Why You Should Think Twice Before Going the “hackint0sh” Way

Lately, the issue of Mac OS X being locked to Macs and being able to run it unofficially on non-Apple hardware has been getting a lot of attention. It all started when a small outfit named Psystar announced its intention to sell an unofficial Mac clone called OpenMac (later renamed to Open Computer) which, according to them, could run Mac OS X Leopard straight out of the box with very little tweaking required. They also sell the computer with Leopard pre-installed.

Whether or not violating the Mac OS X EULA is a serious legal breach or not is still up for debate and no one can really be sure unless Apple actually sues them, which, surprisingly enough, they've has shown no intention to thus far. However, that's not what I'm here to discuss. Whether or not Apple is successful in putting a dampener on Psystar's plans is of little concern to me.

However, what does bother me is the amount of interest and hype this little stunt has generated in the Mac community. Not just in the Mac community, in fact, but even among users of other operating systems. Psystar, the daring little upstart, has seemingly flung open a window of opportunity for all those people who've wanted to use Mac OS X for a long time but either couldn't due to the high prices or wouldn't because they didn't want to commit to the platform given its inherently closed nature.

So, assuming that Psystar keeps going great guns and starts selling their Open computers by the truckloads, we're soon going to see a lot of Windows users jumping on the Mac OS X bandwagon, albeit one that does not run on the hardware it has forever been tied to and is considered a part and parcel of. My question here is: Do these people know what they're gonna be doing? When they switch to Mac OS X, when they make the big switch, do they really want to have the Psystar experience? If you've been planning to do this yourself, let me paint a picture for you, about what your experience would probably be like.

For starters, if you choose the base version of the Open Computer, the one that retails for $399 and doesn't come with OS X pre-installed, or build a "hackint0sh" yourself, you're going to have to install Mac OS X on it yourself. Trust me on this, it's easier said than done. Don't believe me? Well, here's what Macworld's Rob Griffiths observed when he decided to do a little Mac cloning experiment of his own (emphasis mine):

“Building the hardware is actually the easy part of the process. Next, I installed Vista on the PC, just to be sure everything worked. From there, it then took many more hours to get OS X working right—while the process is relatively straightforward, there are a lot of steps involved, and BIOS settings to tweak. If you want to run Windows and OS X on the same drive, there are more hoops to jump through to get it all working. But after many hours of reading, assembling, disassembling, screaming, installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, saying bad words, pestering friends, and generally not having very much fun, I was done: my machine was up and running, and capable of booting into either Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.5.2.”

That's just the installation part, something which every user of unauthorized Mac clones, such as Psystar's product, will have to go through at some point of time, even if the machine shipped with the operating system pre-installed. That's because even after the operating system is up and running, the day-to-day experience is hardly going to be as rosy as one would expect from Mac OS X.

One visit to forums centered around the subject of getting Mac OS X running on a generic PC reveals that (a) the rate of successes is pretty low; and (b) even the ones who do manage to achieve this feat end up having to keep returning to the forum every time something breaks down, which happens unpredictably and often, because they have nowhere else to go.

Note that I'm not condemning the act of installing Mac OS X on a PC. Far from it. All I'm saying is that before you decide to spend $399 on a Mac clone, thinking that you've saved a lot of money, you should know what you're stepping into. Sure, the initial cost is a lot less than even the most inexpensive Mac out there, but if time is money and you could put a price to all the hassle you'll have to endure to keep your machine in working condition, it might just prove to be more expensive in the long run than a Mac would've been.

The absence of drivers for Mac OS X and the various conflicts result in frequent slowdowns and crash-proneness. Those are things that an actual Mac user almost never has to face. That's what it's all about. The ease of use and the generally stable and trouble free nature. What's the point of having a Mac when you're letting go of these traits? Sure, the idea of Mac OS X being a part of the Mac hardware and of the two being inseparable might involve a lot of marketing spin but no can deny the fact that it does have a ring of truth to it too.

Running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is nowhere close to the real thing. It's only a pale imitation of what an actual Mac is like and, for all intents and purposes, no better than a glorified Windows, only prettier and a lot more secure. A computer is something that, in this day and age, becomes a central part of ones life and I'm not sure anyone wants to put an unofficial Mac, a hackint0sh, in that place. The first few weeks of running Mac OS X on your custom-built computer might be fun, but, trust me on this, the honeymoon tends to get over pretty quick. Think before you leap.