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.

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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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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