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Hackintosh is almost dead

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Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#11

Post by verticalscaler »

In the olden times this used to be called the Jade plan:

  I don’t really complain. I had a good run which helped me skip over the worst price/performance Mac lineup that I remember. There’re now plenty good choices within the current crop of M1 / M2 / M3 machines and I’ll be following eBay closely for a good used Mac mini / studio models. Or maybe even splurge on something new.
I've been doing it for ages as Apple hardware holds its resale value exceptionally well. You can use the often exaggerated price premium to your advantage - buy brand new default config at an opportune moment in the upgrade cycle, sell just in time for a coveted new release.

This works even better if you happen to be traveling somewhere where Apple devices are unusually expensive.

I'm still on the M1 Air and will likely sell it just before a M4 release 12-18 months from now. Cost of ownership averages out to <$0.25/day.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#13

Post by bruce511 »

Back in my youth, when I was time rich and cash poor, this kind of tinkering was fun and a good way to improve the machine I was using.

Now that I have more disposable cash, but waaay less time, I couldn't imagine "wasting my time" doing this sort of thing. These days I want to -use- the computer, not spend time trying to convince it to work.

Incidentally it's the exact same journey with my cars. 35 years ago I was fixing something on my car most weekends. Now I just want to turn the key and go somewhere.

Hackintosh served the purpose for its time. It'll be fondly remembered. But I think the next generation of tinkerers will find some other thing yo capture the imagination.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#14

Post by joemi »

actimia wrote: post #8

I don't get why you would ever want to do a Hackintosh this way... Apple has great hardware but ABYSMAL software. I prefer Windows or any of the top 5 Linux distros on any day that ends with y. They are being carried hard by their top-tier CPUs right now. Something drastic needs to happen to the software side - as it is, it is almost an unusably bad experience to simply browse the web and move files around. Now if we…

I strongly disagree re:Apple software. We must have drastically different usage scenarios, since I find it a pleasure. What software do you have issue with, and why?

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#15

Post by m463 »

Retr0id wrote: post #2

macOS supports running as a paravirtualised guest OS (officially, on an apple-hardware host also running macOS). If there is to be a "next gen" of hackintoshing, I think it'd be based on a cut-down linux host acting as a shim between the real hardware and the paravirt interface. See also: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230830161425.91946-1-graf@amaz... "This patch set introduces a new ARM and HVF specific machine type…

I was about to say that VMs will always be wanted.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#16

Post by s0ss »

actimia wrote: post #8

I don't get why you would ever want to do a Hackintosh this way... Apple has great hardware but ABYSMAL software. I prefer Windows or any of the top 5 Linux distros on any day that ends with y. They are being carried hard by their top-tier CPUs right now. Something drastic needs to happen to the software side - as it is, it is almost an unusably bad experience to simply browse the web and move files around. Now if we…

Could you elaborate? I find web browsing and moving files around to be practically an equivalent experience between mac os, windows, most linux distros.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#17

Post by jayd16 »

Asooka wrote: post #7
Retr0id wrote: post #2

macOS supports running as a paravirtualised guest OS (officially, on an apple-hardware host also running macOS). If there is to be a "next gen" of hackintoshing, I think it'd be based on a cut-down linux host acting as a shim between the real hardware and the paravirt interface. See also: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230830161425.91946-1-graf@amaz... "This patch set introduces a new ARM and HVF specific machine type…

It would be interesting to see how feasible it is to run that on an Arm workstation, e.g. an Ampere Altra. Or going the other way and trying to squeeze macOS on to the latest Raspberry Pi.

Would be cool and ironic to get the full Macos on Android hardware.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#18

Post by pjmlp »

Muromec wrote: post #4

Next in the series: EU mandates Apple to sign 3rd party hobbyist drivers to enable Hackintosh enthusiasts.

Apple never licenced their OS to run on non Apple hardware, with exception of when it was on death bed shortly before the NeXT reverse acquisition, and Steve Jobs killing all agreements with clone makers.

Hardly the same of the current DMA requirements.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#19

Post by jwells89 »

It can still be useful for those looking to run older versions of macOS for some reason or another. If there’s PPC applications that one wants to run for example, you can piece together a Snow Leopard hackintosh from used parts that will run PPC apps through Rosetta faster than any real PPC mac ever could while be also being easier and more cheap to maintain.

From time to time I’ll consider building such a box as a time-frozen “zen machine” that runs OS X 10.6 or 10.9, is disconnected from modern distractions, and will never be subject to the disruptions that software updates can bring.

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