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Building a Hackintosh Pro

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Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#81

Post by snom380 »

CPLX wrote: post #49
jrnichols wrote: post #2

I'm in the same boat this author is. It's disappointing to see the desktop market lagging so far behind. For all of the 68k/PPC years, we could at least say "different architecture" and Intel hadn't caught up. Now we're all Intel, and it's Apple that isn't keeping up. It's frustrating, and I'm not necessarily a "Pro user" anymore at all. I have a current generation Mac Mini, and it's over 2 years old now. What I can…

> I wish I know what Apple was thinking. It's literally incomprehensible. Just make a really good fast desktop computer. They're one of the largest companies in the world now with essentially unlimited financial resources, and decades of core competency in making high end desktop computers. So like why don't they just fucking do it.

The problem is that they still have a pretty small product design department, and they're committed to not shipping "crap" products.

What I really don't understand is why they didn't foresee this, and just updated their cheese grater Macs. After all, it's way easier to simply update a motherboard to fit a faster CPU than it is to rearchitect the Garbage Can design every time there's a new CPU and GPU architecture out there.

The only thing I can think of is that they've either just downprioritized a lot to focus on $new_secret_product, or that they've developed a new Mac Pro that for some reason didn't pan out, so they needed to start over again.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#82

Post by ak217 »

Just to provide a counterpoint, I recently did a new desktop build and installed Windows 10. It's not bad, and very different from the Windows 10 beta that I gave up on in frustration two years ago. With the Ubuntu subsystem I can do useful work right away. After turning off some of the annoyances (via the Services and Group Policy control panels), it really does a decent job of just working. You can download and install with a USB stick (no more stupid DVDs). It still demands a license key, but runs indefinitely without registration with a little watermark.

If you haven't built a desktop in the past few years, the performance boost from PCIe NVMe SSDs is great, and Intel i5-7600K (now retails for $200) can run at 4.5 GHz reliably and stay cool. I'm impressed.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#83

Post by Drdrdrq »

yoavm wrote: post #35
amelius wrote: post #32

Curious: is there a window manager for Linux that behaves much like OSX?

In what way? IMHO window managers is something Linux excels in. What does macOS has in its window manager that Linux lacks? (other than "no you can't maximise easily" feature...)

I love Linux, but the WMs are not its strong point IMHO. There are many of them and each tries to invent some new desktop paradigm instead of polishing existing experience. It's OK to be boring - just do your job and don't get it my way. I'm currently using Xfce and hope they don't take the KDE4 route for a long time... (not that the experience is bugless or even great, but it's better than alternatives).

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#84

Post by lisper »

nateberkopec wrote: post #28
jwr wrote: post #5

I used to use a Hackintosh. It was a time-consuming thing, I feared OS updates, and I could never be sure about the reliability (you can get really weird problems sometimes. I then switched over to a Mac Pro (cheese grater) and was very happy with it. Unfortunately, since the trash can Mac Pro I'm left out in the cold, so I'm considering running a Hackintosh again... Unfortunately, the information is still very fragm…

Yeah. I buy Macs because they "just work", so a Hackintosh completely destroys the point of even owning a Mac for me.

Except that Macs don't "just work" any more. At best they "just work" until the day that Apple decides to deprecate a feature or an application that you have come to rely on (for me it's iPhoto) and then it stops working. It doesn't crash, it just says, "Sorry, this application cannot run on this version of MacOS." But from the user's point of view the effect is the same.

[UPDATE] Case in point: one of the banking apps on my iPod just stopped working, insisting that I upgrade to the latest version. So I did, but the new version doesn't work either. It just hangs when I try to log in. Granted, this is an iPod, not a Mac, but the iOS philosophy of having Apple control the device is slowly creeping in to the Mac. Every day and every upgrade is a crap shoot in terms of whether or not what worked yesterday will still work today.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#85

Post by dasil003 »

nateberkopec wrote: post #28
jwr wrote: post #5

I used to use a Hackintosh. It was a time-consuming thing, I feared OS updates, and I could never be sure about the reliability (you can get really weird problems sometimes. I then switched over to a Mac Pro (cheese grater) and was very happy with it. Unfortunately, since the trash can Mac Pro I'm left out in the cold, so I'm considering running a Hackintosh again... Unfortunately, the information is still very fragm…

Yeah. I buy Macs because they "just work", so a Hackintosh completely destroys the point of even owning a Mac for me.

I always felt the same way. Even a huge cost premium matters very little to me since it's a machine I use professionally.

