Mac or Hack

[Som]

Currenty I have windows 7 64bit, 7 32bit, 8, ubuntu & hackintosh on my pc ... mainly for testing purposes, hardly us any of em except 7 64bit , but just curious... isn't hackintosh illegal? and if it is how is that guy selling them?...

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

isn't hackintosh illegal?

 

Been answered to death.  No it is not illegal.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Currenty I have windows 7 64bit, 7 32bit, 8, ubuntu & hackintosh on my pc ... mainly for testing purposes, hardly us any of em except 7 64bit , but just curious... isn't hackintosh illegal? and if it is how is that guy selling them?...

It's not illegal from a criminal sense. It goes against the EULA, but that's a civil matter, not criminal.

It only becomes illegal if you don't legally purchase OS X, which, given there is no real way to purchase it any more, is a bit of a moot point.

[PGHammer]

I will say get a hackintosh. You can beat the price almost half by using hardware which are compatible with Mac. Mainly get intel based PC. I have installed Maverick on almost 6 year old desktop on quadcore intel processor and it works flawlessly. I had to get TP-link wireless card though for compatibility. I even upgraded it to SSD and everything working flawlessly. There are many online forum where you can get all the required program to make your own hackintosh. It is very simple and straightforward. I have HP m8120n desktop and everything works without any hitch.

 

The best thing will be you will have much flexibility for future hardware updates with custom built PC rather than getting mini where everything is propriety.

The "Hack" side is not as expensive as you would think.  My current setup does a triple (OS Number Three is Mavericks, in fact), and my upgrade will do the same.  For wired networking, both Realtek and even Intel-based Ethernet are supported (those are the two most common wired LAN solutions on the motherboard side), and most GPU solutions work out of the box (nVidia's case is the strongest, as everything from GTX5xx up is pretty much plug-and-play - I have a GTX550Ti).

 

Hardware specs:

 

Motherboard - current: ASUS P5G41-M LX2/GB  Target: ASUS Z-87A (choice #1) or ASRock Z87 Extreme6 (choice #2)

CPU - current: Intel Core2Quad Q6600 (Kentsfield) Target: Intel i5-4670K (Haswell)

RAM -  current: 4 GB DDR2-800 Target: 8 GB DDR3-1333 (already purchased)

GPU -  current: nVidia GTX550Ti  Target: ASUS GTX760 DirectCU II (choice #1) or EVGA GTX760 Superclocked (choice #2) or PNY GTX760 (choice #3)

 

And there are problems (specifically, issues with drive corruption) that occur with surprising frequency on real Macs that Hack users can fix far easier than real Mac users.  (I mentioned elsewhere that fixing drive corruption - which even OS X is not immune to - requires dropping all the way to the command line.  There is no GUI-based fix for this issue - which all versions of OS X are vulnerable to.  Worse, it's not the only problem that OS X has that requires CLI experience to fix.  If you have any experience at all with a command-line (such as Linux or Windows, or especially BSD), there's surprisingly little different in the OS X CLI/terminal environment compared to BSD; however, despite that, it's something that Apple discourages.)

[PGHammer]

I boot Mac OS X alongside Windows and Ubuntu, and I can't say I've had many problems, mainly incompatible hardware. For example my sound card won't work in Mac so I purchased a USB DAC. Another example is the 780 Ti I have crashes when opening any program that requires OpenCL (Safari, Adobe programs, etc. There's a hack that disables OpenCL for cards, which isn't preferred.

 

Other than that, I do recommend hackintoshes if your hardware's compatible.

Sound is, in fact, the biggest bugbear on the "Hack" side - and it's also where Apple is the most closed.  The easiest non-Apple workaround for audio (VoodooHDA) supports a wide variety of both onboard audio on motherboard and HDMI on GPUs; however, it does have issues with third-party audio cards (Creative SoundCore - from the current Sound Blaster Z back to the first-generation PCI-E cards, such as Recon3D and X-Fi Titanium) despite the USB headphones with the same DSP working just fine.

[#Michael]

 

And there are problems (specifically, issues with drive corruption) that occur with surprising frequency on real Macs that Hack users can fix far easier than real Mac users.  (I mentioned elsewhere that fixing drive corruption - which even OS X is not immune to - requires dropping all the way to the command line.  There is no GUI-based fix for this issue - which all versions of OS X are vulnerable to.  Worse, it's not the only problem that OS X has that requires CLI experience to fix.  If you have any experience at all with a command-line (such as Linux or Windows, or especially BSD), there's surprisingly little different in the OS X CLI/terminal environment compared to BSD; however, despite that, it's something that Apple discourages.)

 

I'd love to know more about this.  I have never had this issue nor have I heard about this.  Is there a thread on the apple forums about this?

[ndoggfromhell]

As a hackintosh user for .. dear god, 3 years now!!!  I would recommend you stick to a golden stable build.  Research a site with Tony in the name and build off a system they have established is compatible.  I love my hackintosh, built it as a side project then when a need came for it at my work place I brought it in and it's been my daily system over a year now.  Before it I had 2 generations of hackitoshes for home use.  

