Mac users' opinion on Hackintoshs

[syruppie]

Wow.. I got into a heated debate with my buddy last night.

 

It all started out with me complementing how beautiful the new mac keyboard is from this picture of someone using it with his "PC".

 

to his statement of hackintoshes are "ghetto"..

 

Direct Quotes:

 

it's just the way the mac is meant to be consumed like a full fledge package.....personally if u can't afford it u shouldn't try to "build" a half assed one u know.....man i think u would get laughed at macrumours if u "build" your own mac lol and i have every right to laugh and ppl who "build" have no right to get offended....

 

like i'd rather u say i have no money i have to build a mac....than to justify what u are doing because it's personal taste or sorta glorify it u know.....

 

like say some {censored} like i'm enthusiast ...

 

 

Is this really how Mac users feel? I was going to install MAC OSX on my pc for fun.. but am I supposed to feel ashamed of it?

 

But it's also true I can't afford a mac because I can't justifying spending 2,800 bucks for the same gear I can get for 1,500. So any comments on this are definitely welcome.

[Shrimp]

As an owner of a MacBook Pro for two months now here is my opinion:

Apple overprices, if you can install Mac OS X on your PC temporarily until you can afford a mac, or just install it because you don't like macs go for it, it doesn't hurt anyone. You're the consumer, if Apple doesn't give you what you want as far as hardware and price goes, too bad.

 

I used an HP hackintosh until I could afford my MacBook Pro.

[syruppie]

See that answer I like..

 

Wonder if most mac users are like you.. that would prove him wrong

 

I don't think I will purchase a Mac tho.. I only wanted to play around with the OS like I do with Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS.. and I get insulted for it

[U.C.]

Most "proper" Mac users are mostly against Hacks. But frankly, Apple has 10 new customers due to me alone. So we are causing only Good things for Apple

[westwaerts]

I have been a mac user from the first cube time ( 9" monitor, no HD) imagine photoshop on a 700k disk. but besides romancy of ancient times, apple has gone a shareholdervalue way. i still own a powerbook 12" cause there is no better solution in this size.

 

i wanted to buy a new mac pro but 2500 € approx. 3600 US$ is fair to much for me. and from principles it is not to understand, that apple milks the europeans for their benefit.

 

thats why the street leaded me to a 950 € PC which thx to all of here, speaks osx.

[Urbz]

hmm... my opinion on the subject is mixed.

I think hackintoshes are temporary... and although Macs are slightly more expensive than similarly configured PCs, there is a quality about them that really makes it worth it. and I'm not talking about the logo.

Your friend is right in that it's the whole experience that counts, but I would disagree with his point about people hiding behind the term "enthusiasts." If you're at this board, you're an enthusiast. Period. I don't think that's a shield! At the same time, those who do it to save a buck need to realize: It's not just the OS!

 

-Urbz

[track09]

hmm... my opinion on the subject is mixed.

I think hackintoshes are temporary... and although Macs are slightly more expensive than similarly configured PCs, there is a quality about them that really makes it worth it. and I'm not talking about the logo.

Your friend is right in that it's the whole experience that counts, but I would disagree with his point about people hiding behind the term "enthusiasts." If you're at this board, you're an enthusiast. Period. I don't think that's a shield! At the same time, those who do it to save a buck need to realize: It's not just the OS!

 

-Urbz

 

Not the case, for me. I'm in the market for a notebook computer. The Macbook offers specs for $1099 that I could get around $749 on a Dell. I'd even be willing to pay for that. But the Dell offers a 15.4" screen. I don't want a 13.3", it's too hard. The only way for me to get a larger screen on a Mac is a Macbook Pro, and that's way too much money, I don't need a $1999 notebook.

[Alessandro17]

See that answer I like..

 

Wonder if most mac users are like you.. that would prove him wrong

 

Most people here feel like Shrimp.

 

I don't think I will purchase a Mac tho.. I only wanted to play around with the OS like I do with Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS.. and I get insulted for it

 

A friend who insults you because of your ideas is a bad friend, IMO. Get rid of him.

I feel exactly like you: I wanted to try OS X. But after about one year I went back to Linux as my main OS.

So spending a lot of money on a Mac would have been a terrible waste for me.

[InorganicMatter]

Almost all Mac purists I've run into hate my Hackintosh system. They hate us because it brings to stark light how meaningless their closed platform is, and it reduces their beloved operating system to nothing more than a kickass BSD distro.

 

At least, that's my opinion. This post brought to you by a Hackintosh.

[Alessandro17]

They hate us because........... it reduces their beloved operating system to nothing more than a kickass BSD distro.

 

 

How true. If somebody with the same kind of money as Apple did to Linux what Apple has done to BSD, without tying it to a hardware platform (which is impossible anyway because of the GPL), you'd see Linux becoming a serious competitor for Microsoft.

[thespottedelf]

your friend is a douche.... Complete and utter douche....