However I'm starting to give it serious consideration as Apple is signaling pretty hard that they don't give a shit about desktops any more, and MacOS is not seeing much development other than some sloppy seconds and half baked ports of iOS ideas.

I'm pretty heavily depend on MacOS for my daily workflow these days, but the writing is on the wall that I've got to start thinking about Linux or even Windows over the next 5-10 years.

In that light, the benefit of the hackintosh is not only being able to get current hardware at a fair price, but also being able to hedge my bets and dual boot to Linux to get my feet wet.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#86

Post by hedora »

robk wrote: post #72

Those cases still look really ugly. Reminds me of the look I was going for twenty years ago when i was a teenager w all the neon. The Macs at least look elegant and like something I'd want in my house.

There are plenty of elegant PC cases available. The author went to great pains to put a ridiculous number of LEDs into the build.

Even with the LEDs, there is a ~$5k budget difference between the hackintosh and the trash can. That much will buy you a pretty wide range of aesthetic choices. For instance, you could probably have someone cnc something out of aluminum, or commission a hardwood case that matches the period of your office furniture.

Personally, I think the build would have been more memorable if it incorporated some strobes, a fog machine and plasma bulb. (Bonus points for replacing the plasma bulb with a tesla coil without sacrificing stablity / safety, and without exceeding the trashcan price)

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#87

Post by Razengan »

nottorp wrote: post #54

Problem is, Apple doesn't have anything for power users or developers right now. I'm currently hackintoshing, but with every "dumb it down" decision (like remove the battery life time estimation), hardware mishap (LG monitors not working near wifi, come on) or new hardware announcement that still doesn't serve my demographic i wonder if i shouldn't just switch back to Linux. I used to say that their laptops are fine,…

> Apple doesn't have anything for power users or developers right now.

I'm a power user and a developer and I find the 2016 MBPs to be the best laptops around. My only misgiving was the hefty price. The only "dongle" I needed was a single USB/USB-C adapter but I really don't have to use it most of the time; everything I have — phone, tablet, portable hard disk — works wirelessly.

The battery time (I think you mistyped "life time") estimation was dumb, never accurate or consistent, and people don't mind the lack of it on billions of other mobile devices anyway.

The battery issues with the 2016 MBPs were found to be on the software side and have since then been resolved, and they have been reported to go for 18! hours on a single charge. Certainly lasts me a whole day and then some of non-continuous use.

Re: the LG shielding mishap, you're blaming Apple for a completely different company's product, okay.

> still doesn't serve my demographic

Which demographic and what do you require?

> touch typing hostile emoji keyboard?

What?

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#88

Post by izacus »

coldtea wrote: post #48
redsummer wrote: post #18

Apple have made some terrible design decisions since Jobs died. A 'thin iMac' - whose thin-ness was absolutely pointless. The MacBook (2 lbs) and MacBook Pro (3 lbs) were designed to weigh arbitrary weights instead of thinking about features: http://www.apple.com/mac/compare/results/?product1=macbook&p... And the MacPro was possible the worst shape for upgrades. Jobs inspired people to come up with great machines, bu…

> A 'thin iMac' - whose thin-ness was absolutely pointless. For you maybe. Many of us (millions, judging from the sales numbers) appreciate the thin-ness, even if it's for a desktop machine. I had to drag my old non-thin iMac several times to different locations, and it was no joy. Nor do I need a behemoth on my desktop.

Hmm, you're implying that everyone that bought a new iMac appreciates the thinness and bought it because of that?

Or perhaps they bought them because they had no other choice when choosing a reasonably fast desktop machine compatible with their software?

Seriously, the argument "oh, this feature must be popular because the whole machine is popular" really doesn't hold water in complex machines like computers, phones or cars.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#90

Post by [deleted] »

valuearb wrote: post #61
bitexploder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days setting up a Windows or Apple system means fighting lots of relatively confusing dialogs and options to avoid using cloud services, etc. Modern consumer operating systems want to analyze every bit of your activity they can get their grubby mitts on and you really have to fight them and say "No thanks!" about 15 times on a modern phone and less, but still a lot, on Win/Apple. I care about privacy, like most…

Yea, you might be confusing Windows and Macintosh there (or iOS and Android). It's trivial to setup a Mac, there is one dialog to collect crash data you can opt out of, and you don't have to use iCloud. Apple would like you to use iCloud but doesn't make you, doesn't want your private data, and is committed to protecting that data. Windows is a little more frustrating, and I don't think Microsoft has the same level o…

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