Mac users' opinion on Hackintoshs

[pepsitwist]

it's just programs ffs. why does everything have to become a theory of the cosmos?

 

as i see it those who frown upon hackintoshes, either feel jealous because someone gets cheaply the usability for which he paid dearly (buying osx if you have a pc, vs buying a mac with osx). Also, it means he tries to gain something (status? prestige?) from using a 'original' mac. well, they aren't. Original macs died when they stopped using their own hardware. now it's freebsd on common x86/amd64 hardware with a funky gui.

 

i really dislike the prices of macs, that is why i do not buy "mac" "hardware"

[DukeRaoul]

Wow.. I got into a heated debate with my buddy last night.

 

It all started out with me complementing how beautiful the new mac keyboard is from this picture of someone using it with his "PC".

 

to his statement of hackintoshes are "ghetto"..

 

Direct Quotes:

Is this really how Mac users feel? I was going to install MAC OSX on my pc for fun.. but am I supposed to feel ashamed of it?

 

But it's also true I can't afford a mac because I can't justifying spending 2,800 bucks for the same gear I can get for 1,500. So any comments on this are definitely welcome.

 

Your buddy is an example of what I'd call an ignorant snob. The additional information that he owns an Apple Mac should not lead to the conclusion that all Apple Mac owners are ignorant slobs, because they're not. My family's first computer was the Apple LC III mac, back in the early '90s. After that, we continued buying Apple Macs for years, including a few Performas, a couple iMacs, and I bought an iBook and PowerMac G4 when I got old enough to afford it. Now I buy from NewEgg

 

So, as you can see, I am a "real Mac user" from <i>way</i> back in the day, and I think the OSx86 scene is awesome. The buddy mentioned in the first post is obviously uninformed about the facts of OSx86, and I am a certified computer expert (IT pro). Buddy loses argument, based on the facts. Hackintosh is only ghetto if you build it with broke-ass ghetto parts and poorly working installation. Done right, with nice hardware and vanilla installation, it is caviar of a rare breed.

[splits]

Does this mean if I refasten the bezel to the front of my pc with duct tape and chewing gum, then it's ghetto?

[DukeRaoul]

Does this mean if I refasten the bezel to the front of my pc with duct tape and chewing gum, then it's ghetto?

 

Yes, but it's still OK to enjoy using it.

[Guest cavallo]

beautiful but real is better, never crashes, quite never hot, as a pc, afer 48 hours continuosly working.

Remind that best and cheaper hardware (pc) is not always a life warranty of good working if there is not a good platform to use it.

 

Well said: I find that almost always the Mac user that is always huffing away about the quality of Apple components wouldn't know a quality component if it ran over him. Mac users are, as a group, the most hardware ignorant group on the planet. That's usually why they bought a Mac in the first place! So they didn't have to learn anything. So they think the hardware is just "little over what a PC cost". Then I break down their precious iMac and show them how to replace it for less than 50% of the price. That shuts them up in a hurry. The only people that defend Mac prices are people that don't know hardware prices. Whenever I'm selling off computer parts and Mac people phone me, inevitably they don't have a clue as to what they are doing, and you have to dumb down everything for them. What a pain. On a good note though, they tend to me more generous than the typical PC buyer.

 

I know that pc hardware is better and cheaper, the problem is simply that you will never admit that Apple is first an hardware project on which osx runs and then the rest, so worst and not cheaper hardware will in any case run for the next ten years, are you so sure that in ten years you will be still here writing about without buying ten times more better and cheaper hardware?

I don't think so please first think and then talk or write.

[rheneas]

Is this really how Mac users feel? I was going to install MAC OSX on my pc for fun.. but am I supposed to feel ashamed of it?

 

I've used "real" Macs since my first, which was an SE. I still own 3 G4s and just had to toss out our PowerBook Titanium because its screen was busted - otherwise I would have kept it around just for fun.

