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What describes you?

  • No way would I build a hackintosh

    Votes: 349 23.0%
  • I'd consider it if Apple doesn't provide a new Mini or headless iMac in the next three months

    Votes: 185 12.2%
  • I'm considering it right now

    Votes: 578 38.2%
  • I already built one

    Votes: 403 26.6%

  • Total voters
    1,515
Actually, EVERYONE who has built a hackintosh says that it runs BETTER than on an actual mac. You can still do all the software updates and everything works just like a real mac. There's a lot of hacking involved, but everyone who has done it says that it works better than a real mac. That's understandable, as everyone who has done this chooses the really super fast types of processors and super fast memory, better than apple's 4 year old hardware (sorry, but core 2 duo is soooooo 4 years ago!!)

This is a lie and a pretty bad one. No one that is being taken seriously would say anything like that. They will agree that cost for cost, the hackintosh looks better. And if it works better than a Mac there wouldn't be any hacking involved. Hell, even the guys that do the heavy lifting in programming (ie netkas) eventually bought a real mac because it just works better.

If apple keeps on releasing crap OS's (sorry but I really don't like snow leopard, and I don't think lion will be better, sorry, but I don't want ios on my mac. Please steve jobs, keeps ios separate from osx. anyway, I digress) then I will probably build a hackintosh when I am older and have time for it.

So you've never attempted to build one and yet you claim some sort of expertise on these things. Tell you what, if Apple releases another crappy OS buy Windows or download Ubuntu instead.

I mean, yah, you do pay a premium when you buy a mac, and the price is mostly just because of the build quality, but is it really all that neccessary just to have "the world's thinnest notebook" or the world's "thinnest all in one"? I suppose if you consider a mac an art piece AND a computer at the same time. Actually, I am majoring in industrial design in college and I eventually would love to be on apple's design team, if I meet the right people and network accordingly.

You've got a lot of learning to do. As the owner of multiple Dell XPS' laptops sitting in the storage room, all broken from heavy usage. Yes, build quality is paramount once you get over >$1000. This is the market Apple targets and the only one they are interested in. Sling an 8lb. laptop bag over your shoulder for 8 hours and you'll see why "thinness", "weight" and "build quality" are important. If you're satisfied with a $500 Acer sitting on the desk all day, every day then buy that instead. I've got 4 year old Macbooks in heavy rotation, and 1 year old Dells collecting dust. Guess which ones are paying off?
 
I really doubt that Apple would hire someone who has such a negative attitude toward their products.

What are you talking about? You don't have to agree with everything a company does to work for them. People who work for starbucks don't necessarily have to 'like' starbucks coffee, or any coffee at all for that matter. I'm passionate about industrial design and I'm passionate about apple's designs and I'd like to work on their design team eventually in the near or far future after obtaining my degree. How is anyone going to know that I'm on this website or anything else? Are they going to be able to read my mind or something? Logic please?

All that I was stating is that if one builds a hackintosh (or any other type of 'build your own' computer) then you can get way higher specs than a mac for cheaper. But this is just how it works in the 'made from scratch' world. A home made meal is way cheaper than the same thing you would get at a restaurant (simple example: A one pound container of lettuce is $4 from costco, but a way smaller amount of a salad at a restaurant is MORE than that. I've seen salads that are $10 a pop.)

This is a lie and a pretty bad one. No one that is being taken seriously would say anything like that. They will agree that cost for cost, the hackintosh looks better. And if it works better than a Mac there wouldn't be any hacking involved. Hell, even the guys that do the heavy lifting in programming (ie netkas) eventually bought a real mac because it just works better.



So you've never attempted to build one and yet you claim some sort of expertise on these things. Tell you what, if Apple releases another crappy OS buy Windows or download Ubuntu instead.



You've got a lot of learning to do. As the owner of multiple Dell XPS' laptops sitting in the storage room, all broken from heavy usage. Yes, build quality is paramount once you get over >$1000. This is the market Apple targets and the only one they are interested in. Sling an 8lb. laptop bag over your shoulder for 8 hours and you'll see why "thinness", "weight" and "build quality" are important. If you're satisfied with a $500 Acer sitting on the desk all day, every day then buy that instead. I've got 4 year old Macbooks in heavy rotation, and 1 year old Dells collecting dust. Guess which ones are paying off?

