okay, ast the poll says, why did you install OSx86? Was it to try out OS X before you bought a mac? was it because macs are too expensive? mabye for revenge at apple for restricting hardware (seriously, if you want revenge, do it another way, Apple kinda turns a blind eye to us.) or maby just for the hell of it, to prove you can. or mabye another reason? Well I did it as a try before you buy, i'm gettin a shiny new iMac for christmas! whats your reason?

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.

I owned a G3 and a G4 and wanted to play around a bit with the intel macs before I made the plunge. Unfortunately My hack is as stable as my G4 ever was so I'll be sticking with it and not sending my money to Apple. Although if Apple releases MacOs for generic installs I will buy it.

I voted Other.

Because I already had a PC that works as a Hackintosh.

Already have a Mac

And want to experiment/test it.

I voted other.

Why did i make a Hackintosh instead of buying an iMac, simple: Radeon HD 2600 PRO

I simply can't afford one right now.

Macs are too expensive. I built my rig especially for use with OS X and it only cost around $480 (US). Even the cheapest Mac Mini I tried to price out was almost twice that amount. And inferior hardware on top of that.

Voted Other. Reason: 1. I love building my own machine, 2. I purchase parts from a wholesaler cheaper, keep for 3+ months and resell to clients (much harder to sell an iMac every time a new one is released and get your investment back ), 3. It's so much fun to hack!

PS: I buy a license for MacOSX, but choose to use it how I want (sure they ie Apple won't agree, but they just have 2 release a desktop and I'll buy from them )

Just for fun, really. I bought my CX210X because it had the right chipset and such to support OSx86. Worked pretty much with little to no problems in Tiger, and works even better with Leopard.

Bottom line is for what you would pay for a stock mini, I built a much more powerful and more importantly expandable desktop. When Mac wises up and just puts out a nice baseline tower I would be more then happy to buy one. More importantly if the only upgradeable Mac didn't cost $2,5000 maybe more hardware developers would put some time into writing drivers for the Mac.

I did it just for fun , i did tried a few other os´s (linux, BSd,Solaris) and they were pretty boring .I wanted a new project and i love reading so i started to read the OSx86 project wiki and i ended up with a fully functional hackintosh.Now i really like the mac os and the apple products but i work and i dont want to throw my money on a PC that it`s barely upgradeable .

Cost difference of 500 as well as wasn't sure if i could get use to os x environment. But now I just purchased my MBP last week and love it to death and I dont see myself buying a windows machine again and if I do for some odd reason it will surely be hacked.

QFE. I agree completely.

1. Macs are to expensive.
2. I build my own systems how I want them.

I own a copy of OSX, but I will never buy a mac, so this is the only way I will get to use OSX.

Cheers

Anything new is always exciting :-) gettinng bored with windows. im lovin OSX.

Cause OS X is better than Windows and I don't wanna buy a new mac.

Other

I got married and that ate all my gadgets cash, so I need to save for awhile until I can get a nice MacBook pro, I really need a decent GFX
Anyway, the MacBook pro's are between 1900 euros and 2300 euros, so that means I'll be buying one in 6-10 months.

I wanted to try OS X but I didn't want to buy a Mac (a hackintosh is a lot cheaper and much more flexible).
It has been great fun, I have built 3 hackintoshes.

Also, my interest for OSx86 added 18 months life to my interest for computers. But now I am bored again.

My Story,

It all started in the Spring of 2007. I was taking a trivial computer class for an easy A to finish my A.A. degree at Lake-Sumter Community College so I could move on to The University of Central Florida in the fall. The entire class was boring and a waste of time because it was just conceptual visualization of how a computer works. You know, how RAM communicates with the CPU, and so on and so on. The teacher was really enthusiastic and got off on tangents so it was still fun looking back.

Well, as a surprise, at the end of the term (the second to last meeting), he took us to the Graphic Design classes (go figure) to play with the Mac OS X computers (they were still running Panther for some reason, education budget?). I was skeptical of course, I had always hated the few Mac Fanboys who would get in my face about getting their Mac, and for some reason now they were a graphic artists (we have all met one or two).

So at first, I am blowing the whole thing off, just playing with Ubuntu on my Laptop (I had just gotten into Linux then). Then halfway thru the class I looked over at the desktop of one of the machines...