 

That said, when I had to replace our Dell desktop and looked at current Mac prices, I found that for the price of a mini with XP added, I could get a custom-built quad-core screamer. I specified parts that were proven to work in a Hackintosh, and then have had an absolute BLAST building, tweaking, updating, etc. my Hack as a fun hobby. I've learned alot too. BTW, I BOUGHT a copy of Leopard as well.

 

Who cares what your buddy thinks? Try the Hack experience. It's FUN.

[Le-Bebop]

At the beginning, it was for fun, just to discover another OS, and the pleasure to create your own PC.. And I discover the Apple approch. I thinck it's like another Philosophy, an another point of view concerning the way to use the informatic material. it's friendly, dramatically efficient, simple and complex...

 

But, Apple is not only an OS... there hardware is very important componement, the half of a Mac..

 

So, in 4 days, I will receive my MacBook....

[RTA]

Like others here, I've used real macs since I started computing. My first was a Peforma...I want to say, 6700? I can't remember exactly. that one ran until the monitor gave out (maybe ten years?) and we couldn't find a monitor locally that supported the plug-type. So we upgraded, bought a G3 iMac that served well for probably five years. By that time, I had upgraded to an iBook G4, then a 17' Powerbook, while my sister got the G3. Then when Apple switched to Intel, me and my sister both upgraded, her to a iMac C2D, me to a MBP. That lasted for about a year, and the screen in my MBP busted, sold it, downgraded to a Blackbook. Loved that for two years, until recently I traded it up to a Dell Studio 15.

 

All that to say this- I've owned a lot of mac hardware, and while it's good hardware, it's the software that makes a Mac a Mac, it doesn't matter what you're running it on. I just finished my first Hack (because I couldn't stand to be without OSX any longer), a C2Q Q6600 on a XFX 680i LT mobo with a GeForce 9600 GT. And it's the best Mac I've ever owned. Now, I just hope someone works out a driver for the Radeon Mobility 3450, so I can convert my Dell Studio too.

[Khan_Man]

I think buying real Apple laptops make sense (even tho they are over priced) as the community has had trouble with sleep and wireless drivers. Besides, I've owned a few Apple laptops and they do seem to hold together pretty well and are pretty well engineered.

 

If you are going for workstation class computer a Mac Pro is great. 80 gigaflops/sec?!? wow! for 3000 bucks Canadian? That is great. You can't build it for less.

 

But Apples mid desktop selection blows donkey balls! An iMac C2D 2.4 with {censored} video card for 1300 bucks that is going to roast itself? Forget it. I had that kind of performance 18 months before Apple rolled it out ( and with better video). Mac Mini? The only interesting thing about it is form factor. As a computer it is terrible.

 

I think hackintoshing is about choices and having a fun puzzle of your own making. OS X is great. iLife is great. I do different types of computing. It is nice to have a computer that can keep up with my creative, work and fun side (OSX, Linux, Win).

 

Khan

[HipToBeSquare]

Pretty much agree with Khan-man.

 

I am an Apple user of well more than 15 years, my father even before that, before Apple begat Macintosh. I am now, and have been for more than 5 years, an IT technician at the user support level, and deal with mobile workstation laptops, both Mac and Windows. I choose to use Mac OS on my work desk, and at home, even though I am, and partly because I am well versed with Windows support.

 

For what Apple makes, they do a pretty nice job. 9/10, I would say. They have their quirks, like pulling firewire off the MacBooks, and letting MacMini languish. They have weirdly dabbled in proprietary connectivity like ADC, and I could go either way on miniDisplay-Port.

 

But what is killing me, is the HUGE hole in the middle of their lineup. The G3 and G4 towers were never *exclusively* high end, but G5 started down that road, and MacPro is well away from a budget-minded mainstream desktop.

 

They rely on iMac for that... but not everyone wants a built-in screen with laptop components inside it. Some want two matched screens (which I run 2 apple displays via ADC->DVI converter, from my G5 tower at work... as a hand-me-down, not as a newly purchased/budgeted machine.)

