Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

martinhering.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 248 posts

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#101

Post by PhasmaFelis »

e12e wrote: post #57
peatmoss wrote: post #14

Most people invoking a moral imperative to not make hackintoshes are coming from the angle that it’s stealing from Apple. I look at it another way. Apple, as a company is failing to meet the needs of some of its users: - You can’t get an upgradable pro machine - you can’t get a good keyboard (for some definitions of good) - macOS gets more iOS-ified with each release and some people don’t like that Every Hackintosh c…

> Most people invoking a moral imperative to not make hackintoshes are coming from the angle that it’s stealing from Apple. I don't feel a moral obligation not to steal from Apple. I'm not sure I could steal (and use) an amount from them that would impact them at all. I mean even if I stole a classroom full of MacBook pro's in order to give free programming classes - it's not like it would affect Apple in any meaning…

> But you can never do any work on it without risk.

What risk is that?

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#102

Post by dogma1138 »

21 wrote: post #82
peatmoss wrote: post #14

Most people invoking a moral imperative to not make hackintoshes are coming from the angle that it’s stealing from Apple. I look at it another way. Apple, as a company is failing to meet the needs of some of its users: - You can’t get an upgradable pro machine - you can’t get a good keyboard (for some definitions of good) - macOS gets more iOS-ified with each release and some people don’t like that Every Hackintosh c…

If anyone remembers the long discussions at the start of 2000s in relation to music/video pirating, this is not "stealing", it's "intellectual property something something". The content companies had giant advertising campaigns trying to brand this as "theft" or "stealing". Of course, when they sued someone they used the proper term: "IP violation" I'm not arguing if it's acceptable or not, but it's not the same as t…

It’s on the same level as IP theft of any kind since you cause some loss of revenue and investment, now what portion of piracy results in a financial loss is a different story but it’s not 0.

Look at it this way if I steal your trade secrets and clone your product after you spent R&D money on it I’ve essentially “stolen” both a part of your revenue and your investment.

Music, film and games cost money to develop and produce pirating them does incur a financial penalty and that does fall under the common definition of theft.

However as far as Apple goes if you buy a copy of their OS you can easily consider that acceptable since EULA restrictions on the usage can be ethically counter argued.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#103

Post by kimdotcom »

dogma1138 wrote: post #102
21 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone remembers the long discussions at the start of 2000s in relation to music/video pirating, this is not "stealing", it's "intellectual property something something". The content companies had giant advertising campaigns trying to brand this as "theft" or "stealing". Of course, when they sued someone they used the proper term: "IP violation" I'm not arguing if it's acceptable or not, but it's not the same as t…

It’s on the same level as IP theft of any kind since you cause some loss of revenue and investment, now what portion of piracy results in a financial loss is a different story but it’s not 0. Look at it this way if I steal your trade secrets and clone your product after you spent R&D money on it I’ve essentially “stolen” both a part of your revenue and your investment. Music, film and games cost money to develop and…

Infringement != theft

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#104

Post by pkaye »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #23
komali2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I'm the opposite. I was tired of jumping through insane hoops for years to get Mac to have good window management, or make keybindings the same in all apps, or have my desktop look the way I wanted, so I switched to Ubuntu 18. I actually scheduled a PTO day for it because I thought it would take like 18 hours to get drivers config'd and all that (my last try was like Ubuntu 14 or something), but it literally w…

I think that's one of the key things about using Apple products. If you want to have a good time, you need to embrace the way Apple wants you to use the product. And then generally, you'll find that it really does "just work", most of their decisions were right and you can get on with just using the thing. For the more "power users" who prefer to customise things to a fine degree and make particular choices a typical…

Except for the multiple times in the past that Apple would update something and my laptop wifi would get flaky for months on end till the fixed it again. Yup "just works."

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#105

Post by e12e »

hellisothers wrote: post #68
e12e wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people invoking a moral imperative to not make hackintoshes are coming from the angle that it’s stealing from Apple. I don't feel a moral obligation not to steal from Apple. I'm not sure I could steal (and use) an amount from them that would impact them at all. I mean even if I stole a classroom full of MacBook pro's in order to give free programming classes - it's not like it would affect Apple in any meaning…

What does “never be able to run a legally licensed os” mean in this context? I am an iOS engineer and avid photographer: I work on a Hackintosh, I develop my photos on my Hackintosh. I’ve had 0 problems with this setup and it cost me 1/10th as much as a similarly specced Mac. And my “similar” I’m being generous to the Mac because my machine is faster

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1013.pdf

> 2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. A. Preinstalled and Single-Copy Apple Software License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you obtained the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, through an automatic download or under a volume license, maintenance or other written agreement from Apple, you are granted a limited, non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at any one time. For example, these single-copy license terms apply to you if you obtained the Apple Software preinstalled on Apple-branded hardware.