And I literally said out loud in the middle of class, "HOLY {censored}, THAT IS SEXY!!!!!" (Cool instructor, plus its college, who the hell cares). It was the first time I actually looked at an OS X desktop, I was just stunned about how fluid and pretty it was. But then I started to play with a few programs. I knew about iTunes and wasn't impressed (not with the windows version either, still prefer WMP). But then I opened iPhoto, and Garageband, and iMovie and was stunned. These programs made sense, easy to use, and were fun. Now, at this point I did not consider my self an graphic, audio, or visual artist, but it did make me feel like I knew how to do atleast a little bit (Hell, I have been using Photoshop CS since 10 grade and had gotten pretty good at it).

But then I thought, IF LINUX COULD RUN ON ALMOST ANYTHING (INCLUDING MY DREAMCAST), SOME AHOLE OUT THERE HAS TO HAVE GOTTEN OS X TO RUN ON A PC.

I went to google, typed in "OS X on PC", found the wiki, and since then it has been history.

I even update that instructor every once in a while on OSx86 happenings, and my current config of my system.

Well thats my story, sorry if I bored anyone...

I already have a pc, didn't want to buy a mac pc just to try out OSX.

Of course a mac pc would be too expensive if I have the above alternative.

And it's for fun too, not only of testing/doodling with OSX on a vanilla pc, but also of participating in this activity of defeating (to some point) hardware limitations (thanks to the geniuses who permitted this to happen).

One thing's for sure: it ain't "trying before buying"... at least not for the near future.

So it's almost "all of the above", but I'll settle for "other"...

I've always wanted to check out OS X but i lack the money to just waste on yet another computer. I already have a desktop and a laptop that work perfectly fine.

I heard awhile back you could install OS X on a PC but i just figured it would be too hard, up until a few days ago when my curiosity overtook my apprehension for doing it.

I have to say it was certainly easier than some of my past experiences with installing either windows or linux on my laptop.

Desktop PCs are waay more modular than macs, and they are also cheaper.

I voted other as well. I would say first and foremost I just didn't know enough about Mac. I wanted to know more, but with so few people owning them, I could never give it a good try. I read a few years back that it was possible to load OS X on a PC when Apple switched to x86, but I just blew it off.

Fast forward to present time...

My good friend Eric got me excited about it after him raving how much he loved them. So, I went looking online looking for a Mac. None were cheap. At the time I had a an old Pentium 4 system. Funny enough, I ended up installing "FlyakiteOSX", which is a skin for WinXP to make it "look" like a Mac. I so impressed with that, I checked out the OSx86 wiki. My old Pentium 4 system was compatible enough to load Tiger. I loved it so much, I decided to build a system specific for OS X. Remember, I still want a real Mac, but as times are tight and I love tinkering with stuff...it was too perfect for me.

Anyways, enough with the stories. The MAIN reason I wanted to try OS X was for the music recording support. It seems all the pros go for Macs when it comes to that stuff. I now can see why. Everything is so well incorporated with each other. It's the most organic OS I've ever used. It all ties together.

...my 2 cents

-Stell

I needed a computer that could play games well, but a had a budget about equal to a few years worth of christams + birthday money. Plus I love challenges.

i really love how I am being challenged to fix the install that I broke. I love it so much

[OTHER] absolute obsession with all things Apple...

Think Mark

3 reasons:

PC hardware is newer more often, costs less, and steve jobs needs to realize that he can't keep the DMR (digital media rights...think itunes) mentality with us anymore.

all the new motherboards are using EFI emulating a legacy bios (Vista somewhat takes advantage of the EFI...but they have not really embraced it)...well what's left to keep us from using OS X86? Flash the EFI...Pop in a registered copy of Leopard...make sure all kexts/drivers are setup...and we have a bonafide Mac.

-Jordan

P.S.-steve jobs...there's about 200,000+ of us. we all are waiting for you. you could make mroe money and charge more for the X86/X64 copies and we'd buy them.

