hackintosh ... any opinions

[veggieryan]

one more thumbs up for the hackintosh

i built a silent rack mount unit with q6600 on a bad axe 2 and 8 gigs of ram.... it is more stable than my macbook. Feels about 10x more powerful. Low latency performance is amazing. This is the rig I have always dreamed of.

I can do all my web developing, design, research, media, and music at once and no hiccups.

Running 10.5.4 kalyway update. Runs for months without restarting. Whole thing was about $1,300 to build with all the fancy silent pc parts and noiseproofing (worth it).

[technog0d]

I have a Dell XPS 420 with a Quad Core 9450. The thing runs insanely fast. I have the following setup....

- Apogee Ensemble Firewire audio interface
- PCIe UAD cards x2
- PCI Powercore MKII card
- Focusrite Liquid Mix Firewire effects on a second Belkin Firewire bus

Everything works glitch free and is extremely stable. I can use a latency of 32ms with no dropouts and about 30-40 tracks. Although, my DSP effects require a minimum latency of 128, so that's what i use.

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/ echnoGod

[zooli]

Building a dedicated audio machine and looking for a new i7 set up (win 7/Hackintosh), any recommendations ? Thanks!


*LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support
*XFX HD-467X-ZDF2 Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
*CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C9
*2 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
*Antec P183 Black Aluminum / Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
*Antec TruePower New TP-750 750W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE
*Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
*ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

[Syncretia]

For what it's worth, I have spent about 5 or 6 hours putting my first Hacintosh together. Don't believe the hype. You don't need to pay Apple tax. So far, I've gotten just about everything working except for Ableton Live. So far, this exercise has cost me $105 (1 TB HD $59, USB Stick $21, Bluetooth Dongle $25 (Optional)). If you already have an Intel PC, for this kind of money, why wouldn't you give it a stab? If you don't have a PC, you might as well build one because the bang for buck ratio is about 5-1 between legit Macs and PCs. All I did was unplug my Windows drive so I couldn't screw it up and made a couple of BIOS changes. Of course, if I can't get Ableton to work, this will have been a waste of time, time will tell...

Here is a list of things I have gotten working since I started yesterday afternoon:

-OSX Lion
-Networking (Internet)
-DVD Drive
-Magic Mouse/Keyboard ($25 bluetooth dongle)
-Maschine
-Komplete 7
-Saffire 6 USB
-HDMI/VGA output

Admittedly there are few things that are left to get working:

-Ableton
-Need to shut the boot loader up (press a button before the Mac will boot)
-It crashes sometimes when downloading many files at once.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/ is a good resource.

Look, if you want a Mac, already have an Intel PC, and a couple of bucks/hours to spend, you'd have to be crazy not to give this a crack. It's about time Apple stopped raping their customers. I'm all for their design approach, and they make genuinely good hardware that I would be willing to pay extra for. But, I'm not paying $4000 + for a box that I can build for $600-$700.

[Press Enter]

building a hackintosh to run multi-platform software ?

how utterly futile.

Let us know how you get on with 3rd party OSX-specific software, and it might be interesting.

[Syncretia]

I think you have some misunderstanding about the meaning of the word "futile". Perhaps you mean "pointless"?

Anyway, the exercise was clearly not futile because everything is working perfectly now. I just had to get the correct graphics card driver and now Ableton works fine. It's also booting in quiet mode so there are no problems left.

To address the "futile" (I think meant to mean pointless) remark; yes, I already use Ableton, Maschine, and Komplete in Windows. So, I don't really have to set up a Mac. But, you know as well as I do, there are certain VSTs etc. that simply will not run on a Windows machine. Aside from this, I just prefer working in Mac, and I'm happy to pay Apple for their operating system. I'm just not happy to pay Apple $4000 for something that cost me $100 to convert my PC.

What people have to remember is that buying a Mac from the store doesn't even entitle you to support. You still have to pay for an Apple Care plan. This fact negates any arguments about switching to an unsupported platform. MacOS is an unsupported platform.

