What is Hackintosh?

Apple computers come with their operating system called Mac OS X, that is intended to be run on Macintosh computers only. Mac OS X is set to run under specific hardware conditions that only Macintoshes have.

Therefore, it has always been such a challenge for hackers who were struggling to make possible running Mac OS X on PCs. Soon after the June in 2005, when Apple decided to stop using PowerPC processors and start using Intel ones, things seemed to start getting easier.

At the the mid-1990s along the development of the first Intel-HP titanium system, a new firmware standard had been created by Intel to suppress the needs that the old BIOS wasn't yet capable to. It was named EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface).

The EFI interface abstractes the hardware from the software. Thereby, no matter which hardware is running the operating system and both will communicate between each other accordingly.

Apple started using EFI motherboards since the transition, with no clear need to merge to this technology, giving rising for others to think they were just concerned to keep a closed hardware platform.

Later on, a group of hackers developed a patch to emulate an EFI environment, allowing to install the Mac OS X on x86 motherboards. Apple released an update to fix the vulnerability but they were still able to bypass it again and eventually for every time Apple released updates.

Hackintosh is for many a dream that came true. A gift brought abroad by the pirates that allows the Mac OS X to be run on PCs through software and hardware modifications in order to get it closer to the Mac ones. It's an illegal practice and not recommended at all.

Actually, there're two ways of running a Mac OS X on a PC.

• Using an EFI motherboard and a similar hardware that was already used on a Mac.
• Using a patch to emulate the EFI enviroment.

You can see below a screenshot of the Mac OS X Leopard (OSx86) running pretty fine on an Acer Aspire 3680 laptop.

The OSx86 project came up in 2005 right after Apple's Intel transition, on purpose to study and share informations concerning Apple hardware conditions, in order to find ways of running the Mac OS X on x86 processors as good as possible. They are still the bigger community with resources about Hackintoshes.

Even running, it's not guaranteed that everything will run smoothly on Hackintosh. Most of people go to Hackintosh as an alternative to try out another operating system rather than Windows, and mainly to use the Mac OS X without spending a huge amount of bucks. Although, it's pretty much better to buy a Mac and get it working as expected.

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