Biting the bullet... building a Hackintosh

If all goes well, the next issue of your favorite magazine (no, not "Leg Show" you pervs) will be assembled at least partially on a homebuilt PC-style computer running OSX. The issue after that should be produced entirely on the renegade machine.

I've been vaguely interested in Hackintoshes for a while, but This Articleon an indy film blog I regularly read put me over the edge. A couple days ago, I warmed up the credit card and hit up NewEgg for several boxes of goodies which should be here next week.

For about $1500 in parts I should be able to duplicate what Apple wants about $3200 for in Mac pro, and that's not counting all the storage or SSD I'm getting, and I absolutely will not compare the $239 I paid for 12gb of RAM to the $1200 that Apple wants for 12gb or RAM. That's just insulting.

Or, I could end up with a huge pile of smoldering parts.

While I do love Apple, and their approach to the human experience of computing, I'm becoming a bit less enthused by their "Jobs' way or the highway" mantra. Yes, we know the stuff works, but some of us like to use it differently. If we didn't already have tens of thousands of dollars of software and hardware already invested both corporately and personally, we might seriously consider going a different direction.

Anyway, stuff should be here early next week. I'll let you know how it goes.

jg

Good luck, keep us posted!

And if it doesn't work, it sounds like you'll have one helluva rocket on your hands.

it really isn't that hard, you will do fine.

Sorry but I have to be That Guy. I don't blame you at all, and have personally been running various hackitoshes for about 3 years, but in a commercial sertting I'd be a bit loathe to run one. Technically it's a violation of the OS EULA to run it on non-Apple hardware. While it's a far cry from using pirated copies of Adobe's products to build the mag, it's still technically a contract breach and possibly a violation of Federal law. For something that you make your living off of - and can therefore write off on your taxes, and also need to work right all the time - I'd have to consider whether the $1k Apple Tax isn't worth paying.

pigeon wrote: Sorry but I have to be That Guy. I don't blame you at all, and have personally been running various hackitoshes for about 3 years, but in a commercial sertting I'd be a bit loathe to run one. Technically it's a violation of the OS EULA to run it on non-Apple hardware. While it's a far cry from using pirated copies of Adobe's products to build the mag, it's still technically a contract breach and possibly a violation of Federal law. For something that you make your living off of - and can therefore write off on your taxes, and also need to work right all the time - I'd have to consider whether the $1k Apple Tax isn't worth paying.

How so? Really, whats the law on this, I've never heard of such a thing.

Seems to me that if you can buy the hardware, and buy the software, and the software works on the purchased hardware... Whats the problem here? Is it in one of those legal agreements that nobody reads and says "accept"?

JG Pasterjak wrote: For about $1500 in parts I should be able to duplicate what Apple wants about $3200 for in Mac pro, and that's not counting all the storage or SSD I'm getting, and I absolutely will not compare the $239 I paid for 12gb of RAM to the $1200 that Apple wants for 12gb or RAM. That's just insulting.

Ahhh! Stop! I have no more project time!!!!

MTN... from what i've read it's something about the TOS for installing OSX...

i've been thinking of running a hackontosh a bit of late... not sure why as i've got everything i need for MS and linux... but i was given a 1gen dell XPS laptop (3.4ghz p4 laptop haha) that i want to mess with a bit... seems like it could be fun... we shall see when i get some time to mess with the computer come dec...

mtn wrote: Seems to me that if you can buy the hardware, and buy the software, and the software works on the purchased hardware... Whats the problem here? Is it in one of those legal agreements that nobody reads and says "accept"?

Ah, but you didn't buy the software, you bought the rights to use their software, under their terms. It is indeed part of that legal contract you entered when you hit the accept button.

I agree with the cautionary note about building an illegal hackintosh as a commercial venture. Apple is far from unknown to pursue criminal hackintosh makers and users, especially high profile ones. That's why there are no longer prebuilt hackintoshes available, they were shut down, by Apple.

I've never even heard of a Hackintosh. But I wish I'd coined that term. It's pretty cool.

I would absolutely do it. In fact... I suspect that there might be a hard drive on my shelf that boots up Snow Leopard on the very PC I am posting this with from Ubuntu 10.10.

I might not make too much of a show of posting "100% of a major magazine was produced by taking food out of the mouths of Steve Jobs' babies" though. They don't knock on the doors of hobbyists but if they got the idea that you were running a biz they might feel the need to choke you. Leave it in your home office, owned by you and used for whatever purposes you see fit.

