PC/Hackintosh Users: Help me out.

DMCA is infringing on someones copyright. Last I heard the only copyright claim Apple has on the OS is the code. You can't COPYRIGHT where you install software. If you are not modifying the code then there is no infringement. Thats like saying OK you purchased this guitar but you can only plug it into a Marshall. If you plug it into any other amp it will explode.... then you plug it into another amp and it works fine. Yea you void your warranty and support, but you can still use it.

Apple fucked themselves as soon as them moved to the Intel platform. They knew that would remove all hardware restrictions from their OS and they did it anyway.
 
Depends on what you wanna do with it.
If you wanna use an old pci HD system, you need a mainboard with enough pci slots.
Anyway the best mainboards for hackintosh are Gigabyte.

Go:
www.kakewalk.se

They have an amazing installer that allow you to install immediately OSX from the original dvd. Read the forum and you will easilly find the best piece of hardware.
You have to choose carefully the video card but there is a very complete list of compatible models and brands on the net.

ps
For what you wanna do this MB should be awesome: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3434&dl=#ov
You have to choose carefully also the case because these HD card are a PITA, speaking about card size
 
guitarguru777 said:
A Hackintosh as long as its for PERSONAL use is 100% legal.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure we're talking about commercial use here.

And whether or not it breaks this or that license agreement or not, just the fact that it has to discussed so much would be a total turn-off for me. As a hobby machine to fuck around with, sure, but for professional use... no.
 
As I said in another thread recently, Macs may be expensive but if something goes wrong the support you get is the best in the industry. If you build a hackintosh and have issues, you are pretty much on your own to troubleshoot and figure out what is going on. Just another thing to think about.
 
Thanks for all the posts.

I've decided that wanting thunderbolt can wait, as I'm sure there will be PCI/E cards that'll include it soon enough.

I am super surprised how much cheaper a better machine can be.
 
Jarkko Mattheiszen said:
I'm pretty sure we're talking about commercial use here.

And whether or not it breaks this or that license agreement or not, just the fact that it has to discussed so much would be a total turn-off for me. As a hobby machine to fuck around with, sure, but for professional use... no.
Click to expand...

The distinction is between the _use_ of the machine and the _sale_ of the machine. No matter what apple (or any other company) want to put in their EULA, they cannot dictate or control how their software is used once the customer has paid for it and it has left their store.
Imagine if Avid declared that they didn't want Protools to be used for death metal recordings, or if microsoft forbid anyone from installing windows on non-Dell hardware. Absurd right? :)
The point is that Apple simply do not have the authority or the power to author their own laws or enforce them. In every sane society in the world the consumer is protected so they can pay for goods, take them away from the manufacturers hands and do with those goods as they please.

Now, making a hack machine and _selling_ it, without proper licensing would be a legitimate crime, and rightly so, but as the law stands, I buy something and its mine to use as long as I'm not trying reverse-engineer it and sell the IP for my own profit.

The machine being used in a studio is no different, its still fair use of legally acquired software. Consider the number of people all over the world using rooted Android phones (or jailbroken iPhones) to send business emails, would that make their businesses criminal by default?

I find it kind of amazing that people on here openly discuss drug-useage, for which there are very clear laws and penalties, and we're sat here arguing over the 'legality' of using a damn operating system. :)
 
As I said in another thread, last winter I was in the middle of a mix and my macbook pro was near 100% usage...it wasn't very nice because I had lot of error messages in protools when I was with the band working on that mix.
So I decided to finish the mix with an Hackintosh (I was already interested so I knew how to do everything) and in a couple of days I bought and I mounted the whole thing. A couple of days because I bought it the 23th december so I lost some time because of Christmas.
Anyway I installed OsX 10.6.2 (retail dvd) with Kakewalk and updated it to the 10.6.5 with no problem. After that I installed some kext to let the network card works correctly. Everything went really well. When everything was ok I installed ProTools and all my plugins.
The day after I finished the mix without a single error. And still works like a beast.
What I did was, for some of you, very risky...but in my opinion it was the quickest and cheap solution in that situation. I built a machine that does the same result than a Mac Pro in Geekbench and that costed less than 1/3.
Moreover if you have an old HD system and something goes wrong (Lasse) it's not for everybody to spend 10000€ to get a new system because your old card become useless ( -> Apple/Avid policy).
 
I'm gonna go through with this simply through curiousity more than anything.

