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Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

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Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#22
post #19
post #17

Interesting, but as a daily user of one of these Dell laptops, I would never do this. Its some of the worst hardware I've ever had the misfortune to use.

You've obviously never tried an apple laptop. Over the years nearly all of the components of my 2012 mbp retina have been replaced several times. The only things that are still original are the ssd and the bottom plate. Motherboard issues within a year, weak hinges, battery failing within 2 years, power cables failing every 9 months. In all my years of using laptops (15 years before I got the apple) I've never had a…

For sake of comparison I also have a retina 2012 MPB, and it’s been rock solid. Aside from one OS reinstall for AFS I’ve never had any issues.

Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#23
post #18

The one issue I've always had with Hackintosh, is that while the main OS is from Apple it invariably requires using some 3rd party bootloaders, kexts and other files. And, this to me always raises the issue of security and whether they contain, or can contain, any backdoors/malwares. Part of it could be my paranioa, but I never got a good answer to satisfy me.

How is that all that different from any other software you download? With 100s of dependencies any one of them could be malicious and just wait for the next privilege escalation attack and achieve the same persistence level as a malicious kernel module.

Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#24
post #5

Nice packaged solution, if your problem is that you need to run macOS on a five year old midrange Dell notebook. If you are just looking for a cheap macOS solution, 2012 Minis seems to go for around $250 on eBay ...

7440 is not midrange. It's one of the best notebooks until now. Excellent FHD screen, docking port, trackpoint, 3 buttons under the touchpad and great Linux support. The only problem is the rubber band around the screen detaching after a few years.

From the README, the instructions are targeting an Intel i5 4300U. That's a four year-old part, and i5 is definitely a midrange processor.

Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#25
post #14
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually somewhat surprised macOS does not check for the existence of a T2 chip as a precondition.

How would that work for all the hardware Apple has released and still supports that predate the T2? For reference, the upcoming macOS Catalina still supports the following hardware: MacBook Pro (mid 2012 and newer) MacBook Air (mid 2012 and newer) MacBook (early 2015 and later) iMac (late 2012 or newer) iMac Pro (2017 or newer) Mac Pro (late 2013 or newer) Mac Mini (late 2012 or newer) Apple T1 was introduced in 2016…

You're right, but at some point support will be dropped for the older Macs and an Apple proprietary security chip will be made mandatory.

DRM will kill the Hackintosh dream. How sad.

Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#26
When I was developing my first iOS app and was required by Apple to use a Mac to publish it to the Apple App Store, I resorted to installing macOS on a VM[1] rather than using a physical Mac. There is minimal configuration and it ran smoothly on my Windows PC laptop that had 16GB ram where 8GB was allocated to the macOS VM.

[1] https://techsviewer.com/how-to-create-a-macos-catalina-virtu...

Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#29
post #18

The one issue I've always had with Hackintosh, is that while the main OS is from Apple it invariably requires using some 3rd party bootloaders, kexts and other files. And, this to me always raises the issue of security and whether they contain, or can contain, any backdoors/malwares. Part of it could be my paranioa, but I never got a good answer to satisfy me.

Most of the alternative Android distros/builds (other than for devices supported by LineageOS at the moment) have similar provenance problems, in my experience with many devices: XDA-developers usually told me to just download and run/install these binaries from some strange file-sharing site. Not only is that highly questionable practice, but it seems to relieve much of the demand for more reasonable solutions. Which is one of the reasons I'm hoping PostmarketOS takes off -- a lot of the sketchiness potential has been removed.

Re: Dell E7440 and E7240 Hackintosh

#30

hubris https://i.imgur.com/z3E3rLY.png The problem with all of these builds is you're damning yourself to working on top shifting sands and either committing yourself to rooting around in Mac OS plumbing (which I'm sure isn't documented well or even wholly exposed) or hoping the community patches things.

I'll take that over the absurd amount of money I'd have to otherwise pay for a mac system. All so that they will graciously allow me to to develop software for their other, totally unrelated mobile OS.
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