In before the thread takedown...

Last I heard those "EULA"s weren't particularly enforcable in court. Might not stop Apple from trying though.

I haven't purchased a "Leg Show" in years.

JG Pasterjak wrote: Or, I could end up with a huge pile of smoldering parts.

I'm about $700 into my Antenna + HTPC project. I'm 90% sure it's all going to work great, but there is still a 10% chance that the above happens.

The machine is being 100% bought and built by me personally, and will live in my home (right next to my 2008 PowerMac, which is probably not going anywhere), so whatever problem Steve Jobs has, he has with me. He'll have to run a gauntlet of angry parrots to pry it from my cold dead fingers.

The legal grey areas are interesting, however. Although, as of yet, Apple has not gone after any of the build sites where detailed instructions, parts lists, and explanations of how Apple turns a processor into an "Apple" processor exist. When those start getting hit, I'll worry.

Also, this is a bit of a move to preemptively future proof myself should the unthinkable occur and Apple and Adobe's peeing contest escalates. Apple has made real noise about no longer supporting Adobe products should Microsoft's proposed purchase of Adobe go through. If Apple wanted to truly cripple our business, that would be their most surefire route.

But, yes, I will keep you up to date on this personal project that I will only be using for personal reasons. If you folks would like to see the results of the personal reasons I am using this product, I'd be happy to show you (click the "subscribe" link at the top of the page).

Oh, and speaking of building things, I had a little build video go semi-viral a couple of weeks ago. This build on a cheap "ladder dolly" style camera slider built mostly from scrap got picked up by a couple of big photo and video blogs, and even Make magazine. Got close to 100k combined hits on it so far. I'm working on a Lego motion control system for it now.

jg

Motorsport Marketing bought Leg Show? Does that fit between the Subaru mag and CMS?

Dr. Hess wrote: Motorsport Marketing bought _Leg Show_? Does that fit between the Subaru mag and CMS?

With just a pinch of Forever MX-5

jg

Be careful with those viral videos. I understand there is a threat that groupies will then come to your house and kill you.
????????

i highly doubt that apple would stop supporting adobe alltogether, seeing how its basically the reason for a good bit of their sales. adobe CS is less than stellar on a pc, i can tell you that right now

I've been reluctant to spend a lot of money on a hackintosh build because updates aren't exactly guaranteed. OS upgrades broke my hackintosh netbook pretty often, and holding off on OS upgrades isn't in my nature.

That said, I'm thinking about building a little one to use as living room PC and maybe even replace the little low-powered ubuntu server in my basement. I'd love to have a server that played a bit better with my mac laptops.

Having messed around with that a bit I will add some points / questions:

• How did you select your components? What components (especially the motherboard) is VERY important for getting things to work (in looking at the article, I am guessing you are using his list)

• Getting one to work is not that hard, getting one where everything works can be very hard

In messing with mine (I did not specifically pick components with only hackintosh in mind) it was reasonably easy to get it running so I could use it, but I have never gotten the sound to work (probably the motherboard selection). Getting networking / wireless to work is also a common problem, and full graphic capabilities can be difficult.

Realistically, the best way to do it is to do it exactly like someone else has (like the article), so it should go pretty easy for you, good luck.

FYI. it's running. A few bugs, but nearly everything has been worked out so far. Got ethernet, sound, support for three monitors, it'll print and see the other computers on the network, FW400 works (FW800 would probably work if I had bought a PCI-X card instead of a PCI card. Serves me right for ordering half-asleep). Best of all the performance test scores are almost twice that of my late 2008 MacPro. And it was hot for its day.

It was not all super smooth, but anything that went wrong seemed to be fixable, or have a reasonable workaround. Now comes the looooooong process of installing software and getting things in operating order.

P.S. There'll be a pretty hot 2008 MacPro for sale soon if anyone's interested.

jg

How much is this pretty hot 2008 MacPro?

Apple has about zero interest in going after Hackintoshers. There are two few of them, and even within that group almost all will be buying hardware, software or both in the future.

It's a lot like how they look the other way on all the jailbroken iPhones. Yeah, they occasionally make some meager move to slow it down, mostly to appease luciferian suits at AT&T, but there heart isn't really in it, because they know a jailbroken iphone is still an iphone in the hands of a consumer, who will probably buy another iphone someday, and will probably buy a bunch of crap from the itunes stores, too.