 

If you do decided to go with Apple, why not the mac pro... even the first generation intel models are decently fast and easy to upgrade.  

[wakjak]

I looked at the cost of 16gb of Ram on the Apple site... Crazy expensive.  Can I not just use OEM?

 

I bought 16GB of RAM for $89 online. Still running that ram today, bought the newest Mac Mini with the i7 2.6GHZ and I love it.

[PGHammer]

I'd love to know more about this.  I have never had this issue nor have I heard about this.  Is there a thread on the apple forums about this?

Yes, there is.  There are threads on most Mac fora about drive corruption on OS X.

 Let's be honest - every OS has drive corruption issues - without exception.  There are methods in each OS to lessen the impact of corruption - however, no operating system has any method of blocking corruption.

Even OS X third-party utilities can only go so far at reducing the impact (to be fair, the same goes for first-thru-third-party utilities for any OS) -- however, only the BSDs and their derivatives - including OS X - utterly lack non-CLI utilities for dealing with it when it happens.

[threetonesun]

Yes, there is.  There are threads on most Mac fora about drive corruption on OS X.

 Let's be honest - every OS has drive corruption issues - without exception.  There are methods in each OS to lessen the impact of corruption - however, no operating system has any method of blocking corruption.

Even OS X third-party utilities can only go so far at reducing the impact (to be fair, the same goes for first-thru-third-party utilities for any OS) -- however, only the BSDs and their derivatives - including OS X - utterly lack non-CLI utilities for dealing with it when it happens.

 

It happens, sure, but I've never seen one a verify and repair permissions couldn't fix. 

 

Also, there's no way a Hackintosh would have less problems in this department.

[vhane]

Yes, there is.  There are threads on most Mac fora about drive corruption on OS X.

 Let's be honest - every OS has drive corruption issues - without exception.  There are methods in each OS to lessen the impact of corruption - however, no operating system has any method of blocking corruption.

Even OS X third-party utilities can only go so far at reducing the impact (to be fair, the same goes for first-thru-third-party utilities for any OS) -- however, only the BSDs and their derivatives - including OS X - utterly lack non-CLI utilities for dealing with it when it happens.

 

If you're referring to bit rot, then there's no reason why a Hackintosh would be any more immune to this than a first party Mac.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Yes, there is.  There are threads on most Mac fora about drive corruption on OS X.

 Let's be honest - every OS has drive corruption issues - without exception.  There are methods in each OS to lessen the impact of corruption - however, no operating system has any method of blocking corruption.

Even OS X third-party utilities can only go so far at reducing the impact (to be fair, the same goes for first-thru-third-party utilities for any OS) -- however, only the BSDs and their derivatives - including OS X - utterly lack non-CLI utilities for dealing with it when it happens.

In the *BSDs defense, they lack a non-CLI per default.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

If I swap out the HDD to an SSD - is there anything special I need to do?

[guitmz]

hack all the way man :)

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

I'll just chuck my 2 cents in here..

 

I ran a hackintosh for about 6 months, before actually going and buying a real Mac (Macbook Air). I decided to go this route when Windows 8 launched and I was just so disillusioned and irritated by it, I decided to vote with my feet. I've never got on with Linux day to day, but figured OSX would be the next best thing. 

 

The Hackintosh ran great - I deliberately chose a well supported motherboard, and it was mostly good. I got weird problems with occasional lockups and every time I installed an update I had to cross my fingers it'd keep working. I did occasionally have to re-run the MultiBeast package to replace drivers that were upgraded when patches were installed.

 

After that I decided that I not only wanted to switch to a laptop anyway (to save space, and to give me some options when I was on the road) but also decided I wanted to buy an Apple machine. I figured that my ethos has always been if you like something, pay for it. I like OSX and I like Apple hardware generally, and even though it's not like Apple needs my money, I thought it only fair.

 

I've not regretted it a bit. I bought an 11" Air with the Core i7, 512GB SSD and 8GB RAM. It was the most expensive computer I've ever bought but I've been thrilled with how good it is. And it's nice to know, problems aside, that OSX will "just work" on it when I install it. 

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Chicane-UK: Thanks man, I recall you offering help and advice when I first built my old hackintosh :)

[ndoggfromhell]

It happens, sure, but I've never seen one a verify and repair permissions couldn't fix. 

 

Also, there's no way a Hackintosh would have less problems in this department.

 

I've had it happen twice this year.  1 macbook pro being used to watch movies that suddenly stopped.  The other was a imac that locked up during photo editiing.  

 

both had to be wiped and reloaded, drive couldn't be repaired in my hackintosh or another macintosh.

[+Tyranade Subscriber²]

If you are willing to spend a lot of time setting it up and trying to fix things if they go wrong and don't mind downtime or such things go Hackintosh. If you want it to just work and be able to update it with support go with the Mac Mini.

[n_K]

I've had it happen twice this year.  1 macbook pro being used to watch movies that suddenly stopped.  The other was a imac that locked up during photo editiing.  

