Running Mac OS X on standard PCs
Published: 14 May 2008
Apple's MacBook Air, iPhone and iPod may be all the rage, but the company's desktop computers are still relative rarities: although analysts' figures vary, Apple desktops certainly comprise less than 10 per cent of the worldwide market.
This low market share is often attributed to the relatively high prices of Apple computers. However, another reason could be the fact that users rarely have an opportunity to experience Mac OS before buying a computer. This would require a visit to one of the Apple retail stores or an accommodating Mac-owning friend. But there is another way: for some time, various different images of Mac OS X have been available on the internet that have been modified to circumvent its tight coupling to Apple's hardware. These allow the operating system to be installed on a standard PC. To date, Apple has taken no action against such activities, which perhaps indicates that the 'buzz' around its OS is not entirely unwelcome.
However, Apple's licence agreement does state that Mac OS X should only be installed on Apple hardware, so this is a controversial subject. The versions available for download that we discuss in this article are unauthorised. You might feel morally justified in using one of these after you've bought a legitimate copy of Mac OS X Leopard, but you will still be breaking copyright law. Combine that with the dangers of downloading software from unofficial sources, and it's clear that taking this route is only for the adventurous, on securely isolated test computers. We certainly don't recommend you do this — however interesting the results may be.
In the best case, Mac OS X Leopard on standard PC hardware can use full graphics acceleration (Quartz, Core Image) and all of the CPU features (SSE 4.1, for example).
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