Today marks the 3 month anniversary of me installing Mac OS on my custom built i7 machine and using it as my primary computer. 3 months with no problems whatsoever.  Well, that’s not true, there are a few niggling things on the list, but they’re pretty minor overall.

1) I’ve got to type “Graphics Mode”=”2560x1600x32@60Hz” in the bootloader or else the desktop never shows up. Apparently there is a way to put this in some config file so that it happens automatically, but I’ve tried everything I can find written up online to no avail.  If any geniuses out there have any ideas, let me know. This is not the norm on hackintosh, just a quirk of my own configuration.

2) I really miss being able to hot-swap SATA drives. I’ve got one of those slot load drive bays on the front of the computer which is great to pop in some old drive to find something in cold storage, but MacOS doesn’t know what to do and the drive never mounts.  Really frustrating and silly.  Come on Apple, get with the future.

3) I’m a little concerned with Apples “Lion will only be available through the online Mac App Store app” stance. There’s got to be a way to put the image on a disk, how else would you reinstall the OS if you have a hard drive failure? I’m sure my fellow compatriots will come up with ways around anything, but I hope it doesn’t slow down it’s ‘time to my SSD’

4) Every 10th time or so, the apple keyboard I’m using doesn’t get found on boot and I’ve got to restart. Not sure if this is an apple keyboard thing, or an Asus Bios thing, or most likely the USB extension cable I have to use because the one on the Apple Keyboard is about 6 inches long.

Those few things aside though, I’m really loving it.  Mac OS is so much better on a really fast machine. And once you get some keyboard commands down.  If I had to buy a computer right now, I’d probably build a nice Sandy Bridge Hackintosh.  Though I might wait for the high-end 6 slot motherboards to come out, so I can use more than 16GB of RAM (4x4GB Dimms, I know 8GB dimms exist, but they’re crazy expensive right now)  I upgraded to 24GB last month and I don’t really want to go backward. That said, I have no problems with the performance of my computer. It’s crazy fast.  So if you’re technically savvy and want to have some fun, I suggest giving the Hackintosh route a shot.

Here’s a link to my previous Hackintosh buyers guide.