 

both had to be wiped and reloaded, drive couldn't be repaired in my hackintosh or another macintosh.

I'd say the chances are it's something you're doing over it being an OSX issue. Two completely different drives in one year is either just random plain coincidence or something wrong you're doing.

My H/D in this macbook died whilst I was using it (click of death) and was pretty outraged that a 4.5 year old drive had died already, but you can only blame the hardware company for that (and as apple don't make hard drives the blame doesn't lie with them)

[+Tyranade Subscriber²]

Oh and also if you want to upgrade the RAM or SSD in the Mac Mini check this Video out, he shows you how to do a dual drive Upgrade but you can clearly see the RAM is visible and accessible.

 

 

If I was buying a Mac Mini this is definitely what I would do, Max out the RAM and Install a 256GB SSD and a 1TB Storage Drive. But this is what I would say you do, Just buy the Mac Mini with the CPU you want and then do this. Heck it's what I would do simply because when you buy a Mac you get the support and I Don't like not having a working machine.

[protocol7]

If I was going to buy a Mac desktop I'd go for a Mini too. For the size they're great and with a cheap RAM upgrade (does ANYONE actually buy RAM from Apple?) it'll fly.

 

I have a MacBook here and two desktop hacks. Hackintoshing has gotten easier as time goes on. People who run into trouble almost always got there by relying on hacked-up distros or installation tools like the ones from phoneymac. I haven't had an update break my installs.

 

At the high end, I think a Hack makes more sense. Especially with the new MacPro using external TB expansions. I built a hack from scratch last year (for the first time, usually I just hacked my existing PC) because it made more sense than buying a 3 or 4 year old Mac Pro for the same price with lower performance and no warranties.

[#Michael]

Yes, there is.  There are threads on most Mac fora about drive corruption on OS X.

 Let's be honest - every OS has drive corruption issues - without exception.  There are methods in each OS to lessen the impact of corruption - however, no operating system has any method of blocking corruption.

Even OS X third-party utilities can only go so far at reducing the impact (to be fair, the same goes for first-thru-third-party utilities for any OS) -- however, only the BSDs and their derivatives - including OS X - utterly lack non-CLI utilities for dealing with it when it happens.

 

There are utilities out there for dealing with drive issues.  Disk utilities and onyx are first on my list.  Neither require any use of terminal. 

[ndoggfromhell]

I'd say the chances are it's something you're doing over it being an OSX issue. Two completely different drives in one year is either just random plain coincidence or something wrong you're doing.

My H/D in this macbook died whilst I was using it (click of death) and was pretty outraged that a 4.5 year old drive had died already, but you can only blame the hardware company for that (and as apple don't make hard drives the blame doesn't lie with them)

Neither was mine. The dealership I work for is owned by a pretty large family and besides working on the business equipment, they have me working on their personal equipment.  Both were however from the same set of users.  

[threetonesun]

Neither was mine. The dealership I work for is owned by a pretty large family and besides working on the business equipment, they have me working on their personal equipment.  Both were however from the same set of users.  

 

Yeah... I've heard of Macs locking up on reboot with permission errors, and Macs dying while being used due to hardware issues, but just dropping dead while running due to some weird software / OS conflict I've never heard of. 

[Shadrack]

It wouldn't be my first, but the others I bought hardware that was specified in a tutorial and followed it.  Never applied updates etc - and to be fair, it wasn't the best experience (dual monitor never worked, for example, had to use an external soundcard)...

 

I don't want to use this for "learning" or "tinkering" - it is to be my daily computer I use for tasks.  When a software update comes out, I want to be able to apply it and carry on working - not worry about "Oh damn, my soundcard no longer works" and so on.

 

Then get the real deal.  Hackintosh setups can work reliably for months but (in my experience) some issues can crop up and you have to be ready to take the gloves off (i.e., spend some time researching the issue, asking for advice on forums, etc.).  My experience is from years ago, so it *IS* probably better today (and if you follow a hardware guide so that drivers are well supported).

 

I'm considering going with a Hackintosh setup to replace my OLD 1st generation PowerPC Mac Mini, but I'm also OK with spending time on the tinkering of the setup if an update comes out or w/e.

 

That's not to say that having an Apple product will be bullet proof.  Obviously, there can always be technical issues that might crop up and need to be addressed.  Components can disfunction and fail and software installs may become corrupted.  Difference is: size of community and install base.  Hackintosh users are an extreme minority compared to Macintosh users (and even Linux users, probably).  That's not to say that there isn't help available out there, if you are willing to take the time and ask.

 

If uptime is important to you, just go with the official Apple product (whatever it might end up being).  They are pretty consistent with their customer service.  If you have an Apple Store in your town you can likely get an issue resolved relatively quickly.  Some people think that their out-of-warranty-service fees are high, and they do have a markup beyond the cost of a part.  But they also seem to support services for older Macintosh hardware for a pretty decent span of time IMO.  I've seen them helping people out with really old iBooks, for example.