I bought a fifth of 190 proof everclear and 12 non-organic lemons. I washed and “zested” the lemons (scraped off the outermost lemony yellow layer of the skin, excluding the white pith underneath) and put the zest in a large jar with the everclear. I made lemonade with the rest of the lemons, and judging by how well that tasted I think this will be a good batch. The ingredients have now been steeping for a few weeks, and the lemon zest is almost completely white while the everclear has taken on a bright yellow hue.

Day 18: trucker bomb

In about a week I’ll add some sugary water to the mix and let it steep for another month. Finally I’ll filter and discard all the zest and particulate matter in there and put the liquid back into serving bottles. If all goes well I should have 2 fifths of sweet, ice cold, extra strong limoncello in time for the 4th of July.

I’ll get back to you on how it tastes.

Here’s my updated list of parts:

• Intel Core i7-950 Quad-Core Processor BX80601950
• GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R Intel Motherboard
• OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1600LV6GK
• Western Digital WD6401AALS 640GB HDD for Mac OS X
• Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160GB HDD for Windows 7
• Antec Nine Hundred Computer Case
• XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 Video Card
• CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W Power Supply
• IDE DVD Burner  from an old Lacie external firewire optical enclosure

I’m hoping that the upgraded motherboard and power supply will allow better upgrades in the future. Ordered the parts from Newegg, the total cost was $1037.93 after shipping and rebates. Still way cheaper than a Mac Pro.

Looks cooler too.

Four days later…

I received two boxes from Newegg, one containing the case and the other all of the components. Assembly was tricky and required a lot of consulting manuals and my roommate who has done this before. The biggest problem was cable management. There are a lot of cables that come out of the power supply and they all need to go somewhere, even the two or three strands that I left totally unused. I managed to cram them all in, but if I get more hard drives in the future it might become an issue. When I do this again in the future I will buy a modular power supply to cut down on clutter.

It took a little over four hours between unboxing and first boot. To install OSX I used iBoot + Multibeast by tonymacx86 and MacMan. The specific options I installed were the ones recommended on this forum post. Additionally I had to download Lnx2Mac’s Ethernet Driver to get the internet working. I was stumped because for a while the ethernet port wouldn’t respond at all. To fix it I had to turn the power supply off, unplug it, and clear the motherboard CMOS (whatever that means).

When I finally got everything up and running, I did a quick test with a funny old monitor to determine whether OSX would recognize a second monitor. In fact it does, so I ordered an ASUS VW246H to match my current monitor.

Two monitors with zero Apple hardware. Mission accomplished.

Snow Leopard was a bit quirky when I first got it running. There were a lot of random hangs and crashes. I used multibeast to tweak the exact drivers I had installed until things got more stable. Time machine is working fine so I feel comfortable doing most of my work and personal functions on this one. I’ve already migrated my whole web development workflow over to this one. If you’re a Mac developer, here’s an article on how to migrate your Coda sites and settings between computers.

Of course, I installed Windows 7 on the other hard drive, which means that this computer is both a great productivity machine and a GREAT gaming machine. I’ve tested Left 4 Dead 2 and Starcraft 2 at full resolution on extreme graphics settings with no video lag. I need to find a really graphically taxing game to push it to the limit. One caveat: apparently Windows can’t read Mac-formatted HFS+ volumes without special software, most of which costs money. I am still looking for a good solution to share data freely between the systems.

As an afterthought I ordered a Blu-ray drive which will allow me to watch and rip blurays in Windows. One of my biggest irks with Apple is that they won’t release a bluray codec for mac or include the drives on computers. It seems like the reason for this is purely competitive, they want us to purchase all of our HD movies through iTunes. With this drive I will only be able to watch the movies in Windows for now, but it’s only a matter of time until someone releases Blu-ray player software (legitimate or not) for OS X. Hopefully it will still be able to read regular DVDs on the Mac side. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Not good enough.

I want a computer with first class graphics and processing power, multiple (identical) displays for productivity, and room for extra internal hard drives. And I need it to run Mac OS X, which is only licensed to run on Apple hardware. Apple only offers one computer with all of these features, the Mac Pro, base configuration $2500. To factory configure it with all of the upgrades I’m looking into, it would cost something like $4000. Outrageous!

I’m done supporting Apple’s Mac hardware monopoly. I’m going to build a highly funky, ultra cool, righteous hackintosh macintosh using competitively priced hardware and community hacking software, and I will do it for under a thousand dollars. Being a lifetime mac user, I’ve never built a computer from parts before, but I have several friends who have done it, and they say the best place to shop for parts is newegg.com. After about 6 hours of research, planning, and second guessing myself, I’ve come up with the following list of components:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 870 (2.93GHz quad-core)
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3
• Case & Power: Antec 900 Mid ATX & Antec NEO ECO 620W
• Video: XFX Radeon HD 5770
• Storage: 2 x Western Digital 640GB in RAID1
• Memory: 8GB (2 x WINTEC 2 x 2GB)

Put all of those together and you have a functioning computer. Total cost: $940.02 after shipping and rebates, less than one quarter the price of my dream mac. However, that price doesn’t include the blood, sweat and tears it will take to assemble the beast, plus any extra components I’ll have to pick up from radio shack to get it all done. Various video tutorials recommend drilling holes and channels in the computer case just to keep the cables inside from getting too out of hand. Also, these computers are magnets for dust, meaning I will have to keep my office room extremely clean and even then I’ll have to clean the thing out every few months.

This planning exercise has reminded me why people get Macs in the first place: they just work. They’re easier to use, prettier to look at, and have zero compatibility issues because they’re Apple software running on Apple hardware. A computer built from parts is the opposite of that, and getting Mac OS X to run on it will be its own challenge. Even if the cheapest Mac in the world is one you build for yourself, most Mac users will be happy to pay a premium for the real deal.

Maybe that’s why Apple sued Psystar into oblivion but hasn’t taken legal action against hackintosh information sites. Apple claimed that they were infringing on their copyright for Mac OS X, but the real “product” that Psystar stole from Apple was the simplicity of purchasing a computer that runs OS X right out of the box. Since Steve Jobs ended the licensed clone era almost a decade ago, Apple has been making most of their money selling stylish, overpriced hardware. They can’t have people undercutting their business model with $400 iMac clones.

Anyway, I digress. I’ll be ordering the parts for this project very soon. To be continued…