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Hackintosh

If you think you can run OS X on non-apple hardware in any reasonably reliable way, you don't know much about Steve Jobs.

It's a two edged sword. You can't get reliability and "it just works" and use cheap, crappy hardware at the same time.

I hate the fact that I'm bound to Apple hardware, especially when the choices are so limiting. But now that I've switched, I also see the upside to it as well.

Enjoy throwing away your money and time and ending up with a windows machine. I'll spend a bit more for the Apple.

God, I'm getting old.
 
While strictly speaking it is a violation of the EULA, if you actually buy a copy of Leopard to install it's technically no more of an infringement than what's regularly discussed without problems on the Windows on Mac subforum of this very forum. Of course, discussing it here either depends on how matey the forum management is with Apple or elements within, and how keen they are to keep it that way, or how it clearly offends the maniacal Appler-than-thou types here.

You can actually get decent reliability - in fact, higher in some cases with quality for-Windows hardware than with Apple products themselves, but the parts selection is critical. I suspect however that most people would construct a hackintosh for budget purposes than to improve on Apple hardware (not a hard task, but it's the reason we put a lot of time and effort into hackintosh). The only problem is updates - but my guru tells me that is solvable under Leopard. I'm not sure how.
 
gothiquegirrl said:
First, It's wrong.
Second, I imagine it would be more trouble than it's worth...
:rolleyes:
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Wrong? Well, that depends on your definition of wrong. Against the EULA? Yes. Illegal? No. Stealing? I say yes, but others could reasonably argue for no. Against the policy of this site to discuss? Yes.

More trouble than it's worth? It's not more trouble than it's worth if you think it's fun (like I do) to search the interweb and various forums looking for drivers, patches, etc. If you want something that works like a Mac, however, you should buy a Mac.

I played around with a Hackintosh because I wanted to try Leopard out before I bought a Mac. I liked it on a Lenovo Thinkpad T60, so much so, that I went out and bought an iMac and ditched the Thinkpad. Frankly, now I can't imagine ever buying a PC again. In light of experiences like mine, it may even be in apple's best interest to look the other way.
 
More "against the rules of this site" than breaking the EULA of your iphone and hacking/unlocking it? This is not against the law, its breaking a contract which is a civil matter that apple would have to take up with you personally. This site wont get in trouble for talking about it and would have double standards if they dont allow this but allow iphone hacking discussion.

Either way this isnt a forum that would be helpful, insanelymac.com is where you would want to go.
 
It can be done, I know because of YouTube videos. It's more novelty, I believe.

If I were you, I think I would enjoy the reliability and awesomeness of owning a real Apple product.
 
it's not very difficult; I have a friend who did it. just buy a legit copy of leopard.
 
iMpathetic said:
I'm incredibly surprised they did that. :confused:
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Me too. I just went on to YouTube and typed in OS X on PC to see what'd come up (you know, those stupid videos of 10 year old kids saying "I've got OS X on my iPod Nano!!!!") but was surprised by the # of videos demonstrating it and showing how to do it.


Couldn't pay me to do it. To loyal to Mr. Jobs.
 
Anyway, you may be able to get a REALLY GOOD machine (even 'better' for some things,) for much less than a Mac Pro, but you won't be able to get an 'EQUIVALENT' machine for much less. The Mac Pro really is a good deal. (Assuming you don't buy extra RAM or hard drives from Apple, that is.)

The cheapest you can configure a Mac Pro is $2300 for a quad-core 2.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB hard drive, Radeon 2600XT, and a SuperDrive.

Yes, you can configure a roughly equivalent Core 2 Quad system for much less than $2300.

But if you want 8-cores, the Mac Pro is $2799, while the cheapest I can configure an equivalent machine is $300 for the motherboard, $850 each processor, $83 per 1 GB FB-DIMM, $65 for a 320 GB hard drive, $30 for a SuperDrive, $33 for a 2600XT. Then we need to add in a case and power supply. $200 for an ultra-cheap Extended ATX case with insufficient power supply, $200 more for a barely-acceptable server-grade power supply. We're up to $2694, and don't have a keyboard or mouse. Toss in a dirt-cheap $5 mouse and $5 keyboard, and we're saving $95.

Oh, and you don't have an OS. If you want to remain quasi-legal, Amazon has Leopard for $109.49. Oops, we're now at more than the equivalent Mac Pro.

