MacWorld Builds A Hackintosh - "Frankenmac! What's in a Mac clone?"

[DJ Loe Kee]

MacWorld Builds A Hackintosh - "Frankenmac! What's in a Mac clone?"

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/133028/200..._mac_clone.html

 

some exerpts (it's a 2 page article, so click the link the read everything).

 

Take the "mythical mid-range Mac minitower," as Macworld's Dan Frakes called it. While Apple has an excellent selection of laptops, entry-level Macs, and high-end machines, it doesn't offer anything at all in the way of a moderately powerful expandable tower model. Though the iMac offers good performance, it's an all-in-one machine with limited expandability and a monitor that not everyone may need. As Dan wrote:

 

What I'd like to see is a minitower design with—and this is just one possible configuration that would fulfill my wish—a reasonably powerful processor (perhaps a higher-end Core 2 Duo or a single Xeon); a good graphics card in an upgradeable slot; a decent amount of RAM and hard-drive space; a single free PCI Express slot; and room for one additional hard drive. The ability to swap out the optical drive would be a nice touch.

 

I'm generally with Dan on this one—I don't want or need a machine with a built-in monitor, I don't need the power of an eight-core Mac Pro, but I'd like my Mac to be faster and more expandable than a mini. (I want more than one slot and room for more drives, however, so my minitower might be more of a medium-tower.)

 

Tired of waiting and hoping for the Mac of my dreams to appear, I decided to take the technology into my own hands and build it myself. And thus began my experiment to assemble my very own OS X-running machine.

To realize my dream Mac system, I set myself a budget of $1,000 (not including keyboard, monitor, or mouse), and started shopping for computer parts. While this amount is much more than what Psystar claims it will charge, I wanted to build a more powerful machine than what that company is offering, and then see how well it worked compared with machines from Cupertino.

 

Part - Description - Cost

Motherboard Asus P5K-E - $152.99

CPU - Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz - $219.99

CPU heat sink - Zalman CPNS7700-Cu - $48.00

RAM - 4GB DDR-2 800Mhz PC6400 - $94.99

Video card - MSI NX8800GT 512MB OC - $189.99

Case - Antec Sonata III 500 - $119.00

DVD/CD Burner - LG HL-DT-ST GSA-H62N - $40.00

Hard drive - Seagate 500GB SATA 2 - $93.00

Other - Shipping charges - $23.45

TOTAL - $982.40

 

My machine—which I've named the Frankenmac—doesn't look anything like a Mac from the outside, of course. The Antec case is glossy black, with a swing-open door that hides the externally-accessible drive bays, along with two USB ports, one eSATA port, and audio jacks on a shiny metallic strip on the front. And if you happen to be sitting in front of it when it starts up, the BIOS loading screen and black-and-white text-based boot loader (which lets me choose between Vista and OS X) is a dead giveaway that this is not your normal Mac.

 

However, if I were to hide the case and set you down in front of the monitor when the system was already running, you'd be convinced that you were using a "real" Mac—with one minor exception: If you open the About This Mac box, you'll see a giveaway that this machine isn't your typical Mac. I don't think Apple's ever shipped an "unknown" processor! But if you close the About box and just start using the machine, you'll be using a "real" Mac, one that performs (mostly) just like its factory-approved counterpart. The Frankenmac runs any OS X program, including PowerPC-based programs via the Rosetta code-translation system. The CD/DVD burner works with iTunes, iDVD, and iMovie. Even low-level stuff like sleep works—although I have to wake the Frankenmac by touching the power button; the keyboard and mouse are ignored while the machine is sleeping. (That may be due to the fact that I'm using a wireless Microsoft keyboard and mouse over USB—I haven't tested it with Apple-branded hardware.)

 

On the hardware front, everything also seems to work fine. The onboard Ethernet, audio, USB, eSATA and FireWire ports all work. I even found an old USB/FireWire PCI card (from a previous generic Windows machine I built), plugged it in, and connected my iSight camera to it—no problems whatsoever. I plugged in my Wacom tablet, installed the drivers, and found that it also works just fine—including handwriting recognition via the Ink System Preferences panel.

 

that's it for exerpts. read the article for benchmarks (hackintosh/frankenmac vs. a mac pro) and other info.

