why did you make a hackintosh?

[sama7896]

Why ? Osirix - imaging software, no real equivalent on PC. To buy a equivalent Mac with my config would have costed me at least double. Plus i can upgrade hardware cheaply.

So pro-Hack: cheap build, open box, cheaper upgrades.

pro-Mac: style, stability.

$$ counts more to me at this stage. Later on i'll surely buy a MacBook Pro.

[splits]

I was bored, and had been drinking. That's how most everything else I do has started.

[HMiller]

My Hack started as a "just for fun thing", after I got video, sound, and networking functioning (a rather long learning experience as a first timer) I started to really use OSX.

 

I ended up buying a MacBook when I needed a new laptop because I had a chance to use OSX on my Hack--I never would have bought an Apple computer if I had not tried before I bought. I still use the Hack, and a Vista PC, and a Vista Media Center, and about 5 other computers.

 

Two points which describe me and which I see a lot in these forums:

1. OSx86 led me to become an Apple customer. Apple directly made profits from my use of OSx86. I also now recommend Macs to others who have bought them from Apple.

2. Hacks are the only reasonable option for a mid-range desktop. The Mini is too slow, the MacPros are crazy expensive. My $1000 Hack is faster than a $3000 MacPro according to xbench. Even for Apple that price difference is just unacceptable.

[Riley Freeman]

Because I could.

 

That's pretty much it. I didn't buy any hardware. Just installed it on my PC as a dual-boot to XP. I'm getting tired of Windows as an everyday OS and if the drivers for SBLive ever get stable and working, I'll probably move over to Leopard fulltime. Every so often I get tempted to try a linux, but always come away cold for one reason or another.

[Conroe Mac]

Because I can basically. I like computers and I like figuring out how they work.

[vbetts]

Because I can't have an overclocked e7200 at 3.8 ghz per core in a real mac.

[THEHAWKs]

the day Apple Moved Over from PPC to intel was the day i started using a Hackintosh the last Apple Computers i have now are "Power Mac G4 (FW 800), PowerBook G4 (1.67GHz), iMac G5 (2.1GHz).

Since then i have built 6 PC's all ran OSX from 10.4.1 to 10.5.6

[weaksauce12]

There were several reasons for me. I'm a long time Apple fan. I've owned several macs dating back to the G3 era. (yes, that's actually before OS X!)

 

I enjoy projects, and I enjoy a bargain. A Hackintosh gave me both.

 

Same for me:

 

1. I enjoy projects

2. The Mac Pro was simply too expensive ($7,200 as configured per my requirements)

3. Apple doesn't offer a mid-range tower or Shuttle-sized computer

4. I didn't like not having full control over my hardware (add/remove 100% of the parts, overclock, and otherwise upgrade and modify to my desires)

 

With the new BOOT-132 method, you can even use a Retail Leopard disc straight from a shrink-wrapped box and install it like Windows - install the OS, install drivers, and run updates. Can't get much better than that

[Synaesthesia]

I don't have much cash. Tried Ubuntu + it was awesome but I was really happy that my newly purchased 2nd hand Pentium 4 with GMA 950 & 2gb RAM could run Mac OS X perfectly. - Only cost R2000 or about $200.

 

Never looked back.

[Embio]

didn't want an iMac, but wanted something more powerful than my Macbook CD. iMacs can't take 4 internal hard drives

[PainWarlock]

i spent over 800$ on my computer now at the time i was earning money for a computer firm called westan in parts i was earning 200 a week sometimes 500 i could have bough a mac i wanted to but i got fired i bought a pc and put only unix operating systems on it bcus i dislike vista i used it on my friend computer i was burning a dvd and installing some photoshop apps for him and boom an obex hash string came up saying error windows has to reboot i then reinstalled the os for him he wanted to use the vista calendar tool when he did his time applet showed up with the wrong time and went wonky now i installed ubuntu on the and taught him how to use dependancys and use linux after that i installed osx86 on my machine when i got it and ubuntu i have windows xp on there and am planning to make a virus to delete it when i get my next hac mini project for fun guys for fun and then i will be getting a mac steve jobs and the apple team are very intelligent ppl say there stocks arent good but there making very intelligent moves when it comes to osx on hardware proprietary hardware you gotto think if i wanted to invest in microblows or apple i woulc choose apple itunes and all media on apple is so well designed and thought of i would invest in apple for the future they to me have a huge prophit margain i still love linux the idea of being free is some what a blessing when i can run ubuntu and my arch install me using ubuntu on my pc right now the story comes to this next year i will buy a mac learn to use AVID production for my mac so i can edit and produce music with my band a computer is a computer to me not a pc or a mac its a computer i can do what i want with it

[Guest cavallo]

I had and have 2 g4 and i was obbliged to try hack just to use cs3 e fcp2.