Yes, it is possible to build Apple's missing 'headless midrange desktop' for cheaper than the Mac Pro, but it is not possible to realistically build a Mac Pro replacement for less than the Mac Pro. Don't try to claim you're building a Mac Pro equivalent, when you're not.
 
ehurtley said:
Anyway, you may be able to get a REALLY GOOD machine (even 'better' for some things,) for much less than a Mac Pro, but you won't be able to get an 'EQUIVALENT' machine for much less. The Mac Pro really is a good deal. (Assuming you don't buy extra RAM or hard drives from Apple, that is.)

The cheapest you can configure a Mac Pro is $2300 for a quad-core 2.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB hard drive, Radeon 2600XT, and a SuperDrive.

Yes, you can configure a roughly equivalent Core 2 Quad system for much less than $2300.

But if you want 8-cores, the Mac Pro is $2799, while the cheapest I can configure an equivalent machine is $300 for the motherboard, $850 each processor, $83 per 1 GB FB-DIMM, $65 for a 320 GB hard drive, $30 for a SuperDrive, $33 for a 2600XT. Then we need to add in a case and power supply. $200 for an ultra-cheap Extended ATX case with insufficient power supply, $200 more for a barely-acceptable server-grade power supply. We're up to $2694, and don't have a keyboard or mouse. Toss in a dirt-cheap $5 mouse and $5 keyboard, and we're saving $95.

Oh, and you don't have an OS. If you want to remain quasi-legal, Amazon has Leopard for $109.49. Oops, we're now at more than the equivalent Mac Pro.

Yes, it is possible to build Apple's missing 'headless midrange desktop' for cheaper than the Mac Pro, but it is not possible to realistically build a Mac Pro replacement for less than the Mac Pro. Don't try to claim you're building a Mac Pro equivalent, when you're not.
Click to expand...

This case is true with most Apple hardware. Go try and build an equivalent system with Dell and it ends up costing much more. Not to mention, Apple is the only one making good looking computers. The rest look like crap.
 
ehurtley said:
Anyway, you may be able to get a REALLY GOOD machine (even 'better' for some things,) for much less than a Mac Pro, but you won't be able to get an 'EQUIVALENT' machine for much less. The Mac Pro really is a good deal. (Assuming you don't buy extra RAM or hard drives from Apple, that is.)

The cheapest you can configure a Mac Pro is $2300 for a quad-core 2.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB hard drive, Radeon 2600XT, and a SuperDrive.

Yes, you can configure a roughly equivalent Core 2 Quad system for much less than $2300.

But if you want 8-cores, the Mac Pro is $2799, while the cheapest I can configure an equivalent machine is $300 for the motherboard, $850 each processor, $83 per 1 GB FB-DIMM, $65 for a 320 GB hard drive, $30 for a SuperDrive, $33 for a 2600XT. Then we need to add in a case and power supply. $200 for an ultra-cheap Extended ATX case with insufficient power supply, $200 more for a barely-acceptable server-grade power supply. We're up to $2694, and don't have a keyboard or mouse. Toss in a dirt-cheap $5 mouse and $5 keyboard, and we're saving $95.

Oh, and you don't have an OS. If you want to remain quasi-legal, Amazon has Leopard for $109.49. Oops, we're now at more than the equivalent Mac Pro.

Yes, it is possible to build Apple's missing 'headless midrange desktop' for cheaper than the Mac Pro, but it is not possible to realistically build a Mac Pro replacement for less than the Mac Pro. Don't try to claim you're building a Mac Pro equivalent, when you're not.
Click to expand...

True, I dont think people realize how much Xeon's cost. You cannot build a machine equal to the mac pro for cheap since the mac pro uses workstation stuff. Mac Pro's are not overpriced, they are just horrendously overpowered and thus a major waste of money for most. You can easily fill in the gap between the mac mini and the mac pro though with a screaming gaming machine or a low budget but still fast desktop. I think most people build hacks because it fills in the gap of apple's product line, the consumer will always get what they want one way or another.
 
tsice19 said:
Couldn't pay me to do it. To loyal to Mr. Jobs.
Click to expand...

This post wins my "LOL! Wut?" award of the day, grats.

