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Official "GarageMac" movement?


MacMan397
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Should Apple Certify "Mac Rebuilders"?  

39 members have voted

  1. 1. Apple Certified GarageMac Program

    • Yes
      28
    • No
      11


13 posts in this topic

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How many Hackintosh users are out there?

 

Personally I think there should be a public record of how many Hackintosh users there are today and a count of how many people plan to build a Hackintosh in the next six months to a year. If that kind of number is made public and it's significant (maybe up to a million or more) it could possibly convince Apple to do something about it in a good way.

 

While I think that Apple doing the MSFT thing and trying to be the everything OS to all computer hardware is a bad thing Apple could make some custom hardware available to the GarageMac builders of the OSx86 community to reclaim as many legacy Mac cases as possible and recycle as many motherboards etc. as possible. Apple could go as far as to create a training program for authorized GarageMac building certificates where they could collect a fee from individual people helping other people re-build legacy desktop Macs on top of parts costs. Its clear that OSx86 isn't a trend that's likely to die off any time soon and more and more advanced users/builders keep adding to the ranks. It's high time Apple resolved itself to accept that they aren't serving their customers well at all in certain areas, but they can improve. They could even use information for something like this as marketing info. to help them build a line of more specialized computers. In any event if this is something you'd like to discuss further, agree with, disagree with reply to this and don't just be a drive-by post reader.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Dang, I was hoping to get a little response with this the first time, hopefully the repackaging will help create more conversation. Anyway, one point that I missed that could be considered trivial is that a comprehensive "GarageMac" program could be a small countermeasure to help beat back the "Apple is an Evil Empire" hackers that are growing in number parallel to the growth of Apple.

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  • 1 month later...

Interestingly our beloved Steve Jobs started also as a hacker and a Homebrew Computer Geek.

 

My guess is he is fully aware of the hackintosh thing and even of this forum here, as it is the oldest around.

 

Personally I think Apple is not interested and also that they don't care as far as no piracy is involved. think : Every new OSX user - hackintoshed or not - is also a potential buyer of their software, of their itunes store, appstore and in some time later maybe of a real mac, iphone, ipod whatever. So in the end it could even help create new customers.

 

The hype of the Apple brand and their value plus the demand is clearly saying no to generic OSX hardware. They can be proud. Apple has gone through storms and winds and there were times when they were in trouble, deeply. And only in such cases they licensed Mac OS to clone-makers ( OS 8.x times ) .. The times now are very very turning. Microsoft has to be carefully, Apple is going to be bigger - my prognosis.

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  • 3 months later...
Apple has gone through storms and winds and there were times when they were in trouble, deeply. And only in such cases they licensed Mac OS to clone-makers ( OS 8.x times )

Your history is a little distorted. The licensed clones were done during the 7.x days, and they directly led to many of Apple's financial problems at the time. Mac OS 8.0 was a direct response, since it broke Apple out of their agreement to license it to the clone makers (the licenses were specific to System 7).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clo...fficial_program

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  • 3 weeks later...
Your history is a little distorted. The licensed clones were done during the 7.x days, and they directly led to many of Apple's financial problems at the time. Mac OS 8.0 was a direct response, since it broke Apple out of their agreement to license it to the clone makers (the licenses were specific to System 7).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clo...fficial_program

 

But wasnt that back in the days where the best in terms of at least anything remotely close to a modern system what were used to today was the Comodore Amiga 500. I mean wasnt it other turns they took wrong both on the PC side and Mac and they where way behind then.

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  • 2 months later...

As long as there is no obvious money making involved like the pystar it is generally not worth the effort for Apple to hunt down everyone and each of us.

 

Truth is, most of the general public out there (Apple's main target market) are not technical enough to get into this whole hackintosh business. And those who are willing to hack and tinker would most likely not go for Mac if the hackintosh is not an option.

 

My mac history started with my G4 mini andI have been on hackintosh ever since shortly after 10.4 went intel. I haven't really needed a laptop and I am still a career student so I don't own one for the time being. But if you ask me what will my first laptop be, it will be a macbook(air/pro). Chances are I may not have time anymore to troubleshoot and maintain a hackintosh down the road in my life. You see how the hackintosh can in fact help mac growing in market?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Noooooooooooooooooooo.

 

Apple is not a company interested in having people building computers that can run the MacOS....especially if there is money being passed around because of it. I'm a hackintosher myself and I've always wondered how Apple has allowed our activities to go on this long without trying to axe it.

 

They probably just figure...we're low in numbers and that a few hobbyists won't hurt anything. But guaranteed...if they were to find out that a large percentage of people were hackintoshing...the end could come.

 

It's better just to keep this a neat hobby.

