[Tfug] Hackintosh

[Zack Williams]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Jim March<1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nobody here is against somebody geeky experimenting with a Hackintosh,
> or even enjoying one personally.

I'd argue that even Apple isn't against that, from a technical
perspective - changes they make that stop non-apple hardware from
working aren't generally intended to do so...

> Second, once you do have it running strong, Apple is out to stomp you
> into the ground by any possible means: evil updates, legal threats,
> etc.  Geeks can stay one step ahead of them (unless there's a really
> nasty boobie trap in there somewhere) but regular users?  Not a
> chance.

Hah - "evil updates"?  More like, "We didn't test it on your crappy
PC, so don't blame us if it breaks".   The fact that most of the hacks
to get it to work in the first place aren't all that invasive is proof
enough of this - in Angus' linked guide, the only two things you have
to do to get it running are write a boot sector to the flash drive and
add some support code.

What you're right about is that the lack of viable support an issue
for normal users.  Personally, because of my association with Apple,
I'd be putting myself and all the rest of my customers in legal
jeopardy by assisting someone with their hackintosh, and dragging the
thing to the Apple store would just result in laughter.  Not an issue
for a geek who can figure things out, but it's never getting out of
the lab without approval from Apple.

At most, Apple goes after people like Pystar which take copyright
infringement to a commercial level.  At most they're asking
non-commercial sites to take down code when it violates their
copyright.

On a philosophical note, lax enforcement of copyright on software is
how Microsoft ended up with such a huge chunk of the market.   If all
software licensing was enforced 100% of the time, I think that more
liberally licensed and free software would be far ahead of where it is
now...

- Zack