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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."
its apple ][ clones all over again..
and look what it did for the popularity of apple hardware.. they got so big, that ibm decided to make its own PC too.. stirring the behomoth into action.
the best thing steve jobs could do on his his death is to open-source Mac OSX (maybe..)
2cents from toronto
jp
It even says on the first page,
Get off my launchpad!
A mac is a personal computer. PC stands for personal computer. Can we please stop using the terms as if they are mutually exclusive? It makes you sound ignorant, and renders the term "personal computer" useless as a means of differentiating a computer for personal use from any other kind of computer. K thanks.
Until (relatively recently) you *couldn't* run Windows on a Mac.
Saying Apple has a monopoly is absurd. That's like saying Commodore had an monopoly on the Amiga OS because it only ran on their hardware.
http://i.imgur.com/iyOKY.png
building a PC-based Mac was something done only by hard-core hackers and technophiles
What? This is a load of crap. Granted, it's not the simpest thing to do, but I'd say it was two years ago that hackintoshing became simple enough for the somewhat technical to figure it out.
Cool story bro.
I know of no DRM in Amiga OS to make sure it wasn't running on hardware Commodre hadn't been paid for.
Apple sells copies of an operating system that can run on commodity hardware.
Just as it is my right to play my legally-purchased music on any hardware that can play it, it's my right to run my legally-purchased software on any hardware that can run it.
By the way, it's utterly ridiculous for Apple to claim the DMCA has anything to do with this; it's not about pirating their software.
I wonder if the server is a Hackintosh?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Except Windows NT 4 had a PPC build/install disc option ...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
"I know of no DRM in Amiga OS to make sure it wasn't running on hardware Commodre hadn't been paid for."
There isn't any DRM in OS X either. It's a matter of drivers, and EFI.
From TFA:
Topower 1.1kW power supply
People are actually building home rigs with kW rated PSU's? I've been out of the game for too long.
Connectix Virtual PC was released in 1997. That was, what, 13 years ago? I wouldn't call that "relatively recently."
My blog
at teh moment
Commodore didn't have a monopoly on Amiga OS?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sorry, I assumed that the topic was running the OS in question on native hardware, not through emulation.
...so then it should be a trivial matter to pop my Snow Leopard disks into a PC that lacks an Apple logo and create virtual machines to my hearts content in either vmware or virtualbox.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I would surmise that the support is the main difference. Getting your own patches, testing, and applying them will probably constitute the bulk of your time. Also in some cases it's variable on when you can to get a patch.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Ah, but you didn't say that.
My blog
http://www.taranfx.com/install-mac-os-in-virtualbox
Until (relatively recently) you *couldn't* run Windows on a Mac
No, that just isn't true. It just didn't run natively. Connectix Virtual PC for the Mac came out in 1997 (It was a Mac product before MS bought it), Soft PC was around in 1996. And later there was the FOSS Bochs x86 PC emulator. Those products had to emulate an Intel CPU, so there was a significant performance hit. I recall MS-DOS running in emulation on a Mac even before the switch the PPC processors.
You can get OS X pretty easily at Apple, Best Buy, Amazon, etc. The current price for Snow Leopard upgrade is $29. Although it's an "upgrade", I've heard you can use it as an install disc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Nope.
That $29 Snow Leopard is an upgrade from Leopard. That $169 Mac Box Set is an upgrade from Tiger or Leopard. Only way you can get an original copy of Mac OS X is with a Mac, and it's licensed for use with that Mac. Sure, they don't serialize or put registration restrictions on the software, but you're still breaking the license agreement.
In closing, if you're building a Hackintosh you may as well pirate it, because purchasing a disc isn't going to change anything.
Just to see if I could. Later that day I got bored and ditched OSX for a Linux distro. Other than as an intellectual exercise, I don't really see much of a point in this. If you really want a Mac, just buy one. Sure they cost more, but all your hardware will work without any effort on your part.
Sorry if this sounds like a lament,
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! Performance is not good enough. From experience OS/X guzzle memory like no other OS I know. I use two boxes at work, a Linux HP PC with 4GB of RAM that never ever swaps, and a MBP laptop with 4GB of RAM that becomes slow as molasses after a week of use due to memory issues.
I'm extremely disappointed in Apple's focus on the mobile platform at the moment. There is only so much that can be done with a telephone and a hobbled tablet, nice though it may be.
