Dual-Boot Blues

April 11, 2009 9:13 PM

Has anyone installed OS X on a windows laptop? How does it compare to a Mac Book? Is it as stable and/or fast? I would like to put together a Windows/OS X dual-boot machine to take advantage of both operating systems and while it sounds good theoretically I an curious about how it works practically. (Plus, I would rather not pay Apple laptop prices)
posted by rtimmel to computers & internet (16 comments total)

Many people have. OS X has the benefit of a small hardware base, so with fewer hardware configurations to keep track of it is, arguably, a more stable OS than Windows machines. You lose that benefit and your results will depend if your video card/ audio/ network adapter/ etc are OS X compatible. If not, you may be able to track down compatible patches/ ktexts/ etc, but it could involve lots of searching, tweaking, and great deal of uncertainty when OS X updates come down the pipe.
posted by sharkfu at 9:37 PM on April 11

If you just want dual-boot machine, I'd have to recommend getting a Macbook and running Bootcamp. It walks you through the install and you won't have to worry about problematic OS X updates.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:03 PM on April 11

Plus, I would rather not pay Apple laptop prices

Take a look at refurbished apple hardware.

I'm equally at home with Windows, OSX or Linux. I buy mac laptops because the hardware is very nice. The new unibody machines are particularly great.

If you are going to go through the trouble of making OSX run on non-mac hardware, why not just install Ubuntu?
posted by b1tr0t at 10:05 PM on April 11

Rtimmel, the terms you want to Google are "Hackintosh" and "OSX86." There are a whole community of people who are doing just this, and quite successfully, it would appear. It seems the key is buying a laptop that the community has already identified as having the most compatible hardware.

(Apologies if you already knew all this; it wasn't clear from your question if you were aware of the larger 'OS X on a non-Apple laptop' movement.)
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:07 PM on April 11

Speed can be fine if you purchase carefully. Stability will be somewhere between awful and only mediocre. Updates won't be fun.
posted by floam at 10:14 PM on April 11

...why not just install Ubuntu?

The usual reason is "because there are no Linux versions of the apps I want to run."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:25 PM on April 11

I've installed it on several machines, hardware compatibility is a pain. Most of the time you'll have incompatibilities with network and/or sound and sleep/hibernate. Usually you'll have to end up picking supported hardware which makes it harder for notebooks because you really can't swap out the hardware and without sleep it severely limits functionality.

That said, OS X runs just as well on generic hardware as it does on Apple hardware.

If you really want to do it, I'd check the insanelymac forums on models that are more compatible. Expect to spend hours upon hours to get everything up and running. (I've probably spent 20+ hours of reading/troubleshooting and reinstalling). If you're not a serious tech head, you're better off just buying a real Mac.
posted by wongcorgi at 12:51 AM on April 12 [1 favorite]

Has anyone installed OS X on a windows laptop?

Yes. Sorta. I just went through this process on a desktop. It's different, obviously, because most of the hardware is swappable, however, the machine I worked with was largely stock.

How does it compare to a Mac Book? Is it as stable and/or fast?

Performance-wise, it *seems* pretty close. I dropped it on a quad-core machine w/ 4GB RAM, and supposedly, it's getting benchmarks similar or greater than a Mac Pro with similar hardware specs (that's using xbench, though, which rerportedly has fairly random results). It feels as snappy as the $2000 mac pros we have at work, although it's on a year old Gateway that cost under $1000 when it was bought a year ago. port installs seem much slower, but there may be some sort of setting that was incorrect -- gem install was lagging, for example, until I updated rubygems. Additionally, I tried to upgrade to 10.5.6 after installing and screwed my computer for an entire week (completely non-bootable -- kernel panic, couldn't reinstall). That's the real cost: (besides the fact that well, you won't be using a legal distro) lots of time plus potential hardcore fail that can't be diagnosed by dudes at the Genius Bar or whatever. If you like tweaking on your computer, searching google for drivers, and punching the wall, you'll enjoy (mostly) this process. I recommend adding "site:insanelymac.com" to whatever google search you do. Look up your laptop first to see if anyone has had any success; it might save you a lot of time. Know, however, that reports are often a little out of date -- supposedly no-one was able to get the board I was using running at all, but I've got full network and sound (the hardest pieces to put together, typically). Further, doing the whole dual boot thing is slightly more difficult -- I'm using it as a mac-only machine because it was tough enough just getting OSX running and I decided I was happy enough with the environment that any added work wasn't worth it (I have enough windows/linux machines already, and honestly, OSX has a complete enough offering that the need for windows is going to be pretty rare and the need for linux is probably fulfilled entirely by darwin).

