The YZA

I use a Mac at my day job. It had been years since I’d used a Mac every day — my father bought my Apple sales pitch when I was in the fourth grade and we bought an Apple IIGS (“Graphics & Sound”) for something like US$4000 (and that’s in 1989 dollars, which is US$6860.57 in 2008 dollars according to the inflation calculator). The machine had no hard drive, and at the software store there was exactly one wall of Apple software, as compared with over a dozen walls of PC software (lots of walls at this software store, like a maze).

After a couple years of school reports and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, I realized that PCs were where it was it — lots of software, cheap, lots of hardware options, and most importantly for 13 year old me (and probably for 26 year old me, too): tons and tons of computer games were made for PCs. So we ditched the Apple and bought a Gateway and thereafter I became a PC guy. I admire my old friend Martin Stabe who tricked out his Apple IIGS and used it through high school (till 1997! Maybe even beyond!). Maybe if my parents hadn’t caved in to every consumer whim I had as a child, I’d be better with my money.

Anyway, here I am, using a Mac every day, and realizing that Windows XP sucks to use after using OS X Leopard, and that for software (including games) that needs to run on a Windows machine, I can use Virtualization software like VMWare Fusion or Parallels or the free VirtualBox. So I wanted a Mac machine, but I wasn’t about to spend buckets of dough on an overpriced Apple computer. I decided that I was going to attempt to install OS X on PC hardware, something people have been doing for a few years ever since Apple started shipping Macs with Intel chips (the same chips that PCs use).

So I went to the Insanely Mac forums and read for a while and at first found it really confusing, inundated by too much information, or missing information, or misinformation. The site is entirely dedicated to people hacking OS X to get it to run perfectly on regular, Newegg bought PC hardware. Eventually, I decided what hardware to buy — the motherboard and video card are probably the most difficult choices to make, as your compatibility with OS X will depend heavily on those two pieces of hardware. I bought the stuff, put it all together, and less than two weeks later, after dozens of installs and re-installs, I have the machine almost fully operational. I’ll share details soon.