I have some experience with Hackintosh. In my opinion, be prepared for a world of hurt, very comparable to the Linux experience of 10 years ago. Basic features not working (e.g suspend-to-disk), no support, needing to be very careful about what hardware can be accommodated, performance issues, and very shaky future. Apple could basically pull the plug anyday. At the end of it a little more software is available, from the big editors. Realistically a lot of the free software tools that I like do not run as well as under Linux (for instance Inkscape).
I used to like the OSX development tools but they are not portable, I wasted a lot of time with them, so this is as basic as I can make it now, so my software runs everywhere.
But you can't legally run it on hardware that isn't "Apple Branded" according to the EULA.
Sure, but that was just Bill Gates demonstrating to Intel how he could bring down the sales of Intel chips by offering his OS for other chips like PPC or DEC Alpha. All because Intel said they were interested in supporting Java in hardware. When Intel backed down (see page 14), suddenly Microsoft lost interest in other chip architectures.
That's correct. Google is your friend. There's numerous ways to do it. VMware, Virtualbox as mentioned, maybe some others.
The article is about building a "Hackintosh". Silly me, I assumed the topic at hand would be running the OS on native hardware.
... I have an Amoeba 3000, it's even better.
That $29 Snow Leopard is an upgrade from Leopard. That $169 Mac Box Set is an upgrade from Tiger or Leopard. Only way you can get an original copy of Mac OS X is with a Mac, and it's licensed for use with that Mac. Sure, they don't serialize or put registration restrictions on the software, but you're still breaking the license agreement.
You can use the "upgrade" disc to do a full install. The main difference between the Snow Leopard upgrade and the Mac Box Set is that the Box Set includes the latest version of iLife. Normally iLife does not get upgraded when you upgrade the OS. That is worth about $100 separately at retail. And if you're installing OS X on a hackintosh, you're breaking the license agreement anyways.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I have setup several Hackintosh's at home for my family, a dell 9 mini and a couple of desktops, and I have to say it's just not worth the time and effort. I should have just bought a Mac mini and a Macbook that "just worked" out of the box.
Actually let me amend that, it is worth your time if your time is worthless. :) The money I could have made (as a freelancer contracter) in the time it took to setup and support them would have more than offset the cost of a real Apple machine.
Last time I checked, OSX guests on Virtualbox only worked on OSX hosts.
Heh.... I remember running Windows 3.1 on a Mac IIsi via Soft PC ^_^ You could also buy x86 cards that you could plug into a Mac's buss and run Windows strait on intel hardware and get a pop-up window on the Mac Desktop.
Apple needs a desktop mini tower at $1000-$1500
The mini is priced a little to high and only a core2 cpu?
the imac are nice but the price is a little and high + the lack of a mate screen is a trun off and there lots of people who don't want to be locked in to a screen.
also the imac is weak in video card area for it's price.
The mac pro is cool but the base system needs to take $1000+ off it's price and boast the ram to 4gb min.
What is unfair, of course, is that it is allowed to run Windows on a Mac, while it is not allowed to run OSX on a PC.
Time for the FTC to look into this, I would suggest.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Incorrect. You can buy copies of OSX that can be installed on a fresh hard drive. Otherwise rebuilding with a fresh drive would be very tedious.
Did you see the picture of the case he chose? He says he chose it because the HP blackbird case is one of the highest quality aluminum cases he could find. I had to laugh. Having looked inside a mac tower case it's just astonishing that such a spagetti looking case could be considered "high quality". In the end perhaps the case as little to do with the function of a computer. But one of the main points of building your own is aesthetics and as far as that goes mac cases are the best you can possible get.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, its history is derived from "I have an IBM-compatible PC"
So would the proper term be "Lenovo-compatible" since IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo about half a decade ago?
Nope the first computer marketed as a personal computer was the HP-9100A. And that was 1968. But apart from that you are right.
"My PC is really l33t"
elif
Is your PC made by apple?
"My Mac is really cool"
else
"Want to have a look at my linux box in my Mom's basement?"
No, that's just it. It doesn't make for easy conversation; it makes for confusing and ambiguous conversation, like talking about Toyotas vs cars would, if someone arbitrarily and unilaterally defined car as meaning only automobiles that were built in England. PC used to mean personal computer, and then it meant IBM-PC-compatible computer, generally drifted to meaning generic x86 computer (which is almost the same thing, but has become less stringent, and then it meant Windows, while the x86 definition got refined to include all x86 machines except for the ones built by a single manufacturer (Apple). It's gone through too many meanings (and forks!), so when someone says it, you don't know which one they mean unless you're already intimately familiar with the context.
