I saw someone over at DailyTech ask a question about building a Mac and watched him take machine gun-like shots over and over from PC and Mac fanboys for asking a stupid question. You know it’s bad when you have both sides of the computer world bashing you. Of course you can’t build your own Mac.
But, Why not?
Since Apple’s conversion to Intel’s Core 2 system architecture, there have been people all over the world asking questions like “Can we run Windows on a Mac?” and other similar questions. The answers to these questions are becoming yes – no matter how hard Apple tries to control what you can do on their hardware.
Recently, there was a huge debate about a Mac Clone device that could run OS X and was not Apple-certified. I saw two distinct reactions from the community:
1. Because it is cheaper, it won’t work as well.
2. Finally! A cheap way to try OS X!
I have also been reading business reports showing that Apple is going to have to do some things to maintain its market after dominating the MP3 player arena. Analysts say Apple needs to do something to keep revenue coming in.
There is a simple solution that will earn Apple money, give DIY users – like many that read our website – full control over their systems, and still gives Apple control over the market itself.
Build Your Own Mac
Let’s say Apple licenses its architecture to a few hardware manufacturers. Let’s use Samsung, Corsair, Asus, Intel, Seagate, and Lite-on to develop individual hardware components which meet certain specifications, yet can be purchased individually. We can have Apple-certified hard drives, motherboards, processors, RAM, and optical drives. Then, distribute these parts through etailers like Newegg and allow them for sale to a wide audience of DIY customers at a reasonable price. The customer who wants to venture into this can get what they want – a computer that will run OS X, with the satisfaction of building it themselves and at a decent price. Apple earns revenue for sitting back and watching the market make their products more popular.
One of the prohibitive things that keeps me from buying an Apple computer is simply cost. I can’t afford to spend twice as much money on a computer that has the same functionality of a PC. Apple makes nice computers. No doubt there. But I won’t be buying one for a long time (if ever) because of the way PCs handle the market. If I can build a PC and have ownership of what I put in there, I will do it any day over purchasing a pre-built Mac. Especially when considering the price.
So, why would it hurt for Apple to allow its user’s to build their own Macs? It makes perfect sense to me that they should embrace the huge market and interest that would be generated by this business model. Hell, it might even drop the price of an Apple-built computer down to a more reasonable level by increasing Apple’s revenue elsewhere?
In closing, Apple should open up its computer hardware distribution to allow its user’s to build computers that meet their specific needs. There is a huge market that would be interested, and it might even knock down the PC market share a bit.
Would you build a Mac if you could?
Tyler Thompson A native of Derby, Kansas, Tyler is the man who brings you our weekly newsletter. He is currently interested in programming, hardware and networking systems, and technology integration.
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The low cost of 3rd party products compatible with MAC hardware are a result of the open-PC hardware standards Apple has begrudgingly had to adopt to continue to scale and profit. The artificial chaining together of OS and hardware allows Apple to say how great their products are compared to XYZ budget PC. Apple wants to retain the benefits of a locked/controlled hardware environment while enjoying the economies of scale and standards that grew out of the Wintel marketplace.
Hopefully Linux/Google/web apps or virtualization will make the OS part of the equation no longer an issue in another couple of years. Stylish MAC hardware will then compete with the likes everything else.
Hitch…
You’re an idiot. Seriously. We are talking about server/workstation grade hardware. You can’t run a xeon with anything but FBDIMM so your PC8500 won’t work. Oh, and you picked the wrong Xeon CPU’s (the 3.18 is FSB 1333, the Mac Pro is using newer FSB 1600). Oh, and you forgot the motherboard. The motherboard is $500 by it self. Welcome to the world of expensive hardware.
Here is a _real_ comparison of a home built Mac Pro, and an actual Mac Pro:
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1032469135&postcount=16
Notice the difference, ~ $250 (the cost of the extra 2g of ram in the home built;)
Apple is hardware vendor. Like all hardware vendors, including Dell, HP, Gateway, Sun, EMC, etc they screw their customers on upgrades. No one complains when these other companies do it, why do they bitch so much about Apple?
Oh, and before anyone calls me an “apple fanboy” or some such… I’m running Leopard on my OC’d Q6600, not a Mac.
If you want to do it yourself, you deserve to be stuck with windows.
Kevin,
Before you spout off about who is being an idiot, check yourself. 4 gigs of FBDIMM ram STILL only costs about 200 bucks, and the CPU difference in price is negligible at best. Even though I did forget the motherboard, 500 dollars is selective. I found Intel boards down to $300, if we wanna talk specifics.
I’m not talking about Dell or HP…everyone knows OEM vendors rip you off. However, Apple does it more than others. The price of SSDs in their machines already cost 300 dollars more than Dell’s does! I’m talking about BUILDING YOUR OWN (hence, DIY) computer. The parts CAN be had for cheaper.
No, actually they can’t be had cheaper. I proved that with my list of all the parts to build the machine. Can POS hardware be found cheaper? Sure, of course it can, but you get what you pay for.
Do you want PCI-e 2.0? Do you want a FSB of 800 mhtz? Do you want more than one x16 PCI-e slot? Ok, so find me a board with all of those (all of which the apple board has) for under $500.
For that matter, give me a FULL list of your parts which will be as powerful as the spec’ed out Apple and is significantly cheaper.
Kevin
It is entirely possible–and quite easy at that–to build your own mac these days (though note, it is illegal due to a violation of Apple’s license). There are several hacked editions of OS X that allow them to be installed on a non-Apple computer. While drivers are limited, it works as long as you have the right hardware. Some of them even support AMD processors.
I can get a board for that with all the extras and built to oc if you pleas for under three hundred with sli.
Hech my regular pc is a gigabyte socket 775 and is rated at 4.5 with win but when it comes to overclocking without having to do oyher than air-even in a 90 degree day without ac is incredable at 4.08 gigahertz.
only the aftermarket boards will give what is needed. socket 1333 with an soon to be released i7 will cost about he same but is so much faster and very solid.
oh by the way with windows 7 is fantastic, no crash or need to restart for 9 months now and with it at release canidate is the most solid windows ever!!!!!!!
add the i7 and see ya.
ok you know what hey. I agree completely with the author. I am running an Ipc. Intel core 2 quad with 4 gigs of ram etc ASUS mother board. Sure it was a bit of a hack to get it running, but well worth it. I am strongly considdering buying a mac, but you know what its just not worth the cash layout. You guys think you have it bad try buy one in south africa. $2297 for an entry level Imac. you could pay almost that for the I7. Any way point is I have a entry level 8 series nvidia card runs two monitors dead normal box, and I have to admit its magic. I work with adobe photoshop flash dreamweaver flex builder and can have them all running at the same time while running Bind Tomcat mysql virtualbox with xp and a dedicated gig of ram to run visual studio all at once without my pc failing. So Kevin please stop talking crap.