As an aside, vmware performance (which I also tried) is absolutely dismal -- it was completely unusable on my computer. Also, it was very difficult to install (i actually had to use an already created vmware image - I never got an installer to work).

I would like to put together a Windows/OS X dual-boot machine to take advantage of both operating systems and while it sounds good theoretically I an curious about how it works practically. (Plus, I would rather not pay Apple laptop prices)

IME, not badly, particularly if someone else has already figured out how to get OSX on your machine (the big blocker is usually the graphics card). If you haven't yet bought a laptop, you may just be able to buy a fairly compatible machine and have decent luck from there. That said, Apple has fairly nice hardware, and if someone hasn't given your machine the 100% compatibility thumbs-up, you will probably be spending anywhere from 10-40 hours just getting the OS installed, so take your opportunity cost into consideration.
posted by fishfucker at 1:05 AM on April 12 [1 favorite]

oh, and btw, stability, besides the "holy crap this update totally hosed my computer, guess I'll maybe think about updating when I have a week of vacation to deal with reinstalling if necessary", has been pretty great so far. no problems or complaints -- that said, I don't worry about sleeping/hibernating because I've got a desktop (i just turn off the screen and let the processor and hd spin. A little evil, but my machine is decently low-power).
posted by fishfucker at 1:09 AM on April 12

If you can find a decent laptop that, according to InsanelyMac or the like, is 100% compatible, then it might be worth doing; otherwise, I'd take a look at refurbished Apple hardware. Most of the time, the thought process for laptops goes like this:

1) I can buy a crap laptop for $500 and install Leopard on it! Neat!
2) Oh, wait... the crap $500 laptop uses crap hardware components from no-name manufacturers that mostly isn't compatible. Let me try it anyway!
3) Wow, that was a waste of two weeks. What a pain. Thankfully Wal-Mart's return policy is as dumb as most of their employees. Back to the drawing board.
4) Hey, it looks like this Dell laptop is almost completely compatible with OS X! I'll get that one and stick it to the man!
5) Actually, since this one has real hardware in it, it turns out it's not even that much cheaper than the MacBook. Maybe I'll just get that instead...

Now, desktops might be a different story, because Mac Pros are more overpriced, but do the research and you'll eventually see the same thing.

I have a older MacBook, and my work just bought me a Dell laptop. When I was told I had to buy a Dell, I looked at the 3 or 4 choices I had and picked the most Hackintosh-friendly. It wasn't 100% compatible out-of-the-box but it was close. It turns out the last 5% was what took me forever to get running, and I'm still nervous about updates. Meanwhile, reinstalling Leopard on my MacBook took about 45 minutes and approximately 0 pain.

The most popular Hackintoshes seem to be netbooks right now, simply because a) there are a lot of good compatible ones, and b) Apple doesn't make anything in that class. As far as Hackintoshing a 'real' laptop goes, if you're forced into buying a specific brand (as I was) you can probably make it work; if you're going from scratch, just buy a Mac.
posted by cebailey at 6:00 AM on April 12 [1 favorite]

I had OSX running on a desktop for a while. It was really fun to put together, but in the end it was far more work than it was worth. I spent hours each day researching why I couldn't get the sound to work, or why the resolution wouldn't set to the mode I wanted, or why the hard drive wouldn't recognize correctly. It's not as simple as popping the DVD in the drive and clicking "install".

OSX isn't designed for PC hardware. It's just not. Yes, you can get it to work somewhat, but it's a pain in the butt. Many parts may not work, and there's no warranty or service and support in place to help you. Your only resource would be the insanely mac and OSX86 forums and that only gets you so far. Installing Leopard on a PC is still only semi-legal, even when you buy a license. If you're not willing to commit a whole bunch of time to the project AND risk your data, then I'd just let it go.

