Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Other OSes on the Mac Running OS X on a Windows machine

A friend of mine told me his college-aged kid got Mac OS X to run on his Windows laptop. Is this still considered a "hack" or has that become authorized? Just curious. Thanks.

FWIW, just like jailbreaking an iPhone, running Mac OS X on generic PC hardware is considered a hack, and not authorized by Apple. Any potential legal consequences depend on the country you’re in, but so far Apple has not gone full tilt after transgressors other than by regularly updating the various OSes and with it affecting various hardware compatibilities.

Just to reinforce what Alternaut said according to paragraph 2 of the Mac OS X Software License Agreement So installing OS X on a PC is a violation of the Apple License Agreement.

I couldn't resist taking a look at the "iSnow Portable" project. OS X 10.6.2 on a usb flash drive, bootable on most PCs. Works surprisingly well. I suppose if you install it using a macintosh, (which you do) and then take the flash drive to a pc and boot it, you're not violating at least one of the usual silly licensing agreements, eh? It says you can't install it on a non apple brand computer, but doesn't say anything about running it. Everyone knows if you take a live CD or a flash drive with firefox to another computer, you're not installing anything.

I personally just use it to demo to PC users what Mac OS X looks like. Heck, the way I see it, I'm drumming up Apple some business.