Osx86: Creating a Hackintosh

Although I don't have a hackintosh at the moment, this book is the single most useful resource to getting the job done. There are many hackintosh forumulas and ISOs out there. Many of those combinations are very specific and often the concept of dual booting is not adequatly covered in the public domain. This is the one resource to pull it all together and show you all of your options and all of the steps it takes to get there. A must have for the hackintosh enthusiast.

Apple has always been very controlling of all its products, dictating where and when it can be installed. With Apple's switch to working with Intel computer chips in 2006, the door was cracked (I don't think you can really say it was `opened') to install its OS X operating system on non-Apple hardware. Thus the hacked Macintosh, or hackintosh, was born. Industrious programmers quickly went to work to try and make this possible - to fool the software to install and work on hardware other than Apple's proprietary computer systems. The results are a variety of tools and methods to make this happen. While all this information is available on the Internet, Baldwin has worked with many of these programmers to pull together a step-by-step guide to creating your own hackintosh. The process is not easy, nor guaranteed to succeed. However, Baldwin tries to lay out the steps, the choices you must make regarding the setup you are trying to build (using an external drive, booting from your Windows hard drive, or creating a new Mac system), and warns of the potential pitfalls and failures. He is straightforward in his warning that this may require multiple attempts and in the end it may not work on your system. But the process is laid out if you want to try. And if you are successful, he helps introduce you to the OS X operating system, especially in translating the Windows convention the user is most likely familiar with into the operations of the Macintosh. The process has limitations - you are restricted to working with OS X 10.5 (Leopard) instead of the newer 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The truth is that the book, and process, is aimed at the tinkerer and persons who enjoy making software work on a system it is not designed for. If you wanted the latest versions of OS X, or you want to be able to run both Windows and OS X at the same time, you would be better served purchasing a (relatively) inexpensive Mac Mini, which can easily run the Windows operating system with full Apple Support. This is for those who enjoy getting their hands dirty and circumventing the system. Many people wanted to run the Mac software on an inexpensive netbook, though the upcoming iPad makes this less of a need. The book is very well laid out and easy to follow. The author liberally gives you screen shots, suggested reading, support URLs and healthy dose of reality checks (e.g. wireless networking is going to be a real pain in the process). The sections include very clear step-by-step instructions to guide you through each phase of the process, and give help through the decisions that must be made in the project (what disk to boot from, how to control the booting Operating System). There is very little new here, but this book pulls these steps together into a single, coherent guide and reference. Overall this is a great book for the do-it-yourselfer, as well as a comprehensive guide for the curious.