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Hackintosh

What Does Hackintosh Mean?

Hackintosh is a type of computer in which a non-Macintosh or unsupported computer is converted to run a Mac OS.

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Hackintosh is a portmanteau of the terms hacking and Macintosh.

Techopedia Explains Hackintosh

The Hackintosh technique allows an x86 and/or x86-64 processor architecture to run operating systems from the Mac OS X family and is designed through jail breaking or modifying a Mac OS for compatibility on x86 processors. The Hackintosh technique was initiated when hackers amended pre-released Mac OS X versions by avoiding Apple’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which uses cryptography to secure sensitive information.

According to Apple, Hackintosh computers are illegal, per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In addition, creating a Hackintosh computer violates Apple’s end-user license agreement (EULA) for any operating system in the OS X family.

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