How does the Hackintosh fit in the Apple Computer history
If you have a look at Apple Computer history you will see that over time there have been one or two attempts to put the Mac OS on PC computers. Over the last couple of years this has most often been seen when users of the netbook computers such as the MSI Win or the Dell Mini 9, have decided that it would have been a good idea if the Mac OS had been an option. Quite often the people that have tried to do this feat of software fiddling, have done it partly just because it was possible. Generally though with the netbooks, it was because they were very cheap to buy and only had either a linux system on there or Windows. To a large extent this practice of putting the Mac OS on netbooks is not really taking place very often now, because it is less necessary now that we have the iPad.
Again if you look over the Apple history Timeline, then you will see that there was a time when Steve Jobs was away from Apple, that there were other manufacturers making clones of Apple machines. This is generally considered to be the dark days of the Apple Computer history and the computers from Apple in that period were not the sort of computers that we have come to expect from Apple now. The Apple clone computers of that period are little different, both from the idea of putting in Mac OS X for PC on spurious hardware and creating a Hackintosh nowadays.
So why would you want to put the Mac OS on PC hardware?
The answer to that is quite simple really – Cost! We all know that you do pay more to own a Mac computer. Partly this is due to the fact that you are getting better quality and something that will last longer. Partly this is also due to the fact that you are buying a computer of a higher spec. If you compare the Mac with a similar set of hardware with the same specification, then there is not such a huge gap in price anyway. The mere fact that you can run the best operating system in the world, Mac OS X along with having the best computing experience with the Mac software, evens things up. Because I am a big fan of the Mac, then I am bound to say that it does more than even things up – It makes the Mac the best computer.
What is going to happen with the Mac Pro?
It is because of the rumours that are going the rounds at the moment, that a number of people are thinking in terms of making a Hackintosh to take the place of the Mac Pro. There are a number of industry watchers that are suggesting that the Mac Pro is not much longer for this world. What on earth are the Pro users going to do when it comes down to having a screaming hot machine to do specialised tasks that needs a big box. It is not so much the big box, but what you can put into a big box. Although many are saying that these days it is not necessarily to have a computer that fits in with the truck analogy, especially since Thunderbolt has been fitted to all the Mac computers apart from the Mac Pro. Even so, there has been some renewed interest in creating a set of PC hardware that will run the Mac OS. In fact there is a new article on lifehacker.com which goes over the basics of creating your Hackintosh. Considering that now the Macs are using Intel processors, it should be much easier than it was when Macs ran on the PowerPC hardware.
The fiddly bits of how to install Mac OS X on a Hackintosh
You will need to do things such as diving in to configure the BIOS, disabling quick boot, configure SATA and change the boot device order. Only after doing those sorts of tricky things with your build, will you be able to to start installing Mac OS X Lion. The best way to go about doing this task would be to follow instructions given by somebody else who has already done it. This way you could avoid some of the trickier problems or at least have them pre-solved for you. Things do go wrong quite often if you are running a Hackintosh and you will have to get used to doing some tinkering with your computer to get problems fixed. At least if things do go really badly wrong then you will have a backup to get it back to a working system. If it goes even worse than that, then you could still use the computer and install a linux system on their such as Ubuntu or Mint. You won’t be enjoying the use of Mac OS X Lion if that happens, but at least you’ll have had some fun tinkering with some computer hardware in the meantime. There again you could be successful and have Mac OS on PC hardware.
