Building a Hackintosh Apple Can't Sue You For

http://www.osnews.com/story/21564/Building_a_Hackintosh_Apple_Can_t_Sue_You_For

by codeodor • 17 years ago

62 53 17 years ago

quoderat3• 17 years ago

Good guide, but I don't care if it's legal or not, because I feel it is my duty to break unjust laws.

sp3323• 17 years ago

Couldn't you at least try writing your congressman first? Civil disobedience is fine when necessary, but otherwise you just come across as a scofflaw.

quoderat3• 17 years ago

I fought against the DMCA at the time, and have been doing such things as writing to my congressman (and woman) since that time, and will continue to do so. EFF donations and other organizations as well.

Meanwhile, I will also ignore laws that attempt to tell me what I can do with products I've legally purchased. And now that the DMCA is being applied to physical products (such as, say, cars) it's even more important to fight against it, and I use all the tools at hand to do so -- including violating that law, and doing so publicly.

The DMCA is one of the most dangerous laws ever passed, because it gives private companies the de facto ability to legislate how you use products you legally own. The First Amendment implications, at the least, should be obvious.

gdee3• 17 years ago

What if I don't have one? (This is the problem with assumptions)

Angostura• 17 years ago

Hmmm, unjust? Apple's busines model is to use the hardware sales to subsidize software sales. Hence the EULA which prohibits you from using OS X on non-Apple machines.

From the article:

"The only possible problem here is the EULA, which forbids installing Mac OS X on hardware that is not "Apple-labeled". I solved that issue by placing an actual apple on top of my machine"

To which I say - I really don't think you have solved that issue.

weegee2• 17 years ago

excellent. the more people who run OSX outside of Apple hardware may yet convince Apple to release a version of OSX for home builders. why they didn't do this in the beginning I'll never know.

robgough• 17 years ago

While part of me wants them to release the OS to all and sundry, I completely understand why they haven't, and won't. At least not any time soon.

stuff4ben2• 17 years ago

why they didn't do this in the beginning I'll never know.

Why should they? Then they'd be obligated to support all of these homegrown abominations that people come up with. Apple made the correct choice when not supporting the DIY crowd. Not that there's anything wrong with doing it, and heck I might even do it just so I can get my MBP back from my wife.

josefresco• 17 years ago

Apple made the correct choice when not supporting the DIY crowd

Did they? They certainly lost (didn't gain) the bulk of the PC market which you could argue is a good thing, but also relegates Macs to a much smaller (albeit more profitable per machine) niche market.

wmf2• 17 years ago

Apple probably felt that they got burned by the last time they allowed Mac clones and ended up losing a lot of money. (I don't think that was the cloners' fault, but I wouldn't bother trying to explain that to Jobs.)

redrobot50502• 17 years ago

It kinda was the cloner's fault, but also the fault of Apple. Apple licensed the clones with the hopes that "apple-certified" clones to grow the market. I.e. figure out new and exciting ways to market macs to windows users, and demographics where it was failing (families, because the PowerPC performas sucked.)

However, Apple failed to certify more powerful clones (i.e. clones that were better/faster/cheaper than their big iron) on a reasonable timeframe. Cloners also contended that Apple was opening up the boxes to steal their trade secrets.

And the cheaper models -- that were often equal or superior to Apple's offerings, were a no-brainer for Apple's customers.

The long and the short of it is: Apple makes something like 30% profit off direct retail of their hardware system. Even on a mini that's pretty good. Compare that to $115 for the sale of OS X, and you realize they couldn't afford to keep the cloners around.

xsmasher• 17 years ago

The cloners weren't growing the market, they were cannibalizing apple's own hardware sales. Jobs knew that, and canned them as soon as he got back in the big chair.

Another poster says the structure of the program prevented the cloners from providing a sufficiently varied product - that may be true too.

TJensen• 17 years ago

I really hope they don't. Apple is able to spend far more resources on making a great experience because they aren't focusing on supporting unknown hardware of the week. For the most part, OS X is rock solid on Apple hardware as a result of not opening it up.

That said, I also don't see why they can't let the DIY crowd do it. Sell a version of OS X that is licensed to use on any hardware but not supported. I guess that would go against the perfect Apple experience, though.

GHFigs• 17 years ago

Apple hasn't sued anyone for building a Hackintosh.

weegee2• 17 years ago

they did however put some code in their ROM on the first macintosh...

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...

rufo2• 17 years ago

Section 2A of the Mac OS X Leopard licensing agreement:

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. A. Single Use. This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time.

You may not be violating the DMCA, and chances are Apple isn't going to sue you anyway, but you are violating their software licensing agreement.

from http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx105.pdf

ShabbyDoo2• 17 years ago

Right. You don't buy software, you license it. This is no different than buying a poster of some sports star. You can hang it on your wall, but you don't have the legal right to photocopy and redistribute it.

I'm not arguing that one shouldn't build a Hackintosh, and I'm not making any moral arguments against piracy or the DMCA. I'm just pointing out that use of software outside the bounds of the license agreement is at least grounds for a civil suit.

dhimes2• 17 years ago

This is no different than buying a poster of some sports star. You can hang it on your wall,...

Except Apple is telling you that you can only hang it on walls painted with Apple branded paint.

onedognight• 17 years ago

You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer,

Did he not cover this by adding the stickers?

rufo2• 17 years ago

If anyone actually believes slapping a sticker on their computer will cause Apple to lose a lawsuit... then I have a title and offer to the Golden Gate Bridge I'd like them to consider.

bmelton• 17 years ago

I'm guessing that the interpretation of "Apple-labeled" means "labeled by Apple" and not "labeled WITH Apple labels", but what do I know.

As far as I can tell, it's somewhat vague unless that is accepted legal terminology to denote 'something labeled by Apple', so shame on them for writing a less-than-ironclad TOS (if in fact it isn't.)

mattculbreth4• 17 years ago

I wonder if I could build a clone Mac Pro? Something really giant with 2 processors, 16GB RAM, 4TB disk space, etc. The retail Mac Pro approached $4K for what I want and it'd be cool to do it for less.

stuff4ben2• 17 years ago

You might be able to do it for less, but you'd still be spending thousands of dollars to do it. Plus you don't get support.

I think the sweet spot for hackintoshers is the exact market Apple is avoiding. Basically a cheap version of the Mac Pro but more powerful than an iMac. For just under a grand you can build a sweet quad core machine that blows an iMac out of the water and probably comes close to a base Mac Pro in terms of power. If I had to spend more than a grand, I would probably just buy the real thing.

mattculbreth4• 17 years ago

Yeah you may be right. Another option is to go Craiglist or eBay and find someone who wants to upgrade to the latest processor and is selling theirs.

jcl2• 17 years ago

Here's an article that tries to do just that, although it doesn't address the software side of the equation (and it's a bit dated, since it uses Harpertown instead of Nehalem processors):

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=942&tag=nl.e550

mattculbreth4• 17 years ago

Ok cool, that's pretty close actually.

tvon• 17 years ago

Well, you can build something that has similar specs to a Mac Pro, a lot of people have. Check the insanelymac.com forums, there are a lot of guids and howtos there.

eli• 17 years ago

Yeah, but it also doesn't work very well.

Building a Hackintosh Apple Can't Sue You For

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