Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
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There's some guy on eBay that's selling "Hackintosh" boxes, is that sort of thing not illegal?
I am assuming it is if he sells OS X with it?
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Gary
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Registered: 22nd Nov 06
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I would have thought so. There'll be something in the T&C's about patching etc.
Dunno why hes bothering. If your clued up enought to knowk what a hackintosh is you would be able to follow the imstructions on how to do it. Looks easy as long as you have the correct hardware
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Sam
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Probably trying to cash in on people that want a Mac but don't want to pay Mac prices.
Doesn't seem to have worked out well for him from what I remember as he's not sold many systems.
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Gary
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Prob because of what I said. People who know what they are just do it themselves.
To anyone who dnt know, the name 'hackintosh' wouldn't fill them with confidence!
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Sam
There's some guy on eBay that's selling "Hackintosh" boxes, is that sort of thing not illegal?
I am assuming it is if he sells OS X with it?
There was a German company selling pretty high spec'd Hackintosh systems a few years back. From what i remember they ended up getting buggered by Jobs and his lawyers.
Edit - Psystar was the company and it wasn't German, apparently American based. IIRC, the T&Cs with OSX is that it can only be installed and used on Apple hardware; could be wrong though.
[Edited on 01-09-2011 by Dom]
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Rob_Quads
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Illegal - hmm its an interesting one.
While its against the EULA to install OSX onto your own hardware whether that means its illegal is debatable.
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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Everybody that tries it gets shut down pretty quickly so it's illegal enough that it's not worth fighting Apple.
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Rob_Quads
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everyone that tries selling it gets shut down but notice that they have not gone after a single individual.
Its more a civil matter. If I give you a bit of paper saying "This paper can never be destroyed", you accept it and then destroy it, can you be arrested..No but I could take you to court for breach of contract, probably
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Sam
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I'm guessing you could get round it by selling it as a normal PC "which has Hackintosh compatible hardware" or something along those lines, and separately sell a copy of OS X.
I just tried to find a link on eBay to show you this guy's auctions and I can't find them anywhere - live or completed listings, so I'm guessing eBay binned them...
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Dom
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quote:
Originally posted by Rob_Quads
Illegal - hmm its an interesting one.
While its against the EULA to install OSX onto your own hardware whether that means its illegal is debatable.
I'm sure Psystar got screwed for copyright due to modifying the DVD before it could be installed on x86 hardware.
Also going after individuals would be pointless. It's the same reason Microsoft don't go after pirated individuals. Although with OSX being relatively cheap (~£30), majority of hackintosh users will purchase and use a retail copy.
quote:
Originally posted by Sam
I'm guessing you could get round it by selling it as a normal PC "which has Hackintosh compatible hardware" or something along those lines, and separately sell a copy of OS X.
I just tried to find a link on eBay to show you this guy's auctions and I can't find them anywhere - live or completed listings, so I'm guessing eBay binned them...
I thought you had to be an Apple retailer/reseller to sell OSX discs?
Either way, who'd buy the systems? It'd be a very niche market considering the user would have to install OSX themselves and although not a difficult job it isn't a simple case of sticking a DVD in the drive. And if you sell the retail discs would you then ship the modded bootloader CD as well (not sure on the legality of the bootloader either)?
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Rob_Quads
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quote:
Originally posted by Dom
I'm sure Psystar got screwed for copyright due to modifying the DVD before it could be installed on x86 hardware.
And this I agree would be against the rules as you are breaking copyright which there are specific laws about. Its now possible to install OSX into hardware without getting around this and breaking copyright which is where it enters the tricky grounds as the only 'rule' your breaking is the EULA, no copyright thus why its so much harder
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Sam
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I've seen individuals selling new copies of OS X, whether this goes against Apple's T&Cs I don't know.
As for the bootloader - well I was looking into this last night and there is apparently a bootloader created by some dude which is based on open source Boot-132 code from Apple. This is meant to be able to let you install an unpatched OS X straight from the retail DVD, I was going to give this a go last night by installing on VirtualBox in my Windows 7 laptop but the only OS X I have here is the PPC version of Tiger! 
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Rob_Quads
quote:
Originally posted by Dom
I'm sure Psystar got screwed for copyright due to modifying the DVD before it could be installed on x86 hardware.
And this I agree would be against the rules as you are breaking copyright which there are specific laws about. Its now possible to install OSX into hardware without getting around this and breaking copyright which is where it enters the tricky grounds as the only 'rule' your breaking is the EULA, no copyright thus why its so much harder
Surely using a bootloader disc, which you need to use in order to spoof the EFI prior to booting from a retail disc, would break any form of copyright 'protection' as you're having to modify/spoof the OS prior to installation?
Sam - It's still a two disc operation, plus i wouldn't say a hackintosh is '100% stable' in the sense that updates can easily break an install (my hackintosh broke a few times during updates, luckily i had imaged the drive) and not all hardware is 100% compatible with a hackintosh even if they are compatible with OSX (my protools rig is fine on PC/Mac but it doesn't want to know on my hackintosh; also have a few other pieces of hardware that don't want to install).
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