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Its a cool idea, but i dont want apple to be behind all of this. I mean, if apple starts selling "Apple authorized EFI dongles for pC" or such thing building a hackintosh woulndt be as cool or challenging anymore. But on the bright side, i wish apple would stop patching their OS to prevent it from running on pcs (as in removing legacy drivers, updating boot systems, etc.)

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  • 1 month later...

I don't agree with Apple certifying "Mac Rebuilders" because that would result in the non-certified being shut out by the certified ones because the certified ones would want to control it in order to capitali$e on it. I like the Hackintosh/FrankenMac community as it is, open-ended and free for anyone to participate in. A lot of Hackintosh dabblers are not successful enough to create a fully functioning Hackintosh and many of them eventually buy a Mac because they got the Mac "bug" to the point of wanting a bonafide fully supported Mac which runs all the Apple application software and is updated without breaking their OS installation. The rest of the Hackintosh community, which sticks with doing Hackintosh, are mostly technically sophisticated and do it as a hobby or because they want a Mac OS computer which has features which a real Mac doesn't have such as what I have which is a Toshiba tablet laptop which runs the Mac OS and has the tablet function and screen rotation which only the iPad, iPad, and iPhone have which aren't full-feature computers. Apple tolerates it this way too because trying to control it would cause Apple more grief than it's worth.

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  • 2 weeks later...

apple should open that os to all x86 builders. its so much better than any version of windows...

i run lion on 2 builds a x58 and a 1156...

used tonymacs technique ([url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]-[url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url])

both fully functional....

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Microsoft sells Operating Systems and software. Apple sells Computers.

 

At Apple, there is no separation between the hardware and the software, they design, build, and sell a full experience that is consistent and elegant. They have zero interest in supporting Mac OS X as a standalone product and being on the hook to support it on billions of PoS desktops -- they want every Mac user to have the same experience. No "my iMac doesn't wake from sleep" or "My Mac Pro doesn't get full acceleration in QE" or "My MacBook Pro's FireWire port doesn't work".

 

That is what makes a Mac a Mac. They don't want people installing OS X on anything else because they believe that a Mac will give the best experience for the user. I'm inclined to agree with them. I think Hacs are great for a hobbiest but hardly the same thing as having a Mac.

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  • 3 months later...

Re-visiting this after so long brings back a few not so distant memories, but it doesn't change anything about my belief that a "GarageMac" initiative for Desktops/Workstations/Servers is a better way forward for Apple to serve it's current customers and prospective customers needing more than gadgets to get their day to day work done. Also, considering Apple is clearly moving away from building anything other than gadgets in what the they've deemed the "Post PC Era" rather than give customers few products, many of which have overpriced hardware that doesn't meet customers needs or is overkill "the certified "GarageMac" initiative with Apple selling all of the internal components makes more sense than ever. At the end of the day selling software really seems like it should be the most important thing might give them access to the all important technological gatekeepers of technological word of mouth promotion which counts for A LOT.

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It's nice to have dreams...I want a unicorn that poops gold nuggets, which is more likely to happen. Since apple has no idea how to run a profitable company, doing a full 180 and moving to a optional self build business model, with it's much smaller hardware profit margins and increased tech support costs along with the potential to cut into their existing high margin product sales, is the perfect solution to get out of the red and back to black. Seriously though, putting the whole user experience that is their mantra aside, they would need to require a computer aptitude test before letting anyone buy from them, what I guess would just be PC parts with apple logos and available kexts from apple. I can imagine a line of people at the genius bar with boxes of mangled computer parts and other personal failures. Do you turn them away because they bought the kit and hurt the image of your brand? or help and loose any profit within the first hour of free tech support? As soon as you public approve of it, you gotta support it. As it is now, by turning a blind eye, they are making money and not spending ton's of money on building anti piracy measures that only serve to annoy the paying customers, no tech support needs to be offered, hackintosh users become free super beta testers for all things apple, and hackintosh gave me and others a reason to spend hundreds of dollars on apple peripherals and software that would not have been otherwise, also converted many people to mac users who then buy the real thing for that complete user experience, which is their ace in the hole against rampant hacking (adding consumer value to the real thing that can't be replicated by building you own). So loose that, you loose Apple. And in the end it would just make hackintoshing with non-apple branded hardware easier. So since I think it would basically lead to the collapse of apple if they could ever burn though all their cash reserves, on the flip side, getting a big list of hackintosh users together would more likely convince them they need to further lock down OSX with simply different anti-piracy measures and sue all of us for violating their intellectual patent on "thinking about computers that have screens, with windows and buttons and stuff that do stuff when clicked on, and other similar stuff that could be found on, or stuffed in, a computer".

 

So lets not make any waves and go rockin the boat:)

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