 

Others don't want a fixed screen at all. I want a machine in my home theater, plugged into the video monitor, and otherwise headless. an iMac won't cut that either.

 

For the specific appeal of an all-in-one solution, on a home or office desk, if the iMac works for you, it is a nice machine, and a very good solution. But Apple has iMac blinders on, and doesn't see a market on either side of the iMac, for headless, or dual-head desktop-class machines, that aren't overkill MacPros.

 

MacPros are HUGE, hot, and expensive. But they have a lot of horsepower, and if you need it, the MacPro is a nice machine, and a good solution. The G5 tower I mentioned, is currently space-heater acting under my desk, as I write this. It was this sort of solution from a few years ago, and was handed down when replaced by 8-core intel machines, which aren't cooler. (some of the liquid cooled ones even ruptured, and fried, but that is another story.)

 

MacMini is a great little headless, budget-minded machine, but there is a BIG gap between single-monitor or headless mini, and Giant grey elephant Mac Pro. Mac Mini can't do dual-head work. MacPro is overkill for database/spreadsheet viewing and communications.

 

MacMini can work in a home theater operation, but it isn't as good as it could be, and it is WELL out of date for it's price. I hope it gets updated with current, new laptop specs. But it may still be a bit too budget minded, in terms of expandability, and graphics performance, trading it for compactness and packaging, for the dollar.

 

For laptops, as odd as I think dropping Firewire was for the MacBooks, or as isolated as MacBook Air is, by it's utter lack of ports, and lack of accidental damage coverage with AppleCare, I would still tend to heavily favor Apple laptops to run OS X, over a hackintosh laptop. Specifically designed hardware in the laptop arena is a lot harder to work around, for repair and compatibility, once you get deeper than universal RAM and HDD. It is just too much of a hit-or-miss proposition to run OSX reliably on a 'pc' laptop.

 

But in terms of a desktop solution, I have to say, I am really more in favor of a Hackintosh built to the purpose it intends to serve. A dual head office machine... a dual-boot machine to run Mac OS for some things, or Windows for gaming, with game-spec hardware, or even a desktop-hardware based HTPC, running Mac OS/FrontRow/Plex, etc... EFiX is really making me take a hard look at just that possibility.

 

And for tinkerers, I admire that, even if I don't have a whole lot of time or spare hobby money to tinker a lot myself, a Hackintosh makes a lot of sense. OR for someone really looking to build a bargain desktop mac in an existing ATX shell. Using EFiX, or using other methods to load OSX, I can very much see how that is attractive.

 

Personally, I don't think it poses any real risk to Apple's bottom line. Apple is risking it's own bottom line.

 

The people who are going to build a Hackintosh for their own purposes are very much not disposed to buy an off-the-shelf Mac. Apple is not losing a sale it would have already gotten. If anything, they would not change hardware, but change software to Linux, if it came right down to it, before buying a 'closed box' apple solution, regardless of how nice Apples are.

 

The people Apple ARE losing, perhaps even myself, to the OSX86 community are because Apple has those blinders on, and aren't offering the center of that matrix. aside from iMacs or laptops, above Mini, and below MacPro. A giant hole right in the middle.

 

If Apple would make it EASY to do what I want to do, honestly, dealing with EFIX and building a machine, or re-working software files to run on non-Apple hardware, would not be worth just buying the Apple hardware in the first place. Working with laptops has shown me how nice OE warranty can be. I can fix my own computer... but that is down time, and time off of other tasks, or hobbies.

 

I would rather be USING the computer, or doing other things. I realize that for some, tinkering IS the hobby... and they should have the opportunity, and Apple makes relatively little impact on that. People are going to tinker and manipulate Mac OS, almost regardless of what Apple decides to do, hardware or software wise, it is about the challenge and the learning.