Now i have an imac also and i think that mac will be always a mac and a pc a pc.

This is caused by apple hardware project that till wiil be protected will not enable us to install osx on a pc without patches. efix or other, just putting in the disc and press enter.

[PainWarlock]

I had and have 2 g4 and i was obbliged to try hack just to use cs3 e fcp2.

Now i have an imac also and i think that mac will be always a mac and a pc a pc.

This is caused by apple hardware project that till wiil be protected will not enable us to install osx on a pc without patches. efix or other, just putting in the disc and press enter.

 

then what is a computer then is it a pc or a mac? i dnt get it doesnt make sense

[UncleRage]

Greetings.

 

Like a few others here, I built for fun, but I also built for work related reasons.

 

It's funny, actually. I'm half of the Mac support team for a school district and 90% of my field work is based off of my NC4200 running Linux. Meanwhile, the, PC supporting, MIS department carry shiny little Macbook Pros and boot into Windows.

 

Meanwhile, I've used Macs most of my life (in fact, I recently ran across an old interrupt switch for my, looong gone, SE/30), and that came after graduating up from both the 8 & 16 bit Apple camp. My last Macs were a G4 Yikes and a Lombard PB... after that, I just didn't have it in me to play the "buy first generation and get left behind six months later" game anymore. And since I started cutting my Linux teeth with YDL back in '98 or '99, I decided to make the move to x86, cheaper build costs and easier upgrade paths. Meanwhile, I seriously missed Apple's style. So, after working with Macs again for work, I just couldn't resist any longer.

 

Long and short, I finally got tired of having to to wait until I arrived at the lab in the morning to test something out... so I threw OS X on a spare drive this past weekend and duplicated my shop workstation.

 

So, half fun, half work inspired by necessity and driven by room temperature stout.

 

Anyway, nice forum here... I lurked for awhile; so here's my howdy. I'll probably be a bit more vocal now.

[OcciJano]

Macs are simply too expensive, largely because they refuse to build a desktop.

 

Their entire line is made out of laptop parts, except the Mac Pro which uses workstation parts. Both of those are more expensive and slower than their standard desktop counterparts. I do photo editing and web/graphic design from time to time, so I have a monitor for that. I'm either stuck with a weak Mac mini or a multi-thousand dollar workstation (Mac Pro) that sucks power and has slow RAM.

 

YES!!! I think the same, if any of the parts fails, you're in a deep $$$ problem. I've always bought Macs, from the 512K to G4. My Hackintoshes aren't perfect, but, if someting fails, I'm not forced to buy a new whole Mac.

[alloqba]

I want to make a cheap server (already own a MacBook), so I am looking forward to install OSX on my 6 year old PC (latest release of usb live copy worked - see the bay

[darkXmatt]

Used a mac, then it was really nice and awesome,

so i decided to install it on my pc aswell :]

 

~dXm

[shadow 999]

At first it was just a hobby, I was bored and wanted to see if I could do it. The first board was a Gigabyte GA-K8NS and I could install OSX 10.4.9. While using it I found out how it was faster and more stable than windows. Being that Apple is so expensive to buy or just to fix I built my own.

 

Now I am really happy using my new Leopard OSx86mac. I even have vmware (unity) installed so I can use my favorite windows apps. HAHA! It is so stable I always forget programs are running in the background.

[Hugo Guerreiro]

Idid it for the chalenge....

[InsanelyOne]

I voted other. I can't stand the windows OS. I had a Dell desktop and Dell laptop so I decided to put OS X on them. I also have a PowerBook and MacBook.

