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Posted: **2008-09-25 06:16pm**

First, the blurb from /.:

An anonymous reader points out Gizmodo's review of a USB dongle, made by a company called Efix, which allows for an effort-free transformation of a non-Apple computer into one that runs Mac OS X. According to the reviewer, the transformation is perfect (aside from a few quirks he describes as "trivial"); the included screenshots sure make it seem that way, too. The dongle costs $155, and works only on a subset of PC hardware. Non-Apple machines running OS X will no doubt make Apple unhappy, though, so, the reviewer concludes, "it's understandable if you wanna approach this with caution."

According to the linked review, it appeared to work flawlessly (even with updates), apart from the 2 minute initial boot-up times.

The downside to this EFiX dongle is that its only compatible with a small set of PC hardware:

CPU's:
Intel® CoreTM2 Extreme Processors
Intel® CoreTM2 Quad Processors
Intel® CoreTM2 Duo Processors
Intel® Pentium® dual-core Processors: E2xx0
Intel® Celeron® dual-core Processors: E1200
Intel® Celeron® Processors: 420, 430, 440.
Intel® 45nm Multi-Core Processors
Intel® AtomTM Processors
Intel® XeonTM Processors

VIDEO CARDS (nVidia):
Geforce 7300 GS *
Geforce 7300 GT *
Geforce 7600 GS *
Geforce 7600 GT *
Geforce 7800 GT *
Geforce 7800 GTX *
Geforce 7900 GS *
Geforce 7900 GT *
Geforce 7950 GT *
Geforce 8800 GS **
Geforce 8800 GT **
Geforce 8800 GTS (320/640 mb)
Geforce 8800 GTS 512 mb **
Geforce 8800 GTX
Geforce 8800 Ultra
Quattro FX 5600

VIDEO CARDS (ATI):
Radeon HD 2600 XT
Radeon HD 3870 **

* Maximum VRam size 256 MB
** after updating to Mac OS X 10.5.2

MOTHERBOARDS (Gigabyte):
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4P
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS5
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6
Gigabyte GA-EP45-EXTREME

WIRELESS LAN:
U.S. Robotics PCI Adapter 5417 WLAN 125Mbit
D-Link DWA-547 RangeBooster N
Dynex DX-BNBC

SOUNDCARDS:
SoundCards based on ALC889A codec
USB Audio
M-Audio USB Sonica Theater 7.1 channel
Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External (USB)
Speedlink USB Audiocard
Griffin iMic External Sound Card

HDD/CD-ROM/DVD-ROM:
Only SATA Devices AHCI required, No PATA Supported

Well. This certainly has me rethinking my computer purchase.

Posted: **2008-09-25 06:23pm**

Well. This certainly has me rethinking my computer purchase.

Or you can sink the $155 premium into getting a Mac proper, and you'd have multi-boot with OSX too, without running the risk that an update next week renders your new toy useless.

Posted: **2008-09-25 06:24pm**

HELL old news.

Posted: **2008-09-25 06:28pm**

Bounty wrote:Or you can sink the $155 premium into getting a Mac proper, and you'd have multi-boot with OSX too, without running the risk that an update next week renders your new toy useless.

You do have a point about Apple not being very friendly toward people who don't play within their pool when it comes to their hardware. However, how would their OS detect this, particularly with how it works hardware-wise?

Stark wrote:HELL old news.

...This is not about the Hackintosh, Stark. If this particular device has been discussed before in this forum, I didn't see it.

Posted: **2008-09-25 06:48pm**

No, I mean the concept isn't new, not that it had been posted before.

Posted: **2008-09-25 07:14pm**

Stark wrote:No, I mean the concept isn't new, not that it had been posted before.

Ah, I see what you mean now - thank you for clarifying.

Since I was considering a new laptop or desktop anyway, I thought this was a possibility; but as Bounty pointed out (and what you left unspoken but said regardless) Apple doesn't have a friendly track record with this sort of thing.

So, the main point of posting this, being "ooo shiny!" was to see just how viable such a thing would be. Given what I know about PC hardware, it should be difficult at best to account for such a device, but I also know I am far from an expert at PC hardware.

Posted: **2008-09-25 07:36pm**

I don't have time to check right now, but poke around a bit and you should find that ever since they moved to Intel processors there have been many and various methods of doing this sort of thing, and Apple has gone to great lengths to stop it in some cases. I'm not familiar enough with how this works to say if it's 'foolproof' or not, but if you're getting a laptop I don't see the point when you could just buy a macbook and dual-boot if you must (or Paralel etc). Saving a hundred bucks and isn't worth the lack of support, possible problems and the threat of Apple breaking it, in my opinion. If it's still being sold in six months and there's no problems, however, it'll be much more attractive.