However, is there any real advantage to using os x for music production any more?
I haven't had any problems with windows 7, it works fine at low latencies, no crashes (other than immediately traceable shit non-OS software and slightly dodgy RAM), performance seems fine... is there really any point in going with a hackintosh for audio? (please note, I am NOT asking if getting a MAC is better, I am fully aware of the high quality of components, build quality and support that you get with a real mac)
 
Im running a hackintosh right now and actually posting this message on it,
OSX 10.6.7
Ive been running one for years and due to the monster sized community of geeks into massing with drivers etc etc, things are getting better and better by the week.
Ive always used this same system since i started out as my main hack mac but ive installed OSX on varius machines with various results.
This one here is my main audio machine, although its pretty old spec by todays standards its alwats been very solid and reliable and once you learn how to deal with drivers, (kexts) and installing uninstalling them and some basic maintenence rather like you have to deal with in windows its a pretty safe world.
The spec of this machine is:
Asus X975 chipset P5WDG2-WS Pro Motherboard
Intel Q6600 core2 Quad 2.4GHz (overclocked to 2.7Ghz)
6GB OCZ Reaper memory
Nvidia 8800GT Graphics card
1000W Tagan PSU

I run one of these hard drive recievers:
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MjA2OQ==

EasySATA_Q.jpg


So i can slot either my OSX , Win7 or test SATA hard drive in and boot up so the hard drive are just like quick swap OS cartridges which i can clone for fall back in case one screws up i just throw another in and away i go.

I have My Pro Tools HD cards in a magma chassis thats hooked up to the machine and performance in protools is just as good in OSX and Windows (another reason not believe the bullshit about windows 7 or OSX being better performance than the other, i can prove test either in a hart beat).

so yes it works great solid and reliable and i whole heartedly recommend it to anyone who can spare the time to learn what they are doing, if you have never done it before you will/may have a few headaches but hey its a learning process just like the first time you learned to use windows,cubase, protools, drums guitar whatever.
Its not so straight forward as just iinstall osx and away you go, you need to select components that have easily available and proven working Kexts (drivers) so the best thing to do is spens sometime on the Hackintosh forums like insanelyMac and find out what the most trouble free hardware is that has available solid Kexts.
learn how to install kexts, edit them remove them,
Learn how to look for problems hardware and kext in the loading text of the linux boot kernel screen, play with the environment get used to it and away you go.

Oh and the greatest bonus of this whole setup is being able to use PCI cards on INTEL OSX :)
MY PTHD cards and UAD-1, TC Powercores are PCI and work like a charm !
 
John_C said:
I'm gonna go through with this simply through curiousity more than anything.

However, is there any real advantage to using os x for music production any more?
I haven't had any problems with windows 7, it works fine at low latencies, no crashes (other than immediately traceable shit non-OS software and slightly dodgy RAM), performance seems fine... is there really any point in going with a hackintosh for audio? (please note, I am NOT asking if getting a MAC is better, I am fully aware of the high quality of components, build quality and support that you get with a real mac)
Click to expand...

It's a comfort level thing for me. I've been on macs for more then a decade, so switching to an operating system I havn't used since windows 98 seems like a waste of my time and more of a learning curve then I'm willing to deal with. I want people to think they're on a mac even if they aren't. Especially in "pro" studios here in town, if you don't have a mac, you can pretty much close your doors.

DigitalMetal said:
Im running a hackintosh right now and actually posting this message on it,
OSX 10.6.7
Ive been running one for years and due to the monster sized community of geeks into massing with drivers etc etc, things are getting better and better by the week.
Ive always used this same system since i started out as my main hack mac but ive installed OSX on varius machines with various results.
This one here is my main audio machine, although its pretty old spec by todays standards its alwats been very solid and reliable and once you learn how to deal with drivers, (kexts) and installing uninstalling them and some basic maintenence rather like you have to deal with in windows its a pretty safe world.
The spec of this machine is:
Asus X975 chipset P5WDG2-WS Pro Motherboard
Intel Q6600 core2 Quad 2.4GHz (overclocked to 2.7Ghz)
6GB OCZ Reaper memory
Nvidia 8800GT Graphics card
1000W Tagan PSU

I run one of these hard drive recievers:
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MjA2OQ==

EasySATA_Q.jpg


So i can slot either my OSX , Win7 or test SATA hard drive in and boot up so the hard drive are just like quick swap OS cartridges which i can clone for fall back in case one screws up i just throw another in and away i go.