(...)

> J. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so.

(...)

If you're not going to abide by the license, you're essentially running "pirated" software.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#106

Post by S_A_P »

I can also add a solid reason to build a hackintosh: There is a systemic, as yet unresolved issue that a non trivial percentage of users are experiencing with the iMac Pro and 2018 refresh Macbook Pro.

While unproven, it seems related to the T2 chip and it causes kernel panics in certain cases. There is a lengthy thread on the apple support community about this[1], and Ive worked with an apple engineer off and on for a few weeks to gather information about my system.

The symptoms are a kernel panic occurs when the system is allowed to sleep overnight with certain OS options enabled. The panic also occurs when the TB bus is loaded down or daisy chained and accessed by an application. So far there is no fix but ways to decrease the kernel panics.

The affected users appears to be anyone with an iMac Pro or 2018 macbook pro. I happen to have both of the affected products, but fortunately my macbook pro is not having this issue. In my case, I was able to turn off things like powernap, unlock with apple watch, and some other energy saving functions, but I dont want that to be a permanent configuration. I still get crashes when using applications that access the TB bus as well.

[1]https://discussions.apple.com/message/33728078

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#108

Post by lazerwalker »

I recently switched from a Hackintosh to a brand-new MacBook Pro. My desktop was/is way more powerful than the new laptop, but MAN is the new MBP more enjoyable to use.

Some things I ran into on a daily basis:

* GPU support (at least with Nvidia) is terrible. Anything GPU-bound was absolutely horrendous. The OS would just freeze and reboot itself a dozen times a day due to the GPU (and not obviously e.g. overheating issues). No issues at all when running Windows on the same box. And this was after I spent hours trawling forum posts and fiddling around with kexts and patches and installing random tools off GitHub that would let you downgrade from the latest Nvidia drivers to the last "known good" ones. This didn't used to be as bad, but High Sierra really fucked things over.

* I never got non-Bluetooth audio working. The community recommended a USB audio adapter; never worked for me. I'd occasionally connect AirPods, but not having proper support for the fast device switching meant it was a pain in the ass.

* iMessage worked... maybe 30-40% of the time? Switching over to my new Mac, I'm amazed how I'd trained myself away from sending text messages on my Mac purely because I didn't expect it to work reliably.

* Other little things didn't work that you wouldn't reasonably expect to work. Apple Pay in Safari via your phone, unlocking your computer with an Apple Watch, remote iOS debugging in Xcode / Safari, etc. Little things that I didn't really notice at the time, but are so much nicer now that I'm back in first-party hardware land.

I'm glad I did the experiment, and I'm glad I still have my custom box lying around for Windows gaming, but man am I happy to be back on first-party hardware. If I needed to switch back to using my tower as my primary computer, I'd definitely use Linux or Windows before going back to a Hackintosh.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#109

Post by jasonkostempski »

cortesoft wrote: post #13
iBelieve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason would be to use non-Mac hardware and Windows or Linux as your primary OS, but still have access to macOS for the times that you need it, for example to do iOS development. I do some iOS development and primarily use a Dell XPS 13 with Linux on it, and have to switch computers any time I need to work on an iOS project. And specifically about the Mac hardware - I agree MacBooks are the best available, especi…

Man, I would so love to be able to run MacOS in a VM on my non-mac machine. I have a crazy powerful desktop, better than any mac hardware I could buy, so that I can run all the different things I want in a VM. I can kind of run a MacOS vm, but the performance is garbage. I just want to be able to run all the operating systems on a single machine, so I can not be limited. Is that too much to ask?

My solution to that was to RD into a Mac Mini. It was good enough to fulfill my obligations, then I got away from iOS development completely.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#110

Post by dogma1138 »

kimdotcom wrote: post #103
dogma1138 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s on the same level as IP theft of any kind since you cause some loss of revenue and investment, now what portion of piracy results in a financial loss is a different story but it’s not 0. Look at it this way if I steal your trade secrets and clone your product after you spent R&D money on it I’ve essentially “stolen” both a part of your revenue and your investment. Music, film and games cost money to develop and…

Infringement != theft

IP infringement and theft are different things, infringement is often done in regards to IP that is in the open, if I hack and steal your trade secrets which are by definition secrets and not protected by a patent what is that then?

And in any case you are arguing about semantics, "theft" is also technically not a singular legal definition but an amalgamation of different civil and criminal legal statues.

In most jurisdictions intangible property also does fall under the broader definition of theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft

Post reply on HN