Mac OS X 10.4.4 "Tiger"
MSI Wind running Mac OS X
On January 10, 2006, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.4 with the first generation of Intel-based Macs, the iMac and the MacBook Pro. These machines used Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) platform firmware instead of the legacy BIOS found on most x86 motherboards. On February 14, 2006, an initial "hack" of Mac OS X v10.4.4 was released on the Internet by a programmer with the pseudonym crg92.[14] Within hours Apple released the 10.4.5 update,[15] which was patched again by the same author within two weeks.[16] On April 3, 2006 Apple released their 10.4.6 update[17] and again patches were released within two weeks that allowed users to install most of this update on non-Apple computers, although this did not include the updated kernel in 10.4.6. In June, the hackers released the 10.4.7 Mac OS X update for non-Apple computers using the 10.4.4 kernel.
Up to the release of the 10.4.8 update, all OSx86 patches used the 10.4.4 kernel with the rest of the operating system at version 10.4.8. However, the newer frameworks relied on the newer kernels and this led to users of 10.4.8 encountering many problems. Apple also started making more use of SSE3 instructions on their hardware making it even more difficult for users with CPUs supporting only SSE2 (such as olderPentium 4's) to get a fully compatible system running.
XNU kernel patch
Two programmers, working under the pseudonyms Mifki or Vitaliy and Semthex, released new kernels by starting with the open source XNU tree and applying patches necessary to run the kernel on non-Apple hardware. Mifki's goal was to release the kernel with as few patches as possible, able to run on close-to-Apple hardware. Semthex's goal was to make his kernel more compatible with legacy hardware with the omission of some crucial features.
Both kernels allowed most of the updated kernel extensions/frameworks to work, making properly configured PCs operate more like genuine Apple computers. While Mifki has only updated his kernel once, Semthex updates it regularly and added AMD, VMware and SSE2-support in later versions. Semthex released his hacked kernel source code on his webpage. On December 24, 2006 he also released the latest patches for the SSE3 kernel as a diff file for his original source tree as a Christmas present to the community. The SSE2 emulation that Semthex developed with Rufus was the first fully complete emulation of all SSE3 instructions to be presented to the OSx86 community. The previous SSE2 emulation was incomplete, only emulating 3 of the available SSE3 instructions, and very inefficient compared to the new emulator. The new emulator enabled even SSE2 OSx86 users to run SSE3 based applications such as iTunes 7 and most 3D programs.
In the early days of 10.4.8, an Intel-SSE3 only install DVD was released by JaS, which included Vitaliy's and Semthex's kernel. A few weeks later, a hacker calling himself tubgirlreleased an AMD-SSE3 install DVD. With Semthex's successful completion of the SSE2 Kernel, JaS released an SSE2-SSE3 universal DVD and announced his retirement from hackingMac OS X after seven successful DVD releases. However, on August 9, 2008, JaS released yet another distribution featuring both a client and server version of Mac OS 10.5.4.
Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard"
Mac OS X v10.5 installing on a Lenovolaptop computer.
As early as Mac OS X v10.5 build 9A466 the community has maintained a version of Leopard that can run on non-Apple hardware. A hacker by the handle of BrazilMac created one of the earliest patching processes which made it convenient for users to install Mac OS X onto 3rd party hardware by using a legally obtained, retail version of Apple Mac OS X. It was utilizing the BrazilMac patch that many effortless distros of Mac OSx86 came to fruition. Five of the most popular builds go by the name JaS, Kalyway, iATKOS, iPC and iDeneb - although more recently these builds are on the way out as the Boot-132 method (described below) gains popularity. However, all of these compilations rely on the work of kernel hackers made by Lorem (build 9A466), SynthetiX (builds 9A499, 9A527 and 9A559), ToH (builds 9A581, 9B13 and 9B18) and more recently a group calling themselves StageXNU (now called Voodoo) (Darwin 9.4.0). Their contributions trickled down into the various Mac OSx86 installers, readily available on the internet. There continue to be refined and updated builds released, not just to maintain compatibility with Apple releases but an ever increasing number of third party components. The OSx86 community has been quick to make the necessary modifications to enable Apple's latest releases to run on non-Apple hardware. Within hours of Leopard's release, an AMD/Intel SSE2/3 Kernel Patcher was created which removed the HPET requirement from an original untouched mach_kernel file, a core component of the Mac OS.
Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard"
When "Snow Leopard" was released, Russian hacker netkas created a version of Chameleon which can boot Mac OS X v10.6. The main problem was that many people were forced to modify DSDT or use kexts due to some specific issues. As soon as possible modbin and dmitrik have released test versions of kernel that allow to boot Snow Leopard on AMD machines. Stable XNU kernels for v10.6 were released by Qoopz and Pcj. There are some popular builds based on Retail by the name Universal (Intel only), Hazard, and iAtkos. Since v10.6.2 Nawcom, Qoopz, and Andy Vandijck have been working on Legacy kernel for unsupported CPUs.
Mac OS X v10.7 "Lion"
When Apple had released the Developer Preview 1, Russian Hackintosh developer usr-sse2 was the first who created a method to install Lion. The method consists in deploying Mac OS X v10.7 image on a flash drive, and booting from it through XPC UEFI Bootloader (See DUET below). After some changes were made to the Chameleon source code, booting of Lion was possible with an updated version of Chameleon. First distribution based on a new version of OS is iAtkos L1 (Intel only).
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