To start off this article, you should know a little bit about my Mac background. About a year ago I had never used Mac OS X in my life. Back then I never even saw a Mac computer in real life. Sure, I knew what they looked like, and I saw demos of OS X during Steve Jobs’ keynotes, but I had never used a Mac. Although I had never used a Mac, I was still Mac-curious. Being an iPod and iTunes user, I was already familiar with the design and functionality of Apple, and being fed up with Windows at the time, I looked toward Mac OS. There was one problem, though. Macs were expensive, I had a limited budget, and I wasn’t going to spend everything I had to buy a computer I had never even used.
Then Steve Jobs revealed the future of Macs at WWDC 2005. Macs were going to be running on Intel. That announcement instantly got my head spinning. Maybe I could run Mac OS X on my current PC? I apparently wasn’t alone. Since there was a number of people who wanted OS X on generic hardware, fake copies started spreading around. After several fake copies, a real leak was finally released, and thus began my journey into OSx86.
The first time I ran OSx86 was at school using the Deadmoo image. I had to run OSx86 on a computer at school since my home computer did not support SSE2 CPU instructions, a requirement for Mac on x86 hardware. My first OS X experience was rather crappy, since the computer at school sucked, but that didn’t stop me. When Christmas rolled around, I took that as a great opportunity to build a “real” OSx86 machine; one that could support accelerated graphics and supposedly run as well as a real Mac. So, that’s exactly what I did. I built a machine that was identical to Apple’s Intel developer kits, and installed OS X on it. From then until now, I have been manually installing every single OS X update, mainly using Maxxuss’ instructions.
Enough about my OS X history. Flash forward to today. I bought an Intel MacBook on Thursday and sold my Hackintosh on Friday. To keep the lawyers happy, I should mention that I sold my Hackintosh with the hard drive wiped clean, and did not provide the disks necessary to install OS X on the machine. So, basically I went from never using OS X in my life, to buying my first Mac in about nine months. I would have bought my Mac sooner, but it took me this long to save up for one. So, with that said, I thought it would be interesting to compare an install of OSx86 to a real Mac and see how well OSx86 stacks up.
The Updates
I guess I should start with the most obvious, updates. The major difference between a real Mac and OSx86 is updates. The minute Apple releases an update, I can now download it. Back when I used OSx86, that processes took quite a while. You could never tell if an update was safe. You had to wait for someone to test the update to see if it was safe. Then if it wasn’t safe, you had to wait a few days for someone to come up with instructions on how to install the update; usually bypassing the files that were causing problems. Then a week or two later someone would crack the files that were troublesome, you would add those files to your update, and then the easy installers would start appearing for the people who didn’t want to manually install. So, if you manually installed, you usually had the updates in days, with a second update a couple of weeks later, and if you were a noob, the update took a few weeks until you could install. Now with a real Mac, updating is no longer a problem.
Within the updating process, it should be mentioned that OSx86 users couldn’t always take advantage of updates. Often the OS point updates contained performance enhancements tailored to specific Apple hardware, so while Mac users may have been reporting major performance enhancements, OSx86 users were still running at the initial speed. The reasoning to that is along the way Apple has caught onto what the OSx86 scene has been doing, so they have been removing things that apply to generic hardware, forcing OSx86 users to use the original files. The best example of this is the kernel. In 10.4.5 Apple pulled the power instructions for generic x86 CPUs and started using power instructions tailored to the Intel Core chips. Since the majority of the OSx86 scene do not have Core CPUs, the 10.4.4 kernel has been used ever since. So, whatever performance enhancements Apple applies to the kernel, OSx86 users never see. The same thing apply to the drivers. While OSx86 users are seeing the new features and bug fixes of every release, they never fully take advantage of hardware fixes and enhancements.
Everything Works
The next major difference between Hackintosh and Macintosh is everything works. To run a perfect OSx86 install you either need to be lucky, or build a machine tailored to running OS X. Many OSx86 users have sound cards that don’t work, wireless cards with no connectivity, and do not have accelerated graphics. Sure, OS X runs on those machines, but people miss out on a lot of the functionality.