 

But by Apple ignoring that core market segment, is making it HARDER for me to do what I want with a piece of Apple hardware. So Apple is pushing me toward thinking about a future Hackintosh. Who knows, maybe they'll update the mini, or change it's market placement a little higher into the desktop segment, and I'll swing back to an 'official' product. But I can, and will still respect the DIY nature of Hackintosh.

[LogicalUser]

i've been a mac fan for many years now, and my basement is littered with ancient apple machines. I'm typing this from a dual 2ghtz G5 tower, and its definetly showing its age. now, i want a new machine, but the mac pro starts at $2,899 canadian, and comes with 2gb of ram, 320gb hd, and a graphics card with 256mb of RAM.

 

i guess the imac is what Apple is offering for me, but i've already got a high end 24" monitor, and all in one is not a benifit to me

i've been waiting for some sort of middle ground between a mac mini and mac pro, but it seems i will have to build it myself if i am to afford it, so.... here i am?

[undo]

I love my MacBook except for its glossy screen. I like the new MacBooks except for their extra-glossy glass screens. So I ordered a windoze notebook with a matte screen and intend to hack it.

[121fred]

Always used Macs since macplus days, but just can't take to those awful mirrors they call a screen on the iMacs so its a hackintosh all the way now and it rocks. Apple needs to take a good hard look at it's product lineup and leave the trendy design {censored} for that other useless time waster the iPhone.

[fryke]

I've been a Mac user for more than twenty years. When I bought my Hac for experimenting with OSX86, I didn't really know what I would use it for. I had a MacBook at the time that covered me well. Nowadays, my Hac is my media center and central server for both my MacBook Air and other interchanging Macs as well as my iPhone and AppleTV. I'm going to replace the Hac sooner or later with the next Mac mini (or whatever Apple might put in its place), because now that the hobby-thing has passed and I actually _use_ the machine, its quirks are getting in the way. It works _almost_ perfectly at the moment, but that could change with the next update to Mac OS X, since we're always playing catch-up, basically. The whole projects have come a long way. It's much easier now to get the right hardware and to install, but it's still not the same experience, of course.

 

I'm certainly not being a snob about this. I _know_ I could have much better hardware with a Hac for the same amount of money. But it's that ease, that feeling of everything just working, that makes the Mac so great. Even with a Hackintosh, things still feel much better to me than on Windows or linux, but the whole Mac experience _is_ more than just the software. And Apple's hardware design is much more than just a fancy case design. Writing this on my MacBook Air. It's lovely.

[SingingSabre]

Apple reamed me with my iBook G4, and that left me bitter. The model I had (and a few other models) had a faulty logic board, sending it into occasional, and eventually chronic, kernel panics.

 

They did not cover this under a recall, and the warranty had long since expired when it started happening. Even then extended two year warranty wouldn't have covered this problem. I got by for a year and a half by opening it up and propping the logic board against the motherboard with a shim.

 

It would have cost me $400 including parts and labor to have the logic board fixed. My HP turned Mac cost me $488, and $50 for the wireless card. Going the Vista route would have cost more, as I've sunk a lot of money into Mac software for my work and life. Going the full Mac route would have cost more, because they cost a lot (and I'm not willing to spend $400 to repair an already far outdated computer).

 

Luckily, I got the Hackintosh up and running two days before my computer completely and irreversibly bit the dust.

 

Perhaps someday I'll give Apple another $1,000+. As it is right now, I cannot afford that nor care to give it should I have it. I'll need time to heal.

[staticwow]

The people who are going to build a Hackintosh for their own purposes are very much not disposed to buy an off-the-shelf Mac. Apple is not losing a sale it would have already gotten.

 

Been using Macs for awhile now. My Mac died and I really wanted to buy another mac. But I don't have any money. If I had the cash, I'd be typing away on a new Macbook. I don't so I went with a Dell instead of a Mac.

 

I can deal with not having a cool looking computer. But I do not want to go back to windows. Hence my newfound interest in OSx86.