 

 

A hackintosh is a great answer to many problems. Like a dell, a hp, and a mac it has its place. For me i'd like to build one just to build one. (that and i hate having to share a computer with the rest of the family)

 

btw i have 4 imacs 2 ibooks a g4 power mac, and a couple old age macs (cause my dad is a camp directer and we live on the camp ). My family never has and most likely never will own a pc of any sort. We are pretty much the ultimate mac family.

 

With that being said. If your not sure if you want a mac or not, a hackintosh is an awesome answer. Also i'd like to be able to run open suse, ubuntu, windows, and osx all on the same box... yea i could do it with a mac. But i don't think it would be as easy as on a hackintosh. That and i'm going to have to save for 6 months to be able to afford the $800 is parts. (which includes windows, it will be the first time it has been bought by anyone in my household.... trying to decide if i'm proud of that or not lol)

 

 

anyways... I still think your friend is a douche....

[Hamb0ne]

{censored} Mac users, i got my DELL XPS 710 gaming Rig running XP and LEO 100% natively. Mac users cant do that {censored}.

[sarahbau]

{censored} Mac users, i got my DELL XPS 710 gaming Rig running XP and LEO 100% natively. Mac users cant do that {censored}.

Mac users can't do what? Run Leopard and XP? Yes they can, and no hacking is involved in doing it.

[yoda75]

...They hate us because it brings to stark light how meaningless their closed platform is, and it reduces their beloved operating system to nothing more than a kickass BSD distro.

 

I disagree with that. There are plenty of advantages to their closed platform. It keeps their development and customer support costs down, they always use premium components. The hardware also has features that can't be found on a PC (target disk mode,magnetic power supply on notebooks, FW800, Apple Remote etc) You must also consider that by buying a real Mac, you're letting the development cycle continue. No Mac sales=no more OSX

 

With that said, Im not a purist and I think hackintoshes are a good thing. Hacks expose OSX to people that might not have given it a shot otherwise. Hacks force users to get very familiar with the OS from the get go. All of these things are great but it's not a good user experience. It's always better to sit in front of a fully supported machine than to run a hack job sweating bullets every time you want to update your OS. Without acknowledging these things you start to head towards the opposite extreme that the ignorant Mac purist is on.

[Headrush69]

your friend is a douche.... Complete and utter douche....

++

 

Use what you want and what fills your needs. Your computer is "ghetto" because it's not a real Mac, what is your friend, like 8?

 

A computer is a tool, bottom line. It amazing how well Apple has sold this Macs are a different way of life line.

[hot hatch]

My personal opinion:

You pay to run OS X either way. Mac users pay with their money, hackintosh users pay with their time. But if you're going to forego paying $599+ for a mac, at least pay the $129 for the OS.

[ayle]

Mac users can't do what? Run Leopard and XP? Yes they can, and no hacking is involved in doing it.

 

Yeah but if find that unfair comparison if some Mac User come boasting that their computer can run windows and osx. It's not our fault if Apple has decided that you can't run OSX on something other than their hardware... If Microsoft did the same thing and denied Apple users access to their OS, somebody would cry foul or unfair competition...

[mmcnally]

I built a Hackintosh, so I could have a play with OSX, as the Bull Ring store is always too full when in Birmingham. However the time involved in making it work and then updating means to me it isn't worth the effort. I just want it too work, without having to spend time making it work.

 

Instead will go with a MacBook Pro for laptop and then just get a mac mini as an Elgato/iTunes Server, feeding two AppleTV boxes

 

I really can't say that I need a Mac Pro and my desktop needs / basic video can be done on the MacBook Pro.

 

Having said that I have made a suggestion to a UK online seller that possibly buy Mac pro parts and make available a bare chassis, with motherboard, memory risers, disk caddies etc that can add own cpu, memory, gpu too. Following Nagals thread with interest, and if the online seller goes for it then will probably build a budget mac pro without too much hassle.

[capt_cope]

The guy is an idiot. All offense meant there. Tell him to take a look at newegg.com or tigerdirect.com. Then guide him to the various components in a mac, point out that you can build a faster mac than apple can, and for far less than apple charges. Without the PPC to hide behind, the truth is pretty obvious to anyone willing to look: Apple gouges the hell out of their hardware buyers.

 

His attitude is that of the guy who just bought a Viper for $80,000 talking down on the guy who just built a Cobra kit car for $30,000. The kit car cost less and is faster in all respects.

[apowerr]

The guy is an idiot. All offense meant there. Tell him to take a look at newegg.com or tigerdirect.com. Then guide him to the various components in a mac, point out that you can build a faster mac than apple can, and for far less than apple charges. Without the PPC to hide behind, the truth is pretty obvious to anyone willing to look: Apple gouges the hell out of their hardware buyers.

Indeed. Real Macs are great, but every single one of them is overpriced. Also, theres no way for a hardware enthusiast to get the Mac experience aside from with a hackintosh. You can't build your own Mac with the parts of your choice and overclock it, etc. Hackintosh's allow hardware enthusiast to use the worlds best OS (in my opinion) on their homebuilt PCs.