I have My Pro Tools HD cards in a magma chassis thats hooked up to the machine and performance in protools is just as good in OSX and Windows (another reason not believe the bullshit about windows 7 or OSX being better performance than the other, i can prove test either in a hart beat).

so yes it works great solid and reliable and i whole heartedly recommend it to anyone who can spare the time to learn what they are doing, if you have never done it before you will/may have a few headaches but hey its a learning process just like the first time you learned to use windows,cubase, protools, drums guitar whatever.
Its not so straight forward as just iinstall osx and away you go, you need to select components that have easily available and proven working Kexts (drivers) so the best thing to do is spens sometime on the Hackintosh forums like insanelyMac and find out what the most trouble free hardware is that has available solid Kexts.
learn how to install kexts, edit them remove them,
Learn how to look for problems hardware and kext in the loading text of the linux boot kernel screen, play with the environment get used to it and away you go.

Oh and the greatest bonus of this whole setup is being able to use PCI cards on INTEL OSX :)
MY PTHD cards and UAD-1, TC Powercores are PCI and work like a charm !
Click to expand...

Great post man thanks alot.
 
John_C said:
I'm gonna go through with this simply through curiousity more than anything.

However, is there any real advantage to using os x for music production any more?
I haven't had any problems with windows 7, it works fine at low latencies, no crashes (other than immediately traceable shit non-OS software and slightly dodgy RAM), performance seems fine... is there really any point in going with a hackintosh for audio? (please note, I am NOT asking if getting a MAC is better, I am fully aware of the high quality of components, build quality and support that you get with a real mac)
Click to expand...

In my experience, nope. It does really depend on what DAW you use though.
 
C_F_H_13 said:
Great post man thanks alot.
Click to expand...

No Problem ! Glad to be of help :)

drew_drummer said:
In my experience, nope. It does really depend on what DAW you use though.
Click to expand...

Yes specifically PT on Windows (untill the issue is addressed) is pretty bad for memory handling of RAM hungry virtual instruments so you are far better off rewiring Reaper into PT and running the VI's in reaper then PT has all its RAM allocation just for PT and not VI's

Whereas on OSX the memory handling isnt so bad,

There are tiny Pro's and Cons for either OS like this that may help swing you choice one way or another,

Personally i can quite happily deal with either but ive learned how to handle both,
if you dont give time to learn the quirks you will always come across problems on either platform
(not wishing to start a flame war so dont bother whinging) i believe those that moan about one being better than the other havnt taken the time to embrace the pro's and cons of both flavours and have settled on just one and feel the need to defend their decision with fire.

:devil:
 
I don't really know anything about hackintoch but reading this thread i have a little input to give.
Why not buy an hp workstation xw8400 for pci and xw 8600 for pcie?
This beast are build like a rock, run with xeon cpu (8cores at 3,33ghz for the fastest), can run 32g of ram. You have room to put 5 3,5 drive and 5 2,5 drive. And most important both workstation are avid approved for running PTHD.
I have a xw8400
Mine run a PTHD2 with pt8.03 under xp. Was ready to run after 2hours (time to put all my drive, install os, pt, plugin and run digitest. A friend have same as mine except he run w7 on it. Both system never had a single crash, error or slow down performance time.

A fiew gearslutz member run same system with osx with great sucess too...
Just an other option...

Ps: for the cons, mine weigh 22kgs stock so this shit is heavy!
 
Can you post your build if you end up going through with this? Being that my mac pro is going on 5 years old, I'm considering this as an option for an upgrade...
 
Dont get an HP if you intend to run it as a hackintosh, it will be a bitch to get working as they have their own boards manufactured there will be minimal driver support.
Build you own with proven "working in osx" components
 
::XeS:: said:
Depends on what you wanna do with it.
If you wanna use an old pci HD system, you need a mainboard with enough pci slots.
Anyway the best mainboards for hackintosh are Gigabyte.

Go:
www.kakewalk.se

They have an amazing installer that allow you to install immediately OSX from the original dvd. Read the forum and you will easilly find the best piece of hardware.
You have to choose carefully the video card but there is a very complete list of compatible models and brands on the net.

ps
For what you wanna do this MB should be awesome: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3434&dl=#ov
You have to choose carefully also the case because these HD card are a PITA, speaking about card size
Click to expand...

I'm no hackintosh expert, but my intuition tells me iBoot is less overwhelming and not very limiting (edit: no hardware compatibility limitations like the Gigabyte thing for Kakewalk). Correct me if I'm wrong.

But my intuition also tells me Kakewalk would give you better performance than iBoot.

Google is our best friend.
 
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