How to roll your own Mac for under $240
uselessninjas.com
uselessninjas.com
Just go the mall early with a brick, you know, when the walkers are getting their exercise. Throw the brick through the window of the Apple store and steal a mini. Its a better machine and Apple probably won't mind since they need to flush the inventory before next weeks announcements. Why, you are probably doing them a favor since they can write off the retail price as a loss from theft instead of flushing it at a reduced price. No one gets hurt, same as the original article.
(Ok, the mini isn't better if you want the two 3.5" SATA bays, in that case steal it the way the author documents.)
[Downvoted? At least I amused myself. Perhaps I should have added a smiley somewhere.]
The real value of software is the information, the compiled code that makes it do something valuable. You're not paying your share towards development costs that make that happen. So you're robbing the company of the money you would pay for the software.
With software, the idea of theft only being taking the physical product is stupid because the physical aspect is practically worthless. Some software isn't even distributed through physical means at all.
Also, he advocates stealing it or buying it.
Talk to people on IRC (there's some very talented people around there still, and even more talented folks that have quit the scene already). If you can, find old forum posts from osx86project - or concretesurf/win2osx (I'm talking stuff 2.5-3 years old, before they were big and worth indexing)
In short: Explore the system at as low of a level as possible. Don't leave a stone unturned.
If you just want to copy others work, you can stick with the "Talk to people on IRC.." part and you should manage, assuming you have an idea of what you're doing.
All that being said, I'd recommending spending the time working on something more worthwhile.
Also, stealing/not-stealing blah blah blah.
I understand the attitudes of those so grossly offended by copyright and DMCA violations. But suggesting copyright infringement doesn't automatically disqualify an article from Hacker News.
That said, I've personally found them to be problematic over time. We're a 6-person Mac-based game developer, and we picked up a Psystar hackintosh out of curiosity. We had an intern work on it for awhile, but it had some weird quirks. The biggest problem is updating must be done manually and carefully. The longer you have it the more work you're creating for yourself, if you want to keep current, which is pretty much opposite the goal of using a Mac (less work/maintenance over time).
I actually hit this hard a few months ago while trying to turn my laptop into a hackintosh. It would only boot once every 3 tries. And ultimately there's nothing special about the OS. I missed my apt & kde4
I would dispute that... except that I suspect that it might be much more true if you're foolish enough to go the Hackintosh route.
The whole point of the Mac OS is that everybody is using more or less the same thing: similar OS, similar software, similar hardware, similar drivers. That makes it fairly easy to adopt tips and techniques from the community, or to Google for applicable advice, and it makes the user experience smoother and simpler. Once you throw away much of the ease of installation and maintenance, the consistency, and the stability the Mac OS is not that much more than Unix with pretty windows and a stricter set of UI guidelines -- and there are plenty of ways to prettify your Linux windows!
You do get access to well-designed, closed-source, Mac-only apps. (The open source Mac apps can generally be cross-compiled for Linux, or more likely vice versa.) But if you're too cheap to buy actual Mac hardware you're less likely to care about the power to pay for nicely designed Mac apps. Especially when some of those apps might exhibit mysterious bugs on your hackintosh hardware.
Just spend those hours you'd waste trying to maintain a hackintosh learning more about Linux. It's a better use of your time. Or buy a real Mac like everybody else.
Oh, I don't know anything about Unix, but you might want to keep a few of those if you want to keep up with Ubuntu.
You do get access to well-designed, closed-source, Mac-only apps.
If I used windows, I'd also get the privilege of paying for lots of well-designed closed-source windows-only apps.
"Also, doing the non-program updates (system updates) seems to screw it up. I'm not sure why and I am finding a fix but for now just update iTunes and the like."
FWIW, not even iTunes updates can be safe. They update Quicktime a well - which Apple has used to break osx86 in the past.
At worst it is breach of contract (possibly attracting actual damages of as little as $0, as you bought the software), but that depends on your legal jurisdiction.
Not that I advocate installing OS X at all. It seems churlish to insist on using something the creator doesn't want you too when there are free alternatives that benefit from a large user base.
It is possible, however, to buy a legitimate OS X and perform the same patches to get the install image they are using, in which case no copyright violation occurs. Installing shouldn't even be an EULA violation if you're doing it on an "Apple labeled" computer.. so just get an Apple sticker and label it.
In any case, it's perfectly legal for you to buy a cheap watch and put a Rolex sticker on it as long as you don't sell it on as a "genuine" Rolex.
Something can be "Apple labeled" but not a genuine Apple product. "Apple manufactured" would have made more sense.