Looking at my own install of OSx86, I had to do some wacky things to get certain functionality. Since OSx86 didn’t like my wireless card, I had to run a wire from my Hackintosh to my Windows machine, using Windows to share its wireless connection with my Hackintosh. Sure I got internet, but my Hackintosh was never part of my real network. The Windows machine created a network just between it and the Hackintosh, thus preventing my Hackintosh from sharing files with the rest of the network. Then there is Front Row. In order for Front Row to work, I had to hook up an separate USB mouse, using the mouse’s USB profile to fake it was a Front Row IR receiver. So, the majority of OSx86 users either have something that doesn’t work, or they’re doing something crazy to get it to work.
Performance
The next major difference I noticed between OSx86 and the real OS X is performance. Now I’m going out on a limb here, since my switch from Hack to Mac was a substantial hardware upgrade. I went from a 2.5 GHz Intel Celeron to a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo, from 1GB of RAM to 2GB of RAM, and from an Intel GMA 900 to an Intel GMA 950. As you can see, I have a feeling the majority of what I’m noticing is from that hardware upgrade and does not have anything to do with custom tailored Apple hardware. I’m still going to mention my findings though, because they may mean something to someone.
The first major difference I noticed is with the video. Animations run smoother, and things just feel snappier. On top of that, colors look more vibrant. Previously I felt that the colors of OS X were washed out and never looked that good. I calibrated the color profile several times, and could never get it looking the way I wanted. Now with my MacBook, the colors look great and no longer suffer from that washed out look. I should probably clarify here, since I know I’m going to get some person tell me it’s because of the glossy screen on the MacBook. I’m not comparing the screen of the MacBook at all. I’m comparing the colors of OS X through my LCD monitor. I should also mention that I have re-calibrated the MacBook’s color profile, so it has nothing to do with the color profile that ships with the MacBook.
Yet another performance enhancement I have noticed has been Rosetta. Previously on OSx86, I dreaded every time I had to use a PowerPC application. The performance of Rosetta was so bad I could barely use it at all. Word was so slow it couldn’t even keep up with my typing speed. I couldn’t even get Photoshop to load without leaving my computer on overnight. Alright, that last statement was a bit exaggerated, but it certainly did take a while. Now with a real Mac, Rosetta runs like Apple’s been demoing since day one. I can barely tell that Word is a PowerPC application and Photoshop runs well enough that I no longer have to switch to Windows for my Photoshop work.
Conclusions
So, that brings me to the crux of this article, is OSx86 good enough as a real Mac? Being an OSx86 user for sometime, I can say that the hacked version of OS X isn’t too far off from the real thing. By running OSx86 you certainly have all the features that real Macs have, but you miss out when it comes to performance. You can keep your operating system up to date, but it takes some time until you can finally install the updates, and on larger updates you often miss out on hardware enhancements. On top of that, just to run OSx86 you need to have the right hardware, otherwise you’ll be missing out on key features of the OS, or end up doing some funky things to get them to work. So overall, it’s not bad, you just have to do some work to maintain the operating system.
Now of course, you need to keep in mind that there is always the threat of Apple putting an end to the OSx86 community altogether. Sure, OS X may work on generic PCs now, but when 10.5 Leopard comes around, Apple could easily add things that prevent generic machines from functioning. You could always use the last version, but I know how I function when I don’t have the latest and greatest. I feel like I’m missing out on something, and I hate that feeling.
I personally think that OSx86 is perfect for what it’s there for. I look at it as a transition point. It’s a way for geeks who might not have the chance to try OS X and give it a test run. If they’re curious like I was on using Mac, they can try it without the high costs of buying a Mac. If they like it and they’re interested in becoming a serious Mac user, they’ll buy a Mac sometime down the road. It may not be immediately, but at some point they will buy one. I say that because I can’t see anyone going through all the trouble of updating the OS for the rest of their lives. Eventually it will get annoying and the person will either buy a Mac or go back to using Windows.
