Posts tagged Hacks

I do an awful lot of Mac-hating here on my blog, and usually for good reason.

I usually have mixed things to say about Apple products, and I do love my iPod touch, and I do want an iPad 3G, but as far as their actual computers go, I don’t usually have anything nice to say.

Previously, my experience with a Mac had only gone as far as OS 9, which as even most Mac users will tell you, sucks. I’d heard about the “Hackintosh” some time ago and thought I might give it a go, but it proved to be more hassle than it’s worth.

I managed to get my hands on about 3 different versions of the Hackintosh OS, only one of which worked, a prebuilt VMWare image of Mac OS Leopard.

The pros: It works… kind of. I haven’t fully explored any compatible hardware devices, I have only played around inside the OS a bit. It runs fairly decent for a virtual machine, but generally more and more laggy the longer I have it open. Unfortunately, the one purpose for which I wanted Mac OS, using the iPhone SDK, is completely out of the question since apparently you need OS X 10.6 to run the SDK, and I have 10.5. Kind of stupid that it won’t even let me try, and I don’t know if updating will work due to the nature of the hackintosh. But hey, the thing works, and if you want to play around with it, grab the torrent and get to downloading.

The cons: No iPhone SDK support, no sound, laggy performance, Mac OS can’t do anything else my PC can’t EXCEPT run the SDK, and this version won’t even do that.

Two thumbs WAY down for Mac OS. It’s overly graphically done, and does not run well. Combine that with the cost of the hardware and I can say it’s a fair bet you won’t ever see me buying a Mac.

Will somebody please crush Microsoft and make a real alternative OS? Even Ubuntu has a long way to go.