1. Why A Netbook Hackintosh?
In ten easy steps, and for about $300, you can have a fully-functioning, lightweight, sleek little Mac in the form of an Asus EEE PC 100HE.
I'm writing this article from the comfort of my new "hackintosh netbook," an Asus eeePC 1000HE that I bought from Newegg for $425 shipped. You could knock about $100 off of that if you didn't include a 2GB RAM stick ($42) and an external DVD drive ($50), but I did buy those things.
Compared to my 18-month-old MacBook that I’m used to, the keyboard feels a bit cramped, but the Asus is significantly quieter, lighter and easier to handle than my standard machine. It also cost less than half the price.
This project came about as my wife and I were talking about the merits of getting an iPad. See, she has an older, iBook G4 -- and mainly uses it for basic tasks: Internet, music, movies and Microsoft Office. But video isn't always reliable on her machine. Hulu, for example, runs noticeably smoother on my MacBook than on the iBook G4. We'd thought about the merits of an iPad, but after checking with some of our iPad-toting friends, there still isn't a good full word processing suite (like Microsoft Office) for the iPad.
Sure, there's Google Docs, which for most basic tasks like writing and simple editing is fine. But my wife, as a teacher, is constantly having to use things like footnotes and track changes within the documents -- something that free online alternatives don't yet have. Also, printing from the iPad isn't quite as easy as it should be, yet. So the iPad was out. Even with my add-ons including the DVD player (my wife likes to watch borrowed DVDs of "House"), the netbook was still under the iPad base price of $499, and instead of a 16GB flash drive, I would get\ a 160GB just-as-quiet hard drive.
As far as OSes go, I had basically three options: 1) keep Windows XP as it came factory installed ; 2) Install some flavor of Linux (a friend has been bugging me to try Ubuntu) ; 3) Install Mac OS X. Given that I know OS X best of all, and that all the other devices in our home are Macs, it seemed the logical choice. Plus, given that I’m the one-man IT department for my home, it’s the OS that I know how to fix. Plus, it would be a fun to see if I could make it work!I'd heard about people installing OS X onto netbooks, and came across this handy compatibility guide. In short, everyone who’d tried it seemed to suggest that the simplest and easiest option was to buy a Dell mini 9. Sadly, Dell doesn't sell those anymore. So, after careful consideration of price, size and battery life (a main selling point for netbooks), I settled on the Asus eeePC 1000HE. At just $289, it's cheap, and boasts over nine hours of battery life (with the Windows XP that comes pre-installed and most important of all, according to the handy chart in the compatibility guide, it supports all of the main functions (even on this unauthorized hardware), including WiFi, sleep, sound, and all the rest.
See, that's the thing with creating a hackintosh netbook.–There are a lot of very specific options, software settings and instructions to follow. There are specific guides for specific models, all of which have particular instructions as to how to get all the options working. Even then, there still are some kinks to be worked out. For example even now after I’ve finished the complete installation, when I close the netbook to put it to sleep, instead of choosing sleep from the Apple menu, sometimes the computer will crash. But other than that, it's a long-lasting, quiet little Mac.
Now, before we get started, remember that installing Mac OS X (even a legitimately bought copy) may violate the end-user license agreement (EULA), as Apple doesn't want you installing its OS on non-authorized hardware. Also, if something goes wrong, don't even think about taking your hackintosh to your local Genius Bar. You're on your own. Tom’s Guide, too, takes no responsibility for your actions. That said, we hope you find this article helpful and interesting.
Ready to take the plunge? Good.
One more warning: these instructionsare specifically for how to install Mac OS X 10.6.0 onto a brand-new Asus eeePC 1000HE. I haven't tried upgrading the OS beyond that, nor have I tried using other models, so don't ask me about them. Any other questions are fair game, so feel free to weigh in below.
- 1. Why A Netbook Hackintosh?
- 2. What You Need
- 3. Step 1
- 4. Step 2
- 5. Step 3
- 6. Step 4
- 7. Step 5
- 8. Step 6
- 9. Step 7
- 10. Step 8
- 11. Step 9
- 12. Step 10
- 13. Step 11
- 14. Troubleshooting
But why does it have to be 10.6.0? What's wrong with 10.6.3?
10.6.3 cannot be hacked directly, I think :-p
Typo on the first page it says software where it should hardware.
Good article to bad no 12" netbooks are fully supported
Typo on the first page it says software where it should hardware.
