How to build your own Hackintosh!

For the past 4 years, I’ve been doing most of my work on what is known as a Hackintosh. That is, if you haven’t heard of it, the Mac OS X system installed on non-Apple hardware. Around the time I did my first build, it was restricted by a limited choice of hardware and required quite a bit of know-how. But come today, building a Hackintosh and getting it up and running, is actually quite easy. Your hardware options are vast and the installation process is fairly simple. But I have to warn you, building a «hacked» Apple computer is not hazle free, it will from time to time require some troubleshooting and a bit of patience.

So what are the advantages?

Well, if you haven’t built/assembled a computer before, it’s that rewarding feeling of knowing how things are put together. Secondly it’s the price. We all know Apple make good products, but they also know how to get paid for it. Building a Hackintosh can save you anything from $ 1.000 up to about $ 6.000, depending on what you’re aiming at. Where building something similar to Apple’s High-End Mac Pro, will give you the biggest difference. Being a filmmaker, I’ve personally gone for a powerful workstation/desktop computer, but you can also install OS X on laptops. If you are in the creativi field and in need for a computer for your work, I would stil urge you to consider the desktop though. As this article highlights, you should consider the costs, power advantage and not to forget, the ease of hardware choice and installation.

Where to start?

First, you’ll need a bit of DIY attitude, a sense of adventure and comfortable with the idea of building your own machine. Remember that you will have to provide your own technical support when you run into problems. But I’ll try to point you to several resources to help you learn everything you need to know about building a computer so you can feel confident on your first time through the entire computer building process. In the end you’ll see that it was definitely worth it.

Legality

Before we go any further, you should also be aware of the controversial nature of building a hackintosh. While it is illegal to sell a hackintosh (just ask Psystar), building your own is more of a legal gray area. It’s my understanding that the act violates the End-User License Agreement (EULA) of Mac OS X,