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Hackintosh is almost dead

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Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#161

Post by zavertnik »

I daily drove a hackintosh for years until I recently pivoted to apple silicon. I was a very enjoyable experience for me. The success and reliability of a hackintosh is really dependent on your hardware configuration. I had lucked out that my desktop tower that I had built years prior just so happened to coincide almost 1:1 with hardware requirements for a golden build. (6700k, 64gb ram, Vega 64, compatible wifi/bluetooth pcie, compatible m.2 controllers, z170 mb which is well known in the hackintosh community, etc.)

Being able to have a modular Mac was really something and I exploited that to tailor my machine to my use case (television/video production). I never had issues with bluetooth or WiFi, nor did I have ever have an issue with Apple's services like iMessage/Facetime.

What sucked about the process was staying current with system updates. Updates within the macOS release went without a hitch, but my hardware was aged out in newer macOS versions which made upgrading a bit too much like surgery, and since this hackintosh was my production device, that wasn't something I wanted to roll the dice on.

Having switched to apple silicon, I do kind of miss that freedom, but I've found that same freedom just by doing things a little less hacky. Instead of a board I can add drives to, I just setup a NAS, instead of using an old PCIE HDMI capture card, I got a more modern USB one, etc.

For a long time, Hackintosh was an opportunity to do things my way, and that experience led me to learning experiences that have improved my day to day that I otherwise may not have learned. It was a freeing experience. Today I still do things my way, but these days my way is more focused on convenience for the things that should "just work" so I put my attention on things that matter, rather than things that shouldn't, such as modifying my EFI before a macOS update to trick macOS into thinking I have the iGPU of a newer chipset because Apple dropped support for Skylake on a new release.

Good times, the headaches were worth it in hindsight.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#162

Post by adamomada »

zozbot234 wrote: post #135
j33zusjuice wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable when you consider TCO, but you still have to pay 100% up front. Not everyone can drop $2k on a laptop, most people don’t need to.

> Not everyone can drop $2k on a laptop That's what most laptops used to cost back in the 1990s or so (after adjusting for inflation). If you look further back in time, hardware was even more expensive - and it couldn't even do 10% of what a modern MacBook does. Modern hardware is ridiculously cheap.

Inflation calculator says the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro I bought in 2007 is something like $4400 now. Bought a small intel ssd for the sata3 port in it too for probably another $500 now

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#163

Post by marcosdumay »

MenhirMike wrote: post #99
k12sosse wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good is relative. Windows 2000 never reset your preferences on an update of the OS.

Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of Windows. Rock solid, and that was before they broke the search function (when it actually still actually searched in files rather than an incomplete index - thankfully, grepWin can be installed) or when they dumbed down the Control Panel.

> when it actually still actually searched in files rather than an incomplete index

I don't even care about in files. I just want a file named foo.txt to appear when I search for "foo" on the directory containing it.

Windows 10 is completely unable to run that search.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#164

Post by johnwalkr »

bruce511 wrote: post #13

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 f…

Same for me. I spent countless hours recompiling my kernel in slackware, configuring enlightenment window manager. These days I don't even change the desktop wallpaper.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#165

Post by nerdawson »

wkat4242 wrote: post #138
j33zusjuice wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable when you consider TCO, but you still have to pay 100% up front. Not everyone can drop $2k on a laptop, most people don’t need to.

And you can drop it and lose the $2k in one single second. You can insure against that but it costs another small fortune. TCOs are great calculations for companies but don't work for individuals.

AppleCare+ on the $2k 14" MBP is $279 or +14% for 3 years of coverage. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#166

Post by jwells89 »

MenhirMike wrote: post #143
meepmorp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the only person I've ever seen who agrees with me on that. W2K was the perfect windows - more polished than NT4, less bullshit than XP.

I really don't understand where the nostalgia for XP comes from. Well, actually I think I do because a lot of home users probably didn't use NT4 and 2k and went straight from 98/ME to XP. But I remember all the ridicule that XP got for being such a terrible bubblegum OS X imitation, with required activation, and a bunch of stability and driver issues that were eventually ironed out. XP after Service Pack 2 was also r…

I used both 2k and XP.

2k is pretty great, but fully patched XP is too. It’s totally subjective but as much as I loved 2k I’d give an edge to end-state XP mainly for its ability to be customized with third party .msstyle themes, of which there were many that were well made and good looking.

Fully patched 7 is a bit better yet for me though, because its theming engine added support for full depth alpha which really opened up possibilities for theme designers. It was a massive disappointment when Windows 8 came along and gutted the engine, regressing it to being barely more capable than Windows 1.x with all the flat squares.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#167

Post by reactordev »

I used to tinker with building nforce4.kexts for OSX Leopard. I got everything working including the Realtek HD Audio thanks to a pcid injection. Snow Leopard was the last time I was able to build for nforce4 boards and we moved onto Intel gen 6 LGA1151.

This was back when NVidia and Apple got along. GeForce 900 days. SLI was a thing. And it worked on my drivers. Sadly, I had kids and grew out of it, got old(er), and now only use Linux because aarm64 killed hackintosh.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#168

Post by da768 »

bsdpufferfish wrote: post #3

Additional reasons: - there is less alternative hardware I want to use. I want Apple Silicon processors, materials, and there just isn't much high quality competition. - Because of inflation the Apple premium isn't as high as it used to be. You get a Mac mini or MacBook Air at very competitive prices (RAM is still painful). - Linux Desktop software is more competitive and fills some of the roles that needed macOS bef…

It wasn't too bad a few years ago but right now you can buy two Ryzen 7840U 64G/1TB with OLED display for the price of one similar specced MacBook.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#169

Post by rpdillon »

bruce511 wrote: post #13

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 f…

People have been making this argument to me about Linux for more than 25 years. The most cutting version that I ran across was:

> Linux is only free if your time is worthless!

Something never quite sat right with me about this argument, and your comment finally made me understand what it is: the understanding you gain from tinkering is priceless, and it's exactly the experience that you use to help everyone around you: it turns you into an expert.

So yes, I may just want to turn the key and have my car work. But when it doesn't, I often wish I was that guy that had tinkered with my car, so I can better understand what was wrong, and whether I can fix it myself or if I needed a professional.

I run Linux on all my machines, and my family generally uses Mac (both sides), but all those years tinkering with Linux, they still come to me for help with their Mac machines that they insisted would Just Work.

All that out of the way, I agree with your fundamental premise: hackintosh is likely in the rear view mirror for the next generation of tinkerers.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#170

Post by carlosjobim »

sangnoir wrote: post #89
carlosjobim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are very expensive in some parts of the world, where other computer brands are affordable. A hackintosh could be a good option, and when somebody learns to do it well they could do it for others for money. Not only installing MacOS on PCs, but also installing newer versions of MacOS on Macs that are officially not supported anymore.

> A hackintosh could be a good option, and when somebody learns to do it well they could do it for others for money Apple thoroughly screwed over Mac developers that the only compelling software that's exclusive to MacOS is developed by Apple themselves[1], IMO. Even those packages have equivalent (or better) alternatives on Windows. Macs used to be the platform for DTP, audio and video production - now all the 3rd p…

I use many third-party apps on MacOS that are top of the line in their niche, regardless of OS. People have many different uses for computers and workflows that you are unfamiliar with.

When you discover how programs on MacOS can connect and interact with each other and with the OS as a whole, it becomes a completely different experience.

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