The new Mac Leopard OS has only been out for a few weeks now, and the hacks keep on rolling out for installing leopard on a PC. This time around Lifehacker’s Adam Pash put together an amazing article on building a high-end desktop Hackintosh (a PC running the Mac OS) for under $800. His configuration consists of the following:
- 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor – $127.99
- 4GB of RAM (four sticks at 1GB each) – $188.00
- ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard – $179.99
- GeForce 7300GT (the same basic video card that comes installed in the default Mac Pro configuration) – $69.99
- 500GB hard drive – $119.99
- DVD burner – $33.99
- Antec Sonata case – $149.95
All of the supplies listed above come out to be over $800, but the mail-in rebates kick it back under the magic price. Compare that to a $600 Mac Mini with a 1.83GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. For $200 more that is quite a difference!
I’ve never actually tried to put the Mac OS on my PC because a lot of people have problems with it. First off, you have to either patch your Leopard DVD, or you have to download it illegally via BitTorrent. Once If you get it installed there will likely be some hardware issues, with the most popular problems being with the audio card and wireless networking.
After all was said and done Adam said “it’s a chore to set up, to be sure, but it’s also the most powerful Mac per dollar I’ve ever used.” His configuration appears to have worked out pretty well, but he has to keep the Leopard DVD in the computer while booting. If he takes it out Leopard won’t boot up, which might get annoying after awhile.
Has anyone tried to give this a try on your own computer? If so what were your results, and how well did it run?
This is a interesting idea, but too many problems.
That’s what I’ve always thought. It’s the very reason that people get frustrated with using Linux: because there are hardware problems. Yet they are willing to use this which will more than likely have the same issues?
I made this trick once in 2006 with the very first Intel-compatible Mac OS X version. It was easy enough, because I had a step-by-step guide… It worked
, and it was stable, BUT sound and networking wasn’t working, because I had no drivers for it. I believe, it should be fully working on the recommended PC configuration, but I just used my own PC for this experiment.
This is just awesome!
The price could be toned down a lot, actually. Who actually needs a 500 gig hard drive? Not me…not most people I know. I could probably take that down to 80 and be fine.
A $150 case? I’m sure you can get cheaper ones…<_<
Either way, if I want OSX I’d just buy a mac and save myself the hassle.
What a waste of time, money and resources. This machine is going to be ripe with problems for it’s life.
And yes, this could have been done for a lot less money – there are better deals out there on some of this gear, and some of the gear is unnecessary.
Why custom build a system and ruin it with a crappy OS?
Mac OS X’s EULA says that it’s illegal to install it on anything that hasn’t been manufactured by Apple. Well la dee da. At least Microsoft doesn’t go all posh on Apple…
If Apple really wants to push itself out there and challenge Microsoft, they should open up their OS to be installed on all kind of hardware. Most he criticism Microsoft is receiving regarding BSODs and so on is because of hardware problems.
Of course if Microsoft chooses to designe its own hardware and make it the only hardware that Windows would run on it, then +90% of all these Windows problems would be gone.
I wanna see Apple playing a fair game before they go on criticizing Windows in their “Hello I am a Mac” ads.
I think he chose that one because it came with a lot of stuff, such as the power supply. That way he didn’t have to hunt down the small stuff.
It’s kinda funny how ironic that actually is, but that could also be the reason that Microsoft is leading the market. Most of the people I know who are using Macs are also running Windows on them, so it’s not like Microsoft is losing their marketshare because of them.
It would be nice to see Apple support a wider array of hardware, but that would also cause a lot more work for them. If they continue the way that they are going they can focus more on features rather than compatibility, and I think that’s what they really want to do.
Then why doesn’t Apple let us install Mac OS X on Windows PCs, despite the fact that this move would increase their market share? I friggin’ hate their “closed source, closed system” policy… (Oh yeah, the driver thing. Of course.)
I actually don’t think the driver issues is what the big problem is. If Apple decided to open their system up I think device manufacturers would take the extra step to make their hardware compatible with Macs. I think Apple’s big concern is that they would have issues making money with their under-priced operating system. Right now they offer the operating system for $129, and they make up for the low cost (compared to the price of Vista) with the over-priced hardware.