Apple first announced its computers would switch to Intel-based processors in 2005. After 10 years on the PowerPC architecture, which never took hold in the mainstream personal PC market, Macs were coming over to the more common x86 architecture, and the immediate question was obvious. Can the Mac operating system be tricked into running on non-Apple hardware? The answer was a definite yes, and solutions soon emerged, but in those early days it was very hard to get them working, with a lot of crashes and limited support for hardware.
Now, things are considerably easier. Lots of sites offer free software and boot loaders to help you to install OS X, plus compatible drivers and detailed instructions by developers who are often online on forums to answer your questions… It is possible to build an equivalent to or even better than Mac in terms of performance for a fraction of the price from pc parts, however experience with hardware is a must. The Hackintosh community has come a long way in the last 7-8 years and the tools and methods available make is easy for most people to build one. As long as you buy compatible parts, have patience and can put them together yourself, you can have a very stable Hackintosh, but as I said, its mostly for hobbyists or those driven to have a mac at low cost.
Macintosh computers can only be classified as such if they have official Apple branding on them and run on Apple approved hardware configurations. Just because you are able to port OS X to run other processors and hardware configurations does not make your computer a Mac; you may run the Mac operating system, but it’s not a Mac since it’s not Apple branded. Also, Os X EULA states that you can run Os X on Apple labeled hardware only.
Mackintosh
– desing
– style
– high price
– Manufacturer Warranty
Hackintosh
– 3-4 x cheeper than same performance mac
– SSD as system drive (it’s real expensive in real macs)
– More HDD drives
– better RAM, and more RAM, even better Mother board, CPU…
The choice is yours, but be careful when choosing your hardware, and always back up your data first:)