First of all, the fact of it being HACKED doesn't have anything to do with anything being 'better'. ANYTHING that is software based can be hacked. For example, hackers come up with 'cracks' and 'key generators' and 'pre registered' software with no problem. Besides, if it's sooooo "stable" and "better" then how come people are even ABLE to hack it in the first place? If it was more "stable" and "better" then nobody would be able to hack it. The iPad was hacked in less than 24 hours after being released. All hacking is basically is getting access to the very bare bone root file system of the device/software. The iPhone can be hacked, and from experience (along with millions of other jailbreakers) it's pretty stable if you ask me. If you want to talk about "better," all the jailbreak apps run better than apple's version for the same thing. Why do you think the 2g iPhones CAN indeed multitask via a jailbreak app called "backgrounder." Huh? Explain that to me. Spec wise, there is no difference between the 2g and 3g iPhone, besides the 3g aspect and the fact that the 3g has a plastic backing, so apple's decision in not allowing 2g's to upgrade to ios 4.0 has been debunked. The only reason for the 2g iPhone not being supported anymore is to force people upgrade and spend more money. This is the game I'm talking about that apple plays. I digress, but the mac app store is another thing that apple has made to "force people to upgrade and spend more money" otherwise it would be available to os's prior to snow leopard. If you have a power pc processor in your mac, you cannot and never will be able to use the mac app store. Again, digress.

I never claimed "expertise" about anything. I was talking about what OTHER mac users have stated in other forums somewhere on the internet that I have read. I don't remember the specific sites, but I have read about it from other mac users.

EDIT: sorry, I didn't mean to double post.
 
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Why do you think the 2g iPhones CAN indeed multitask via a jailbreak app called "backgrounder."

i am not sure why you are bringing the iphone into this conversation - because it is not a logical comparison. IF you could install say, windows xp, or something similar onto your iPhone as easily as you could with a hackintosh.. THAT would be a good comparison.

a hackintosh will never be "more stable" then a "real mac" - that is just not feasibly possible (unless apple really stuffs up with something). you are forgetting that macs have the SMC to manage power, etc - which are highly optimised and not available in PC motherboard. there are other examples, but i am lazy :)
 
i am not sure why you are bringing the iphone into this conversation - because it is not a logical comparison. IF you could install say, windows xp, or something similar onto your iPhone as easily as you could with a hackintosh.. THAT would be a good comparison.

a hackintosh will never be "more stable" then a "real mac" - that is just not feasibly possible (unless apple really stuffs up with something). you are forgetting that macs have the SMC to manage power, etc - which are highly optimised and not available in PC motherboard. there are other examples, but i am lazy :)

People install android on an iPhone, how's that for comparison? I didn't say that a hackintosh is "more stabe" than a real mac. I stated that just because something can be hacked doesn't mean that it IS good or stable or unstable or bad. The difference between a mac and a machine running a hacked version of osx is that a real mac has EFI and the custom built pc has a BIOS.

It's too confusing. I wouldn't want a hackintosh.
 
People install android on an iPhone, how's that for comparison?
thats even more of a 'hack' then installing OSX on a PC ;)

I didn't say that a hackintosh is "more stabe" than a real mac. I stated that just because something can be hacked doesn't mean that it IS good or stable or unstable or bad.
you stated..
originalpost said:
There's a lot of hacking involved, but everyone who has done it says that it works better than a real mac. That's understandable, as everyone who has done this chooses the really super fast types of processors and super fast memory
that is where i got my impression from, sorry if i am mistaken. :)

FTR, faster memory/CPU ≠ more stable

The difference between a mac and a machine running a hacked version of osx is that a real mac has EFI and the custom built pc has a BIOS.
thats what you think, the new Intel Sandy Bridge chipset now incorporates a PROPER EFI - so now it will be easier then ever to install OSX on a PC :)

It's too confusing. I wouldn't want a hackintosh.
it takes a bit of research, but i love mine. my PC has OSX 10.6 Server installed, and its GREAT. very stable, but not better then a real mac due to certain limitations. :)
 
if you own IBM then Kalyway and Chamelion are your friends

Old IBM intellistation Pro M 6225 3.6 with gt220 video 1GB and 1GB of DDR2 pc2 3200 no ECC 240 pin. RAM

1/2 an hour and voila 1 osx86 leopard actually running on a clunker by todays standard. I repair Apple and Microsoft PCs daily. this is a Huge jump in performance. I had rendering multiple windows open and nothing bogged it down. This will be a good tool.

OH did I buy the software. YES multiple times and well :p


good luck to all that take this project on



KERNEL DARWIN WAS MORE THAN AN EXPLORER
 
Really need some help

I recently purchased some components to build a hackintosh with (that wasn't my original plan btw). My specs are:

Intel Core i7 870 2.93GHz CPU
Gigabyte P55a-UD3 Motherboard
16GB DDR3 Ram
ATI Radeon HD4890 1GB Graphics.

