Note to forum hosts.  If this violates the COC, please delete.  I have no idea what the legal status of building one is and i have no intention of starting a convo on an illegal act.
 
For those who unfamiliar with the term, it is simply a pc built to run Mac OS.  I know Apple doesn't support, but as long as you are buying legitimate software to run it, it's still money in their pockets.  In any case,  i was wondering if anyone could share their experoiences.

interesting.  i find it incredible that you can build the equivalent of a $4000 mac for about $1000

dubdisciple
interesting.  i find it incredible that you can build the equivalent of a $4000 mac for about $1000

That might be a wee bit extreme, but I know several folks that have built Hackintoshes, and they work, and in two cases they are in use in studios running Logic and DP.
 
Since all I'd want to do is run DP and Max and a couple other things that work better on a Mac I'd probably just go with a Mac Mini - but it would be fun to build one.

wst3

dubdisciple
interesting.  i find it incredible that you can build the equivalent of a $4000 mac for about $1000

That might be a wee bit extreme, but I know several folks that have built Hackintoshes, and they work, and in two cases they are in use in studios running Logic and DP.
 
Since all I'd want to do is run DP and Max and a couple other things that work better on a Mac I'd probably just go with a Mac Mini - but it would be fun to build one.

Might be a tad extreme depending on core components. Top level graphic cards likely to be used by one doing high end 3d and compositing work are going to push the price closer to the Mac price, but a good shopper can get deals close to half of what the Mac price would be.. I priced out the components of a 2800 Mac once to about 650 with a very quick search. This did rely on recycling some already owned components.

I have a pretty powerful computer and a high end video card. Could I turn it into a Mac by adding a drive with OSX installed? That might be REAL good. I could have the best of both worlds.

Some configurations work better than others i have heard .

The problem is mainly the drivers for the components. Because they are in control of the systems, Mac OS can ship will all the drivers you will ever need for their machine. Stray very far from that and you are faced with writing your own interfacing code (or depending on someone in Cloud having done so for you) or hacking the underlying OS to let you install something non-Apple. There is a cottage industry producing kexts but not every component is going to have one available.

slartabartfast
The problem is mainly the drivers for the components. Because they are in control of the systems, Mac OS can ship will all the drivers you will ever need for their machine. Stray very far from that and you are faced with writing your own interfacing code (or depending on someone in Cloud having done so for you) or hacking the underlying OS to let you install something non-Apple. There is a cottage industry producing kexts but not every component is going to have one available.

That is what I fear most, every minor update renedering the OS useless until a hack comes along. Not much incentive for Apple to make Mac drivers for unsupported hardware. I suppose making a dual-boot machine based on configurations known to work would at least have the consolation of being a  usable windows machine if the mac partition starts acting up.

I know someone who built a couple of hackintoshes, both of which ended up being regularly overtaken by OS and application updates. Though it did give him a cheap platform for Mac-compatible Pro Tools for a while. Talking to him about the hacks always reminded me of talking to linux users in the 90s. An awful lot of "to get round that I had to...." and "looks like I'm going to have to write the code myself for...".

A couple of years ago he finally ran up the the white flag, visited his local Apple merchants and invested in an iMac and MacBook Pro on which he runs Logic Pro. His conversation now features computers and their odd behaviour, incompatabilities and constant need for tweaking much less than it used to, for which I am very grateful.