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Hackintosh is almost dead

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Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#191

Post by zozbot234 »

rpdillon wrote: post #169
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 yo…

> Linux is only free if your time is worthless!

This argument is quite out of date. You'll lose a whole lot more time on forced Windows 10/11 updates than you'd spend managing a reasonable Linux installation. ("Reasonable" meaning avoid things like Arch or Ubuntu, and pick decent, natively supported hardware.)

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#192

Post by bluescrn »

vehemenz wrote: post #63
hparadiz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not much of a time commitment. You can just lookup hardware with full compatibility and build a desktop that "just works".

Cost of ownership of an M3 MacBook Pro is like $300-400 a year. Even if you have the time, it's just not worth it anymore like it used to be.

I wouldn't count on 10 years of real-world life from a non-upgradeable and 'repair-resistant' device with a glued in battery, even if the hardware specs are good enough to last that long.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#194

Post by bruce511 »

teh_infallible wrote: post #187
rpdillon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Your comment makes me think of my 3d printing journey. A lot of printers require maintenance and tinkering just to keep them functional. To an extent, since they are targeted towards “makers” who like to play with these things, that’s fine. But sometimes the thing you’re trying to build is of central importance, and you want the machine to stay out of your way.Tinkering with the machine takes away time you could be e…

Sometimes the holiday is the destination. Sometimes the fun is in the getting there, not being there.

Tinkering can be fun. But these days I mostly want results, achievements etc. I want to tinker to a successful goal, not just tinker for tinkers sake.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#195

Post by bluescrn »

duskwuff wrote: post #180
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.

Entry-level price for a new Mac, right now, is $700 (M1 Macbook Air at Walmart). It doesn't get you the best or the fastest, but it's a perfectly usable laptop. Or, if you're okay with something lightly used, a refurbished M1 Mac Mini is ~$500.

But Apple's entry-level Macbooks aren't intended to be bought. They have almost comically low amounts of storage and RAM for 2024 (8GB/256GB).

It's all about the upsell on those non-upgradeable parts.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#196

Post by johnwalkr »

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…

A couple more for me:

- The icloud webapps are now pretty good, and icloud file storage and password management works well on windows these days

- Windows is also pretty good these days, and obviously if you want to run games, it's the easiest option.

Although I enjoy my macbook and iphone, I don't have a compelling reason to have MacOS on my desktop instead of windows. I think the only thing that I would like to have are clipboard sharing and Universal Control (share mouse and keyboard with macs and ipads), but there are cross-platform software solutions that are good enough

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#197

Post by linguae »

KingOfLechia wrote: post #30

Other than trying out the MacOS for the first time to learn how bad it is, why would anyone make a hackintosh? Windows and Linux are infinitely better operating systems, more open, with better backwards compatibility, more hardware support, independence from vendor servers and more available software. A reminder that with MacOS you need internet connection in order to re-install the OS as it requires activation just…

I used to love macOS in the 2000s and 2010s. I never made a Hackintosh but I was always intrigued by them. Before WSL was introduced, the Mac was the best platform for people who needed to use proprietary software packages such as Microsoft Office and the Adobe Creative Suite while running Unix. There was (and still is) a lot of native software on the Mac that is well-polished, such as OmniGraffle and Keynote.

Times have changed, though. While macOS still provides a more consistent user experience, IMO, than Windows or Linux, Windows with WSL means I can run Microsoft Office and other proprietary apps alongside a seamlessly integrated Linux environment without needing to SSH into a VM. The popularity of Electron apps undercuts the Mac’s consistency while also making Linux a more viable option since Linux can run the same Electron apps macOS and Windows do. Microsoft Office is now available as a Web app via Microsoft 365; while I prefer the macOS and Windows versions to the in-browser version, the in-browser version gives Linux users access to Office. I also believe macOS’s Unix environment has not kept up with advances made in the BSD and Linux world. Windows can be quite annoying with its notifications, but unfortunately the Mac in recent years also has annoying notifications; I know this because I use a work-issued MacBook Pro regularly.

In my opinion, the most compelling reason for a Hackintosh in 2024 is for Intel Mac users reliant on Mac software tools to still use them without being restricted to Apple’s hardware. The 2019 Mac Pro is still very expensive, and Apple’s ARM lineup requires paying substantial sums of money for RAM upgrades with no workaround since there are no DIMMs.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#198

Post by andrewdb »

If only this Dockerfile were real. It would greatly help app developers and publishers:

FROM apple/mac-os-slim:latest ...

Please, Apple, please let your developers use more virtualization or containerization.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#199

Post by matthewfcarlson »

As a long time lover of hackintoshes (couldn’t afford a real Mac as a youth but tried to make the netbook macOS dream come true), I’m quite sad to read this. The author has a very valid point that drivers are going to become increasingly complicated and difficult.

I appreciate the call out that Apple (the engineering) isn’t explicitly trying to kill hackintoshes.

As an Apple engineer who deals with ACPI bugs, hackintoshes are a unique source of frustration. I’ll spend hours digging through crash logs only for things to not add up. It says it is an i7 MacBook pro but it has way too many cores. It way more memory than it should. The kext versions are a weird mismash that shouldn’t be possible. The firmware is a version that we never released. Etc etc.

I do my best to fix these sorts of issues but hackintoshes make it hard to reproduce the crash conditions. Which means being confident about a root cause and hard to verify that I’ve fixed it.

Now I’ve spent hours chasing something and I can’t help.

(Opinions are my own, etc etc).

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#200

Post by jupp0r »

johnwalkr wrote: post #174
leptons wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even talking about? Copying folders on Winfows just works. Please explain.

By default there is a path character limit of 260 characters, although there is a method to increase it. So if you try to copy something with a long filename that is many nested folders deep, it will fail. In one office, I had a coworker who used very descriptive folder/subfolder names for everything, and he constantly had this issue.

The problem is that lots of older software allocates fixed size path buffers (mostly on the stack) that uses the MAX_PATH macro (which is set to 260). Fixing this requires recompilation.
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