Theoretically speaking (of course) – is there anyone in Taiwan who makes and sells such a system? Say, based on an eee?
You might be able to find an enthusiast to get more put together for you. I actually inquired about this a few months ago. Try looking on ruten.com.tw for a used MSI Wind U100 or U120, Dell Mini 10" (it has to be a gray-market US import, not a locally assembled one. The locally assembled one is the Dell MIni 1011 and has an incompatible graphics card), EeePC 1000H or 1000HE (1000HE is easier for 10.6 Snow Leopard, and 1000H is easier for 10.5 Leopard).
Some do put their already done OSX86 machines on ruten.com.tw so if you look hard enough you will find them.
Is this even worth it unless you already have a machine that you want to dual purpose?
First, unless the hardware is really close, like say a Dell Studio XPS 13, which is basically a MacBook Pro 13, you’re going to need to fiddle with it a lot, avoid upgrades, etc.
Secondly, it will run, but well on an Atom eeePC? Furthermore, the latests builds don’t support Atom.
Third any iPhone OS apps written this way are not going to submit easily or at all. What other apps are Mac specific that don’t have a PC equivalent?
Fourth, Windows 7 is pretty damn good.
Last, a brand new white MacBook 13 is what, 999usd? And the previous generation MacBooks are less still on the secondary market.
Atom isn’t officially supported any more, but there’s a really easy guide here tonymacx86.blogspot.com/
Notebooks/netbooks aren’t recommended in general as some things are pretty much guaranteed not to work.
Also note…I donno the rules here but to run OSX86 you basically have to pirate OSX.
No you don’t, with the method I linked to you use a retail OS X DVD, so Apple get their license money.
Installing it is still a DMCA violation. It circumvents the copyright protection apple put on the disk to allow it only to run on Apple machines. From their point of view, they are a hardware company and price their software with the idea you own one of their machines already. It hurts their business model. Nobody would buy apple machines if you could get OSX running well on cheaper platforms.
The reason “my friend” 
would be interested in a Hackintosh would be portability. “He” travels a lot and packs ultralight, so a MacBook is way too much size and weight for that model. “He” is considering an iPad with keyboard or buying a second iPod and jailbreaking it for use with a folding portable keyboard. But if “he” went netbook Hackintosh, “he” would want to buy one from someone all made up – so maybe that’s not a good idea for “him”?
This “friend” of yours, did she cough I mean “he” eventually decide against the iPad?
That’s a load of cockabull, there’s no copyright protection on the disc, so that argument doesn’t stick. And the DMCA doesn’t apply outside of the US of A, so that doesn’t stick either.
Apple use what is known as an EFI which is sort of like the BIOS on a PC, but PC’s are set to get EFI support as well sometime in the future. What has been done is that some clever people have created an EFI version for PC that makes OS X believe that your PC is Mac and allows you to install OS X on it. This has yet to be proven to be breaking any laws, as it’s not a reverse engineering of Apple’s EFI.
I have OS X running 100% stable with 100% support for my hardware on my PC. Now I don’t use it, as I don’t find it all that useful, but it’s possible to get it working perfectly on a PC if you have the right hardware.
As for the OP, OS X runs like a slouch on netbooks, so it’s not really recommended, but it doesn’t work. It also requires a few workarounds and you wouldn’t be able to automatically install updates of the OS. There are some notebooks that have been known to work well, but you need to find one with the correct graphics card or you’re SOL.
I was under the assumption that there is court precedent ruling in the favor of Apple. They had a case against a clone manufacturer and the special EFI was mentioned in the ruling.
No, that was against Psystar, the problem isn’t about the EFI, it was a matter of the company selling non Apple made systems with OS X pre-installed. There are no laws against you installing it yourself using open source software that is readily available on the internet. None of the open source sites have so far had any complaints from Apple.
Last time I talked to ahem him 
, no decision had been made, but the iPad was a real contender for weight and usability…also cost. There really isn’t any hurry as he does not plan to be traveling abroad until October at the earliest. He is just intrigued by the Hackintosh idea but cost-wise it would probably be smarter and less nervous wear-and-tear to just get an iPad. After all, he is hoping not to be doing all that much work while he is abroad.
fwiw, everyone i know who has gotten an ipad (all of whom are heavy heavy laptop users) reports practically stopping use of their laptops at home since. they all say the soft keyboard is almost faster than a hard-keyboard because like an iPhone, once you get comfortable ham-fisting the input and just letting the auto-correct figure it out for you, you can get really really fast.
Thanks for that mabagal, because the ipad has been out for what, a week or less already in limited numbers so its clear that this feedback would be representative. :roflmao:
Last time I talked to ahem him , no decision had been made, but the iPad was a real contender for weight and usability…also cost. There really isn’t any hurry as he does not plan to be traveling abroad until October at the earliest. He is just intrigued by the Hackintosh idea but cost-wise it would probably be smarter and less nervous wear-and-tear to just get an iPad. After all, he is hoping not to be doing all that much work while he is abroad.[/quote]
I wouldn’t rely on a hackintosh for real, irrecoverable work if I were you. A lot of things you expect to work don’t work all the time, and a software update can potentially shut it down and render your hack useless, especially if you don’t have the means to recover files stored on a HFS+ OSX drive.
Does your local Apple web store sell refurbished Macs? If you want to save some money you can definitely try there.
a week is way more than enough to make a hypothesis on where this is going, that’s practically forever worth of data these days. but that said, this def is not representative and also biased due to opinions coming from early adopters. my stateside friends are heavily from b-school and engineering undergrad, tech-savvy and like to separate home from work. they are also disproportionately in boston/nyc/bay-area based start-up companies or bay-area or seattle bigtech. i trust their opinion and will make both consumption and business decisions based on their input. i have seen the same “i stopped bringing my laptop home” bit repeated at least a dozen times, and this is enough for me to make my opinion on which way this is going. i’m just sharing that opinion…
Another note for travellers, 5 reports from personal friends if sample size matters, also Kayak actively dispersing this info: In states at least, iPad (and Kindle) can stay in bag through security checkpoint, unlike laptop or netbook as we have all experienced. Will report on experience intl in a few weeks.
This wouldn’t help me because I always have 3 laptops when I travel over long periods of time 
Last time I talked to ahem him , no decision had been made, but the iPad was a real contender for weight and usability…also cost. There really isn’t any hurry as he does not plan to be traveling abroad until October at the earliest. He is just intrigued by the Hackintosh idea but cost-wise it would probably be smarter and less nervous wear-and-tear to just get an iPad. After all, he is hoping not to be doing all that much work while he is abroad.[/quote]
I wouldn’t rely on a hackintosh for real, irrecoverable work if I were you. A lot of things you expect to work don’t work all the time, and a software update can potentially shut it down and render your hack useless, especially if you don’t have the means to recover files stored on a HFS+ OSX drive.
Does your local Apple web store sell refurbished Macs? If you want to save some money you can definitely try there.[/quote]
Sure, or “he” could try EBay – but the issue is size and weight, not price. (Although “he’s” fairly cheap, come to that. 
)