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Hackintosh is almost dead

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Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#251

Post by grishka »

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…

There was a time when hackintosh was practical for everyone who needs macOS and/or can't stand other desktop OSes. It was the tail end of Apple's Intel hardware. It was pathetic in terms of performance (underpowered CPUs and buggy GPU drivers), quality (butterfly keyboards) and thermal design (things would overheat all the time), yet expensive.

I myself was contemplating building a ridiculously overpowered hackintosh machine around 2019. Then the ARM transition was announced. And then the M1 came out with overwhelmingly good reviews from literally everyone. So I decided to wait for the beefed up "professional" version, which did come later, so here I am, typing this on an M1 Max MBP, the best computer I've owned so far.

Also, for me personally, hackintosh was an introduction to macOS. I was a poor student at the time and couldn't afford a real Mac. Of course I bought one about as soon as I could.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#252

Post by hparadiz »

umbra07 wrote: post #238
vehemenz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you factor in repair costs? A 14in MBP with an M3 Pro/36GB/1TB is $2800. Add 10% sales tax, and that's about 3k.

I've never needed to actually repair a Mac.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#253

Post by hparadiz »

bluescrn wrote: post #195
duskwuff wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

VSCode remote to my Linux desktop on LAN. The upsell is obvious but I'm not gonna drop $500 on 256 gb of disk space

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#254

Post by Nab443 »

golergka wrote: post #229
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…

For you, me, other people on HN who generally make a living by understanding computers, definitely. For a layman who just needs to connect to WiFi, edit some documents and print them without having to update a kernel? No.

Even as a dev with 3 environment I've not had to tinker my kernel since I left gentoo something like 15 years ago, Ubuntu takes care of it..

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#255

Post by steve1977 »

golergka wrote: post #236
steve1977 wrote: post #98

I gotta say, 10 or 15 years ago, Mac OS X would have been worth the effort and it was basically what justified buying Apple hardware for me. Nowadays, if anything, it's the hardware that justifies buying Apple, and the operating systems are something I can live with. I don't see any compelling reason to use macOS on non-Apple hardware today (except hacking for hackings sake)

It’s about the only viable option for professionally working with audio, in either studio or live setting. That's the biggest group of hakintosh users I'm personally familiar with anyway.

You can work professionally with audio in Windows, you’ll probably even get better performance out of the same hardware you’d be using for a Hackintosh.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#256

Post by TylerE »

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…

I had a similar revelation a few years ago. My giant PC gaming rig blew up again (specifically my 3080 shit itself), a year after having to replace the power supply and requiring the whole thing.

I was just done with faffing around with that kind of thing.

So I bought a (then fairly recently released) Mac Studio, just the plain jane base 32GB model, and couldn’t be happier. So nice to have something virtually silent and energy efficient, instead of jet turbine that drew about 300w at idle.

I 100% do not want a laptop for my primary personal machine, but the big workstation towers are too much.

The Studio is that wonderful Goldilocks zone - performant, bring-your-own input devices, but merely “a bit pricey” and not extravagantly so.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#257

Post by izacus »

nerdawson wrote: post #165
wkat4242 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So now you made it a 2.3k$ MBP didn't you? Funny how the 999$ MacBooks tend to explode in price when you configure them to make them useful.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#258

Post by greedo »

wkat4242 wrote: post #141
zozbot234 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In the 90s most people didn't have a laptop for that very reason. They just owned desktops which were way cheaper. I studied computer science then and I knew 1 student out of 50 that had an actual laptop. Even at the uni we had to use their computer rooms full of desktops and X terminals.

Not really sure they were much cheaper in the 90s. My first PC was a Dell P90 in 1994, IIRC it cost about $2500. There was kind of a mantra at the time that no matter the improvements, you'd always spend about $2500. And adjusted for inflation, that "way cheaper" desktop was over $5K in today's dollars.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#259

Post by AltruisticGapHN »

Now it's the other way around: you hack Linux onto Apple Silicon (Asahi Linux).

For me buying a new Macbook Air or Pro is definitely made more palatable knowing I could turn it into a Ubuntu laptop down the line.

And if the Asahi team keeps kicking ass, we may even use Asahi to run Windows games with Proton inside Linux Steam. Thus replacing the Bootcamp partition for those who dual booted to play Windows games.

I don't miss Hackintosh. The one build I made it all looked like it was genuine macOS, but you could feel it wasn't the same. Photoshop felt more laggy. Unless you used an equivalent iMac beforehand as I did you might not notice that something was off. That said this was like ten years ago.

Even if it works well "Hacking" isn't worth it imho, whenevr there is the slightest lag or issue, you just never know. Is it because of the hackintosh, is it a genuine bug in macOS? Is it my hardware? Too many unknowns.

Re: Hackintosh is almost dead

#260

Post by nirav72 »

xcv123 wrote: post #178
nirav72 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No denying that windows these days isn’t stable. Indeed it is. My biggest issue is all the third party crap I never asked for gets installed with it. Not to mention all the Microsoft services that I don’t want to use, but still manage to be there. Like OneDrive. Sure one can uninstall it. But then see the mess it leaves with the way files are saved in the documents directory. Even when setting up a Windows 11 VM , I…

> I usually have to spend an hour just removing stuff, disabling things and multiple reboots just to trim things down. All of that is automated now. https://atlasos.net

yeah, I've used plenty of community made tools to de-bloat windows. But that's not the point. We shouldn't have to do that. Especially when its a paid windows license, I shouldn't have to spend time dealing with Microsoft's effort at further squeezing out more revenue from their OS platform.
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