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Comment by panacea | Hacker News Reader

A boot to the face of Microsoft.

Microsoft sells software, Apple sells hardware with matching software. But make no mistake, they are a hardware company - OSX won't even run without a chip confirming its an authentic Mac.

The idea that they would charge for these smaller OSX updates is bizarre, and the price point has been in the "we need this for accounting" range in the past.

I feel the need to point out that you can run Mac OS X on pretty much any recent Intel processor and a wide range of motherboards. It is not locked to Apple hardware.

Theres a reason they call them Hackintosh. It's not because that is an officially supported configuration.

There's a giant difference between "not officially supported" and "a cryptography chip locks you out".

I guess you should take a look at what installing a hackintosh system entails. It starts with flashing your BIOS and it doesn't get any better afterwards.

You're either running a massively unsupported configuration (even for hackintosh standards) or just plain trolling. I'm posting this from a hackintosh I triboot with Windows and Debian. The difficulty involved reading a HCL when I built the system 3 years ago. The installation involved burning a disc and booting from it.

Nope. You burn the disk and install OSX as normal. Depending on the hardware you might need to download a few kext (Kernal Extensions AKA "drivers") Comparable to installing Linux or Windows.

> It starts with flashing your BIOS and it doesn't get any better afterwards.

Not true at all. Maybe if you're using old or unsupported hardware.

At most you'll need to set your BIOS to Optimized Defaults.

There is a certain working around the official seals involved. Google DSMOS.

When I was dabbling with Hackintoshes a few years ago, updating the OS was not supported (regardless of your hardware) and there were a couple of other limitations. Have most major issues like that been sorted out?

Nope, I'm burning a new usb install for Mavericks as we speak lol, have to do a whole new install for a major upgrade like this.

Which I did/do for my Macbook Pro anyway. So when I got into the Hackintosh scene, it's second nature. I typically recommend formatting when upgrading anyway. Just doesn't feel right to just upgrade. Maybe it's just left over nightmares from when I was on Windows. Only way to upgrade was to format.

Have you seen the docs for what it takes to get that running? Have you seen the docs for what it takes to complete a normal "update"?

Trying to run OS X on non-Apple hardware makes the old days of "cumbersome" Linux-systems look like kindergarten-stuff.

I'd hardly say it just runs.

If you spend the time to research and get the parts that are supported by OS X, building a Hackintosh is breeze. I have had no problems with the one I built.

Could you give us a couple links to kick off our own research? I've been wanting to do this for some time now but have been putting it off.

The OSx86 Wiki [0] is a good place to start.

[0]: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Maybe I was unlucky with my hardware but for me it was an uphill battle all the way and I never got anything near working.

The best I had was a system which booted (incredibly slowly) and for which I could never get wifi working.

YMMV, but you have been warned. Even with good documentation, there is absolutely no guarantee you'll get anywhere at all.

You've really got to just follow the hardware guides to the tee, and I personally recommend using their prebuilt configs. If you go on tonymac or the other hackintosh sites they will have different hardware lists that are more or less guaranteed to work, as all the components will be ones used in mac desktops and have built in support. There is definitely a huge dick around if you try and be adventurous and go off the beaten path, and you will spend hours messing with the loader configs and kexts etc.

Tonymac is the best you'll find:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/

Their recommended builds are excellent, even if you were only to use them for Windows.

That's sort of what he's going for though- remember the old days of Linux when only certain devices were supported? When using OS X like this, you don't even have the luxury of writing in new code to support them.

It's definitely limited. But hackintoshes are a planned and strategic undertaking. You want OS X but don't want to pay the rape rates requisite of the apple brand. So you build your pc based on the hardware guide so that everything will work from the start. If you need to add more hardware, you just buy the brand that will work. There's not enough limitation to make it suck, and you're paying 700-800 bucks for a computer that the mac equivalent would run you 3 grand.

Have you read the updated docs? Oh, you didn't get the memo. Oh, the memo is stuck in 1999. Oh.

When the Hackintosh movement started that was the case, sure. Nowadays it's a lot easier - tools like MultiBeast make it trivial on fully compatible hardware.

Na. If you get the right parts(mainly gigabyte motherboards) and read TonyMacOSX, you can get a Hackintosh up as easy as a Linux install.

It's literally build the computer, put the required software on USB drive(Unibeast). Boot computer, format drive, install OSX. Run Multibeast. Voila. Keep usb drive for when you update.

