Too bad Hackintoshes are illegal, could get a lot more hardware for that kind of money.
Even though I copied a "gold build" from "TonyMacx86" (the "hackintosh authority"), the machine freezes randomly every hour, sometimes a week. But it will freeze and I'll have to do a hard reset.
Also, many of Apples services won't work with a hackintosh. iMessage and FaceTime, for example. To fix it, you'll need to call Apple and convince them to whitelist your fake generated system ID, risking getting your apple ID banned.
Something also happened during the installation so I have to have a Mavericks USB drive attached at all times to boot the damn thing.
Oh, and don't forget you have to reconfigure the whole thing when you apply an update.
Had I known these things I'd just have saved up a little more and bought the real thing.
I built one last year, and it's far from being a nightmare. I also followed the builds from the site you mentioned, as best as I could in my country (local dealers are cheaper, or on-par to amazon around here) - the few deviations I had to make just require me to replace the NIC and Graphic kexts after an update (but I can do this on the same system, it's not unusable without them). The only other problem I did not bother to fix yet is that I can't watch hardware-accelerated movies in the browser (really not required with the work I do this machine).
But still, it was for fun. I'd never use them as a substitute to the real thing, the price difference is too small IMHO – I do factor in the time I "waste" on a system.
So I don't quite get where people got the Idea that a Hackintosh is worth the hassle to be used as a substitute. C'mon, it's even in the name.
The first time I built one I had lots of problems like you described but that was pretty much due to me not really knowing what the hell I was doing.
Time I could've spent much more productively.
I disagree with this comment due to the level of colloquial discussion. Illegal is (colloquially) whatever you can't do because of the law. (Just about the only exception is a contract, which you might be forced to follow because of the law, but we don't view as part of the law in a colloquial sense.)
Regarding "nothing will happen, you don't even have to feel bad." That is a very narrow view and I disagree that this is the correct way to view all civil torts.
Indeed, the whole idea of a tort is that you have wronged someone. You are literally saying that you don't ever have to feel bad for wronging someone, because they would have to sue you and prove their case, even though an entire field of law has been enacted to give them the possibility of making them whole again.
On a very literal level, you are saying "you don't have to feel bad for wronging your neighbor." (Which is the definition of a tort.)
Look, I even argue for a new form of a tort (civil liability) here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7910112
precisely because of how damaging it is to someone. The terms I use is that it shoudl "be illegal", and I compare it with libel and slander, which are both torts.
Basically, your view is no different from saying that you are innocent until you are proven guilty of a crime. Well, yes and no.
In the case of running Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer, Apple is not wronged. Where are the damages? What has Apple lost? Apple has lost nothing.
Running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware damages Apple as much as putting on a Harry Potter puppet show at a children's library damages JK Rowling. Zero. It just makes people more interested in Apple hardware and JK Rowling books and movies respectively.
If Apple can find you, they can send you a cease and desist letter. That is the most action they can take. Likewise for JK Rowling shutting down a puppet show using characters she created.
As far as hackintosh's go, I think it's accepted that piece of hardware is one of the best supported ever. All the hardware worked flawlessly, all the time. It even slept and work up.
Even still, there were a hundred little things that it did (or didn't do) compared to Apple hardware running OS X. After all those years, the choice was very simple. I bought a MacBook Air, and I've never regretted it.
I've never done a Hackintosh (very happy with other unixes), but is this true? Certainly more complexity with setting it up, but afterwards? If you follow http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php and get hardware they recommend and follow their guides isn't it pretty close to Apple's own computers?
The machines have minor problems on occasion; but to be frank I don't expect any computer to work with 100% reliability.
For instance a problem my dad w/ the hackintosh tower stemmed from storing `/Users` on a secondary hard drive.
Occasionally the hard drive would not mount quickly enough and Mac OS would create skeleton home directories under `/Volumes/<drive2>/Users` which would bork the login. Plus the volume can no longer automount since the path `/Volumes/<drive2>` now exists.
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The HP ProBook works really well but it has had strange issues w/ the wireless card.
For some reason the wireless card lost the region code stored in its firmware. As a result Mac OS no longer sees the wireless card. (System Profiler shows the hardware, but refuses to recognize it as an "Airport Express" card.)
Humorously: the utilities to reflash Atheros firmware don't run on Mac OS.
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I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous. The "Hackbook Pro" runs much faster than my actual MacBook Pro of similar vintage (late '11).