to be not that specific anymore, but I do not speak legalese that well.
http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1010.pdf



There is no Windows hardware.


Microsoft does care and OS X is free.


Because the X86 scene does not make money with their modifiers and/or sells hardware with OS X preinstalled on.
Click to expand...

When I said non-Windows hardware, I meant, Apple XP
 
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