[X4U] OS X On Generic PC Hardware

[Stroller]

On 16 Nov 2007, at 08:44, Zane H. Healy wrote:
> ...
> In any case, as has been pointed out, this is illegal, it is in  
> violation of the Mac OS X licensing.
> ...

Any chance you can drop this, please, Zane?

Randy opened this discussion on the basis of "what do you think about  
it? leaving legalities aside." We all know that running OS X on a  
generic PC is a breach of the license, but that won't stop anyone  
that wants to do it. And I suspect that - at this point in time - the  
majority of people who'd want to build their own hackintosh are  
natural pirates, anyway.

I have bought PowerMacs for my last two desktops simply because they  
run OS X and they have dual-video outputs. PowerMacs - or MacPros -  
are more easily & fully "upgradeable" than other Macs, but to be  
honest I don't know how much I use that. My current DP G5 has 3gig of  
RAM and nothing extra in the PCI slots. The accommodation for an  
additional SATA drive is useful occasionally, but not often used, and  
not essential.

The premium I pay for meeting my needs is ridiculous - the UK Apple  
Store lists MacPros from £1,699 - that's $3,400 in your money - and  
really, I haven't felt I've gotten a good deal in the past. Apple's  
hardware is indeed GORGEOUS, but the additional cost of AppleCare was  
prohibitive, so I skipped it. This time both the front firewire port  
& the graphics card have failed outside warranty.

Considering how badly this G5 has depreciated, it's not worth  
replacing the graphics card even with a second hand Apple one - were  
this machine in perfect running order then I'd be pleased to get 500  
quid for it on eBay, yet a secondhand graphics card from a reputable  
3rd-party supplier is > £200. Instead I was able to pick up an ATi  
9800 Pro on eBay for £30, flash it with a hacked firmware & it works  
perfectly.

Thus my slide into hackintoshery has started. The benchmarks posted  
show that an 8-core MacPro will slay a dual-core on particularly well- 
threaded applications - who'd have guessed it? - but otherwise this  
$800 machine will do everything I require. I built a mostly-new XP PC  
for a customer the other week, buying a new case, motherboard, CPU &  
RAM and transferring his hard- and optical-drives over; the cost of  
the hardware was right about £300, and that included a decent-enough  
PCI-Express graphics card, Core2Duo processor & 2gig of RAM. I love  
Apple's hardware - it just feels so well-made and such good quality -  
but the £25 ATX case I picked up last week really was a very great  
improvement on the ATX cases I was using a few years ago; there was  
really nothing at all wrong with this one and I would go as far as to  
say it was quite excellent for its price. What can Apple give me at  
£1700 than I can't get for £400 elsewhere?

Will I buy a generic PC and install OS X on it next time around? My  
G5 is doing so well that it's far too early to say. I've always loved  
OS X for its ease of use, and the idea of messing around with stuff  
to try & get it to install on a beige box does bother me. There's a  
big bit of me that says "hop to Linux" at that price, but of course  
that raises as many questions again.

Stroller.