 

It will be fun to tinker with OSx86, and it will be cool to show my friends my new Dell with its newly installed "Mojave" OS. That is baller, son!

[niteman1969]

Hmm, great question about macs vs hacks...

 

Having myself come from an IT background and being a bit

of a tech freak I relish something new to get my teeth into.

 

I have done some pretty idiotic stuff with computers in the past

just to make them do something that they were not meant to,

such as getting dos 6.22 defrag to work on a windows 98 machine.

 

This was because i felt the dos defrag was more efficient, and it

very efficiently killed my start menu items, but the stuff that was

still there worked very fast........

 

I first stumbled on the OSx86 project as it was in 10.4.5 days

and found myself a new challenge to get it working on my PC.

 

Spent much time reading the forums and finally worked out that

I would need an upgrade to get it working properly so bought the

components needed and happily got lots of help on the irc channel

from the great JaS man to get it working.

 

Not once did he laugh at my dumb questions or stupid mistakes

and had nothing but time and patience, and finally i had a working

OSx86 10.4.5 install and was very happy.

 

Then came updates to 10.4.6 , 10.4.7 , 10.4.8 etc and along with

minor kext editing and tweaks etc I had a machine that worked flawlessly.

 

The problem with that is I became bored with no fixes etc needed to

maintain the system, and upgraded to another machine which at first

had problems installing OSx86 and because of time constraints I dropped

mac os until recently, when a rogue virus killed a lot of my media library.

 

Now i am running mac os almost exclusively apart from a few key

programs that i run in my xp partition.

 

I think the whole mac vs hack thing doesn't do justice to the amount

us hackintosh users actually learn about the operating system through

owning a hackintosh. It takes much time and patience and a stubborn

streak to keep it going through all the updates etc.

 

Also I'm sure that the whole OSx86 thing has brought a lot more people

to apple hardware, that have had only a partially working hack and decided

to stop their problems by going for the real thing.

 

Myself now I have decided to minimise my huge electrical draw and actually

downgraded to a samsung nc10 laptop from a huge dual core overclocked

desktop and have never been happier, especially after swapping the internal

wireless card with one that works.

 

I have also bought the samsung usb dvd writer and am soon replacing

the inbuilt 160gb hdd with a 500gb and have a personal internet and media

machine which far outperforms an ipod touch or archos.

 

Also with modifications in the future (adding internal usb broadband dongle)

It will be an ideal machine for what i need it for.

 

If Apple made a 10.2 inch netbook with the samsungs battery life then I would

be very , very tempted.

 

I'm only guessing but i think the atom may be about as fast as a 1.6 core solo

mac mini ?????

 

Regards

 

Niteman1969

 

 

PS .... will probably also be getting an intel atom dual core desktop board and

getting a friendly engineer to swap the processor into the samsung (if even possible).

 

He has proper reflow and bga an other soldering stations and will be interesting to try

but not sure I want him near my beloved Sambook / MacSung .... lol

 

Results 44.25

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)

Physical RAM 2048 MB

Model MacBookAir1,1

Drive Type Hitachi HTS543216L9A300 Hitachi HTS543216L9A300

CPU Test 28.81

GCD Loop 61.48 3.24 Mops/sec

Floating Point Basic 18.60 441.99 Mflop/sec

vecLib FFT 24.54 809.72 Mflop/sec

Floating Point Library 35.64 6.21 Mops/sec

Thread Test 50.60

Computation 42.71 865.17 Kops/sec, 4 threads

Lock Contention 62.07 2.67 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 76.24

System 66.49

Allocate 100.07 367.48 Kalloc/sec

Fill 84.78 4121.99 MB/sec

Copy 42.86 885.28 MB/sec

Stream 89.33

Copy 88.28 1823.46 MB/sec

Scale 86.41 1785.12 MB/sec

Add 101.35 2159.04 MB/sec

Triad 83.26 1781.07 MB/sec

Quartz Graphics Test 62.57

Line 58.51 3.90 Klines/sec [50% alpha]

