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Building a Hackintosh Pro

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Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#111

Post by justinclift »

dasil003 wrote: post #85
nateberkopec wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

As a data point, I was putting together a super cheap "build server" (for compiling stuff on) recently. Supermicro motherboard, and dual 6 core Xeon cpu's (E5645). Cost of the motherboard and cpu's (from Ebay) was ~$US140.00. 32GB of ECC ram to match was ~US60.00. Everything else needed (power supply, etc), I already had around.

Just to see if it would work, I hackintoshed it prior to installing FreeBSD. Apart from the network ports, everything else (Nvidia card, USB, etc) worked.

Network connectivity was fixable by just plugging in a USB3ethernet adapter (also had one handy), and voila, usable desktop.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00XZQRMRU/

It wouldn't be surprising (to me), if newer generation Supermicro boards also worked. That would open up possibilities for lots more cpu grunt in an OSX box. :)

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#112

Post by rsync »

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…

"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..."

As the owner of an early-2009 octo-mac-pro, I am very interested in learning about how to max that system out to the gills.

For instance, I am under the impression that it is now possible to boot from a pci based SSD card on that system.

Further, I believe it is possible to add a card that gives me USB3/SATA3 (although if I am booting from PCI, I don't really care if my slow mass storage internal four drives are SATA2).

Finally, I think there is some apple-blessed video card that is quite a bit stronger than the original GT120 cards I have in my system.

I've seen bits and pieces here and there about maxing out a mac pro and bringing it very close to "modern" but it would be nice if it was all in one place somewhere...

FWIW, other than maxing out the ram, I really have no problem with the existing RAM options and the dual-cpus that I already have (which bring me to octo-core). Even 8 years later, the machine is not slowing me down at all in the cpu/ram department (and I only have 6 GB).

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#113

Post by nottorp »

Razengan wrote: post #101
jasonlotito wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Re: the LG shielding mishap, you're blaming Apple for a completely different company's product, okay. It's a monitor Apple effectively blessed as their monitor replacement. They sold it. So... yeah. Yeah, I do blame them for their lack of due diligence. Why is this their problem? Because, how am I supposed to rely on Apple to meet my needs if they are perfectly happy dropping products a business depends on? > Which…

> It's a monitor Apple effectively blessed as their monitor replacement. They sold it. So... yeah. Yeah, I do blame them for their lack of due diligence. Apple don't make the LG Ultrafine Display. Apple offer many other third-party products through their stores, but it's the manufacturer's responsibility to support those. > how am I supposed to rely on Apple to meet my needs if they are perfectly happy dropping produ…

Another one that defends the laptops when the original article is about a Mac Pro replacement :)

> Can display at-a-glance status such as time, battery etc.

You look at the keyboard when you type? Not my demographic then, i type too much for that. It's probably fine for you.

> All of the over-a-dozen developers/tech-oriented people that -I- know prefer the 2016 MBPs to everything else. They've also outsold all other competitors in just a single month.

You don't know any developers working on compiled software. And the mbpros outsell everything not because they don't annoy people, but because there's almost no alternative. Perhaps the Dell Developer Edition laptops, but Apple would have to piss me off more than they have so far for me to try a Dell instead.

And again, the article - and my OP - are from people who need a powerful desktop for work.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#114

Post by rndmio »

ak217 wrote: post #82

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 ins…

I came to a similar position recently. Bought a new laptop intending to run Ubuntu on it for personal development work. But the pet management story on the newer Intel CPUs just doesn't compare with Windows 10. WSL is pretty damned good and i don't feel so had using it. I'd objectively prefer to use Linux, but right now i just cant.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#115

Post by orange_fritter »

jasonlotito wrote: post #98
Razengan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mistype…

> Re: the LG shielding mishap, you're blaming Apple for a completely different company's product, okay. It's a monitor Apple effectively blessed as their monitor replacement. They sold it. So... yeah. Yeah, I do blame them for their lack of due diligence. Why is this their problem? Because, how am I supposed to rely on Apple to meet my needs if they are perfectly happy dropping products a business depends on? > Which…

> Yeah, I do blame them for their lack of due diligence.

While simultaneously absolving yourself of having to do any research.

> Because, how am I supposed to rely on Apple to meet my needs

I often see people saying Apple owes it to its customers to make x, y, or z product, as if Apple's role in the ecosystem needs to be expanded further. Apple is a company, not a nanny, they don't owe you anything, and I feel we should keep their scope limited rather than expanded.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#116

Post by Larrikin »

wmf wrote: post #97
matt4077 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite easy to do now, but the community is incredibly annoying. The software is usually on sourceforge or something even shadier, it's rarely actually OSS-licensed, and configuration/documentation/interfaces are a nightmare of incomprehensible incoherence. There cannot be a software community less professional. I've seen Minecraft plugins by 8 year olds much better in these categories.

Android ROMs are the same way. Maybe something about the semi-illegality of it brings out the old DOS scene culture.

Honestly the most annoying thing about that community is that you're expected to wade through hundreds of pages on forums, piecing together information, and people get furious because the answer to your question was on page 63 out of 124. The custom roms will list the very specific things that differentiate them but there are hardly any guides with best practices except maybe if you have the most popular phone out that year.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#117

Post by matthew-wegner »

joshgel wrote: post #24
elmigranto wrote: post #15

I'm wondering whether it would be easier to run macOS in VM. No more fear of updates with snapshots, and I imagine ease of installation and less compatibility issues. Anyone does it, how's performance and keyboard "tunneling" (CMD vs CTRL)?

Ive found it pretty tough to get macOS up and running in a VM. Anyone know of any easy way?

VMWare ESXi officially supports Mac Pro hardware as a host. Guests will just work--you don't need to use any of the hackintosh bootloaders.

If you aren't running ESXi (or VMWare Workstation) on Apple hardware, you can use this to enable the functionality: https://github.com/DrDonk/unlocker

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#118

Post by Nullabillity »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #83
yoavm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Huh? Uncustomized Kwin is about as boring as WMs get.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#119

Post by iamacynic »

rsync wrote: post #112
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…

"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..." As the owner of an early-2009 octo-mac-pro, I am…

a while ago i paid the premium for the mac sapphire hd 7950 and it works great. it significantly speeds everything up and allows me to run 4k + another display on my cheese grater 2008 pro.

i'm sure it's probably very easy to make a non-mac video card work but i can't be bothered.

Re: Building a Hackintosh Pro

#120

Post by Cacti »

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…

If you are trying get OSX on an arbitrary piece of hardware, it could take quite a bit of effort and have any number of weird problems, as you suggest.

However, if you stick to known hardware (mainly this means specific motherboards with well supported chipsets) it's quite straight forward and reliable. If you're starting out without existing hardware, just stick to the known MBs and you shouldn't have any issues. Very dependable hardware lists are available at tonymac and osx86 project, just use that.

Hardware support has come a long, long way in the past few years.

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