Good article to bad no 12" netbooks are fully supported
I tried for ages to get OSx onto my desktop PC and eventually found EmpireEFI which made the process a LOT easier.
http://prasys.info/tag/empire-efi/
Not sure whether it would work for a netbook but might be worth a look.
forget about linux.. you will never use that if you have mac os
Yeah right forget linux, why care about actual productivity when it's the ride there you care about, pay money for an inferior kernel and then more money for products by getting using OSX, then play in Apple's sandpit forever while they suck you dry
No mention as to wether or not sleep works.. a function lost on most netbook/notebooks.
As to why not 10.6.3, the actual version max is 10.6.1, as they deliberately screwed the atom processor as of 10.6.2. There are however modded kernels that can be used to circumnavigate this if you're very determined. Also a much speedier way to do this would be to pull the HD and connect it to the functioning mac (Hackintosh or not, as long as USB works) and remount the HD without the noowners option. you can then do everything before booting the netbook, eliminating a few steps. While I understand its fun to play with, I dont see the point of OS X on a netbook. The OS was never designed to run on something with such low horse power, and it gets quite ragged after running very few apps, not to mention the general inefficiency of the OS at dealing with flash and what not.. you'd get a much better "Experience" for doing the various tasks on Windows since it will make good use of what little hardware these devices have, plus all the hardware will function "Properly".
As to a desktop hackintosh, pretty much ANY intel board with an ALC88x sound chip, Realtek 8xxx NIC, and modern nvidia / ATI graphics card can be made to function perfectly.
My Current build is:
Gigabyte X58-UD3R, i7 @ 4.2ghz, 12GB ram, nvidia GTX 260.
Get a 100% functional mac out of that using stock kexts..Updatable straight from apple with little fuss (Gotta update or remove sleepenabler.kext before a OS version change is all)
Absolute easiest way to dual boot with a desktop is multiple hard drives and just use chameleons selection.To dual boot on this netbook you'll need to resize the partition then install whatever OS, THEN reload chameleon to get the boot loader back. In linux you can have it install the boot loader on the partition only, meaning it should be good to go with just the chameleon loader..
The only reason to do this sounds like the same reason people make case mods out of things that were never meant to house computer systems.
If you're looking for ease of use and don't want Windows then I'd say go with the Ubuntu Netbook version and call it a day. Otherwise if you're doing it just to show you can, nice job.
wait..it had xp on it and you weren't happy????
THanks for you post thekurrgan! So I take it that if you use a system with an AMD CPU and an ATI GPU, then you are screwed if you want to run OSX on it, or doesn't run very well or ...?
I think it would be better just to buy a macbook than going through these steps but if your a total geek. Go ahead and proceed. If you done this before you can probably make a few extra bucks providing your services.
I was actually thinking about trying OSX in a virtual machine. The best part of using a VM is that not much damage would happen should something go wrong...
Apple is probably going to sue Toms!
THanks for you post thekurrgan! So I take it that if you use a system with an AMD CPU and an ATI GPU, then you are screwed if you want to run OSX on it, or doesn't run very well or ...?
If the ATI GPU is of a certain generation you're screwed, AMD you'd need a modded kernel.. search voodoo kernel or hit up google for insanelymac -- They have great guides there. However in most modern AMD systems its the chipset thats the show stopper or at least severe bug maker.. Snow Leopard is design for the recent line of intel chipsets (Generally speaking, any they made on the LGA775 platform) and a specific line of Nvidia ones (9000 series) -- AMD now uses their own chipset, so this makes it challenging. As for the VM, I've had limited success myself, but have not really given it a good effort. VMWare workstation would probably be the best bet, as it supports OSX Server natively, but I'm not well versed on that product outside Vsphere / Fusion.
The Asus 1201n is a fully supported 12" Netbook, as well as its newer brother, the 1215n.
...or can just forget the hassle and use linux...that was hard.
Is this guide encouraging users to break Apple's licensing of it's Operating System? And why would anyone go to these lengths when you could just stick a USB key with Windows 7 on it into the netbook, have everything work first time and have little on going support issues? Nice experiment but for my girlfriends laptop I'd rather use a supported HW & OS combination, keeps the headaches to a minimum!
You can't use the 10.6.3 because it's kernel dropped support for intel atom's arch or something like that. I think it just didn't run on atom's anymore, because apple got fed up of people using it on something other than their hardware.
Look at the survey at mymacnetbook.com. A lot of users are using their iPads more and more and their hackintoshed netbooks less and less.
I have to agree.