Rectangle 55.14 16.46 Krects/sec [50% alpha]

Circle 48.94 3.99 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]

Bezier 59.06 1.49 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]

Text 136.67 8.55 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 58.73

Spinning Squares 58.73 74.50 frames/sec

User Interface Test 29.29

Elements 29.29 134.43 refresh/sec

Disk Test 42.64

Sequential 87.12

Uncached Write 101.75 62.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 100.36 56.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]

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Uncached Read 65.64 0.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 110.59 20.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[Guest cavallo]

Well said: I find that almost always the Mac user that is always huffing away about the quality of Apple components wouldn't know a quality component if it ran over him. Mac users are, as a group, the most hardware ignorant group on the planet. That's usually why they bought a Mac in the first place! So they didn't have to learn anything. So they think the hardware is just "little over what a PC cost". Then I break down their precious iMac and show them how to replace it for less than 50% of the price. That shuts them up in a hurry. The only people that defend Mac prices are people that don't know hardware prices. Whenever I'm selling off computer parts and Mac people phone me, inevitably they don't have a clue as to what they are doing, and you have to dumb down everything for them. What a pain. On a good note though, they tend to me more generous than the typical PC buyer.

 

Real efi, real dsdt, apic (acpi platform) and installation process, those are some of the great differences that let be better, with worst and more expensive Apple hardware, in any case a Mac computer.

My friend if a cpu on pin 935 as always the correct power supply will in any case work better than one that now has 1 mv less an in one second 2 more.

You can pray you can mount and overclock a cpu 2 ghz faster on a pc than a mac one, the mac one will work in any case better cause the power distribution.

[lenesu]

Why don't you take into account the time spent on building the hack and making it fully compatible and stable? I've spent about 50 hours on making my hack and it would have cost me a thousand dollars if my salary was about 20$ per hour.

[Stylez]

i love my macbook, and i loved my powerbook before and my g4 powermac also. and i also love my linux fileserver and i even love windows sometimes a windows user will possibly switch to osx after testing, i guess a hardcore linux user wont.

original apple hardware is too expensive (at least here in europe). if you take a look at the prices of an apple macbook in the US apple store and compare it with DE apple store you'll see what i mean. an apple would be much more affordable if apple would bring their prices on the same level everywhere. (apple macbook 1199euro in DE, 1299 usd in US, thats a difference of 220euro..)

but i am an apple user for some years now and i dont want to miss the powerful OS again..

i think its great to give non-apple users the opportionity to try OSX on their pcs. some try linux to test if they can handle it, so why shouldnt they be able to try osx before they spend lots of money for apple hardware and an OS that might not fit their interests?

i owned a few 'windows' machines as well (i remember my dell latitude d505, 1,7ghz centrino, 1gb ram running kalyway, booting time was 2x faster than my original macbook and stability was absolutely the same..) and tried to get osx86 working on them. of course its still a lot of reading and trying to get your hardware full enabled, but you learn a lot while trying.

i would not say osx is the best OS ever, it really depends what you are using your machine for. but it definitly is easy to use and very very stable. for my usage i had to compile some linux tools that i missed on osx, so no os is perfect

my girlfriend bought an sony vaio for about 1000euro and i really tried to get her to buy a macbook. but she's a windows user and dislikes the handling of osx. on the one hand she wants to tried it, but on the other she already knows that she would switch back to windows again. so do i.

i think osx86 project is a great opportunity for interested users to test osx and to show what is possible with an intel/amd comp running osx. some of my friends already asked me to install osx on their windows machines, but i denied. if they really want to give it a try, they should read and learn for themselves. i guess many 'standard' apple users even dont know the possibilitys of their macs, but everyone here that is trying and trying and trying does. because you have to look behind the system, learning the unix tree, using the terminal, settings attributes or whatever.

but if you are not interested in trying yourself to install osx86 and do lots of reading in the forums, then you better get a real mac or keep using windows. sometimes its just frustrating when you tried something for hours and it didnt work.

a big thx to all of those that are spending much time in coding, compiling, creating patches or whatever to make all this possible!

