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Building a Hackintosh Apple Can't Sue You For
- quoderat 17y agoGood guide, but I don't care if it's legal or not, because I feel it is my duty to break unjust laws.
- sp332 17y agoCouldn't you at least try writing your congressman first? Civil disobedience is fine when necessary, but otherwise you just come across as a scofflaw.
- quoderat 17y agoI 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.
- lethain 17y agoI think your key point is and doing so publicly. Many people use similar arguments against copyright laws to explain their illegal downloading of licensed material, but do it in secrecy. Violating potentially unjust laws in secret and for one's explicit benefit strikes me as extremely self-serving with a very small dose of morality if any at all.
- derefr 17y agoIf a law can be violated in secret (meaning that there are no public side-effects), and "for one's explicit benefit" (meaning that the private side-effects are entirely positive) then it is most likely a consensual crime. There is already a very good case[1] for not specifically violating, but rather just completely disregarding the existence of, such laws. [1] http://www.drugsense.org/mcwilliams/www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/toc.htm http://www.drugsense.org/mcwilliams/www.mcwilliams.com/books...
- sp332 17y agoThat seems fair. But you first said "I don't care if it's legal or not", when really, you care quite a bit!
- quoderat 17y agoHa, good point! More accurately, I should have said that I know it's illegal, but it's unjust -- so I choose to battle it in various ways.
- bonaldi 17y agoI will also ignore laws that attempt to tell me what I can do with products I've legally purchased. I take it you also object to laws that prevent you using the gun you've purchased to shoot someone, using the lighter you've bought to start a fire, driving the car you've bought over a pet dog, processing uranium in the reactor you've bought, running off copies of your Stephen King collection on the printing press you've bought, deafening your neighbours with the stereo you've bought ... I'm not being facetious either. It's a strange notion that took root among hackers that their computers are somehow exempt from the law's regulation of the products we purchase. That someone paid for their computer is utterly irrelevant to the matter, yet continually you hear the cry "how can they tell me what to do with bits in a machine I own!?!"
- edmccaffrey 17y agoReductio ad absurdum. Without endorsing either of the two opinions, your analogies are invalid because they are examples of the above logical fallacy. You cannot compare using something in a manner that violates a person's right to not be maimed or killed with something that does not voilate the highest universal human rights.
- bonaldi 17y agoThey are reductio ad absurdum -- but that isn't a logical fallacy, it's a valid logical form (http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/reductio.htm http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/reductio.htm). By showing that the logical consequence of an argument is absurd, you show that it's flawed. Either way: the poster I was replying to made no reference to human rights, or the ultimate reasons behind the laws. He simply said he wouldn't hold with laws that limited what he could do with items he had purchased. And this is a nonsense position: many laws limit what we can do with possessions, for a multitude of reasons. Look at the example of the printing press -- it has nothing to do with maiming or killing. The post's getting a lot of downvotes, so is pretty unpopular, but it's not a fallacy, and certainly wasn't intended as trolling. There are arguments against adhering to copyright and licenses. That they're limitations on "something you purchased" isn't one of them.
- gdee 17y agoWhat if I don't have one? (This is the problem with assumptions)
- Angostura 17y agoHmmm, 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.
- weegee 17y agoexcellent. 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 17y agoWhile 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.
- stuff4ben 17y agowhy 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 17y agoApple 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.
- sp332 17y agoNot everything is about money!
- derefr 17y agoThey didn't lose the majority of the PC market; they never had it to begin with. To gain the PC market, you need to make/license/QA drivers—lots and lots (and lots) of high-quality drivers. Microsoft has spent the last 20-odd years doing this, and they still can't guarantee a high enough quality standard that my webcam won't lock up Explorer when I accidentally select it with Preview enabled.
- GHFigs 17y agoApple hasn't sued anyone for building a Hackintosh.
- weegee 17y agothey did however put some code in their ROM on the first macintosh... http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt&topic=Software%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
- rufo 17y agoSection 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 http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx105.pdf
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoRight. 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.
- dhimes 17y agoThis 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.
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoYes, and that's their right. We can argue that we don't like it, but its no different than me licensing Hanna Montana's likeness for a toothbrush I'm producing (no, I'm not!). I'd have the right to put her pretty face on the toothbrush but not anywhere else. I understand the laws to be well established here. If you don't like it, use Ubuntu. I understand a moral argument, but pragmatic ones are of little use here.
- mattculbreth 17y agoI 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.
- stuff4ben 17y agoYou 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.
- mattculbreth 17y agoYeah 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.
- jcl 17y agoHere'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 http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=942&tag=nl.e550
- mattculbreth 17y agoOk cool, that's pretty close actually.
- jcl 17y agoNote: if you're planning to actually build something based on these instructions, be sure to get a case that supports the Tyan motherboard's CEB mounting holes or be prepared to drill your own. Both of the Coolermaster cases mentioned in the article only have ATX/EATX mounting holes. (I'm still a little irked at George Ou for writing an article whose premise rests on the existence of a machine that he didn't even try to build.)
- eli 17y agoYeah, but it also doesn't work very well.