Two Tier OSX????

[shadywack]

The hackintosh community is possibly bigger than you might think!

Man, I hope not. Below the radar is the best way to be. Survival through obscurity. Don't get me wrong, I think this community is a treasure trove and does a great thing for people.

Building my hack has taught me a great deal about OSX and about the hardware/software interaction. It's taught me much in the same way as when I got into Linux, like installing Gentoo from source.

Having a large community, however, also exposes more problems and issues can fester. I think as long as we can all get along without drawing much attention that's great.

On a sidenote, I've disclosed that some of the systems in my house are hack's to Apple engineers running the Appleseed program. They actually stay in pretty good contact asking about bugs on certain things that they can't get info about on a non-hack. This doesn't mean that they're going to a PC-OSX tiered system, but rather future hardware support in Macs. Things like nVidia cards, different south bridges that they might be testing, etc etc. Another thing that some of you may or may not already know, I know of at least 2 Apple engineers that frequent these forums and are contributing users. I gather that they're not condoned by Apple and that Apple doesn't know what they're doing here, and let's just keep them happy to be here.

 

[Levitys]

I think a lot of us started of with a hack and ended up with the real thing later on. Presently we have an iMac 2011 and a MacBook at home. Those came after building my Hack. Despite some of the incompatability and user mistakes in creating my Hackintosh, I was sold I wanted more of this brand the Mac. After building my Hackintosh, the countless amount of software Ive purchase from the app store, I think my hack did them HUGE favor.

Although I am sure it is true that some people start with hacks to begin with. Do you really think this is the majority? I have been using macs for a long time and just recently discovered the "Hackintosh". I actually switched in order to avoid Apple's Insanely Priced Hardware. Now, I'm not saying I'll never buy another Mac but it sure is nice to have an alternative. I can't believe I'm in the minority on this.

 

[rjperciful]

I think a lot of us started of with a hack and ended up with the real thing later on. Presently we have an iMac 2011 and a MacBook at home. Those came after building my Hack. Despite some of the incompatability and user mistakes in creating my Hackintosh, I was sold I wanted more of this brand the Mac. After building my Hackintosh, the countless amount of software Ive purchase from the app store, I think my hack did them HUGE favor.

Although I am sure it is true that some people start with hacks to begin with. Do you really think this is the majority? I have been using macs for a long time and just recently discovered the "Hackintosh". I actually switched in order to avoid Apple's Insanely Priced Hardware. Now, I'm not saying I'll never buy another Mac but it sure is nice to have an alternative. I can't believe I'm in the minority on this.

I agree, I have used Macs long before they were cool to use. I, too, have recently discovered Hackintosh and am thrilled about the community. I am a pro user and feel neglected. I purchased Logic about eight years ago and have used it live countless times, having shoved out gobs of money to keep my system up to snuff. Now, through their planned obsolesnce, a program that used to cost over a $1000 is available for $200 - and they made everyone "upgrade" Mainstage - which has killed my computer. The kicker is that we can't go back to using Mainstage 2.1 - which ran perfectly on my iMac.

I will not buy another Mac for a long time. I would rather have total control over my build. I have just started learning about Hackintosh and I thank everyone for their time and effort they put into their posts.

 

[theandy94]

The hackintosh community is possibly bigger than you might think!

Man, I hope not. Below the radar is the best way to be. Survival through obscurity. Don't get me wrong, I think this community is a treasure trove and does a great thing for people.

Building my hack has taught me a great deal about OSX and about the hardware/software interaction. It's taught me much in the same way as when I got into Linux, like installing Gentoo from source.

Having a large community, however, also exposes more problems and issues can fester. I think as long as we can all get along without drawing much attention that's great.

On a sidenote, I've disclosed that some of the systems in my house are hack's to Apple engineers running the Appleseed program. They actually stay in pretty good contact asking about bugs on certain things that they can't get info about on a non-hack. This doesn't mean that they're going to a PC-OSX tiered system, but rather future hardware support in Macs. Things like nVidia cards, different south bridges that they might be testing, etc etc. Another thing that some of you may or may not already know, I know of at least 2 Apple engineers that frequent these forums and are contributing users. I gather that they're not condoned by Apple and that Apple doesn't know what they're doing here, and let's just keep them happy to be here.

you just have to go on the first forum page to see, that there are 423388 registered users in this forum and i think that more than 3/4 of them got an working hackintosh. and this is probably just a little number of all hackintosh users.
i know that maybe 1 million hackintosh user are not a big number, but just think about what money apple could have get if all this users instead of a hackintosh purchased a real mac.