Posted: **2008-09-26 01:15am**

rhoenix wrote:You do have a point about Apple not being very friendly toward people who don't play within their pool when it comes to their hardware.

It's not that they're unfriendly. It's that they don't care.

Posted: **2008-09-26 01:29am**

Durandal wrote:It's not that they're unfriendly. It's that they don't care.

That's an interesting opinion; I didn't expect to read that. Do you think that Apple will then also not care about this PC dongle?

Posted: **2008-09-26 01:38am**

rhoenix wrote:So, the main point of posting this, being "ooo shiny!" was to see just how viable such a thing would be. Given what I know about PC hardware, it should be difficult at best to account for such a device, but I also know I am far from an expert at PC hardware.

This is really not something you should try to rely on as a serious computer. If you just want to play around with OS X, fine, but it's entirely possible that an OS X update down the line will totally break compatibility with the dongle or with some other part in your system. Not even as a specific "fuck you" from Apple, but just because they're targeting their update to a very specific and known set of hardware and not testing it against other configurations which some people may have pieced together.

If you really want to run OS X as your computing platform, buy a Mac.

Posted: **2008-09-26 01:44am**

Honestly, the option of being able to triple-boot between Windows, Linux, and OS X is attractive to me, and that's the main reason I'm considering this device.

However, Uraniun235, you make an excellent point about the device - despite being only useful with a very specific set of hardware (that appears to be very similar to parts used in Macs, to my eyes), a random update down the line could theoretically cause a spectacular breakdown.

Well, thank you for your thoughts, everyone - I'm definitely going to be considering my options about a new computer a bit differently after today.

Posted: **2008-09-26 01:52am**

Durandal wrote:
rhoenix wrote:You do have a point about Apple not being very friendly toward people who don't play within their pool when it comes to their hardware.
It's not that they're unfriendly. It's that they don't care.

They are spending millions throwing the book at Psystar. I'm pretty sure they give a shit about this sort of thing.

Posted: **2008-09-26 07:04am**

The Kernel wrote:They are spending millions throwing the book at Psystar. I'm pretty sure they give a shit about this sort of thing.

Psystar was selling complete computer pre-installed with OS X: that has more legal ground to stand on due to the EULA. They've also seemed to ignore all of the "hackintosh" efforts previously.

Posted: **2008-09-26 10:59am**

The point of a dongle is that it should work on a wide range of computers, but this only works on a very narrow range of computers. The only pieces that are on my computer that fit are the hard drives and video card (and maybe the audio). Sure, lots of computers will fill at least one of the requirements, but very few will fill all of them. You're just as well off trying to do OSx86 (or if it's defunct now, some other project) on your machine rather than paying for a dongle that's only usable on one machine.

Posted: **2008-09-26 11:50am**

Complete waste of money.

That list of supported hardware is laughable, meanwhile some guys over at insanelymac now have a method to boot and install off retail DVD's, with the native kernel and all. And you can use any hardware that currently has a kext with that, which is way more then on that list.

But I hear this is actually new or something, and people haven't been doing it for years now.

Posted: **2008-09-26 04:06pm**

Resinence wrote:That list of supported hardware is laughable, meanwhile some guys over at insanelymac now have a method to boot and install off retail DVD's, with the native kernel and all. And you can use any hardware that currently has a kext with that, which is way more then on that list.

I'm noting a conspicuous lack of links or quoted text about this method from your post. With a Google search of their site, I noticed this tutorial, is this what you meant?

Also, in looking at the site, this HCL is much more weighty than the HCL in the OP of this thread, which is somewhat promising.

Though I thank you for at least bringing where to look for this information, including actual links and relevant quoted text would have proven more useful.

That aside, I'm going to be researching this at work today, and see just how stable it appears to be (my preliminary guess is "mostly").

Posted: **2008-09-27 10:05pm**

The Kernel wrote:
Durandal wrote:
rhoenix wrote:You do have a point about Apple not being very friendly toward people who don't play within their pool when it comes to their hardware.
It's not that they're unfriendly. It's that they don't care.
They are spending millions throwing the book at Psystar. I'm pretty sure they give a shit about this sort of thing.

They care if you run around making money. But as to whether rhoenix hacking Mac OS X to run on his beige box will earn the ire of Apple's legal department ... no. I just wouldn't count on it working without continuous maintenance.