So, in my opinion, OSx86 is a perfect for a certain group of people. It’s not something that you’re going to run as your main machine for the rest of your life. You’re going to try it for a while and then either go back to Windows or buy a real Mac. I don’t think Apple has to fear OSx86, since it’s not meant for everyone. The people who are going to use it are potential Mac users, and OSx86 is simply their trial disk.
30 Comments
Excellent article. I grew up with Apple in school, and at hope used inferior PC clones. It’s amazing, i’ve used state-of-the-art Apples in school and at home used a monochrome POS PC that didn’t do anything useful. I can’t believe I’ve used a PC so long and never gave apple a chance. Even the older Apple II’s were great, capable machines. I really wish I switched long ago. Luckily I was able to play with the classic mac’s from school usage and even played games from the computer club, but i never got into the system. i didnt do much different on my winbox at home.
as i started to hate windows more and more i switched to linux. and like a lot of linux people out there, used aqua based themes. then my boss at the time said just switch already. you love aqua, u love unix, just get OS X.
and now i am ready. once the new power macs (mac pros??) come out, i’m getting it. now i wish i can at least play with older macs and play with the classic macs again. so im joining later in the game and i cant wait to do so.
i mean at home, not hope…
Great to see you writing for the OSx86 Project! Awesome article, and welcome! =)
in time, i`m interesting to use mac os as my operating system. but, i don`t have any money to buy an apple computer.
i heard we can install hacked-macintosh on the pc. is it true??
my computer-specification is:
intel celleron 1.7 GHz
ram 128 MB
(and the others, i think isn`t requested to be explained)
what should i do, to build a mac on pc??
thank you for everyone may explain.
try
Double your ram. use a USB keyboard and mouse. PS/2 support has been cut from newer releases. That celeron should have SSE2, so apply the proper patch. A little birdie told me there’s an Install-DVD image floating around on the BitTorrent protocol right now…It will give you the option to select an SSE2 Intel CPU such as yours. Don’t expect your sound to work. If it does, you’re just lucky. Don’t expect great video performance either, you’ll be most likely stuck in a framebuffer.
I have a P3 IBM think pad laying around, it is a crappy 500mh x500. Will this support a mac kernal? also as it does not have a dvd drive, only a cd, do you know of a set of disks floationg around in the event it will work?
regards,
Christoff
onique@yahoo.com
I installed Mac OS X 10.4.3 (8F1111g) on my gateway 7330
its got a core due p4 3.06 ghz and 1gb ram I also left windows and linux for gaming and wifi appz. if I could afford a mac I would own one, maybe if I owned the isp I do tech support for I could be alas I’m lucky to have this seven hundred dollar machine.
I’m having all the same issues mentioned above(no halo for me) thats why I kept windows and hakintosh can’t even see my wireless card but it’s still os x the powerhouse of a unix os that it is, is better than no osx. I’ll do a toot on a proper osx win linux triple boot and link it here
Hey,
Great Article!
Have a nice day,
cenk
Nice piece of writing. Presently I use a Hackentosh it has OS/86 10.4.6 can I just install the combo upgrade (10.4.9) without any patches? The combo will upgrade a intel based Mac with OS/X 10.3.x and up if I am correct.
No you can not. You have to wait until someone patches it before you can do that.
Very Good Article! Not too much or too little detail, just enough to give people an idea of the pros and cons to running OS X on a PC vs a Mac.
Here is another Article similar in nature…
http://www.switchingtomac.com/wp/under-the-hood-what-it-means-to-be-an-intel-mac-imac-vs-pc/
You are absolutely right about Rosseta on hackintosh. It is way too slow. Too bad…
I certainly would like to own Mac but i can’t afford it, so i must use hackintosh. If Apple cut off prices i will buy a Mac, but now i don’t want to spend 80% more money for hardware that will do same thing as cheaper one.
Sasha, the Mac’s are much the same and in some cases cheaper, than equivalent spec. p.c/clones. Yes cheaper, its been proven over and over by many sites so dont bother flaming me. Dont be fooled thinking that Apple hardware is more expensive than p.c.’s these days. Its a different world.
