So when i was looking for details about Hackintosh, there were no good guides. There were guides, of course, but they just didn’t offer a simple way to see what to do. So the obvious list of what to do is:

1. Get a copy of Hackintosh. Only after you’ve bought a legal version of the Mac OS, of course.
2. Put Hackintosh disc in machine.
3. Install Hackintosh.
4. ???
5. Profit.

So let’s deal with the technicalities.

The main problem with Hackintosh is that Apple didn’t make OSX to run on different hardware and because of this, they haven’t added in much support for hardware due to the fact that they know exactly what hardware you should have. Therefore the OS has to be hacked in order to run on other hardware.

The second problem with Hackintosh is that Apple don’t want OSX running on different hardware, so they have added in checks to ensure you’re running on a Mac. This, once again, can be hacked around but it limits how you can install OSX on your PC. That is, you can’t just put the normal disc in.

Getting a hold of Hackintosh is pretty simple. It’s available on most torrent sites. Making sure you get a decent one is reasonably easy. Well known ones are “iAtkos” and “Kalyway”. Each one usually means that there is a different hacked version of the kernel or a modification in icons. They may also include certain drivers for certain hardware devices.

Burn this disc image and put it in the computer. Boot.

This is where the difficulties start. Your hardware might not work. The basic discs seem to have pretty good compatibility. But i would suggest an SSE3 compatible processor. Although some work for AMD, Intel processors are also recommended just to try and allow for maximum compatibility. As a general rule, if the the hardware you’re running is pretty general for example a Realtek network card, chances are there’s support for it. Although sometimes this may require an extra bit of configuring. 

If the computer starts to boot, but then doesn’t finish. Try hitting enter on boot up and entering -v. This turns verbose mode on and should enable you to see what might be causing the crash. 

Following the installation procedure of the disk. If it works, well done. You’ve got a Hackintosh.

However, chances are it didn’t work. So you’ll have to work out why. Usually this involves changing some settings, for example trying different drive formats, different partition maps. There is extra help here for hardware compatibility.

Eventually, if you’re lucky, you might be able to boot. Chances are that something won’t work. It could be your network card or sound card but chances are that something won’t work. Basically, if you look around on that forum and site. You would probably be able to find a nice little fix for your hardware. If you can’t find one there isn’t much you can do unless you know someone very very kind at Apple, or you’re a brilliant driver creator.

But once you’re satisfied with everything how it is. You can start to think about software. The majority of Macintosh software should run on your Hackintosh. You might have some hardware incompatibilities at some points but on the whole you’ll be fine.

One thing to be careful about are updates. Especially point releases, for example updating from 10.5.2 to 10.5.3. This can often result in a kernel upgrade and often your new kernel won’t work with your Hackintosh. Usually, a Hackintosh is released a day to a few hours later than the official one. The kalyway one was released hours after, for example. So you should be able to update from there. These can often be found on torrent sites as well.

Another thing to remember is that different Hackintosh distributions might not work with each other. For example, you might not be able to use a new Kalyway kernel with your iAtkos disk.

So i hope that helps with your Hackintosh wants. I’ve installed my Hackintosh a few times but it often just works. The only problem i have is that sometimes it doesn’t boot, but this is often fixed by a power off and power back on.