OS X on non Apple hardware viable?

June 9, 2006 12:44 PM

Is it viable to use OS X on non Apple hardware for daily, full use?

I own tons of Apple hardware but am tiring of it. The selection is, frankly, pathetic. I thought the switch to Intel might improve matters, but it's still under-par. Regular PC notebooks have higher resolutions and more features at the same sizes, better upgradability, are cheaper, etc.. and desktop PCs are streets ahead in raw hardware stakes (A Mac Mini at 2GHz with an upgraded HD would be great, but, nope.. t'is not avaiable).

Using OS X on non Apple hardware appears to have become a popular hobby but as I'm not into BitTorrent or the whole downloading thing, I'm weary of experimenting immediately as it'll be a hassle to get. I know this is not legal license-wise, but as I have lots of Apple hardware, always buy their latest software and stuff, I have no ethical worry about that.

What I'm wondering is.. is it worth getting it and using it on non Apple hardware on a daily basis? Or is it still just a big experiment / toy? Is anyone here using OS X on non Apple hardware as their main machine?

posted by wackybrit to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

It's a big experiment/toy. If you used it for any services you'd need to compile your own stuff to keep on top of your own security updates, since Apple bundles security updates with OS X updates, in the long-term. If you turn off Software Update, you could conceivably use it as a main machine, but that's risky.
posted by Mr. Six at 12:57 PM on June 9, 2006

Here's a formula to help you work this out:

T1 = How much time you will spend making this work and keeping it working, in hours
T2 = Time saved, per day, using your faster PC
D = Replacement cycle, in days, for this PC
$ = value of your time, per hour
K = Satisfaction of knowing you bucked the system and got a machine with some feature Apple didn't offer.

If (T2 * D * 24 * $) - (T1 * $) + K > 0, then do it.
posted by adamrice at 2:34 PM on June 9, 2006

From my admittedly casual perusings of slashdot, I'd say that OS X on non-Apple hardware would leave you even more unfulfilled than you are now unless you're a compulsive tinkerer. From what I understand, there are significant speed and stability issues which would negate any speed increase you'd experience.
posted by lekvar at 2:39 PM on June 9, 2006

Uh, I just searched for a non-Apple machine with similar specs to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro (God I hate that name!), and it looks like you would be spending at least $2700. So I'm not sure the savings would be so great.

Plus you have no recourse if you run into most kinds of hardware or software trouble, and you can't be certain that these features you mention would even work in OS X. Would some small improvement in resolution (on a laptop) or clock speed be worth it? I guess I am having trouble understanding what task you're doing that would be greatly improved by such a hassle-intensive plan.

Taking adamrice's point, I would say that K would have to be awfully high or $ would have to be awfully low to make this worth it.
posted by lackutrol at 3:49 PM on June 9, 2006

It's probably not worth it, at least not at this point. I got it working on my Thinkpad T30 with the exception of wifi and OpenGL support. Finding a laptop or putting together a PC with hardware 100% compatible with the current builds of OS X86 is probably next to impossible...
posted by Venadium at 6:47 PM on June 9, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for all the answers guys! Seems it's not quite time yet :)

lack: Here in the UK I can get a 17" Dell Core Duo (and similar thickness and size to the MBP) that does 1920x1200 resolution for circa £1200 compared to circa £1750 for the MBP. Not everyone wants integrated cameras and such.

And it's not so much 'satisfaction' but it'd be good to have a 2 GHz Core Duo (with external display) with a proper video card and a couple of RAIDed SATA drives. There's nothing in the Apple range even vaguely close to that and the performance would be a lot higher than the Mac Mini! The iMac is closest, but having a computer and screen in one unit seems very risky, no?
posted by wackybrit at 8:11 PM on June 9, 2006

And it's not so much 'satisfaction' but it'd be good to have a 2 GHz Core Duo (with external display) with a proper video card and a couple of RAIDed SATA drives. There's nothing in the Apple range even vaguely close to that and the performance would be a lot higher than the Mac Mini!

This might be just because they haven't upgraded the power mac yet. The rumor that I seem to recall running across is that such an upgrade will be announced at WWDC in august. Of course it won't be any cheaper than the current power mac.
posted by advil at 8:27 PM on June 9, 2006

"having a computer and screen in one unit seems very risky, no?"

No, not very. In a separate CPU and screen set-up, what are the odds that either will fail in a year? 2%? Assuming an iMac has the risk of either failing multiplied together, that means there's a 3.96% chance of failure. Macintouch has gathered failure statistics, and IIRC, the iMacs tend to have a lower failure rate than that in reality.
posted by adamrice at 6:23 AM on June 10, 2006