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/