Hi Ronald,
That was a great article! Especially the way you were upfront about it. I’ve been lucky enough to get my Hackintosh machine to run everything including graphic-acceleration with Quartz Extreme and Core Image support (on an Intel 915 GMA) with great sound. I’ve tried just one Rosetta app. which is Ableton Live 5.1. It seemed to work fine but when I actually started creating some music, I could hear the jarring (caused by high CPU usage). Soon, I tried the newer 5.2 Universal Binary and it worked flawlessly.
I say this while being clear about one thing that is, I am gonna shift to a real Mac as soon as it’s financially feasible for me. This was a test-run, as you rightly said…and it’s been great!
It offers stability, elegance and a high performance quotient which make it suitable for artistic work (although I wouldn’t reccommend it for any development work, its too different from Windows/Linux environment that I’m used to. The Terminal app. is a pain in the a$$ to work with).
Using OS X on a PC (hackintosh) sounds like using Linux on a PC – a lot of tweaking to get things working, in mysteriuos ways….
“The people who are going to use it are potential Mac users, and OSx86 is simply their trial disk.”
EXACTLY, been messing about with OSX86 for a few months, installed it all on my PC and everything worked first time, wanted to see what it was actually like to use a Mac OS and not commit hard cash until I had seen what all the fuss was about plus get use to the quirks of the system (‘moving’ as opposed to ‘copying’ many files is not intuitive!) not as fast obviously as a real MacIntel therefore will be buying a proper one at Xmas, I hope you are paying attention Mr Jobs!!
Hello all. Very good article. I did things a little bit backwards. I just dove into the mac scene in the past week. I bought a MacBook Pro 15″ and I’m loving it. It is fast, beutiful to work in, and is top quality. At $2,000, it was worth it. You can get a iMac, iBook, or MacBook for much cheaper and they will all run circles around a hackintosh with base drivers. I know this because I just got OS X installed on my pc to try it out. My mac is more powerful, but not by a whole lot hardware wise. Without video acceleration the mac is running choppy and accessing the hard drive is slow as hell. I have a WD 76Gb Raptor HD. It should be faster than my MacBook. My recomendation for anyone wanting to try OSX86 now is to install it and try it out. If you cumputer is able to run it look into duel booting. But whatever you do, don’t buy a new PC if you like the mac. They only cost a little bit more and it is quality. When you buy a $500 PC from BestBuy you are getting what you paid for, a craptastic Vista experience. Save up a little bit more and make the switch. You would have to buy a Sony or IBM/Levino PC to get equal quality hardware. Think of that when you make your price comparisons. I’m going to play around with this some more and see if I can get a video card driver. Other than that, this has been a fine first boot into OSX86. Once you try it, you want to buy it. =)
I was using hackintosh for about 8 months , everything was smooth on my Dell Inspiron 6400, but i realized i wanted the real thing so i decided to get myself a MacBook Pro and i never looked back since then.
Very good article! I had my first “trial disc” in the form of a G4 laptop, though – traded my PC for it, and it was… different. Still not sure if I’d keep with that route, so I’ve traded that one off for a gym set and will try to get yet another laptop, perhaps a 12″ Intel Mac instead
Thanks for all the interesting comparisons, I’ll have to do the reverse when I get an Intel Mac, install Windows on it completely and find out what’s what
Great piece!
Your article has given me a realistic estimate of what to expect when venturing down the OSX86 route. It’s something I’m still willing to attempt although, being a Mac user (of the PowerPC era), I know that the real Macs are still superior and with a lot less baggage to boot.
Cheers!
I am a multi platform technician, windows, OSX, linux. Theres nothing great or special about OSX, its just a different operating system. The only difference is that not near as much software is made for mac as windows, because as of a couple months ago windows has 90% of the desktop market, linux has .9% and mac has the rest. Running OSX is the same as running windows logged in as a user and not an administrator, and you know when your OSX asks for your password? Windows has the same thing, its called run-as. Do macs get virus’s? Not really, who would waste their time targeting 9.1% of the desktops out there and yeah a virus can’t run on a mac without the users password, but programs cant install in a windows user account without doing run as, and using an administrator password. The only thing mac has going for it is some cool hardware design features, and because its just a heavily modified unix, its a hell of alot easier to use than linux. So for all the people bitching and crying about windows, its not that mac is better than windows, its that it FORCES you to run as a user and not an admin, where as windows lets you run as admin, and everyone does so their computer gets ate alive, basically windows lets stupid users shoot themselves in the foot and OSX doesn’t. End of story, so if you think mac is prettier get one, otherwise don’t spend more money for something that isn’t any better.
