> there is no way that you can't build a hackintosh
Have you ever personally run a Hackintosh, full-time for a prolonged period of time?
It's anecdotal, but I can assure that once you're used to how OS X and the Apple hardware work together and never, ever, ever crash, using a Hackintosh is an exercise in frustration.
I had one of the known-best Hackintosh configurations in existence, and it didn't hold a candle to the MBP I had prior to it in terms of "it just works".
Sure, it was cheaper.
Guess what I did when that Hackintosh needed replacing? I walked in and dropped the coin on genuine Apple hardware without a second thought. I have never regretted it, and I'll never go back.
I'm surprised at how much attention 'hackintosh' is getting in this thread. It's a completely naive sub-topic. If you are a US corporation 'hachintosh' is completely taboo, beyond taboo, it's illegal. If hachintosh is how some cooperations run, yikes, let me know so I can never be their customer. If a company is that cheap with their hardware and their morals, I would hate to see how they treat their employees. (It's also naive to think if a company saves money on their hardware by hacking the shit out of it, that money saved will be siphoned in to workers paychecks.)
I have been using a Hackintosh as my primary rig going on 4+ years now. It can be frustrating if you are trying to use the very latest hardware but I find the small issues a decent tradeoff.
It's not a matter of cheaper for me, but a matter of fitting my needs. I don't want to run AMD graphics cards, I need PCI-E, I want lots of internal storage, I want really high single threaded CPU performance.
I can't buy that from Apple in a desktop form-factor. So I have my Hackintosh.
That being said, I don't disagree that Apple hardware is nice. I have a rMBP 13 and intend on replacing it with a newer model Apple notebook soon.
For months and months on end of heavy usage without a single restart or issue?
EDIT: to expand a little - I was developing/compiling all day long on my ~2008 MBP with it plugged into an external monitor, network, mouse, kb. I'd close the lid and walk home with it, then watch movies, torrent, develop some more, surf etc. Close lid, and repeat for months on end. The only time I ever restarted was for OS updates, I never had a single app even crash in ~2 years of doing that.
My hackintosh (and the windows 7&8 HP machines here at work) don't hold a candle to that.
That is your experience. A properly set up Hackintosh (with a custom DSDT and the proper kexts as needed) can be as reliable as a genuine Mac.
Regarding Windows machines, I've had desktops that would be used for months at a time (mostly rendering) without a restart and never crash.
A pretty good way to test for reliability is to let Prime95 and Memtest86 run for a week or so and see if it fails somewhere along the line (obviously proper cooling is a must), many consumer machines will fail this test.
You sound pretty confident in it, so here's a question from a perspective more relevant to the discussion:
Would you found a company and make your primary product hackintosh servers? Are you willing to stand behind your 'perfect' configuration and give those customers years of support?
These guys are running a real startup. A vendor with that exact promise and a failed delivery could tank them.
1. Apples EULA does not allow OSX on non-apple hardware.
2. Some major updates can break customizations and require some modifications (bootloaders, etc) to be re-installed
I have no problem helping a friend set up a Hackintosh when they want to save a few thousand dollars (I have set up a few already) with the understanding that they need to backup before doing any system updates and expect things to break after updating.
While Hackintosh's work well for personal use as long as you are somewhat techy and pick the hardware carefully, (putting aside the EULA issue) it does not make sense for anything large scale.
Have you ever personally run a Hackintosh, full-time for a prolonged period of time?
It's anecdotal, but I can assure that once you're used to how OS X and the Apple hardware work together and never, ever, ever crash, using a Hackintosh is an exercise in frustration.
I had one of the known-best Hackintosh configurations in existence, and it didn't hold a candle to the MBP I had prior to it in terms of "it just works".
Sure, it was cheaper.
Guess what I did when that Hackintosh needed replacing? I walked in and dropped the coin on genuine Apple hardware without a second thought. I have never regretted it, and I'll never go back.