Re: Checking for hackintosh

[Andrew Merenbach]

On Jul 30, 2008, at 10:20 PM, Andrew Merenbach wrote:

On Jul 30, 2008, at 8:24 PM, Chris Suter wrote:

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 1:00 PM, Matt Burnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >wrote:

Then shouldn't you be able to determine if they are using a hackintosh by

the descriptions of support requests they are submitting?

Sure, if customers are willing to disclose that they're running on a
Hackintosh which isn't usually the case.

If not are you sure your code checks return values and is designed to fail

gracefully?

they are different (especially where disk utilities are concerned).


doing it.

-- Chris

Of course, but we don't support Hackintosh's so we don't test on them and I was just making the point that it would be useful to be able to detect whether you're running on a Hackintosh *if* there was a reliable way of

Cheers,
        Andrew

This thread, albeit only marginally-related to Cocoa, is an interesting one. One solution (not saying that it'd "work" for everyone) would be to abandon Hackintosh-*checking* code, but install a menu item to send a system profile to you, via an online PHP form or some such, along with a support request message. Thus one need not program in potentially-fragile code, but one does get to decide, per-support-request, whether a computer is legitimately a supported machine. On the other hand, it might be possible for a clever user to hack your program and to send bogus information to your web form. This would be Bad. But such a system might at least be a deterrent to "Hackintoshers."

Just a thought.

Cheers,
        Andrew

While it may be poor form to reply to myself, I realize now my need to clarify: this is a *menu item* that I am suggesting -- a voluntary option. They'd still have access to one's support e-mail address. It's simply that, if one has doubts, one can ask the customer, "Would you be able to actually send me a system profile? I made it easy for you with this menu item." And, lo and behold, your words come true -- they send you a system profile, you figure out whether they're using a Hackintosh or not. It's still completely voluntary on their part. But the functionality behind a "Support" menu item with an optional system profile attachment seems to me like an ingenious idea with which a third party might develop a framework. Just a thought.

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