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How to roll your own Mac for under $240

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Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#21

Post by Zev »

petercooper wrote: post #20
weegee wrote: post #12

it's a copyright violation to use OS X on any non-Apple manufactured computer, so this isn't a great idea. nice cheap computer though, and it was interesting to read the steps the guy had to go through. I don't think HN advocates copyright violations, do they?

In theory, since you cannot buy this hacked copy of OS X it might be a copyright violation since you can't have a license for that copy. It is possible, however, to buy a legitimate OS X and perform the same patches to get the install image they are using, in which case no copyright violation occurs. Installing shouldn't even be an EULA violation if you're doing it on an "Apple labeled" computer.. so just get an Appl…

I dont think sticking a sticker of an apple sticker on it makes it "Apple labeled" anymore then a tag saying "rolex" would make a fake rolex from the street a real rolex.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#22

Post by Radix »

Zev wrote: post #17
jodrellblank wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that stop it being voted up? Things don't stop being interesting just because they are illegal. Also, he advocates stealing it or buying it .

The stuff you need to know to hack osx on your own isn't something you can read on a forum randomly. Buying -> hacking isn't an option for many people.

Where do you find that knowledge?

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#23

Post by petercooper »

Zev wrote: post #21
petercooper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, since you cannot buy this hacked copy of OS X it might be a copyright violation since you can't have a license for that copy. It is possible, however, to buy a legitimate OS X and perform the same patches to get the install image they are using, in which case no copyright violation occurs. Installing shouldn't even be an EULA violation if you're doing it on an "Apple labeled" computer.. so just get an Appl…

I dont think sticking a sticker of an apple sticker on it makes it "Apple labeled" anymore then a tag saying "rolex" would make a fake rolex from the street a real rolex.

That's still a point of legal contention.

In any case, it's perfectly legal for you to buy a cheap watch and put a Rolex sticker on it as long as you don't sell it on as a "genuine" Rolex.

Something can be "Apple labeled" but not a genuine Apple product. "Apple manufactured" would have made more sense.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#25

Post by GHFigs »

Herring wrote: post #5
pedalpete wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how this is better than dual-booting on your current machine, or using an old pc. Am I missing something?

Yeah well, driver headaches if you don't pick your hardware carefully. Nobody will release OSX drivers & you don't want to depend on third party drivers. They all suck. I actually hit this hard a few months ago while trying to turn my laptop into a hackintosh. It would only boot once every 3 tries. And ultimately there's nothing special about the OS. I missed my apt & kde4

apt and KDE 4 both run on Mac OS X.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#26

Post by Zev »

Radix wrote: post #22
Zev wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff you need to know to hack osx on your own isn't something you can read on a forum randomly. Buying -> hacking isn't an option for many people.

Where do you find that knowledge?

If you actually want to do the hacking on your own: Learn x86 or x86_64 (be prepared for Snow Leopard) asm in depth for the kernel. Lots of C/IOKit knowledge for writing your own kext's (drivers for osx). Examine memory dumps and to figure out what gets loaded when (not to mention how. There's a few cryptographically signed things that had to be dumped; Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext is a good example). Look at tons of device and vendor id's and find the corresponding plists within apple-provided kext's. Find where and what to modify in them.

Talk to people on IRC (there's some very talented people around there still, and even more talented folks that have quit the scene already). If you can, find old forum posts from osx86project - or concretesurf/win2osx (I'm talking stuff 2.5-3 years old, before they were big and worth indexing)

In short: Explore the system at as low of a level as possible. Don't leave a stone unturned.

If you just want to copy others work, you can stick with the "Talk to people on IRC.." part and you should manage, assuming you have an idea of what you're doing.

All that being said, I'd recommending spending the time working on something more worthwhile.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#27

Post by jrockway »

petercooper wrote: post #23
Zev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think sticking a sticker of an apple sticker on it makes it "Apple labeled" anymore then a tag saying "rolex" would make a fake rolex from the street a real rolex.

That's still a point of legal contention. In any case, it's perfectly legal for you to buy a cheap watch and put a Rolex sticker on it as long as you don't sell it on as a "genuine" Rolex. Something can be "Apple labeled" but not a genuine Apple product. "Apple manufactured" would have made more sense.

But of course Apple doesn't manufacture their own machines. They design them and label them, hence the odd wording in the EULA.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#28

Post by Herring »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #10
Herring wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah well, driver headaches if you don't pick your hardware carefully. Nobody will release OSX drivers & you don't want to depend on third party drivers. They all suck. I actually hit this hard a few months ago while trying to turn my laptop into a hackintosh. It would only boot once every 3 tries. And ultimately there's nothing special about the OS. I missed my apt & kde4

ultimately there's nothing special about the OS I would dispute that... except that I suspect that it might be much more true if you're foolish enough to go the Hackintosh route. The whole point of the Mac OS is that everybody is using more or less the same thing: similar OS, similar software, similar hardware, similar drivers. That makes it fairly easy to adopt tips and techniques from the community, or to Google fo…

Once you throw away much of the ease of installation and maintenance, the consistency, and the stability the Mac OS is not that much more than Unix with...

Oh, I don't know anything about Unix, but you might want to keep a few of those if you want to keep up with Ubuntu.

You do get access to well-designed, closed-source, Mac-only apps.

If I used windows, I'd also get the privilege of paying for lots of well-designed closed-source windows-only apps.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#29

Post by hangten »

rms wrote: post #18
cliffy wrote: post #3

Why is this being voted up? He advocates downloading Leopard from the pirate bay. The only 'Mac' thing about this computer is the OS and he recommends stealing it.

Oh no... not... software piracy! Also, stealing/not-stealing blah blah blah.

Consider HN is a hacker + entrepreneurial site you could see why people would not welcome Reddit/Digg support for piracy.

Re: How to roll your own Mac for under $240

#30

Post by rms »

jws wrote: post #4

$240 plus a DMCA violation and stealing a $100 piece of software to end up with a beyond low end Mac that breaks as soon as you perform a system software upgrade (according to the article). Just go the mall early with a brick, you know, when the walkers are getting their exercise. Throw the brick through the window of the Apple store and steal a mini. Its a better machine and Apple probably won't mind since they need…

There's always jury nullification.
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