When talking about computers in general (such that mainframes might not be off-topic), PC usually means personal computer; when talking about games, it usually means Windows; when talking about Macs, sometimes it means generic x86 and sometimes it means Windows. But when you come at the conversation from a different direction or from a gray area (e.g. you're comparing Linux gaming with console gaming) then it's totally ambiguous and you have to assume it means both until someone says something that (to you) obviously only refers to one of them, and then you say, "ah, you were talking about Windows and didn't mean to ask or imply anything about OpenBSD" and then someone else says "no, we're still ambiguous at this point," and then you have a flamewar and whatever the original subject was, is forgotten by then.
The best thing to do is either only use it by its original meaning, or kill the word. And since abused words can't ever be reclaimed (e.g. "hacker", "bricked", etc) they must be humanely slaughtered.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"I know of no DRM in Amiga OS..."
Then you don't know anything about Amiga OS. The OS was tied heavily to the custom chips on the motherboard, and to the Workbench ROMs, all of which were copyright owned by Commodore and normally only sold with a complete system. Even now, Amiga emulators are (in theory) illegal if you don't buy a licensed ROM image - as is the case with many emulators of very old hardware. I think most people are happy to copy now because it's so obsolete, but in the late 90s and early 2000s it was very common for the documentation for emulators of 80s and 90s hardware to suggest that you copy your own ROM image from your own machine in order to use it.
Ubuntu is easier to install and supports more hardware and software.
Hackintoshes are like teaching a pig to sing. Even if you succeed, it just wastes your time and annoys Apple.
Not every computer is a PC. There are also servers, mainframes and embedded devices. Personal computer means that it is commonly used by one person at a time. And just in case you wonder: An embedded device usually lack the resource for self hosted software development.
Long ago (in computer industry terms), OSX got Apple back on the road to financial success. OSX has become a favored, octogenarian at Apple. Treated well, but generally irrelevant to other projects.
Every time there's a consumer buying content for one of Apple's dedicated entertainment devices, they are made richer. The best part of this scheme is two-fold.
1. It's early days for dedicated entertainment devices like the ipad and even the iphone. Tons of money yet to be taken from the consumer while the personal use doctrine is being dismantled.
2. The distribution of entertainment is a U.S. government sanctioned oligopoly. Apple has become an blessed member of the oligopoly.
Contrast the scale of those revenue generating opportunities with the general purpose computer (OSX) where once the tower/laptop is sold, that's about the end of the revenue stream.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
And if you're installing OS X on a hackintosh, you're breaking the license agreement anyways.
Which is kinda the point of the original post: "it requires OSX which you cant legally acquire without buying a mac first."
That is not the definition I find of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer . So where did you get your definition from? Invented in the fly? Or do you have some citation for me?
Most Apple hardware comes with a little book of Apple stickers. I've always presumed that's so you can stick the Apple logo on the front of your beige box PC and then install OSX on it legally.
but $2500 for a 1 cpu base system is too high cut it down to $2000.
also apple should make the mini more like $500-$600.
and why not have a imac like system without the screen or at least a mate imac.
apples pushing games on mac and the video cards are not there and with the imac the card in the system is weak for the screen size.
While it might be inconvenient that Ford break shoes won't fit a GM car it is neither unfair nor is it a case for the FTC.
That they strictly control in every way possible, by selling in their own stores, itunes, ipods, iphones, an os that runs on standard intel mb's and cpus... that anyone can buy.
How about Apple filing suit against Psystar for creating Mac compatibles? Apple might as well sue Dell and Intel for making Mac Compatibles. Apple won that lawsuit. Apple has a monopoly over an OS that is designed to run on standard PC hardware.
There is no reason why another company cant make Apple Compatibles technologically.... but Legally... Apple has won their legal right to be a monopoly.
Except Windows NT 4 had a PPC build/install disc option ...
But how many publishers of applications for Windows provided universal binaries?
Understanding Apple's Binary Protection in Mac OS X
That requires a modified (and illegal to distribute) copy of OS X.
And you think that'll stop most Slashdotters? Using others' work without compensating them for it is a point of pride.
Like the supposed POSIX compliance, this was more vapour than reality.