 

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/133028/200..._mac_clone.html

[macgirl]

where is the world going? :pray_icon:

[~pcwiz]

Interesting, notice how they don't mention OSx86 anywhere?

[cabron]

I liked his article and the frankenmac pwnz a mac pro, lol.

but I understood right? I'm also not kinda zealot apple fanboy.. but he is encouraging us to make a ihack?

 

Its sound strange a guy from magazine coming on the underground place and showing for the world how things works here and by the other side its nice to see this on magazines

[mac_cute]

Interesting, notice how they don't mention OSx86 anywhere?

 

Right ~pcwiz:they don't mention it...

 

Part Description

Cost

Motherboard

Asus P5K-E$152.99CPU Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz$219.99CPU heat sink

Zalman CPNS7700-Cu$48.00RAM 4GB DDR-2 800Mhz PC6400$94.99Video card

MSI NX8800GT 512MB OC$189.99Case Antec Sonata III 500$119.00DVD/CD Burner

LG HL-DT-ST GSA-H62N$40.00Hard drive

Seagate 500GB SATA 2$93.00Other

Shipping charges$23.45TOTAL

 

 

$982.40

 

 

It's like a fever...

[alamoa]

Well .....actualy they do in another article called "Apple and the homebuilt Mac community"

 

*http://www.macworld.com/article/133035/2008/04/hobbyist_os_x.html?t=205

 

But he does not seem to know "Insanely" as long as his built has a few problems an he states that:

 

 

One approach—which appears to be the approach Apple’s taken thus far—is to simply ignore these hobbyist hackers. Since there’s no real measurable impact on Apple, fighting the hobbyists may be more trouble than it’s worth. What evidence do we have to support the theory that Apple is ignoring this segment thus far? For one, there’s been no apparent effort to remove the osx86 project web site, which is the defacto source for information on running OS X on generic PCs.

[vbetts]

but he is encouraging us to make a ihack?

 

Second page tells you don't try this at home.

[idividebyzero]

What is it with mac users and how they think every minute of the day is worth some kind of money? I see mac users say how their time is more valuable than saving money by doing something yourself as much as I see BMW analogies. They seem to be able to put a dollar amount on everything, they must be light sleepers since thats just money down the drain.

 

Building your own computer isnt hard, its just plugging stuff into slots, and those slots are even color coded and in different shapes so you dont plug a SATA cable into a RAM slot. You know, like those shape puzzles that toddlers can do where the triangle goes into the triangle shaped hole. And it only takes like 30 minutes + install time for the OS. He makes it sound way harder than it actually is, its true that the research can take a long time for OSX but hes exaggerating the "build a pc" part by a lot, its an extremely simple process.

[SA22C]

Aside from the 4GB of RAM and the Quad Core, his system is the same as mine.

[DJ Loe Kee]

What is it with mac users and how they think every minute of the day is worth some kind of money? I see mac users say how their time is more valuable than saving money by doing something yourself as much as I see BMW analogies. They seem to be able to put a dollar amount on everything, they must be light sleepers since thats just money down the drain.

 

Building your own computer isnt hard, its just plugging stuff into slots, and those slots are even color coded and in different shapes so you dont plug a SATA cable into a RAM slot. You know, like those shape puzzles that toddlers can do where the triangle goes into the triangle shaped hole. And it only takes like 30 minutes + install time for the OS. He makes it sound way harder than it actually is, its true that the research can take a long time for OSX but hes exaggerating the "build a pc" part by a lot, its an extremely simple process.

yea. they're comparin' the value of buildin' a pc but nobody has any complaints about the lost of money caused by watchin' tv.

 

ppl are lazy, most ppl cannot even add a new dvd burner to their own pc (one of the easiest things to do). it is so easy to change your own car's oil but most ppl don't even know how to do that.

[muitommy]

he stepped on our genius bar, and claimed the tutorial flowing around are poor-instructed ...

[macgirl]

well, some are, but not all, I say 75% of them are very good.

[idividebyzero]

he stepped on our genius bar, and claimed the tutorial flowing around are poor-instructed ...

Pretty sure he was talking about motherboard instructions, which are usually engrish translations from taiwan companies, although this place has some engrish tutorials too. My motherboard manual has a babel fish translation where it says something like "It is for the enjoyment for you to set it to on". But you dont need motherboard instructions except maybe to check how the ram does dual channel or to look at the dialog for locating all the connectors.