There are so many great clichés. Take these two for example – “Apple users belong to an elitist group that cares more about looks than functionality” and “Macs are more expensive than an X86 Windows PC or offer less for the same price”. Times change, though, and now Apple’s computers are also based on the x86 micro-processor architecture and use Intel hardware across the board. Users are even given the option of installing Windows alongside Mac OS X using the integrated Bootcamp utility – a capability that any conventional x86 PC lacks. Seen from this perspective, you basically get two PCs in one. Even cheaper than a dual-boot Apple PC is building your own Mac using off-the-shelf components. Naturally, the installation is a little trickier than on a real Mac and takes more time as well. Also, there is no guarantee that all features will work on the DIY Mac, as we point out further on in this article.

Hackers have been working on making the DIY Mac a reality since the first release of OS X for Intel hardware. The goal – to create an affordable platform that is easy to set up and install and offers good performance. The final result should be a Mac (PC-system) that dual boots Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista; a platform, in other words, that allows users to get their toes wet in the Mac world while giving them the safety net of a Windows installation on the same machine.

The problem is that Apple does not offer an official version of Mac OS X for normal PCs (yet), so that resourceful hackers have stepped up and created their own modified versions, which are constantly being updated and refined. The growing enthusiasm for Apple’s operating system is not just apparent on message boards and forums, either – even dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft fans find themselves flirting with the mature, user friendly and stable Mac OS. Software is available for both the Power PC and Intel hardware, and conversely, even old PPC applications will run on Intel systems thanks to the integrated real-time emulator dubbed Rosetta.

This article is meant as a kind of inspiration, if you will – a purely experimental attempt to build a system than runs Mac OS X from off-the-shelf components. The components themselves are also quite inexpensive, which fits well with the DIY theme. In the end, we were able to create a Mac with 2D graphics suitable for office tasks as well as home usage, thanks to the help of our resourceful friend. Gamers have the option of installing a more powerful 3D card and booting into Windows for more 3D power. The less charitable members of the hacker community would probably put it this way – dual boot between Mac OS and the toy OS.

Apple sells this version of its operating system (Mac OS X 10.5 – Leopard) sells for around €129/£85 in its online store. We met with a well-known hacker from the OSX86 scene who showed us a number of tricks to smooth the installation process. We started off with an official and legally obtained version of the current Mac OS X, which our helpful friend proceeded to install on a conventional PC with the help of a few tools. After all, all other components being identical, the only major difference between a standard PC and a Mac is the Mac’s special BIOS (EFI – Extensible Firmware Interface). On its Intel Macs, Apple includes its own boot loader as well as the drivers for the HFS+ file system right into the EFI-BIOS, suppressing all command lines and consoles.

Currently, a number of different DVD images are circulating on the web, created by hackers such as JaS, Uphuck or ToH. Their success point to an increasing interest in a modified version of OS X, jokingly also referred to as Hackintosh, whose kernel and bootloader allow it to run on a conventional PC.

If you believe the talk in insider forums, the market has been ready for Apple to open its OS to a wider audience for quite some time now. That’s not much of a surprise. After all, we’re talking about a very mature and stable OS here. Apple grabbed the spotlight with two nigh-on revolutionary steps, namely the transition of its entire product line to Intel hardware and the support for dual-booting into Windows using the Bootcamp utility. This was in 2005, and still the community’s enthusiasm shows no sign of ebbing any time soon.

In the end, it’s not the performance of the hardware we use here that makes this project so fascinating to us. Instead, it is their low price, which in turn allows us to build a very affordable Mac system – all on our own. If you find this project as interesting as we do and are doing some Christmas PC shopping, consider choosing components that will work well both in Windows and Mac OS X.