Turn Your PC Into a Mac… With a Dongle?

When Apple first announced that Intel processors would be used in their machines going forward, it became obvious to many that hacking OS X to run on your PC would have to be made much easier. Although projects existed before that announcement to run OS X on your non-Apple machine, the result was lackluster in all regards. But, things changed when moving over to the x86 scheme of things, that’s for sure.

I didn’t realize things have gotten this easy, though. Over at Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan gave a new ‘dongle’ a go, of all things, which allows a user to install OS X on their PC with absolutely no hassle. Well, there might be some hassle, but it’s minor, and the biggest caveat is that you need to use supported hardware, which at this point in time, is a small list.

It’s noted that the OS installed just fine, though, and even the updating system works like a dream. Unlike a ‘Hackintosh’, this dongle tricks the system into thinking it’s a legitimate Apple machine, so the updating process is no issue. Whether or not Apple has the ability to patch their updater for this specific type of hack is yet to be seen, but you can be sure they are investigating. Oh, and if there is another downside, it might be that the dongle will set you back a cool $150.

Okay, there was a slight hitch. My video card, an Nvidia 8800GT, isn’t supported by the firmware EFiX ships with. EFiX already has the update on the site, but its updater is only coded for 32-bit Windows. If, like me, you run Vista 64-bit, you will have to install Vista 32-bit on the drive you intend to put Leopard on, just to update the stupid firmware.