[Ben_Binary]

Applecare is pointless as your apple hardware is (or should be) covered by a statutory warranty...

[Press Enter]

Futile is precisely what I meant. Go look it up. If 'pointless' is easier for you to grasp, then so be it - it's not at odds with futility. At any rate I figure you'll find either word preferable to 'fucking retarded'

Anyway - I don't know as well as you do that there are certain multi-platform VSTS 'etc' that simply will not run on a Windows machine. Enlighten me! Sounds interesting.

Benchmark some OSX specific software.


On the topic of apple support. It's a pocket-emptying gauntlet I've been down before, and luckily managed to get out of without too much of a financial sting. But it took crazy arguing, and literally months of my time. The net result of that experience is I'll certainly never buy an iMac ever again - as it's the least (not impossible) DIY-repairable of the Mac range. Next mac purchase will be a used mac pro, or building a hackintosh.

But I'll be running OSX specific software, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

[Press Enter]

Also, just to be a pedant about it, the OSX OS software is subsidised by their hardware sales.
Running OSX on anything but apple hardware is in breach of the EULA, is it not ?


That's why I find it ever so curious that Ableton turn a blind eye to these threads.

[esky]

I also heard using OSX on anything else than Apple hardware is illegal...!!!

[kooperativ]

@Press Enter, esky:

Yes, it's against their Eula - which means they can kick you out your apple ID and tell you you've been a bad boy. But it's not illegal. As soon as you buy the OSX Software (which you can, for 29$ digital, 79$ on an usb stick) you can run it on whatever you want to run it on.

[Press Enter]

@Press Enter, esky:

Yes, it's against their Eula - which means they can kick you out your apple ID and tell you you've been a bad boy. But it's not illegal. As soon as you buy the OSX Software (which you can, for 29$ digital, 79$ on an usb stick) you can run it on whatever you want to run it on.

Ya, I intentionally never said it was illegal - just against their EULA.

Still a curiosity that Ableton turn a blind eye to it. I'm certain they'd lock/delete any threads that encouraged the breaking of their own EULA, and detailed the methods of bypassing any measures they might have put in place to prevent such things. Probably reprimand the thread starter too.

Meh.



By the way, what do you mean 'kick you out your apple ID' ? and what's the main effect it would have for the end-user ?
No more OSX updates ? No more updates for Apple software ? Like Logic & Final Cut Pro licenses...they would be effected too ?

[kooperativ]

That's a good question actually. I think App store & Mac store purchases would be affected, maybe iTunes? - i think i remember reading something about the software always staying on apples side and them giving out licenses tied to the apple id. Not sure about licenses that were purchased through different sources.
However: I've been reading the major hackintosh forums for a few years now - and i never saw anyone having trouble with apple. Unless you try to earn money doing so. There was a company that was selling 'fake' macs running OSX86 on standard hardware. They got shut down by apple pretty quickly.
It's a grey area. Where would they cut the line? What about people using several real apple products running OSX86 on a secondary machine?

To Ableton putting a blind eye to this: Could you imagine apple returning the favor if someone started a discussion on their mailing lists about something that would break Abletons Eula? Doubt it!

[Syncretia]

I think that if Apple wanted to test the law, they could take people to court for a breach of EULA. However, it would be a futile effort (notice the use of the word futile in its proper context - notice the juxtaposition with the word pointless) because courts have already ruled that you can put whatever software you want on the hardware you own, so the reverse would probably be true: that you can put the software you own on whatever hardware you want.

[nebulae]

I recently had a foray into hackintosh world. I honestly found the install process to be really hard, and in addition, I found the build to be unstable. My perspective is that if you want a Mac, you need to shell out the cash to get one. After a week of reboots and crashes and stuff not working right (likely because I didn't have that perfect combo of hardware that OS X works with), I decided just to get a Mac instead.

Having said that, I think a kick ass Windows 7 machine would be cheaper and would still let you do plenty of music in a rock solid environment.