On June 6, 2005, Apple announced its plans to transition to Intel x86 processors at their Worldwide Developers Conference and made available a prototype Intel-based Mac to selected developers at a cost of $999 (equivalent to $1,320 in 2020). While the methods Apple uses to prevent macOS from being installed on non-Apple hardware are protected from commercial circumvention in the United States by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), specific changes to the law regarding the concept of jailbreaking have placed circumvention methods like these into a legal grey area. Notably, companies such as Psystar have attempted to release products using macOS on non-Apple machines, though many Hackintosh systems are designed solely by macOS enthusiasts of various hacking forums and communities.

The popularity is due to the introduction of the powerful AMD Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs.Īpple's software license for macOS only permits the software's use on computers that are 'Apple-branded.' However, because modern Macintosh computers use Intel-based hardware, there are few limitations keeping the software from running on other types of Intel-based PCs. In recent years, the use of AMD processors has become common in Hackintoshes, thanks to the website AMD OS X. Hackintosh laptops are sometimes referred to as 'Hackbooks'. macOS can also be run on several non-Apple virtualization platforms, although such systems are not usually described as Hackintoshes.

Benefits cited for 'Hackintoshing' can include cost (older, cheaper or commodity hardware), ease of repair and piecemeal upgrade, and freedom to use customized choices of components that are not available (or not available together) in the branded Apple products. Since 2005, Mac computers use the same x86-64 computer architecture as many other desktop PCs, laptops, notebooks and servers, meaning that in principle, the code making up macOS systems and software can be run on alternative platforms with minimal compatibility issues. 'Hackintoshing' began as a result of Apple's 2005 transition to Intel processors, away from PowerPC.

A Hackintosh (a portmanteau of ' Hack' and ' Macintosh') is a computer that runs Apple's Macintosh operating system macOS (formerly named 'Mac OS X' or 'OS X') on computer hardware not authorized for the purpose by Apple.

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