Yes, you could get a version of NT4 compiled for PPC. But it was never at all useful. Why? Because windows relies on a blobware ecosystem and the vast majority of app vendors simply couldnt be bothered to clean up their code so it would compile on PPC and release it. So you have no apps. There were no 'universal binaries' for NT, and I cant remember a single application that actually offered a PPC port for NT (if there was one, there certainly werent many.) Hardware support was sketchy, and just getting it to install on a PPC machine could be a major hack job. And for what purpose with no apps? You could presumably, with enough work, find a way to get it to run x86 NT apps in emulation, but this would only make your fast, expensive PPC machine run your apps like a slow, cheap x86 box, and with a lot more work, so why bother? These are all the same reasons why NT on Alpha never took off as well, btw.
One possibility would come to mind with NT/PPC that would not with NT/Alpha, of course - the possibility of running apps intended for Macintosh PPC using a much thinner emulation layer since the processor is the same. This doesnt work either, however. PPC processors (and this is an overgeneralisation, in fact in some cases not true, but usually) are bi-endian, meaning they can be set to run little-endian OR big-endian code. However for decent performance you really need to pick one mode and stick to it. Mac software was all big-endian. NT is little-endian. So, like everything else positive about NT on PPC, this was only a theoretical benefit but not a practical one.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It did. Unfortunately very few applications were released for the PPC, but you could dick around with Windows all you liked.
Technically, he said legally acquire which you can do quite easily. Your counter example is completely illegal. And you can legally install it on a non Apple machine. If Apple goes after you legally for violating the EULA by doing so, you have a defense. It's called Fair Use. Don't expect any support from Apple if you do.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's called Fair Use. You are breaking your contract with Apple so you cannot expect support; however, so far no one has really tested EULA vs Fair Use. I would think that some provisions of the EULA are not enforceable.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Like the supposed POSIX compliance, this was more vapour than reality.
What do you mean "supposed"? Microsoft has supplied a POSIX layer for NT for over a decade.
I think you need to go back and look up what "monopoly" means. Sure, it's a cool word to throw around on /. because it triggers responses (hell, I'm responding), and might even get you modded up. But words have meanings, and there's a _Princess Bride_ quote I'm holding back on.
Besides, it wasn't that long ago that running Windows on a Mac wasn't even a consideration, hacks or not. So one does not need imagine at all.
In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos / (alone or single) + polein / (to sell)) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
You are saying that Commodore did not have sufficient control over Amiga OS to determine significantly the terms on which others would have access to it?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How about Apple filing suit against Psystar for creating Mac compatibles? Apple might as well sue Dell and Intel for making Mac Compatibles.
That might be, except for the fact that "creating Mac compatibles" wasn't Apple's complaint with Psystar.
Just because you can technically do it doesn't mean it's allowed by your license agreement. An analogy is, if I have volume-licensed software at work that doesn't require activation, that doesn't make it legal for me to take it home and install it, even though the software technically will permit it.
He didn't need to mention that. For every technical discussion, there's always some freak with a special case. You know damn well emulation wasn't what he was talking about.
Reminds me of a discussion I was having circa 2003, explaining that Windows XP does not have a DOS backend you can boot into. The freak of the day decided to join the conversation and say "No, you're wrong. I was able to boot into DOS using a floppy disk from Norton!"
Sometimes I think the true hobby of most computer hobbyists is trolling.
I've been able to run OS X on my AMD gateway 5654 for a while now with only the addition of a cheap nvidia graphic card. you'd be surprised what the ability to read, comprehend and follow directions can accomplish.
Serenity now, insanity later.
I have a 68GB library, on an i7 MBP. It loads in twenty to thirty seconds. I have a 750GB hard drive that is 70% filled, and Spotlight simply doesn't work. Type in "Text" and it hangs for about 10 seconds before finally settling on TextEdit in the Applications folder.
Again, for most college kids, it's a fine OS. Ask it to be more than a media player and web browser that also runs Pages, and you're looking for trouble.
I created a Hackintosh and I think it taught me a lot about how OS X works "under the hood". If you don't see that as valuable, then no it isn't worth it.
For $500 I built a gaming machine that dual-booted nicely with much better hardware than I could get in a Mac Mini, especially the base version, and I've been able to upgrade it piece-meal in the four years since. Why? Well, there are some programs that are Mac-only, but mostly because I like the user interface for general day-to-day use. I can't get the polish yet in Linux. It may be purely aesthetic, but it matters to me.
;-)
I have a licensed copy for the machine, and stuck a mac sticker onto my case. No reason to break the EULA if I don't have to, and it just says "apple-labeled hardware"
Bullshit. My average typing speed is 140+ and it's far better than having to depress a tall key for 10-15mm than a flat, larger key about 5mm. The feedback is enough to let you know you pressed a key, and not so much that it delays it any further.