[Harvey Dent]

Well for me i think a osx86 machine is great especially with the advent of voodoo kernel and boot321 innovations I have a msi wind that i use primarilly for office and world of goo its virus free stable and (yes i purchased retail) It cost 450 and another 20 for ram runs fast and well you cant beat it for the price (wind overpriced). I will probably never buy a mac because i'm to much of a tinkerer and love the frustration/reward of getting something to work when its not supposed to like fta recievers and the rest of pirate/ hacking communities. There is a marketplace for tinkerers like myself not looking at getting it for free but it's enjoyable to show my co workers osx on mah wind. bext goal is buildiing a core i7 monster with osx but i will wait on 10.6 snow leo for that. Not to mention i learned alot about efi and osx from osx86

[Then there were none.]

I used OS X x86 back on my custom build computer, but in my opinion its just too much hassle. I really loved using the OS mind, so I got enough money together and bought an iMac 17" Core duo and it was one of the best computers I had ever used, which I later sold to fund the purchase of a Macbook pro I am currently using. The Macbook pro is the best computer i have ever used. My personal opinion on hackintosh computers are that basically, its a good thing as it opens up more users to the apple experience, and shows people that mac computers are fantastic.

[Konami®]

Well I want to add my two cents, I consider myself a Mac user because I completely switched my preference to run in OS X. I don't own a Mac but after using my hackintosh, it blowed my mind and I think Apple computers are the best for graphic design, business or college use. I don't know really if Apple hate us (Hackintosh users) but one thing I know for sure is that we are Apple switchers and we really are going to be real future Apple customers and I am very glad and happy with OS X than ever before.

[manta]

In my personal opinion, as someone who's used Macs and PCs quite extensively over the years, the Mac hardware has been going down in quality recently. I have an Intel Mac Mini which has deteriorated quite badly - audio dies randomly, DVD drive is long dead. The iMacs are terrible if you need to do any maintenance - for example if the hard drive dies out of warranty... have you ever tried to take apart an iMac? I've seen people do it and I can assure you it's not fun.

 

Likewise the latest laptops continue the trend of really weird hardware decisions. New untested chipset, dropping of firewire in all but one model.

 

Personally I think if Apple came out with a mid-range desktop machine, easy to open and upgrade, with just a Core2 Quad chip (most people don't need and don't want to pay for an 8-core xeon!!), then most people wouldn't consider hacks. I just don't think they are going to do this though, they are too devoted to the iMac market.

 

From my angle, a hack made perfect sense - I can spec my own easily and cheaply replaceable parts, I can put the computer under the desk where it belongs, I can upgrade the hard drives easily, I can run proper PCI audio cards instead of crappy USB/firewire ones. I don't have all manner of {censored} hanging off leads from the computer.

 

I have a machine that kills iMac performance and is way more functional and upgradeable, for a 2/3 of the price. When Apple offers such a machine, I'll buy it!

 

And by the way I have many Mac-owning friends who, like me, are more into *getting work done* than admiring their shiny new digital lifestyle accessory - they are all pretty jealous of my machine's performance.

 

You may think I'm hating on Apple - and in some ways you'd be right as I really dislike their recent approach. But I have to say they make a really great OS, which I happily purchased. I hate a lot more things about Windows

[Maurits]

I think it's a good way of checking out the Mac OS, check out all the programs and check if you like it, I did, I'd liked the whole OS X look and feel and I was very comfortable with it, and that's why I bought my MBP 2 weeks ago, I'm very happy with it and I hope that pleasure will last long!

So, I think it's okay to use OSX86, not on a commercial base but for private use it's okay.

If you like the Mac OS than go save/work harder to buy a real one, that's a whole lot better and you can just click update all, that's a lovely feeling