

How to roll your own Mac for under $240 - makimaki
http://www.uselessninjas.com/guides/msiwindosx/

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jws
$240 plus a DMCA violation and stealing a $100 piece of software to end up
with a beyond low end Mac that breaks as soon as you perform a system software
upgrade (according to the article).

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.]

~~~
dcurtis
You are misinformed. See this fantastic diagram:
<http://i33.tinypic.com/2yor21y.png>

~~~
jackowayed
Yeah, but with software, there really is no "original" to steal. They can make
new copies and ship them to the store for like $0.50 tops.

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.

~~~
dmix
I don't think he was questioning the value, he was commenting on the use of
the word "stealing". Copyright infringement is the better phrase for it.

~~~
Herring
Not if you want to tar & feather someone, it's not. Sometimes communication is
the least important function of language.

------
cliffy
Why is this being voted up? He advocates downloading Leopard from the pirate
bay. The only 'Mac' thing about this computer is the OS and he recommends
stealing it.

~~~
jodrellblank
Why would that stop it being voted up? Things don't stop being interesting
just because they are illegal.

Also, he advocates stealing it _or buying it_.

~~~
Zev
The stuff you need to know to hack osx on your own isn't something you can
read on a forum randomly. Buying -> hacking isn't an option for many people.

~~~
Radix
Where do you find that knowledge?

~~~
Zev
If you actually want to do the hacking on your own: Learn x86 or x86_64 (be
prepared for Snow Leopard) asm in depth for the kernel. Lots of C/IOKit
knowledge for writing your own kext's (drivers for osx). Examine memory dumps
and to figure out what gets loaded when (not to mention how. There's a few
cryptographically signed things that had to be dumped; Dont Steal Mac OS
X.kext is a good example). Look at tons of device and vendor id's and find the
corresponding plists within apple-provided kext's. Find where and what to
modify in them.

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.

------
mariomoosum
Does Xcode run on this? Does the iPhone emulator work? Can you do iPhone
development with this setup?

~~~
matthew-wegner
Yes. I have a friend who has shipped an iPhone game developed on a hackintosh.

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).

------
parenthesis
Used genuine Macs are available if you want cheap (or cheap _er_ , at least).

------
pedalpete
I'm not sure how this is better than dual-booting on your current machine, or
using an old pc. Am I missing something?

~~~
Herring
Yeah well, driver headaches if you don't pick your hardware carefully. Nobody
will release OSX drivers & you don't want to depend on third party drivers.
They all suck.

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

~~~
mechanical_fish
_ultimately there's nothing special about the OS_

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.

~~~
Herring
_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..._

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.

------
snewe
Important caveat at the end:

"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."

~~~
Zev
Thats because in order for osx86 to work, you have to hack the kernel and
several kext's. They all get reset and updated in system updates.

FWIW, not even iTunes updates can be safe. They update Quicktime a well -
which Apple _has_ used to break osx86 in the past.

------
GHFigs
Factually inaccurate. The computer described is not a Mac.

------
codeview
The joy of getting things done..

------
weegee
it's a copyright violation to use OS X on any non-Apple manufactured computer,
so this isn't a great idea. nice cheap computer though, and it was interesting
to read the steps the guy had to go through. I don't think HN advocates
copyright violations, do they?

~~~
petercooper
In theory, since you cannot buy _this_ hacked copy of OS X it might be a
copyright violation since you can't have a license for that copy.

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.

~~~
Zev
I dont think sticking a sticker of an apple sticker on it makes it "Apple
labeled" anymore then a tag saying "rolex" would make a fake rolex from the
street a real rolex.

~~~
petercooper
That's still a point of legal contention.

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.

~~~
jrockway
But of course Apple doesn't manufacture their own machines. They design them
and label them, hence the odd wording in the EULA.

