Building a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard for $900

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

Fans of Apple's computers tend to disagree, but the facts are there... Macs are expensive. Go to Apple.com, and find their least-expensive Mac offering, then compare the individual parts at a site like Newegg. You'll not only wind up with a more customized computer, but you're likely to build a faster one as well. That's the idea being the "Hackintosh"... a custom-built Macintosh.

The process of building a faux Mac has gotten a lot easier over the years. Even just five years ago, the process was incredibly difficult, and the end result was something more of a gadget to goof around with rather than a usable machine. But the move to Intel's architecture blew the doors wide open, and even Apple themselves likely didn't expect Hackintoshes to grow in popularly so quickly.

So what does it take to build your very own Mac computer? Well for the most part, building one is quite similar to building any other computer, but there are many little steps that are required to get things up and running, thanks mostly due to OS X, which is an operating system that knows what it wants. If your hardware doesn't match up, it doesn't want to run, and that's half the fun of such a build.

Adam Pash at Lifehacker put together a rather in-depth guide on how to build your Hackintosh, from start to finish. There is one thing I noticed though, that I find rather interesting. When Hackintoshes first came to be known, the required hardware was rather limiting, and it looks like that hasn't changed. Even the motherboard is similar. Then there's the graphics card... a now phased-out NVIDIA's 9800 GTX, which course has been replaced by the faster GTS 250. I have to wonder if the newer card simply wouldn't work? If so, then it seems even Hackintoshes limit your choice of hardware!

Either way, this is a great guide for anyone looking to get this done. And I can't imagine a much better feeling than knowing that you built the equivalent of a $2,000 Mac for under a thousand.

The most expensive iMac, by comparison, has only a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory for $2,200 ($1,300 more than my build, but it is built into a monitor), while the cheapest Mac Pro has a single 2.66GHz Quad-Core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 640GB hard drive-and it costs $2,500 ($1,600 more than mine, though it's a different and better processor and DDR3 rather than DDR2 RAM). In short, my $900 "Hack Pro" sports nearly as good or better hardware than any Mac that Apple sells short of the $3,300 8-Core Mac Pro (which can, incidentally, get more expensive, but it won't get much better).

Source: Lifehacker​

 

[MacMan]

I'm so tempted!!!!!!

From our front-page news:

Fans of Apple's computers tend to disagree, but the facts are there... Macs are expensive. Go to Apple.com, and find their least-expensive Mac offering, then compare the individual parts at a site like Newegg. You'll not only wind up with a more customized computer, but you're likely to build a faster one as well. That's the idea being the "Hackintosh"... a custom-built Macintosh.

The most expensive iMac, by comparison, has only a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory for $2,200 ($1,300 more than my build, but it is built into a monitor), while the cheapest Mac Pro has a single 2.66GHz Quad-Core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 640GB hard drive-and it costs $2,500 ($1,600 more than mine, though it's a different and better processor and DDR3 rather than DDR2 RAM). In short, my $900 "Hack Pro" sports nearly as good or better hardware than any Mac that Apple sells short of the $3,300 8-Core Mac Pro (which can, incidentally, get more expensive, but it won't get much better).

Source: Lifehacker​

I'm so damn tempted! I've considered building a Hackintosh for sometime, but since I don't have your brain and aptitude for such things Rob, I will probably continue to pay through the nose for Apple's sexy machines.

Honestly, even though you can get more hardware for less by building one yourself, the overall functionality is less too, since Apple is the only one, at the moment, that can claim that they build the whole widget, therefore, guaranteeing that the hardware and the software works as close to perfection as you can humanly get.

If only Apple would license OS X to anyone and everybody, it would be cool, but it's not going to happen as long as the Big Steve is around. I've met a lot of Windows users who have switched to the Mac, and honestly, not one of them have ever complained about the so called, 'Apple tax', or that other machines had more performance at less cost! Amazing, but true!

That said, if Apple really wanted to they could assist people in that regard, but again, it isn't going to happen. I would love to see OS X licensed, because, as good as Windows 7 is, it isn't as good as OS X or it's cousin, Linux! Besides, the look on Steve Ballmer's face would be well worth it, because he knows damn well that OS X would take a big bite out of Windows. Windows 7 is an operating system designed for the present; Snow Leopard, on the other hand, is an operating system designed for the future with advanced technologies such as Grand Central Dispatch, Clang, Blocks and Open Cl, etc., as John Siracusa for Ars Technica clearly demonstrated in his recent article for Ars Techica.

Still your point is well taken, Mac's are more expensive and it would be nice if OS X could be licensed to everyone at less cost. No one builds luxury machines quite like Apple, but that still leaves a lot of people who can't afford one - pitty!

Personally, I think Apple should stick to the manufacture of luxury Mac's, but let others build Mac's for the mass's. Believe it or not, that no matter what you think, there are people who actually prefer to spend extra dollars for a well crafted luxury machine. That's why people will gladly pay $155,000 for a luxury Mercedes Benz SL 550, despite the fact that it only seats two people, can't lug as much groceries as a cheap Ford, etc. Apple machines are the same, but still, even Mercedes builds those tiny, inexpensive Smart cars. Apple should let others build cheap OS X machines and leave the sleek, sexy and prestige machines to itself.

It's always been a mystery to me, however, that people don't complain about how much BMW's cost so much more than a Ford, and why they can't be sold for less? Apple makes luxury computers, plain and simple, so why should people complain? I don't know, but it seems a little hypocritical. Apple says it's not interested in building cheap or low cost computers. Apple has decided to service a certain high-end clientele, rather than the mass's so it's beyond me why the masses do complain.

Someday, I might actually try building a Hackintosh, but since Apple already has most of my money, it will take me a little more time on my part before I can even afford to attempt that, but, then again, I could always start out with a Dell Mini 9, couldn't I?