Following the iBoot + Multibeast method on the Tonymacx86 wesbite, and a couple of other resources, I am able to get OSX installed with network and sound fully working, however, I cannot get my graphics working.

I have read in places that I need to use Netkas' drivers but can't figure out how to get them working.

Can anyone please offer any advice before I end up ditching this card and getting an nVidia instead?
 
I recently purchased some components to build a hackintosh with (that wasn't my original plan btw). My specs are:

Intel Core i7 870 2.93GHz CPU
Gigabyte P55a-UD3 Motherboard
16GB DDR3 Ram
ATI Radeon HD4890 1GB Graphics.

Following the iBoot + Multibeast method on the Tonymacx86 wesbite, and a couple of other resources, I am able to get OSX installed with network and sound fully working, however, I cannot get my graphics working.

I have read in places that I need to use Netkas' drivers but can't figure out how to get them working.

Can anyone please offer any advice before I end up ditching this card and getting an nVidia instead?

I had the same problem with my ATI graphics card so I bought a very good nVidia card, and the Install then worked perfectly.
 
Been playing around with iPortable snow. Its a pretty decent release, tried it on 4 different intel based machines and it works no problem.

Still not a replacement for my MacBook though :)
 
Not really what I wanted to hear lol...What nVidia did you end up with?

Have just ordered an nVidia GTX280 to see if that's any better :)

Been playing around with iPortable snow. Its a pretty decent release, tried it on 4 different intel based machines and it works no problem.

Still not a replacement for my MacBook though :)

Do you (or anyone else) think it's possible to really hae the 'mac experience' with a hackintosh? I mean, yeah I'm building my own hackintosh but it's never gonna be the same as sitting at an iMac or MBP is it?
 
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With right hardware and tweaking you can have the mac experience yes.

But for the everything just works, seamless experience you need to have a mac :)

i have an older G31 chipset machine, not supported by apple at all - but i found a custom kernel for it and everything - and now it works perfectly! i actually have osx server installed onto the machine. so yeh, its a wonderful mac experience and even more stable then my iMac 2009 (which falls out every 60 days or so).

eh.
 
How come it falls every 60 days? I've had some killer uptime on my MacBook with never any issues... ruined only byt the 10.6.6 update.

My original hackintosh was an asus P5N-MX board, which had everything pretty much supported in 10.5.4.... Wish I still had it laying about to test iPortable snow.
 
How come it falls every 60 days? I've had some killer uptime on my MacBook with never any issues... ruined only byt the 10.6.6 update.

im not sure, it just gets to the point where it will not open applications, and takes 10 minutes to open tabs (this is my imac btw). it has always been this way through every build its had on it.

i have 12GB RAM, and use it fairly heavily - 9days uptime now and 4GB swap space, yada yada. its normally always active.

i dont do as much with my hack (mainly file server, downloads etc) but it does get a lot of use too.
 
I have it running on a separate partition. Pretty stable for a dev preview. Im not sure I like the iOS style transitions though...

very stable indeed, though many bugs (WindowServer keeps dying on me) etc. overall i am pleased with the stability.

i do, however, mirror your iOS thoughts - it reminds me more of a mix between Ubuntu + iOS more then iOS + OSX.

i like the "crispness" of the UI though! even on some old 20" cinema displays it looks amasingly sharp :)
 
With right hardware and tweaking you can have the mac experience yes.

But for the everything just works, seamless experience you need to have a mac :)

I think this accurately describes the Hackinosh experience. I have built three in the last three years. My initial motivation was Apple's lack of a significant iMac update about two or three years ago. The other two were a rack server for iTunes n the basement and a netbook. They all work fine. However, there is a maintenance investment in terms of time. Putting in new updates usually requires an afternoon's time investment to make things work.

I saved a lot of money and got nice specs for a system at a good cost point. I learned some hardware and macOS stuff. But I think simplicity in the Apple ecosystem will eventually trump that.

I will definitely be getting another iMac in future when my Hackintosh ages out. I've liked the hardware flexibility, but honestly, I'd be better off with an iMac. Having two HDDs is a big deal, but I might be able to get that now on the right iMac.
 
I'll get her one for her birthday...

Just got iPortable snow fully up and running on an old dell optiplex 210L:

Celeron 3GHZ
512MB DDR2 667
Intel 915 Chipset
Intel PRO 100 lan

Using a 5400rpm 160GB 2.5" sata drive. It still flies on this machine.

I suppose I should get some real work done. Perks of being in IT when your sat at a computer you look like your working :)
 
i plan on getting an MBA for school but i also wanted to build a hackintosh computer for home and was wondering if it is stable and uses the complete OS and all is functional. thanks in advance
 
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