Get me a real Mac: My Hackintosh Experience
There are many of us out there that have caught glimpses of putting OS X on a regular computer, such as a Dell or an HP. Personally, I’ve already been curious enough to try it more than once - however, I’ve consistently failed in the most embarrassing manner - I could never manage to burn the disc right.
During my sabbatical, I rekindled my love affair with Apple, but I still felt as though Macbooks were pretty damn expensive - especially when it still possessed similar hardware to my year-old Dell Inspiron 6400. If I had a perfectly comparable computer right now, why consider a new one with similar specs?
That all changed one night, when I actually had a dream I was using iTunes in OS X, browsing through my albums with Coverflow (I’ve got weird dreams). There it was: Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith, It’s My Life by Bon Jovi - you know the rest. The dream was peculiarly vivid - and it really made me think: how can I get Apple’s OS X without going through a Mac?
Let me tell you something first: I’m not an advocate of installing OS X on non-Apple hardware. Personally, I think that it’s acceptable as long as it’s honestly just used to try the Mac experience - after all, the price jump really is a huge dissuading factor. With that in mind, I tried it just to see if I could really be as happy with a Macbook as I am with my Dell Inspiron 6400.
A friend of mine, who actually has a very similar computer to my own (we’re pretty close, so we actually bought computers together), took a jump and offered to trade laptops with me. He had previously turned it into a Hackintosh already, but I was able to ask him how the installation went: “a living hell,” he described it. “Installing graphics drivers made my mouse jump - something that I’d never seen with Windows, and so after three or four tries, I just decided to go with the native 1024 x 768px. Oh, I forgot to mention: he had a 14.1″ widescreen monitor. I really felt for him, because nothing really looked the same.
The Actual Experience
Let me re-iterate: I am not an advocate of installing OS X on non-Apple hardware. I wanted to really see how the OS X was, and if I thought it was worth it. Problem is, with the Hackintosh, the things that really matter just wouldn’t work:
- Sound: apparently, the included drivers didn’t freaking work. This knocks out my dream of playing Aerosmith and Bon Jovi on the glory of the Mac, but also negates the possibility of working with Garageband. My two greatest aspirations, destroyed.
- Video: just didn’t look that great, due to the lack of graphics drivers. Imagine 5:4 image on a 16:10 screen. It was brutal.
- Unresponsive: maybe it was the lack of compatibility, but OS X was actually slower and less snappy than Windows Vista when running on the same machine. Disappointing.
- Boot: needed the DVD - and sometimes would go into endless boot loops. Dear God.
So for all the hard work put into emulating Mac OS X on Windows - which my friend told me took him endless hours to figure out how to burn and then work out the technical issues - I find the results a bit disappointing. Some will think differently, and some will have much different results and thus be much more satisfied. Personally, I just want to leave you with this: don’t expect a real Mac experience.
What Now?
So your dreams, like my own, have been crushed. I apologize. Alas, hope is not lost - I have decided to refocus my efforts to produce the Mac experience by actually, officially, legally purchasing an Apple Mac Mini. Or a Macbook, depending on my resource fund. Either way, the idea here is to purchase a real Mac - sure, a Hackintosh can help emulate the experience, and it wasn’t totally non-worthwhile. But, it will only take you so far.
And in the end, with a real Mac, we get to decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze.
If you’re still considering turning your ordinary Dell into a Hackintosh, and my article still didn’t deter you, then I’ve got one quote for you: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Will you live your plan, or let it die? And no, for legal reasons, I will still not advocate installing OS X on non-Apple hardware.
April 11, 2009 Update: I’ve decided to write a post following up this one about how I got OS X to work on my PC and hoping to be of more inspiration to fellow experimentors. Good luck.
http://cutedge.org/the-best-of-both-worlds-how-to-fool-proof-your-hackintosh-installation/
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I’m not sure the unresponsiveness is caused by it being a hackintosh. OS X is actually very slow compared to both Windows and Linux. I have a MacBook and a Philips X58 (dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu Hardy), which have fairly similar hardware, and if you try running a Linux distro in VirtualBox on either Vista or Ubuntu, it’s a lot faster than the same in OS X. Apparently it’s because the XNU kernel used by OS X is a lot less efficient than either the Linux or Windows NT kernels.
