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Mac OS on a PC: Can it be done?
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Just to clear a few things up for the OP:
It is illegal. However, if you research hardware and buy hardware that is known to work (google: OS X HCL), you can have a 100% working hackintosh system. Your VAIO's hardware is probably not 100% supported by OS X and you will not have things like sound, wifi, quartz, etc...
I ran a hackintosh (2 of them) for well over a year and I loved it. In fact, I just finished my latest one, Core2Duo e6400ES and it's geekbench score is higher than the iMac I just bought (2.4ghz 20 inch) and it's higher than the High end iMac.
In closing, you will probably have a better experience if you just fork over the cash. If that's an issue (as it was with me when I was a student), you can build a good mac.... illegally.
It is illegal. However, if you research hardware and buy hardware that is known to work (google: OS X HCL), you can have a 100% working hackintosh system. Your VAIO's hardware is probably not 100% supported by OS X and you will not have things like sound, wifi, quartz, etc...
I ran a hackintosh (2 of them) for well over a year and I loved it. In fact, I just finished my latest one, Core2Duo e6400ES and it's geekbench score is higher than the iMac I just bought (2.4ghz 20 inch) and it's higher than the High end iMac.
In closing, you will probably have a better experience if you just fork over the cash. If that's an issue (as it was with me when I was a student), you can build a good mac.... illegally.
i know someone that has this done, its tooo cool! it works pretty damn good plus he overclocks it, pretty fast i might add
You could get Zune to go with it. Then you'd have almost a Mac and almost an iPod. Neither would really work right, but who cares? Let's all brush our teeth with Chinese toothpaste because Crest is too expensive.
I know a guy who attempted this on a Toshiba laptop. It ran really well, he said. He liked the OS X so much, he bought used PowerBook. And he's even happier.
It is a fun experiment to try, but if you want your computer to simply work, but an
.But like I said above, you can get hardware that is fully supported. There is a ton of it out there. Apple included drivers for a lot of different pieces of hardware that aren't used by the machines that they make.It just struck me that Windows is DESIGNED to run on lots of different hardware, and it still gets hardware issues. Mac OS X is only designed to run on Apple hardware, so imagine what it will be like on other hardware...
You could also not be a (fill in the blank). The guy wants to know about the topic, there is nothing wrong with educating him on it. Just because you think differently doesn't mean you have to be an ass. Besides, put my hackintosh side by side with my iMac and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, except my hack is faster.
Just to clear up, no it's not illegal, it's just against the EULA. If it were illegal you could go to jail for doing it which you can't, but apple can sue you for it. A EULA is nothing more than a contract and as such you can be pursued in Civil court for violating it, not Criminal court.
Seeing as how he would be pirating a copy of OS X in order to do so, yes, it would be illegal. I highly doubt he would go through the trouble of making his own image of a legal disc, get all the required cracked patches and kernel... I should have been a little more specific and said "if you download a copy of os x off the internet, it is illegal"
I don't think the reason many people try to put MacOS on generic PC hardware is to save money. I'm pretty sure a lot of them do it to create a better than Apple's PC, and probably spend more, or would happily, in the process.
It's still illegal under Civil Law, so it's illegal but not criminal.
How could it be better? The OS is hacked, all of the apps are pirated, everything's unpatched, all the serials are fake, and its all on generic, unsupported hardware. I see where you get cheaper, but where do you get better?
the hack, the pirated software, the unpatched stuff, the unsupported hardware, this can all be overcome. put all this on a core 2 extreme overclocked, get some other good hardware, this "hackintosh" can honestly perform better than a top end imac.
honestly, i think it is probably more work than its worth, but you CAN build a system that's cheaper and faster than a mac and still run OSX on it.
Don't forget the fact you can make a computer that is smaller than the Mac Pro, but yet have something that is smaller/compact than the Pro running OSX. More like a Mac mini tower or something. Or have OSX in a Shuttle PC with two 500gig HD(or configuration of sizes) in RAID configuration. Then have it running a Core 2 Duo extreme OC'ed chip.
It seems that you are a touch uninformed as to how OS X runs on normal x86 machines. The kernel is the only thing that is cracked. It is still the same kernel that is being used in off the shelf OS X but the protection has been stripped off. Also, there have been some improvements added to it in places to better support different processors/fsb's/etc...
As for everything being pirated, this could not be further from the truth. You can very well run OS X on a hackintosh and have all legit software.
Unpatched? Not quite. All the updates are broken down for individual system types (AMD/Intel) within a day of their release from Apple.
It is better in some ways because it gives you more freedom to build a machine that is still powerful but much cheaper. Hell, my machine was less than $1,000 with a 20.1 inch lcd and is faster than the fastest iMac right now.
I find it funny how someone read on some site that OS X on a PC is unstable and they immediately go by that belief. Most people that say it is unstable are the ones that either haven't tried it themselves or are trying to put OS X on their Best Buy bought computer. You have to build a machine with the idea of putting OS X on it first and go out and get parts that are known to be supported.
So I'm just wondering out loud here. What do you guys think the chances are than with Leopard, that there will be an Intel version that users can install on their own hardware? I think from the business model standpoint the answer is no. With all that hardware out there, there will people with crap hardware who will conclude (incorrectly) that Apple sux and bad mouth the name.
It would be cool if they did open it up for those who know how to read the HCL and would build an appropriate machine.
It would be cool if they did open it up for those who know how to read the HCL and would build an appropriate machine.
Remember, the OP wants to put it on his Vaio, the one he already bought. Chances are that it is not completely compatible and there will be major stability issues, or things that don't work at all.
Apple won't release a copy to do that. However, you can already run Leopard on hackintoshes.
Very true, I went slightly off-topic.
I was more or less talking to the others in here.