[A Nonny Moose]

Macs are not overpriced when it comes to the hardware/software deal. This has been proved on these very forums.

 

On to the topic at hand, I think the hack community is a good development opportunity for everyone. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have things like Natit and other critters. My big issue is when someone comes in saying "I am a professional _____ and want to use a Hackintosh to _____." Not only is that being completely stupid, but you're making a profit off of stealing/copyright infringement/whatever you want to call it today.

[capt_cope]

Perhaps to you they aren't overpriced. In my opinion they are. I base that purely on the power to dollar ratio. The Mac pro we got at work cost somewhere around $3500. It's got two dual core xenon processors, 5gb of ram, and a 7300 in it. (and the standard 250gb hd) Yet that $3500 bought us a machine that is, for our line of work, slower than my PC, which cost around $1000 (a C2D e6750 @ 3.6ghz w/ 2gb of DDR2 @ 900 4,4,4,12, and an 8800GT with a 500gb HD.) I'm sure that if you add the componenets in a mac pro up, the total cost isn't too far out of line (assuming you don't add ANY extras) but for the price, a lot better can be had.

 

And not just a little slower, a LOT.

It took my PC exactly 10 seconds to transfer a .cr2 (from an EOS 1ds MKII) to a .tiff, regardless of how many were in the batch.

It took the mac pro, using the same software (Canon's DPP and Photoshop CS) 30 seconds per image transfer.

The time to do a bunch of photoshop filters on an image was less drastic, but the PC still had an edge.

Now I know, for a fact, that Vista is NOT a real "fast" OS, and that's what I was running at the time (yes I got tired of it and went back to XP)

 

So riddle me this:

How is it not overpriced if my PC

Intel C2D e6750 -~$250 at the time I bought it

Buffalo Firestix 2gb DDR2 800 ~$120

eVGA 680i SLI ~$200

WD 500gb SATA ~$100

BFG 8800GT ~$280

Total= ~$950 (I re-used a lot of components from previous builds, such as the case, PSU, optical drives, and the HD. You can't do that on a Mac, but I'll toss in an extra $50 for the used parts, since the case was $20 new, the DVD burner was about $30 new, and the PSU is so old it doesn't have a re-sale value, it was new when I built my FIRST 939 build. It's an old Enermax Liberty 480w)

So new Total ~$1000

 

Mac Pro ~ $3500

 

So, three times the cost for one third the performance*. In my experience, they are overpriced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Performance is RELATIVE, if you're into video editing/creation, I'm sure it fairs better than most PC builds out there, then it probably isn't overpriced to you. In my case, it IS.

[InorganicMatter]

Macs are not overpriced when it comes to the hardware/software deal. This has been proved on these very forums.

Most people don't base it on that. It boils down to being this simple: I would never dream of spending more than $500 on a single computer. A PC can be bought in that price range, a Mac can not. The cheapest Mac is $600. Real simple math here: $500 < $600. In that sense, the ONLY sense that matters in the REAL world (real world, not computer message boards), Macs are overpriced.

[thespottedelf]

well the only thing about that is apple doesn't make a {censored} computer. A mac mini (1.83 ghz cd2 yadda yadda).

 

A 500 doller pc is gonna have some pentium single core {censored} with 512 mb of ram.

 

 

So really that is a {censored} argument. The thing you can't get through osx86 is support. That is part of the price, how else are they going to pay all the people that work for them? If you think abought it, in a hackintosh you are putting in all the assembly, tech support, and sales person work. So there are three people you don't have to pay.

 

 

Now you should see that it isn't that over priced after you put it into perspective.

[capt_cope]

well the only thing about that is apple doesn't make a {censored} computer. A mac mini (1.83 ghz cd2 yadda yadda).

 

A 500 doller pc is gonna have some pentium single core {censored} with 512 mb of ram.

 

 

So really that is a {censored} argument. The thing you can't get through osx86 is support. That is part of the price, how else are they going to pay all the people that work for them? If you think abought it, in a hackintosh you are putting in all the assembly, tech support, and sales person work. So there are three people you don't have to pay.

 

 

Now you should see that it isn't that over priced after you put it into perspective.

 

Have you looked at $500 PCs lately? Take a look at the Dell Inspiron 530. With a moniter and C2Q q6600 it's $589. If it weren't for the hours spent removing bloat-ware they'd be the way to go. Heck the last PC I bought pre-made was a crappy little e-machine, $400 out the door with a 15" LCD moniter. Granted that was a while ago, and it's a skt 754, but it still runs XP fine, my sister uses it for internet and the Sims 2 and AOE3. The Mac mini doesn't come with a moniter ($150-$200) doesn't come with a keyboard or mouse ($100 for the pair) and it's still only marginally better than an e-machine in terms of hardware (personally the lack of an upgradeable GPU makes it worse IMO). Yet it's $900 out the door. Assuming you don't choose an apple moniter, then you're looking at $1300 out the door. For a 1.8ghz c2d with 1gb of ram...