 

[masso912]

The hackintosh community is possibly bigger than you might think!

Man, I hope not. Below the radar is the best way to be. Survival through obscurity. Don't get me wrong, I think this community is a treasure trove and does a great thing for people.

Building my hack has taught me a great deal about OSX and about the hardware/software interaction. It's taught me much in the same way as when I got into Linux, like installing Gentoo from source.

Having a large community, however, also exposes more problems and issues can fester. I think as long as we can all get along without drawing much attention that's great.

On a sidenote, I've disclosed that some of the systems in my house are hack's to Apple engineers running the Appleseed program. They actually stay in pretty good contact asking about bugs on certain things that they can't get info about on a non-hack. This doesn't mean that they're going to a PC-OSX tiered system, but rather future hardware support in Macs. Things like nVidia cards, different south bridges that they might be testing, etc etc. Another thing that some of you may or may not already know, I know of at least 2 Apple engineers that frequent these forums and are contributing users. I gather that they're not condoned by Apple and that Apple doesn't know what they're doing here, and let's just keep them happy to be here.

you just have to go on the first forum page to see, that there are 423388 registered users in this forum and i think that more than 3/4 of them got an working hackintosh. and this is probably just a little number of all hackintosh users.
i know that maybe 1 million hackintosh user are not a big number, but just think about what money apple could have get if all this users instead of a hackintosh purchased a real mac.

Well, there's another thing to consider.
Every user that has an hack has bought at least 5/10 apps on the appstore.
Some people can't really afford a mac because of the cost, or simply because they are gamers and having a nice pc with dual boot OSX and Windows is a nice thing.

If osx in a pc hardware were only a dream, some users would have bought a mac but many other not, fueling the Microsoft income, since likely any pc is shipped with Windows.

Apple, in computer sector, doesn't really take profit from hardware, but from the apps that are sold.

 

[headfuzz]

Apple, in computer sector, doesn't really take profit from hardware, but from the apps that are sold.

This is true of any OEM - hardware sales have minimal profit margin. Other OEM's, Dell, HP, Lenovo etc make the bulk of their money not from selling hardware similar to the competitors who are all trying to beat each other on price, but from enterprise support, licencing, SaaS and so on. Apple makes the bulk of their money from their ecosystem; iTunes and App Store downloads, for which they get a slice off the top (30% iirc) for effectively doing very little (that's new anyway, their infrastructure and delivery model have been in situ for years).

That said, it's a safe bet their margins are healthier on their hardware than their competitors, precisely because they have OS X as an exclusive. Those who buy Macs for the hardware alone and have nothing to with OS X are a very small number indeed.

Amusingly however, Linus Torvalds is one.

 

[headfuzz]

The short version is, if 1000 people install OS X on a Hackintosh, it doesn't mean 1000 lost Mac sales, it means potentially hundreds of thousands of App Store downloads and possibly even a few additional Mac sales to sweeten the deal.

It's win-win for Apple. As long as Hackintoshing remains a hobbyist movement, any software issues can be blamed on the unsupported hardware. As soon as someone makes a commercial enterprise selling them à la Psystar, then Apple's reputation is at risk, at best the vendor sells half arsed efforts which don't work and the buyers turn their back on the Apple ecosystem for good, at worst they work flawlessly and get noticed resulting in the general public realising they can have a perfectly working machine running OS X for a fraction of the price in the white and glass store - and that DOES cannibalise Mac sales.

Apple could have killed the Hackintosh movement back in the days when we were still patching 10.4.4 discs with PPF files if they wanted. They have control over the design of their hardware, they could have placed a unique piece of hardware extraneous to the x86 platform variants and unique to Apple (and I don't mean TPM, which is a standardised specification across the industry, but something uniquely Apple) with the very next hardware refresh once the Developer Transition Kit was leaked in the wild, but 6+ years on they have yet to do so.

And nobody can argue that they don't have the resources to implement such a barrier if they want.

 

[Fegelein]

If they did sell OS X to PCs, they would lose out a lot in hardware sales.

 

[vladimir0523]

Hackintoshing will end when Apple decides to verify that any machine accessing the App Store is actually a real piece of Apple hardware. Apple will call this a security measure and when asked about its impact on hackintoshes will say something like, "Oh, that. Well, yeah..."

And why would they do that? Hackintosh users are purchasing via App store too, so…

 

[Maxster]

If they did sell OS X to PCs, they would lose out a lot in hardware sales.

The world has changed since the last time they licensed their OS to other vendors; now, computers are a sideline for them. In fact, recently Anand mused concern that PCs had become a burden for Apple.