Yeah, but is it a real Mac?

chewed-appleI built my first Hackintosh a little over a year ago, and I recently upgraded it to the latest operating system for Apple, but it’s always been bothering me whether it was a real Mac. It is certainly speedy as far as surfing the internet, and it works excellently as a Plex media server in conjunction with my Roku players, but does the Hackintosh hold it’s own as far as a graphic design machine?

Like a lot of artists, I got involved with Apple computers back in the ’80s and Macintosh computers in the ’90s with some detours into Commodore computers and Windows/DOS PC computers along the way. God help me, I may have sunk some serious cash into Amiga computers if their marketing department had ever responded to the Business Reply Card query I had dutifully sent to them.

Anyway…

If you wanted to get involved in desktop publishing, you had to get a Mac. Nobody else was buying Macs during those dark times before Steve Jobs returned to the company he founded. Graphic designers were the only suckers customers they had. They had me on their hook as did Adobe and QuarkXpress.
Ubuntu on a Presumed Dead HP Pavilion ZD8000

Recently I was experimenting with installing Linux on discarded or trash-picked PCs, and I’ve found that to be a very satisfying operating system as far as web browsing or playing music, and it has a wide selection of desktop publishing software some of which are very nice, but they feel like the generic product next to the real thing. If I took the time and threw myself at learning curves of various steepness, I’m sure I could complete a comic strip or produce a file for professional printing, but who has the time?

So now I’m back to Mac with my burning Hackintosh obsession, but is it a real Mac? Can I do graphic design on one? Can it be counted on? How could I tell?

cs-splashAdobe’s line of graphic design software has always been obnoxiously expensive, and their current subscription service is nothing short of insulting, but they have Photoshop, and I love Photoshop! I know it’s wrong, but I do. Running Photoshop on the Hack Mini would certainly give my machine the test I was looking for.

Screen-Shot-2014-05-12-at-8.15.33-PMAs it turns out, there is a deal of sorts. For $50 a month, you can use everything that Adobe sells, but I’m not interested in that. For $10, you get to use what they call the Photographer’s Bundle which includes Photoshop and Lightroom. That doesn’t sound too bad, but I’m going cheaper still. For a month, I’m trying out Photoshop for free. If I can’t let it go after that, they may get the 10 clams a month out of me.

…and how is it on the Hackintosh? I’ll let you know! Stay tuned!

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