Another important point raised in the article is the price of the vanilla Macs. How come we can get the same hardware as regular Macs for 1/3 of the price ?!
Look at the price of a MacBook Pro… almost $2000.. You can get a similar HP for half !
Is Apple screwing the Mac community ? I tend to believe it. Remember their liet motiv from the 80′s: A good computer is an expensive computer.
anyway, I tend to agree that hackintosh are pushing the Mac industry and adoption in general. A price drop from Apple would certainly help further.
I’m still using OS/X but this time it is a renamed and very worked out version of 10.5.1. I’m very happy with the system it is stable and was very easy to load. The system is a Dell Dimention 8400, 3.0 w/HT, 4 gig DDR2, 160 gig sata HD,
I’m in another group of people you didn’t mention. I switched over to apple three years ago, and am now going to try to build my own hackintosh rivaling the new mac pros.
The main is reason is that I love the Mac OS, but hate the hardware. It is overpriced, and can break incredibly easily. Furthermore, my experience with apple and it’s warranty has been less than ideal. So now I’m switching in an attempt to be able to run the OS and replace individual components if they break.
There have recently been two great tutorials on how to build a hackintosh computer from scratch for cheap. I’m opting for the more expensive option, coming in at a whopping $1140. Even though that is less than a third of the price of an equivalent mac pro, the benchmarks are more or less equivalent. Although this is not quite a fair test, the benchmarks can be found here: http://lifehacker.com/software/benchmarks/hackintosh-vs-mac-pro-vs-macbook-pro-benchmarks-322866.php
Worse comes to worse I can always use my killer PC to run windows or linux (hopefully on the latter, I’m not sure all the hardware components will work.)
Excellent article, I have a laptop, I installed osx86 and because I was lucky, I got almost everything to work. I got the wireless, ethernet, video card drive. I’ve been using this hackintosh for over 2 month, and I just love it. Recently my brother bought an iMac because he really liked the way osx86 ran on my laptop :]
OSx86 (hacintosh) runs very well and in some cases BETTER than OEM Apple SSE3 hardware. theres nothing special about Apple hardware, nothing at all. If the builder of a system has half a brain he/she would goto Apple.com and look at the hardware matrices of the different models and buy accordingly. notebooks commonly respond better to OS-X than desktops.
I have an Acer Poyang w/Intel T7500 (C2D 2.4GHz/800FSB)
Nvidia 8600mGT w/HDMI out (512mb*1280mb/DDR3)
Acer CrystalEye webcam
4 Gig DDR2 800MHz
Realtek 7.2 THX/DTS/DD audio
Synaptics pointing device
Intel BGN4965 WiFi card (mPCIe)
Atheros AR5006EXS WiFi card (mPCIe)
dual Hitachi Travelstar SATA-2 HDDs
iR Transceiver (for remote use)
Pioneer blu-ray burner
Hauppauge mPCIe TV Tuner card
ALL 100% functional!!!!!!!!!!
it doesn’t take a programming god to make a driver fix. drivers are soo simple its unreal, just time consuming. if you look around, you’ll find the drivers you need to get almost any notebook system up and running FULLY on OS-X.
and with my hardware matrice, theres no Apple on earth that will ouch my Hacintosh! everything updates just as if it were a macintosh. although price wasn’t what kept me away from the mac, performance was. the biggest Mac Pro i could get my hands on didn’t hold a candle to my Acer creation. I bought the notebook and immediately stripped it down. I only kept the mainboard, soundcard and graphics card, the rest got swapped out for the best hardware that exists.