Well, for the curiosity of see how a Mac OS looks like and for a fun challenge. At the end, I adopted my X86 as standard desktop after using both Windows and Linux. Hope to buy a macbook soon if I magically get some money (I doubt) lol

well originally i did it just to see if i could, I was bored and it seemed like a fun project. But then when I really got into using it, I found myself purchasing more osx86 friendly hardware upgrades. At this point, I've made the decision to buy a macbook and keep this monster for what it was originally built to do: gaming. thus, I voted for "try before you buy"

I voted for fun!
I read about it waiting for a train to bring me home in a small kiosk at the train station on the cover of a plastic wrapped magazine.
As i couldnt read the article i used google/mininova/usenet.
I found Jas 10.4.8 and upgraded my IBM ThinkPad A31 to a 100GB harddrive and 1 GB memory.
Made a partition for XP (so i could download) and installed Jas on a second partition using a tutorial on the wiki page.
Then i found out i couldnt run all software like iWorks08 and iLife08.
I notice the sytem requirements were 10.4.9 or higer...
So i downloaded XxX 10.4.11.
In this version i needed to install more "out of the box" before everything worked but still i got most of it running.

The fun part now is to surprise (Mac) people with my system

Other:

I have always been a Mac customer and loved all their systems. If Mac could run on my PC then why the hell shouldn't it?!!

Another "Other" here.

Always been into Apple's as I started on a non-functioning ][ in elementary school and managed to get it running. From then on I got pulled out of class to fix them.

Junior High was spent programming on Lego-Logo (Tell me someone else remembers that).

High School was spent working on Video Editing and Graphical Arts. Worked on the Senior Video from Freshman year up till I dropped out.

Between High School and now was working at menial jobs until I landed a good gig in IT and could afford a real Mac. Now I have a menagerie.

Since I now own a few True Macs I'm looking for another challenge. Hence OSx86 on my desktop. Got tired of playing FPS's so I might as well do something with it.

It had to do with cost.

In Canada I paid about $3500 for a G4 MDD DP 1.0ghz about 5 or 6 years ago. (I still can't believe I spent that kind of money on a computer, but i had a moment of weakness and took the plunge.) Loved the machine inspite of the quirks (noise and heat). Now I'm running a BadAxe2 with a Quad processor etc. (see specs) and the investment was about $1600 bucks, counting upgrades since the original configuration. It's simply great value for money. Also I now have the use of alot of PC componentry for the case, keyboard, mouse and so on, not to mention future considerations for watercooling and overclocking.

Having said that, it's also been a great learning experience. Kext files, EFI bootloader, making my own brazilmac disks, etc. I damn near started making my own Leopard disk and was researching it heavily, when the first disk came out, so I abandoned the project shortly after....

Heck, just yesterday I modified a kext file in the MMD G4 to change the temp settings in the AppleFan.kext file, Never would have done that before...

Overall it has been worth all the grief, since it took about a year for the support to mature enough for 100% compatibility. EFI being the key to it all. (I pray for RAID Booting!)

Lastly, I have to say that the community I have found here has been wonderful. I may not have been a big contributor, since I'm not a programmer or expert hacker, but I love this site and I have read it all as a lurker. A big THANK-YOU goes out to each and everyone on you....

Steve Jobs, ( if you happen to haunt this site) please forgive me for straying. I did however buy my Original Leopard Disk, if that's any consolation...BTW I read about your recent brush with Cancer, I hope you recover well.

Why did I build a Hackintosh? Well, being a hot rodder from way back I like the formula of cramming a chevy small block in a 32 Ford coupe. Same deal but with computers. Hot Rodder=Hacker or vise versa

Haven't built one, yet. Just thinking about it. I bought an iMac two years ago, and I love it. I guess I just wanna do it for fun. I cant see myself spending all that time and money on an XP or linux system. Would rather build a mac for the pleasure of doing it and with the bonus of upgrading for the future. What ever happened to the DIYers in the world? Someday, I will be a true geek

When my aunt received an Imac for Christmas, she wanted to toss out the old P4 1.8 Ghz desktop from 2002 until I offered to take it off her hands. After tossing in 1 Gig of PC133 RAM I had gotten for practically nothing and two weeks of fiddling around with it and consulting this site....managed to get OSX 10.5.1 installed on it successfully through TOH's 10.5 install. When Kalyway's 10.5.2 updater and netkas' 9.2.0 sse2/3 kernel became available...updated that box to 10.5.2 with Darwin 9.2.0.