Posted: **2008-09-28 02:38am**

Durandal wrote:
The Kernel wrote:
Durandal wrote: It's not that they're unfriendly. It's that they don't care.
They are spending millions throwing the book at Psystar. I'm pretty sure they give a shit about this sort of thing.
They care if you run around making money. But as to whether rhoenix hacking Mac OS X to run on his beige box will earn the ire of Apple's legal department ... no. I just wouldn't count on it working without continuous maintenance.

At $150 a pop for a fucking DONGLE they are certainly making money.

Besides, the real reason they are suing Psystar is because it could potential take away from Apple hardware sales which is exactly the same problem that this would give them.

Posted: **2008-09-28 03:34am**

As I said, I doubt Apple legal cares whether the OP hacks his beige box. As to whether these dongle guys get sued, who knows.

Posted: **2008-09-28 03:59pm**

I just used iAtkos when I installed OSX, which is what I'm booted into right now. While this thread is up, I have some questions. I'm not familiar with this OS yet, so I need some help. What are some of the killer features of OSX over Windows and Linux? What does it do that has inspired so many people to 2 or even 3 times as much money for the same hardware and think it was the best investment they ever made? So far I haven't found anything, but I'm sure I'm just not looking in the right places. Any help would be appreciated.

Posted: **2008-09-28 05:15pm**

Dominus Atheos wrote:I just used iAtkos when I installed OSX, which is what I'm booted into right now. While this thread is up, I have some questions. I'm not familiar with this OS yet, so I need some help. What are some of the killer features of OSX over Windows and Linux? What does it do that has inspired so many people to 2 or even 3 times as much money for the same hardware and think it was the best investment they ever made? So far I haven't found anything, but I'm sure I'm just not looking in the right places. Any help would be appreciated.

There's no killer feature. It just happens to work pretty well, reliably and with fewer security problems than Windows. It also has a reputation for having superior usability and polish.

Posted: **2008-09-28 05:31pm**

The killer app of OSX isn't that it does something another OS doesn't do, it's that it does the exact same thing in a reliable, idiotproof, easy-to-use package. Many of Apple's products work like this, in my experience; part of what you pay for is the peace of mind that your shiny new computer will do exactly what it says on the box, out-of-the-box, and look good doing it.

Posted: **2008-09-28 06:06pm**

Dominus Atheos wrote:I just used iAtkos when I installed OSX, which is what I'm booted into right now. While this thread is up, I have some questions. I'm not familiar with this OS yet, so I need some help. What are some of the killer features of OSX over Windows and Linux? What does it do that has inspired so many people to 2 or even 3 times as much money for the same hardware and think it was the best investment they ever made? So far I haven't found anything, but I'm sure I'm just not looking in the right places. Any help would be appreciated.

Just talking from my own personal experience, my iBook G4 is by far the best computer I've ever owned. It's over three years old and still runs like it just came out of the box, and the only problem I've had with it is a poorly designed AC adapter I eventually replaced. It's not so much that OSX does any one thing much better than Windows, is that it does a lot of little things a little better, and, more importantly, keeps working like it was designed for years, without me having to waste hours of my time fucking with it.

Posted: **2008-09-28 06:13pm**

Dominus Atheos wrote:I just used iAtkos when I installed OSX, which is what I'm booted into right now. While this thread is up, I have some questions. I'm not familiar with this OS yet, so I need some help. What are some of the killer features of OSX over Windows and Linux? What does it do that has inspired so many people to 2 or even 3 times as much money for the same hardware and think it was the best investment they ever made? So far I haven't found anything, but I'm sure I'm just not looking in the right places. Any help would be appreciated.

I LOVE TROLLS!

I particularly love the '2 or even 3 times' part, that's gold; fictional can be fun! I'm less of a fan of the implicit 'all computer users are like me' thing, but I do enjoy how you used the phrase 'killer features' to subtly highlight that you're nowhere near Apple's target market.

Bonus points for the hijack, too.

Posted: **2008-09-28 08:04pm**

phongn wrote:
Dominus Atheos wrote:I just used iAtkos when I installed OSX, which is what I'm booted into right now. While this thread is up, I have some questions. I'm not familiar with this OS yet, so I need some help. What are some of the killer features of OSX over Windows and Linux? What does it do that has inspired so many people to 2 or even 3 times as much money for the same hardware and think it was the best investment they ever made? So far I haven't found anything, but I'm sure I'm just not looking in the right places. Any help would be appreciated.
There's no killer feature. It just happens to work pretty well, reliably and with fewer security problems than Windows. It also has a reputation for having superior usability and polish.

I tri-boot my computer between Vista, Linux, and OSX. The question I have is what reason do I have for booting into OSX? What does it do that the others don't?

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