From what you just read from the title, yes there is really a so-called Hackintosh laptop out there and no, we have no idea if or when Apple is going to swoop right in and shut that thing down (well, we actually could all bet Apple is already more than displeased). Actually called the HacBook Elite, and using a refurbished HP laptop, the specs surrounding this device are incredibly unbelievable (they basically mimic what you experience on OS X), and with a price-point so low, this is something you have yet to see Apple do with its own slew of high-end products.

The biggest catch here, and why we are all probably wasting our breath writing articles about this thing, is there’s no telling how quickly this barely-born item will be gone. Apple is not only one of the most renowned tech companies in the universe, yes I said universe, but is one to not happily respond to anyone attempting to replicate their famous hardware or software, and guess what? That’s exactly what an individual is trying to pull here.

The HacBook Elite is running a version of OS X without warrant from Apple, and it’s all thanks to a 21 year-old student from Stanford, Jack Kim, who is planning on selling these reconstructed HP models he preconfigured to run Apple’s latest operating system. Why build and sell these? It sounds criminal. Well, we’ve got the “why build them” part down. After Kim has continuously been pursuing the inkling of getting iOS on a non-Apple device to no avail, he says he finally got things going when he “made an Android app and was trying to port it over to iOS, and then realized there’s just no way to develop iOS apps when you’re running a PC”. Therefore, Kim pondered promoting the project by running Xcode on a PC, which in turn, you actually can’t do either. Wandering into the laptop environment was the next step, which somehow, after trial and error with his roommate, was how he ended up modifying his first HP EliteBook into a Hackintosh.

Because the EliteBooks are available for as little as $125 on Ebay, he highly encourages its use, and aims to pave the way for others to develop a HacBook if they wanted. Apparently, it should only take about 15 minutes of work for the customer. As Kim will complete the Wi-Fi chip installation, and other details, the rest is a list of instructions on how to finish the transformation.

What you get is a HP laptop that behaves almost identically to a 2013 MacBook (we do know one specification it won’t have is the more current Retina display Apple has branded). It should boot up within 15 seconds, and comes fully upgradable. Of course, if this sounds appealing to you (and why wouldn’t a MacBook copycat for nearly $1,000 cheaper be appealing, especially if you’re not going to get into trouble just for buying one?), you better hurry up and sign up through the website before the words “copyright” and “infringement” come raining down so hard it’ll be like the HacBook Elite never happened. It might just be happening as you’re reading this, who knows?