For reference, look at my posting history for the last year here on /.
If you're careful, hackintoshing is not that big of a hassle. I have two. The first one I built as an experiment about 2 years ago, just to see it for myself. It worked well enough that I put it into service as a fileserver in my home running OS X Server 10.5, replacing an ancient G4 2x450MHz machine. A couple weeks ago I upgraded it to OS X Server 10.6. It's rock stable and performs very well.
The second one is about a year old, and was built to replace two machines: an aging gaming PC, and an old Power Mac G5 that was my primary desktop. I chose my components carefully and got Mac Pro performance for about half the price, and the machine dual boots OS X 10.6 and Windows 7 Ultimate. I enjoy the occasional PC build, and for $1200 in savings, I didn't mind needing to get my hands a little dirty to get OS X running on it. Already having a functional Mac meant I could keep the hackintosh on my workbench for about a month, testing things risk-free, blowing it up and putting it back together, and generally figuring out every last little detail to make sure it would do what I wanted/needed and give me trouble-free operation.
It did take a little work to get them up and running, but once you reach that point you're pretty much set. I am pretty careful about updates since sometimes they do break things, but others usually figure out the fixes pretty quickly and post them on the sites where hackintoshers congregate. I also keep very good backups, via Time Machine as a matter of course, and by making bootable clones to secondary hard drives before I install anything major.
~Philly
I have a personal code. It's probably morally wrong. It goes like this:
If I can buy it and use it, I will buy it.
If they refuse to sell it to me (because I don't own Mac hardware, for example), I will try to pay them anyway and use it.
If they won't take my money, I will pirate it with a smile on my face (like the actually-useful versions of Ventrilo Server).
By your logic, Firestone has a monopoly on Firestone tires and Krispy Kreme has a monopoly on Krispy Kreme donuts.
Yes, they do. Is that not obvious?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Now of course there is the Interix product that adds a real useful POSIX layer (both API and userland), but this started as an expensive third party product that was bought out by MS. It was renamed to SFU and then SUA.
Yes and as I said, it has been supplied by Microsoft for over a decade. Since February 1999 to be exact.
It was formerly free to download but now it is only available bundled with the most expensive versions of Windows 7.
Formerly? I can go to this page and download it for free. Maybe you got confused by the "suggested registration" and assumed that meant it was no longer free?
Actually I would think the random person to thinks of a computer running of XP, Vista (making a disgusted face) and Windows 7 (smiling). M$ marketing has made sure of that.
And since the random person is likely to have a PC at work as well she/she won't consider a PC a home computer.
And if Mr or Mrs random works for a company with uses Linux he/she will still think that his/her work computer is a PC.
Of course this is just my educated guess.
I'm typing this on a $1000NZD Hackintosh right now. Has more power than the top end iMac configured with an i7 Processor. Runs latest OS, installed from a purchased DVD of Snow Leopard, and nearly every bit of the chipset is fully supported (and in fact in many of the current Macs). It's as stable as a normal Mac, at 1/3 the cost! I'm happy with that. Oh yeah, and I retrofitted it into a PowerMac G5 case, so it looks the business.
Microsoft POSIX subsystem was carefully crafted to satisfy a federal procurement requirement without actually being useable at all. It implemented POSIX.1 only. It could not create a thread, open a socket, use RPC, etc. The one and only practical use for the thing was to circumvent the requirement for POSIX compatibility in the Federal Information Processing Standard 151-2.
Dont confuse this with the third party Interix/SFU implementation which replaced it starting with XP, and is actually somewhat useful.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why would I want to do that?
VNC sucks and RDP in Windows 7 doesn't so Windows 7 is running on the mini for now (AnyDVD).
Plus my desktop machine is much more powerful than any of my minis.
I may be a zealot but I have no problem trying strange fruits to see what they offer.
Although it's nice to know if the great overhyped is all that it's cracked up to be. (it isnt)
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Clevenger, is it just me, or did the PPC Macs have better sleep/wake capability than the Intel Macs?
Used to be that when you closed the lid on an (aluminum) PowerBook, it'd go to sleep within one second flat. Same when opening the lid. On every Intel MBP I've used, including the 5 or 6 I've owned, when I close the lid, they whir and beep and bloop for almost 10 seconds - sometimes more - before going to sleep. On wake, it's usually faster than that, but typically is around 3 seconds to get a proper image. I've also seen waaaaay more "phantom sleep/wake" issues with the Intels, where a machine refuses to come out of sleep, etc. My hunch is it's something to do with re-purposed Intel hardware as opposed to purpose-built PPC hardware, EFI notwithstanding. Or, could be the "shadow hibernation" function saving to disk, which the GP was talking about.