Total System Cost including a retail copy of OS-X Leopard = $8200.00
inferior performance apple hardware = $4500.00 and it was slow and sluggish.
the Apple only had a 2.0GHz core 2 @667 FSB, 2gig ram @667, a complete garbage intel GMA950 (x3100) graphics and no blu-ray burner.
Apple is playing a game that better get good real fast! and right now, they aren’t moving too damn fast. their software doesn’t speak loud enough, so they’d better get some kick-ass performance going or PC’s are going to finish them off completely, and in no time flat. Linux distros are getting interesting and Apple doesn’t have MS to worry about anymore, they have the who Free software world to fight with, and if anyone thats reading this knows anything about Mac OS, its that its a *nix platform, it can be easily replaced and forgotten.
I am an Applephile, I have more than 6 in my collection, all desktops for upgrade reasons, not a single desktop PC can compare to my Mac Pro Desktop systems, but in notebooks, I am gonna stick with my Acer until apple pulls their heads outta their tail ends and gets on the performance wagon!
ps. I PAID FOR MY OSX DISC! Apple made $$$ from my experimentation. they might not like how I used the OS, but as far as i’m concerned, thats just TFB for them, I bought it, its mine to do with whatever I want to.
heres a tip for hacintosh system builders… lean towards Intel branded hardware, as crappy as you may think it is, thats the majority of what you’ll find under the hood of most MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s
the Macbooks use the same hardware as any other notebook.
Intel Chipsets are supported, Obviously. N-Force is not.
intel Graphics, nvidia graphics
intel wifi, atheros wifi, broadcom wifi
broadcom eth, Intel eth, Marvell eth
Realtek audio, creative audio
most all DVD/CD burners
this is a rough guide, but its what i’ve found to work in notebooks but thiss also depends on the manufacturer, manufacturers like HP make it very hard to change out hardware and even harder to run rogue drivers on their hardware.
“The only difference is that not near as much software is made for mac as windows, because as of a couple months ago windows has 90% of the desktop market, linux has .9% and mac has the rest. Running OSX is the same as running windows logged in as a user and not an administrator, and you know when your OSX asks for your password? Windows has the same thing, its called run-as. Do macs get virus’s? Not really, who would waste their time targeting 9.1% of the desktops out there and yeah a virus can’t run on a mac without the users password, but programs cant install in a windows user account without doing run as, and using an administrator password. The only thing mac has going for it is some cool hardware design features, and because its just a heavily modified unix, its a hell of alot easier to use than linux. So for all the people bitching and crying about windows, its not that mac is better than windows, its that it FORCES you to run as a user and not an admin, where as windows lets you run as admin, and everyone does so their computer gets ate alive, basically windows lets stupid users shoot themselves in the foot and OSX doesn’t. End of story, so if you think mac is prettier get one, otherwise don’t spend more money for something that isn’t any better.”
Congratulations! You are the 978599 person to spew this complete utter fallacy. Welcome to the club de parrots you are now a member. Please leave your critical thinking skills at the door.
Let’s get this out of the way once and for all/until the next parrot says the same thing shall we? Market-share has absolutely zero to do with Mac OS X being an inherently more secure computer operating system than any variant of windows. (besides a windows box not powered on) If market-share determines security then why does apache have more market-share as a web server than IIS yet fewer vulnerabilities? I’ll tell you why because better code determines security not market-share. I still fail to see why people cling to this “world is flat” idea that windows is more vulnerable because more people use it. I know I’m not that bright but I mean for me it was common sense the first time I thought about it. A steel door is more secure than a wooden one no matter how many more people have wooden doors. Lets face it! Windows is a balsa wood door. It is hideously insecure. I am able to currently code a web-page that can run cmd.exe and delete 5 critical system files on your XP box rendering it unbootable before you can react and exit the window. All you have to do is browse to said web-page. I am able to take full control of your windows box via trojans which btw can easily be downloaded automatically without you even knowing it. These fundamental design flaws have nothing to do with market-share.