I much prefer Linux anyway- it's really come a long way in the last couple years. If you're really just interested in a non-Windows OS, consider Ubuntu or Fedora. They're both great, free, and generally "just work" with modern hardware. They both have live CD's available so you can try them before you install.
posted by JuiceBoxHero at 7:07 AM on April 12

The prices on Mac laptops are not that extortionate, when comparing identical or nearly-identical hardware configurations from other major manufacturers. The caveat is that major manufacturers other than Apple offer economy lines that start below $1,000 and Apple doesn't. As long as your expectations are lowered along with the lower specs there's no problem with that, but it means using hardware different than Apple supports, and which potentially doesn't perform as quickly or reliably. As fishfucker notes, this is the only way to have a netbook Mac.

You can economize on Apple hardware by buying refurbished; recent models are usually available (Apple's refurb list is refreshed every morning, so if you don't see what you want, check back the next day), and current models begin appearing a couple months after they first ship. Refurbished hardware bought from Apple is treated as new in terms of warranty support. You can typically save between 10% and 15% on current equipment that way. If you are a student or employee at a participating college or university in the States, you can use an educational discount instead. The discounts aren't necessarily in line with the discounts you can get with a business account at Dell, for example, but individual purchasers aren't supposed to have access to that anyway.

This isn't to evangelize Macs, since you're interested in running the software anyway. The costs of Macs are not particularly out of line with the Windows world, and price cuts are available with minimal effort.
posted by ardgedee at 7:27 AM on April 12

Yeah, there's really not that much of a price premium for apple hardware if you factor in comparable specs, resale value, and total cost of ownership. And you will spend *hours* (repeatedly) dealing with the hassles of OSX on non-apple hardware. What's your time worth?
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:44 AM on April 12

Thanks all. I was hoping it would be easy -- or I guess, more accurately, low-maintenance once installed. I guess I still have the same issue -- do I pay the full price for it. It's too bad that they don't offer something less powerful, I have purchased a couple of $800 windows laptops that were plenty powerful, and offered screens larger than 13 inches.
posted by rtimmel at 8:02 AM on April 12

If you're not a serious tech head, you're better off just buying a real Mac.

I'm going to echo this. I just got done installing OS X on my new Samsung NC10. For the record, I also own a late 2008 MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles, and I've got Bootcamp running with XP SP3 quite smoothly on that.

OS X runs pretty well on the NC10, but there are a number of hacks to get it functional, not to mention the fact that many features are not 100%. For example, I don't have full audio; it's either headphones or external out, depending on some script I have to run, I think (haven't tried it yet). I've also given up trying to go through the hacks that apparently allow you to use the default wireless card that comes with the NC10 with Mac OS X; it works okay for some people, but I spent about three hours on it on Friday and made only minor progress. I decided to skip it and do as others said and ordered a new wireless card on eBay...which I will have to disassemble the NC10 to replace, by the way (not to mention find the proper drivers for Windows now if I want to keep using it as a dual boot machine). Also, as someone else mentioned, official OS X updates cannot be applied indiscriminately; you have to wait and see what the complications are, what hacked drivers the official updates may have disabled, which kernel tweaks got blown away or broken, etc. etc.

And apparently the NC10 is one of the relatively well-supported Hackintosh netbooks!

Point is, unless you enjoy or at least can tolerate this level of tinkering on some level, you should seriously consider getting a real Mac. For a bottom-end refurbished MacBook (which is quite a nice machine, seriously) you are getting all this and more, with full compatibility--official drivers by Apple for Windows compatibility--for both Windows and Mac OS X, and without the hassle (other than perhaps a bit of tweaking getting Windows going, but nothing compared to what I've gone through getting Mac OS X going on the NC10).

I was hoping it would be easy -- or I guess, more accurately, low-maintenance once installed.

All that aside--other than dealing with the occasional updates, I don't expect to have to do too much after I get the new wireless card in. I don't think past the initial install there is too much hassle. So if the initial time and effort investment is something you're willing to consider to save the money, then you should be fine.
posted by dubitable at 8:53 AM on April 12

The way I'd sum up the OSX-on-non-Apple-hardware issue is this: if you want a hobby, go for it; if you just want a computer, you're wasting your time.

Unless you place an absurdly low value on your time, like not even unemployed-college-student low, the time spent getting the thing working is going to be more than the delta between Apple and non-Apple hardware. I have a few colleagues who tried it (with high-end Dell notebooks) and it was life-consuming for several weeks.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:28 PM on April 12