sharonzaz wrote
for me the bottom line is this:
the Hacks that i build for myself and for clients offer identical performance
to a mac pro with same specs, are just as stable
and come with backup and service.
the hacks that i build cost about a quarter of what same spec mac pro would cost.
Im not trying to sell my services here, but only to emphasize the issue re
mac vs hack.
again, from a legal point of view, you cannot get apple support unless
for any of their software unless you've installed it on a mac.
if there were any major legal issues they would have acted to close
down all forums and website who openly offer info in the matter.
the only illegal thing here would be if you did not pay for your software.
my copy of OSX is legal, and I urge all my clients to purchase all their software.
some of my clients actually own macs and wish to own more but cannot afford another mac pro.
The spec on my machine would have costed me around 50k if i had chosen an actual Mac, but rather costed me around 12k.
software is another issue, you anyways need and should pay for all your software.
regardless of how much your hardware costs.
I run a legal OSX based studio and when I need new software
i go to the app store and click purchase ?
I'm not going to belabour the point here, but if you purchase a software license and then violate the license agreement (as you are doing here) then you are not running a legal copy of the software, plain and simple. Buying a software license does not mean you own the software, it means you are allowed to use it within the terms of the agreement. In other words, paying for a license doesn't entitle you to do what you want, and that's very clear in the EULA.
Apple
can and
have sued and shut down companies that have actively sold Hackintosh computers, check out this link for one example:
http://www.lockergnome.com/osx/2012/02/24/are-hackintosh-computers-legal/
Obviously, the odd Hackintosh enthusiast is not going to be a target for them, because the net financial loss they'll incur to find and prosecute those people isn't worth their while. But that doesn't magically make it legal to violate the terms of the license agreement. Just because there are websites up that tell you how to do certain things, it doesn't mean that it's not illegal to do them.
This doesn't change the fact that you, and other people with similar perspectives, are going to continue to build and mess around with Hacks. I'm not here to pronounce upon the
ethics of that sort of thing. All I'm saying is that you should have no illusions that what you're doing is perfectly legal, simply because the risk seems low. In fact, if you are selling the building and configuring of Hacks as a for-profit service, then you are very much a target for Apple's legal department, but possibly just not a big enough one yet (if ever).
Also, I'd be very interested to see how you'd manage to shave 38k off the price of an equivalent Mac Pro...because very often when I hear arguments like that, the components are not 100% like-for-like. A good example is CPU pricing: Mac Pros use quad core Xeon processors, which are considerably more costly than the average i5/i7 you'll find a desktop. Xeon processors are designed to be added to a dual-socket M/B, and are more expensive etc. (e.g. the processors found in most mid-range servers are Xeon). Often, I see people picking an equivalent clock-speed i7 or i5 when comparing prices, but you're not comparing apples with Apple's (har har). If you compare exact components, you'll find the price gap is still there, but it really shouldn't be 38k...
I don't actually think Mac Pros are overpriced, I think people often just don't understand what they're looking at. You're looking at a proper workstation level machine, not simply a high-end home-use desktop.
Not saying that's what you've done, just that my experience is that people making these claims are usually doing the above, and in any case this is probably best taken to another thread.