Eh. Still smokes any PC I've used, though!
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
A monopoly is determined by size. Apple isn't a monopoly, it's just exclusive.
Five years is 'relatively recently' in the world of computers?
Vertical tying is not illegal per se. It matters on specifics. If vertical tying was illegal, Unix vendors would have been guilty long ago.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's necessary hardware, not DRM.
Your argument is akin to saying that this word processor program has DRM in it because it won't work without this custom 'video card' board thingy in my machine.
Sure, the OS was tied to those chips. Because without them you wouldn't have video or audio.
DRM is a different animal. You have all the hardware you need, but there is a 'hurdle' you have to pass before something will decide to let you or not let you perform the given function.
Don't confuse necessary hardware with DRM. They're different.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
NT ran great on the alpha cpus. Back in the 1990s through 2000 I saw many NT alpha machines. The alpha machines were faster then the Intel machines of the same era. The alpha cpus were much slower then the Intel based ones, but NT ran faster.
We finally migrated off of alpha cpus when we rebuilt the database systems using fiber channel storage systems. That was 1999.
Yeah, NT itself ran great on it, but if you needed applications it wasnt very appealing. Of course if your apps were in-house or Free then, yeah, it was workable, so I am assuming that was your situation. But if you wanted the usual commercial apps you would have been very disappointed.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I can go to this page [microsoft.com] and download it for free. Maybe you got confused by the "suggested registration" and assumed that meant it was no longer free?
Scroll down and see the system requirements: Enterprise, Ultimate, or Server. It won't run on a common Home Premium or Pro installation. So it's not free for most users, who would have to Anytime Upgrade.
I've used Macs since 1984. In my first startup, we had three IBM PCs, and my memory of using them was that I had user's manuals for everything in my lap, always. One day, our three PCs all croaked simultaneously for apparently different reasons, and my friend brought in his then-new Mac Classic. Two days later, we gave the PCs to a local high school and bought Macs. My memory of that transition is that I lost track of the user's manuals by the second day we had the Macs.
Since then I've used Macs whenever I had a choice. Not because they're the fastest, or most flexible, or the cheapest, or the best for somebody who wants to dig into the guts of the soft/hardware and make it do stuff, but because they acted more like a tool than a project and helped me do my work. I've checked in as various versions of Windows have come and gone, but the Mac has remained a better choice for me.
I've had my frustrations with Macs, and I'm not one of the fanbois who thinks Jobs and co. can do no wrong. But, gotta say, I still am utterly unconcerned with what antivirus apps I ought to have on my machine, pretty much everything I have wanted to plug into my Macs over the years has Just Worked as I wanted. The service I've gotten from Apple has been exceptional. I took a failing G4 MacBook in for its 3th service, two days before my AppleCare policy expired, and the Apple guy at the Genius Bar gave me (that's GAVE me) a new Intel MacBook without my having said more than "Hi, I'm back.". That's a level of customer service I value and that seems uncommon in the PC world.
As well, having a Mac frees me (almost) from Microsoft, which I've found to be a Good Thing over the years. I am troubled by Apple's continued construction of its walled garden, and I'm concerned it's another Microsoft in the making. But for now, their systems work better for me than the systems on the PC or *nix side.
YMMV, as always.
First, they inform me about the dangers of "Free Public WiFi." Now, they're educating me on how to install OS X on my Dell. Even though I did it a year ago with MUCH less difficulty than when I tried three years ago, I could always learn, right?!
This is old news. eeePC's and Dell Mini 9's were super popular for being OS X friendly. I, and many, many others installed OS X using retail discs from the Apple Store. Why is this here?
Speaking of not knowing anything about Amiga. There was a huge market for Kickstart (the firmware, Workbench was the software) 2.0 ROMs and most people didn't buy a new system to upgrade.
That might be, except for the fact that "creating Mac compatibles" wasn't Apple's complaint with Psystar.
Absolutely it was. It was just argued more subtly than that.
Rabid Fanboi: Anyone you disagrees with you, and has the gall to explain why.
I should know, I used to be one. Now I just believe in using the best tool for the job.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
No my Analogy is perfect. Because the “third parties” when we come back to computer would be Linux. And Linux installs fine on Apple, Dell, Acer and whatever else. And Apple does not prevent you from doing so.