Other than not being able to play DVDs due to the crappy video card (ATI Rage Fury/xpert 2000 Pro)...everything else works including sound.

Not bad for a machine that was almost trashed.

Just for fun at first but then i realized how stable and easy to use it is, so now its the only OS on my computer and has been for 6 months.

Will buy a mac when I can afford it.

Other...I owned a G4.Now I have an iMac and a MacPro. I am so used to work with them that I made a Hackintosh.Two more remaining...

Other; legacy equipment.

Apple doesn't make a real personal computer any more.

Mac Mini/Apple TV  -- toys
iMac -- too limited (only 3/4GB!!!), too slow
Mac Pro -- 8 cores for what?!!!

My employer is wasting a lot of money and energy buying 8 core Mac Pro workstations with 1GB (or maybe 2GB) of FB-DIMMs for running single threaded applications. I can see why environmental groups might take issue with Apple. They manage to sell $2000-$3000 systems that are no better than $500 hardware while costing at least three times as much energy to operate.

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.

just for the sake of it...
it simply workin' and osx is quite cheap.
oh well, own a macbook pro anyway ;)

I was just curious. I owned a Mac G4 a few years ago, but didn't really do too much with it besides use it as my desktop at work. With Hack I am being more or less forced to learn about the internal workings of OS X. I have also tinkered with some of the OS X-specific apps out there and gotten a little bit of a feel for it. Hey, it may come in handy on a resume someday. Maybe if I'm bored and I think Hack has taught me enough I'll try to get Apple Certified. 8)

it fun Yay fun

i like trying all kinds of new software and i was tired of linux

OSx86 is a new challenge for me

kill the time...

Two reasons: excessive boredom, and to take some load off of my G4 mac mini. Which was under too much load from recording 9 hours of XM radio a day, running EyeTV, and running a media server to allow the iTunes library to be accessed over the internet.

Twofold

To prove I could

If I were to buy a mac (and it's planned) it wouldn't be a desktop. The iMacs are fugly, and limiting. The mini's are underpowered, and the Pros are overpriced. So, in the meantime I build one.

A Macbook Pro is in the near future, and when that comes, likely the Hack will become a media server.

Well, I originally wanted this just for fun, and to see how it holds up against linux, and what all the fuss was about. And I could never afford a real Mac, since I'm only 13. And I miraculously installed it with minimal hassle, and all I needed was a network patch and some video drivers! Already much easier than linux. I really like messing with different OSes and stuff and, as we all know, Windows sucks, and linux seems a bit... cheap. (I realise that It's all made by open source coders and stuff, but still. It just feels cheap and third party.) Mac on the other hand is all seamless and everything works with each other and stuff.

And now, I love Mac. I'll definitely buy a Macbook later on. Much later, maybe when I get into uni or get a part time job. But as a desktop, I think a mac would be too uncustomizable. I like building my own pcs and knowing what goes in it, and upgrading when I want. I'll stick to hackintosh for my desktops.

I voted for "Macs are too expensive". I guess that's the main reason I got hackintosh instead of buying a Mac, but now I see i probably should have picked "All of the above" or "Other."


EDIT: Whoah, just realised this was my first post. What an epic first post
I think this is actually the longest post that I've ever written :/

1. Spur of the moment kind of thing. (40%)
2. I don't like Steve B Jobs at all. (60%)

Congrats, Nano-Rus, well done!

I vote other,
one reason is price (i already have a pc, why sould i buy another computer if i can have 2 or 3 OS's [ubuntu 7.10] in that one?)
the other reason and perhaps the strongest: in my country Macs are not sold... if i buy one out of the country i can't access neither warranty nor tech service... too risky for that amount of money...

Simple, always used Macs. Last one was a G5 iMac and I just wasn't impressed - too expensive, too slow and outdated far too quickly. So I built an intel pc for one third of the price of an iMac which is totally expandable and heaps faster than the iMac and yes it also is running xp and vista because there is nothing available for the mac for bluray movies as far as I can tell. It is going to take something really outstanding to get me to buy Mac hardware again, but there os is way the best.