I am the “pc/mac guru” to my immediate friends and family. I say that not to brag as it is a curse. My mission now is to switch them all to macs. I never ever get calls from the couple of mac users with problems besides general usage questions. I get almost daily calls from the windows users in my life and the people they know to clean their systems and put them back in “working” order. I now make money doing this on the side through word of mouth. I have yet to earn a dime fixing a mac box running OS X due to malware or viruses. The only people that believe OS X or linux aren’t more secure than windows are users that have only ever used windows and are members of the parrot club. I have found that most people I ask whom own a mac in addition to a PC prefer the mac for usability and security. This is no accident. In order to make a really informed judgment you must do it through experience (touching live electrical outlets excluded). A lot of people out there bashing the linux or mac platforms have usually not used either. How can one respect their opinion?
Furthermore, market-share has nothing to do with so called windows hacker preference. This can easily be verified by joining any notorious hacker irc channel. join #pleaseownmewindowsboxen Try this experiment. Post that you have figured out how to take advantage of a remote windows exploit. haha you’ll get no response or get kicked. Now let them know you have discovered a serious remote vulnerability in Mac OS X. I can tell you which one garners more response, and would garner more respect if true. The answer, OS X. The reason for the respect is quite simple. OS X is inherently more secure than windows and less trivial to compromise.
I have to disagree with the writer about the performance of a Hackintosh vs a real Mac, as well as functionality.
(1) A Hackintosh, with the right hardware, is just as functional and speedy(if not more than a real mac). There’s a few rules of thumbs to follow:
i. Use Intel platform, ICHx etc, should work fine.
ii. Use Core 2 Duo. Leopards are made for C2D. Use it!!!
iii. Most onboard sound like Azalia 88x codecs, should work fine. You just need the HDPatcher + the correct dump file. Just run the HD Patcher and drag the dump file into it. How difficult does it get?
iv. Most built-in NIC works fine on those ICHx mobo, if not, just buy a compatible el-cheapo NIC card.
v. VGA – this is one of the more problematic issues. However, as long as you have the right GPU, just download Nvinstaller and run it. Should fix most GPU problem for Nvidia cards
vi. Use EFI and vanilla kernels!!! I’ve update my IATKOSv1.0r2 (from 10.5.1) using official AppleComboUpdate to 10.5.3 easily. Just follow a few simple additional instruction for the update, and patch back the sound and vga after updates. After the updates, my boot time has improved tremendously compared to the IATKOS 10.5.1, in fact, much faster than Vista/XP on the same machine which multi-boots.
But it hates my AMD laptop though, none of the thing works or it just hanging on/off, ridiculous boot time etc…
So, the RIGHT HARDWARE IS THE KEY!!
My specs:
Gigabyte EP35-DS3 (ICH9 mobo)
Intel C2D E4500
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7600GS
Onboard Realtek NIC
Onboard Sound (Azalia 88x)
3 SATA HDD, 1 SATA DVD burner, 1 IDE HDD (Where hackintosh sits), 1 IDE CD-RW.
Congratulations! You are the 978599 person to spew this complete utter fallacy
Another person suckered in by a mac. Mac is a prettied up version of unix. Come on now. Mac is designed for Audio and video edition. Thats it.
People who use macs are limited on what they can use. Yes windows has it flaws, but you have so many choices when it comes to hardware. AMD, intel, Gigabyte, MSI, HP, Dell etc. I guarantee if mac had more flexibility on hardware, it would have the same types of issues windows does. Macs are desinged for a few things while a pc is desinged for everything else. Macs are susesptible to Malware, Keyloggers. I have used Mac, Linux and Windows. I like all 3, however Mac is not worth the money. You could build a windows machine to do the same things as a mac does, only difference is you spend half the price and you get to pick out every part you want. And yes maybe I have to run an anti virus program and a few other security apps, but knowing the fact I didnt get ripped off lets me sleep at night. And the best part of Windows is there is so much free software people design for it..hmmm doesnt take a brain surgeon there. Mac users remind me of the episode of southpark where everyone drove hybrids and they were all smug about it. Get over it macs are not that great. Up until a few years ago, they were dirt slow. I used a G4 and it was the slowest most useless thing out there.
The only reason Mac is more secure is, it is limited on everything. If windows had that many limitation it would be as secure as a mac is.
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