On Tuesday, Apple refreshed several of its Macintosh products, including the iMac, the Mac mini, and the Mac Pro. The refresh brought a little life back to the aging Mac mini line and a nice power boost to the Mac Pro, but it also highlighted again the pricing gap between Apple goods and similarly configured third party offerings. Are Apple products overpriced? It depends whether you're thinking in real dollars or Apple dollars.

The mini's base configuration is about $110 more expensive than a best-comparison Dell Studio hybrid, but the mini has a superior integrated GPU and uses DDR3-1067 instead of DDR2-667. Apple has an excellent track record of delivering quality components and avoiding systems that might compromise its standards. But that doesn't mean that consumers wouldn't welcome solutions that did.

A Hackintosh is a system that runs Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. The entire Hackintosh phenomenon is built on the desire to use Apple's superb operating systems on less exacting and more budget-friendly hardware. For a retail Leopard DVD ($129) plus the cost of a computer, hobbyists are creating robust and varied Hackintosh installations that highlight the consumer gap in Apple's retail line.

Popular Hackintosh installations include towers, laptops, and netbooks. The Mac Pro tower retails from upwards of $2,499. Hackintosh towers generally cost under $1,000, often far less. While these towers cannot match the power of the Pro, they offer users a tower configuration that is completely missing from Apple's lower-end offerings. With the iMac and the mini as the only options, Apple's consumer lineup lacks a low-priced tower entry.

It's clear that consumer towers don't fall into the Apple mindset. Towers target power users who prefer to configure their systems throughout the unit's life. With a tower, users can add memory, ports, and hard drives as needed.

Apple consumer products, as a rule, provide solutions, not configurability. From iPods to iMacs, Apple has built a market for end-users who want to buy a working product and get the job done rather than messing with how that product is put together.

Apple's laptops offer a standard of excellence, but it's a standard that comes at a high price. With Windows laptops regularly retailing below the $1,000 price-point, Apple's offerings are notable for prices that just get started at $1,000.

Getting Mac OS X where it's not supposed to go

Hackintoshed laptops let users place Mac OS X onto good-quality hardware, often at a price point that hovers closer to $500 than $1,000. In the case of netbooks, recent sales of the Dell Mini 9 and the MSI Wind have placed OS X onto units that retail for under $300. This enormous price gap, amounting to a 75% price break in some cases, makes the Hackintosh laptop or netbook extra-appealing for anyone who wants to travel without giving up the convenience and friendliness of a Mac OS X-based computer.

Yes, there are compromises to take into account. In situations where Mac OS X and the system's non-Apple-standard hardware don't line up to the letter, unit functionality may be reduced. Hackintosh systems may not be 100% hardware compatible.

The Dell Mini 9, notable for its Hackintosh-friendly configuration, will not hibernate properly in its standard distribution. For a unit that might cost just $250 shipped, that's a compromise that many users are willing to live with.�

Apple's stance on the Hackintosh phenomenon is clear: don't do it. Mac OS X end user licensing agreement (EULA) prohibits installation on any platform that is not Apple-labeled. Its ongoing lawsuit against Hackintosh supplier Psystar emphasizes that stance. Psystar initially offered a consumer tower for just $399, $200 less than the non-configurable Mac mini and over $2,000 less than the lowest-end Pro tower. Its current "Open with Mac OS X" system sells for $554.99, including a Leopard license.

And yet each of these systems, including the $550 consumer tower, the $250 netbook, and the $400 bargain laptop has no equivalent in the Apple line. During Apple's first quarter 2009 earnings call, Apple acknowledged that it is watching the sub-$500 market, but said it had no plans to enter that arena.

"Our view is that the products in there are products that are much less powerful than what customers want," Apple stated over and over. "We don't think people are gonna be pleased with those types of products. We've watched; we've got some ideas. But some of those products are inferior and don't provide the kind of experience users are happy with."

With Apple declining to pursue that market segment and with a large and dedicated hobbyist community who feels that legally purchasing the Leopard license holds more moral sway than a EULA, Hackintoshing seems to have emerged from this refresh with an undiminished goal to offer Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.�

The core fact remains: Mac OS X means more than the hardware it runs on. In terms of total system value, Mac OS X running on a non-Apple platform remains the solution many users are looking for. Nothing that Apple released this week contradicts that fact.