[ameris_cyning]

I bought an iMac three months before the Intel-switch announcement.

 

Since that day, I told myself that I would never buy a Mac again.

 

So, I guess I am here out of bitterness.

[EddieSosa]

because i felt like it

[Justin R.]

because i felt like it

 

Someone beat me to my response.

 

Actually, when I first started with this whole thing, it was on a really crappy HP laptop that I used to own and I found the deadmoo dd image and decided to give it a try. Haven't looked back since.

[modis]

other:

I wanted a faster computer to supplant my g4 powerbook for home use. I really like osx, but i'm not willing to pay a premium for a computer that doesn't meet my needs. I also play PC games so an upgradable video card is a must. As soon as I buy some ultra quiet fans, this will pretty much be my ideal computer.

 

Apple won't sell mainstream towers because of the image they have established, as shown by their ongoing i'm a pc / i'm a mac ad campaign. PC's are big, ugly, clunky towers -- macs are slick, user-friendly computers that often emphasize form while sacrificing functionality.

[poofyhairguy]

In May of 2006 I graduated college and I decided that I wanted a new Macbook for a graduation present. My friend had an Intel Mini for a few months and I was very jealous. My only previous Mac was a clamshell iBook and all that did was make me unimpressed with PowerPC (for its lack of power).

 

Anyway when I got the Macbook from my mom, less than a week later my dad sent me a Dell XPS200 fully loaded also for graduation (I was less close to him then so he did not know of her gift- only knew I liked computers). The night I got it I found the OSX86 wiki (I knew that such a project existed from Digg) and saw a picture of my Dell on the front page running OSX. After two weeks of hacking on it I got everything to work- network and sound on Tiger. I have been using Ubuntu since it came out in 2004 (still a big fan) but its lack of mature desktop compositing left me lacking so I just single booted 10.4 on my Dell for a year.

 

I built my second hackintosh the week the AppleTV came out- I wanted to prove to my aforementioned friend that I could build an entire OSX computer for the price of his new AppleTV device (he is amazed at the concept of hackintoshing as a big Apple nerd). This Hackintosh has come in great handy to me recently as I have become addicted to using the wonderful program Plex in my living room to give me the on demand system I have dreamed of since I first started stealing movies and TV shows off the internet. Currently I use my Macbook for this purpose, but as soon as my Mira adaptor comes in for my harmony remote, this second hackintosh will take over that job (playing 1080p MKVs all day is about to melt my laptop, but my Girlfriend is addicted to Plex).

 

My most recent hackintosh I built because I need to use XP and Ubuntu very often, and VMware Fusion is the most amazing program ever for that (Unity mode for XP and Ubuntu blows my mind still) but my Dell couldn't run three OSes at once well. So I got a quad-core with eight gigs of RAM (something Apple won't sell for less than 2k).

 

My Hackbook is a dual core Lenovo 3000 N100 that I bought last year because it was on sale and I was craving a 15 inch screen (my Macbook drives me nuts over long periods). I did not expect it to be compatible, but in the year since I have owned it I have gotten everything (sound, wireless, sleep) to work. It requires a lot of not vanilla, but when I took it to my family's big Xmas dinner every family member of mine drooled over it like it was a real Mac.

 

The community has come a long way since the early tiger builds- I am amazed that with Boot 123 I can run pure vanilla 10.5.6 on a box I built without a single extra kext. Since I have become addicted to the power of VMware Fusion (which has things the Workstation version lacks) and my GF will never live again without a Plex box I see me using OSX86 for a long time. I plan to buy from Apple again though, as soon as they put a Blu Ray player in a laptop (Steve is stubborn about it now- "A Bag of Hurt"- but he was about Intel at one point too). But for desktops it will be hackintosh for me (until I can get a 2.0GHz mini for less than $600 for my bedroom TV).

 

It has been a great experience. Seeing OSX at its limits have taught me more about it than I would have ever learned from "just working" real Macs. The fact that Quartz's compositor can run on a framebuffer driver while the Windows and Linux work need dedicated 3D hardware (despite being developed after Quartz) proves to me which is the best designed modern OS. The $190 I spent on Leopard and VMware Fusion was the best money I have spent on software ever.

 

Long live Hackintosh!