> OSX won't even run without a chip confirming its an authentic Mac.

You mean EFI? Because Macs don't have any special hardware inside, and especially not any "authentic Mac" chips.

They have at least one special chip that must be emulated - the smc. If you havent read the story of the copy protection poem you should check it out.

And it's worth pointing out that the SMC does more than copy protection. It's also responsible for some power management functions and practically all the thermal management - which is nice because it means you get sensible fan speeds even when running a different OS that doesn't have drivers for the Mac.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Controller

>Microsoft sells software, Apple sells hardware with matching software.

Something Microsoft would love, love, love to change about themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface

And according to companies like HP , they are officially a competitor. At least for them. On paper. They have yet to make any real world moves to proof they actually compete in the hardware sector. A 800 million dollar write off with the first device does not really count.

What chip? I have a hakintosh with 10.8.4..

I'm not sure I understand this.

Windows 8.1 is about as equivalent to OS X 10.9 as you can get and it was also free.

What exactly is the "boot to the face" here?

Except Mavericks is free for everyone (who can run it). I have Windows 7 and MS is not offering 8 or 8.1 to me for free.

No kidding. You didn't buy your laptop/desktop from Microsoft, did you? Maybe you should take up your claim for free Windows 8 with Lenovo/Dell/HP/Toshiba.

Apple's attempting to set a new expectation with consumers: OS updates should be free. Users are already accustomed to it on their phones, now they'll start to expect it of their computers.

I'm willing to wager that Apple never charges for an OS update again. I'm surprised they've taken this long to make the leap. (Of course, Microsoft makes more from OEM licensing than upgrades, but it's still a blow to their value in the consumer headspace.)

Apple and Microsoft are in almost entirely disjoint businesses, anyway. I doubt that there's much useful analogizing to be done about their current respective situations.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Apple employee.

No kidding.

Not only will Apple get some good press for this (barring any major technical snafu) but they'll glean some additional community goodwill and drastically reduce the number of legacy OS X versions in the wild.

OsX is not free, you still need to buy a Mac. As for MSFT , they are a software company,not sure what they can do about Windows price ,which will never be free. Want free stuff? use Linux.

Linux is not free, you still need to buy a computer.

Any computer. Including the one you already own, and none of which are produced by the Linux Foundation.

I will give that driver support for wifi cards may make some computers more awkward than others. It's very rare these days that any common device other than a wifi card or a just this week released graphics card causes problems any more.

(As an aside, how do you escape asterisks here?)

Let me google that for you, I'll be back with the answer in just a minute.

Linus is not forcing you to buy specific hardware to get linux installed. You can't install os x without apple-produced hardware.

Since when have you had to have a Mac to run OSX?

Lion officially supported 2 VM instances in the license (not sure about Mountain Lion). I'm curious if VM installs of Mavericks will also be free.

Windows 8.1 upgrade is free. How is this any different?

Well, a much smaller percentage of Windows users are on 8.0 than OS X users are on Snow Leopard or later. If Blue allowed upgrades from Windows 7 for free, that'd be a more equal comparison.

That would be incorrect. There are more Windows 8 users than ever version of OS X combined.

Sources: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/02/windows-8-jumps-pa...

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....

That's not what he said. He was speaking in percentages relative to each install base.

Mavericks is free from Snow Leopard onwards (because Leopard didn't have the appstore).

In terms of period that's equivalent to giving 8.1 free to all W7 users (both SL and W7 were released mid-2009)

Microsoft's business model is selling a licensed OS, something which honestly is getting harder every passing day. Apple's business model is selling compelling hardware at a premium price with their own software preloaded.

Apple could (and now indeed does) give away their software for free and still make a decent living. Their software wont run on any hardware they haven't already made a profit on, so there's no significant "piracy" risk either way.

That said, Windows 8.1 was a free upgrade for everyone already on the Windows 8 bandwagon (and thus in need for some overhauls).

Haven't the service packs always been free? I don't remember paying for any, at least...

Yup. They had trouble getting people to buy Windows 8 when it was $40.

Do you have a citation for that? I can't seem to find any sales information on the $40 promo.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-takes-no-prisoners-with-39-up...

The promotion has long since ended.

I knew it existed, but the claim was that Windows 8 sold poorly with the $40 promo, which I couldn't find any backing for. The only reference I could find for Win8 sales around that time said that "Upgrade sales [are] outpacing those of Windows 7 at the same point in its lifecycle": http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/window...

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