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The Hackintosh Guide
An anonymous reader writes "A 'Hackintosh' is a computer that runs Apple's OS X operating system on non-Apple hardware. This has been possible since Apple's switch from IBM's PowerPC processors to Intel processors a few years ago. Until recently, building a PC-based Mac was something done only by hard-core hackers and technophiles, but in the last few months, building a Hackintosh PC has become much easier. Benchmark Reviews looks at what it's possible to do with PC hardware and the Mac Snow Leopard OS today, and the pros and cons of building a Hackintosh computer system over purchasing a supported Apple Mac Pro."
Apple doesn't like OS/X anymore. The platform has basically been stagnant since the inception of 10.6, in 2008. Hardware support is poor, even worse than Linux. For instance there is no way to make a Nvidia GTX460 run under OS/X at the moment, in spite of it being the best bang-for-the-buck video card right now. It was impossible to have an AMD 5xxx series run until only a few months ago!
This is hardly a new issue. Apple doesn't care about supporting hardware configurations they don't ship. It allows them to focus on supporting a small number of hardware configurations and giving the maximum stability and ease-of-use for their users.
The cost is that they have always been and will always be behind the performance curve on supporting the latest add-in hardware that is available on the PC. Plus if you were really interested in "the best bang-for-the-buck", you probably aren't buying an expandable Mac Pro (which is $2,500 / $3,500 / $5,000 depending on model you select).
In OSX, AMD 5XXX support came because they are shipping all 3 of these configs with the AMD5770 standard -- again, they really only support hardware they ship.
FWIW, on the PC, MS doesn't write the drivers for Windows. The hardware manufacturers do. If there was an actual GFX card after-market on the Mac, NVidia and AMD would write the drivers for the Mac (and there's a good chance AMD did write them for Apple when they won the bid to include 5770's in Mac Pros).