The real point of a hackintosh is only as a replacement for a quad core macpro comparable machine, anything below a quad core macintosh pro and you may as well buy a real mac, and anything above and you may as well buy the real 8 core Mac Pro, consider this scenario:

base quad core mac pro from apple store UK : £1899

You can build from website based component suppliers a quad core hackintosh that beats it, from parts including 4gb instead of 3gb memory, a 9800gtx+, and is completely overclockable, for a price that when i made my pc came in at at £370.00 exc VAT. Ok its not nehelam and doesnt have 4 extra virtual cores,(virtual cores sounds too much like interpolated pixels), and the GT120 is slightly better, but seriously what i wanted was something that was upgradeable and much more oomphy than a top end imac.

I have been using macs since the days of The Apple II europlus, pre macintosh etc, And have owned and purchased 8 full price macintoshes in my time, and converted well over one hundred people to being mac users.

I dont understand how it is I as and individual can make a Macpro that is 5 times cheaper than them making one for me ? surely with their purchasing power they should be able to make a much cheaper mac pro than that, i’ll pay double for Apples design sense but not 5 times. And Secondly hardly anyone ever upgrades a mac pro except for sticking the odd compatible card or a new hard drive, whereas the machine I have assembled I can replace any part, as i put them all together myself.

Apple need to build a Mac Midi for £800-900 that is like a medium sized fully upgradeable MacPro type machine less build quality and slightly smaller, until they do this theyre quad core offering is not an attractive prospect at all, this problem is partly to do with the fact apple is always using intel most expensive CPU’s rather than theyre more value offerings.

Because apple is sitting on some $24.5 billion dollars in cash, you would have thought in this recession they could have lowered what must be the healthiest margins in the world, or made some recession priced macs, but really theyre now just obsessed with the iphone. And anyone who works at or near apple makes so much money they cannot perceive theyre mac pro product line as being too expensive for the general user, if they want more pc market share they will have to get cheaper, I can normally persuade relatives to buy macs, recently I couldnt and two of mine went for sub £400 pc laptops against my wishes, I guess those are the times we find ourselves in.

It is 100% true to say this task is for a single person with time, tenacity and intelligence on their hands, and a fair bit of hair to lose, As I would not recommend assembling or give support to anyone else building a hackintosh as it was stressfull enough for me, and if I had kids or a wife to consider I probably wouldnt have time to do it. There are allot of PC users who try it out for a laugh on their and then revert to their PC setup as basically there machines sort of work but would never be 100% stable or fully functioning.

The only person who might consider it seriously are the people who have the time and energy to make it work and were considering spending £1899 on a quad core mac pro.