Matthew: Your explanation makes a lot of sense, and I think is very reasonable.
Here’s where I was coming from: I figured because I had previously used a modest eMac (yeah, an eMac) and had a more responsive experience that it might have been the Hackintosh hardware.
Thanks for your contribution!
I think I got lucky with my hackintosh, I bought a Dell Studio (around $700) just for that purpose, with a little effort I got everything running, sound (Internal, external speakers and mic), wired network, wifi, sd card reader, usb, hdmi output, running Leopard 10.5.5.
This laptop is much better than a Macbook in hardware specifications (for half of the price), and now that it has Leopard is one of the best machines ever.
Wow, I envy you Vorguees! I’m assuming you booted off Kalyway — perhaps I’ll get my friend to try it again.
You just sound lazy. Boo hoo, it didn’t Just Work ™ after install. Boo hoo.
Bah: Haha, I’ll admit I didn’t go at it with the right attitude. I was expecting too much, and willing to do too little work. But I think “my friend” has been making some progress lately; one day when I’ve got time, I’ll show you how far I’ve (er, “my friend” has) come.
Stick around, Bah. I love a good challenge.
$My 350 Inspiron 6400 runs as fast as a $1700 macbook pro. I just made sure I bought compatable hardware in the first place.
I also had a 350 desktop with 1.6 ghz core 2 duo overclocked 100$ and it worked as fast as a 4 core mac editing with FCP Studio2 …..,
Going the hackintosh way is researching first which laptop/setup has been proven compatible with OS X, like choosing the MSI Wind for example if you want an OS X netbook.
If you’re one who’s extremely techie (makes his/her own kexts, drivers) that’s a different story
Wow C.Funk, that’s sweet. I’ve finally gotten mine to work too, who knows — maybe I’ll write about it soon.
Rauy: Ah, very, very true. When I’m looking for my next computer (whether it be laptop or desktop), I’ll be sure to go on InsanelyMac and check out the experiences other people have had. The collective nature of the Internet is a beautiful thing.
I have Mac on my PC right now and am actually posting with it! I guess I have had a very good experience! I had enough compatible hardware that I can do a clean install and choose my packages and drivers and not have to download any others afterwards. I have an nVidia MoBo and Graphics.
I just re installed Mac 2 days ago and this is enough like an actual Mac experience for me! We have an iMac G5 so I do know what a real Mac experience is since we have owned macs for over 10 years
Dette: Wow, you’re running OS X on its own? Without Windows support? Dear sir, you are a very brave man. I’ve always wanted to try that, haha. But I’ve got no back-up computer at the moment, so I’m going to have to put all my data on this trusty old Inspiron.
Ok, you sound like you really did not know what you were doing in the first place. Therefore you failed to use the ultimate power of the OSx86 project properly. I am using it right now and everything works flawlessly. It detects all of my hardware, sound, graphics card, etc. You just have to know what your doing and more importantly you need to know the “what” and “where” when it comes to this kind of stuff. “What” as in what version of OSx86 project you need *cough* iPC OS X Lepard 10.5.6 *cough*. An the “where” as in *cough* torrents *cough*. Then you just need to know the exact drivers you need. To make this a heck of a-lot simpler you can follow this great tutorial found on the OSx86 projects wiki:
http://tgrounds.blogspot.com/2008/10/osx-leopard-1055-on-pc.html
Good luck to those who are capable of figuring this simple task out.
The One Who Knows Stuff: Ooh, haha that hurt. But you have a point, it really wasn’t that hard haha. I’ll be following up this post soon, thanks for the link to the tutorial — hope it makes things for other people easier.