I use OS X because it is a reliable platform... which is a side effect of Apple controlling the hardware (along with excellent coding I imagine). While a cool concept, I see this as more a novelty then anything else...then again, what do I know.
 
actually, its not illegal, as long as you have a legit copy of OS X, and an "apple logo" on your computer, youre made in the shade. what do you think the apple stickers are for?
 
as flopticalcube said, try osx86project and insanely mac. it really comes down to whether your hardware supports the installation or not. i've done it before, but went back to xp/vista because there wasn't a driver for my wi-fi card, and i couldn't figure out how to get sound. if your machine is compatible, you can have a lot of fun with it. i found it much simpler to buy an ibook, and then a macbook, instead.
 
I think the Mac Pro is a fantastic deal. If you were to try to build a machine that's not as good as the Mac Pro because you don't want an iMac's built-in screen, then I can understand why you'd want to do this. Otherwise, just buy a Mac Pro. It's a quality machine at a good price.
 
saltyzoo said:
If you think you can run OS X on non-apple hardware in any reasonably reliable way, you don't know much about Steve Jobs.

It's a two edged sword. You can't get reliability and "it just works" and use cheap, crappy hardware at the same time.
Click to expand...

I've heard this argument before. Sometimes it's valid because mainly people are only doing it because it is cheap. But what if you want to install Mac OS os high end hardware that Apple does not sell?

I did actually experiment with this but inside the EULA. I got Mac OS working inside a VMware virtual PC runing on an iMac. I had a copy of Tiger running in VMware on my Leopard machine. I think this is a legal hackintosh.

What I learned in the process was that it was a bunch of work t set up. I would not do it if saving a little money was the reason but I might if the goal was either of these
1) To have something that you could not get by any other method
2) Personel education, just to learn about how Mac OS X works and how it boots up.

Apple could put an end to 80% of this if they would simply build the computer so many people want: A normal mini-tower machiine.
 
Last month I installed leopard on my friend's dell dimension 5150.
It was a pain, took me three days to get everything up and running, but once it was, it was amazing. Leopard runs soo fast on a celeron D 2.6ghz and 4gb of ram, its amazing that he payed only 400 for the computer and I bought 2 x 2gb ddr2 sticks for 60 dollars. It's amazing how much you get for such a little price. The only thing that you are violating is Apples little EULA (I think it's called). But all it says is don't run mac os x on non-apple branded hardware. So what I did was slapped one of my many apple stickers on the front of the computer and advised him to pay for his own retail copy. There! problem solved :D.

The difficulty is the drivers. Since mac only supports their own internal hardware, it is a nuisance getting video/ sound/ and networking drivers in place. But it's all a matter of simple research. PM me for any advice :D
 
ChrisA said:
I've heard this argument before. Sometimes it's valid because mainly people are only doing it because it is cheap. But what if you want to install Mac OS os high end hardware that Apple does not sell?
Click to expand...
The problem there is that it is still not tested or supported on the hardware, even if it isn't "cheap".

Apple could put an end to 80% of this if they would simply build the computer so many people want: A normal mini-tower machiine.
Click to expand...

Too true.
 
i'm pleasantly surprised that this thread hasn't gotten modded yet. maybe they are finally realizing the hipocrisy of of having a forum dedicated to iphone hacks while stifling discussion of hackintoshes.
 
I thought so too until I read the explanation

arn said:
These issues have been revisited lately, and the decision has been to not police EULA violations specifically. EULA agreements are (theoretically) between the end user and the company. I don't see why MacRumors should be involved.

The problem with hackintosh talk is that historically it's been hand-in-hand with Mac OS X piracy. Frequently links and sites that promote it also link directly to or provide other instructions on how to illegally obtain Mac OS X. This blurry line has been why hackintosh discussion tends to get shut down.

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 when this discussion arisies, again causing threads to get closed

iPhone and iPod touch hacking do fall under the EULA violation, but is not illegal, in the usual sense of the word. There are also many legal 3rd party applications that can be installed with the hacking procedure. However, downloading copyrighted Apple applications (such as Mail, Maps etc...) is illegal and we should not allow links to those downloads to persist.

Hope that clarifies.

arn
Click to expand...
 
I do agree the Mac Pro's are well priced (have a look at the Xeon price tags).

What apple needs is a mid ranged tower. Similar specs to the iMac, but with the Mac Pro customizability.
 
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