Why You Should Build a Hackintosh • Hacker News Board

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#161

Post by matt4077 » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

rozenmd wrote: post #154

ageitgey wrote: post #122

I can tell you from experience that building a Hackintosh is a terrible idea for almost all people. I have no moral objection to it and I totally understand the motivation. Apple is completely failing to provide hardware that runs at a fraction of the performance you'd get from building a commodity $2500 AMD/Nvidia desktop even if you give Apple $7000 for a Pro model. Apple's platform especially sucks if you do anyth…

The simpler solution most people miss is to just buy a hackintosh-able laptop, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X220. Updates up until 10.13.6 worked seamlessly, only "hack" you had to do was change out the WiFi card.

That would miss the point entirely, and arguably be morally dubious.

The Macbook hardware is pretty excellent, and prices are comparable to the (few) competitors of similar quality. In absolute terms, they are not outside the range that their market can afford.

It is only in desktops, or, more precisely, workstations that Apple's offerings fall short.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#162

Post by MaysonL » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #62

detaro wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't saying they are related except that they are both arguments against using Hackintoshes?

By saying that they don't look at it as stealing and then saying that they look at it another way, there is an implication that the way they look at it somehow relates to the perspective that it's stealing. In other words, there has to be some reason that they don't see it as stealing but do see it as a failure by Apple to meet the needs of it's consumers. That reason is the relationship between the two concepts and…

Copyright infringement isn't theft: it's copyright infringement.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#163

Post by mnm1 » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #52

MikeKusold wrote: post #41

I ran a hackintosh around 2009-2010. I will never do it again. When I first got it all setup and had everything working, I thought it was the best thing ever. Then a security update came out and it completely wrecked my setup. I didn't own any Apple computers at the time, so to fix my broken setup I had to borrow a friend's macbook to fix my desktop. This happened to me 2-3 times before I reformatted and installed Li…

I ran Linux on the last two MBPs that I used (from my work, can't afford one myself). Best Linux laptops I've used. And physically solid, I like the hardware quality. Only struggle was the HiDPI stuff which takes a bit of setup (some environment variables to set, basically) but once it works, it works. I wouldn't say that MBP is "unsupported hardware" for Ubuntu. I rebooted to OS X only rarely, for testing Mac progra…

My 2013 retina mbpro couldn't run Linux successfully including Ubuntu. It's somewhat supported. Except for the trackpad (which you can sort of get working, just not well), dual graphics switching (and therefore decent battery life), crap external monitor support, and the random crashes. After this last one, I just gave up and I realized I was blaming Linux when in reality it was my fault for using unsupported hardware and trying to run Linux on it. Hadn't had such an unreliable system since the old windows days and that's after days and days of setting it up, trying different distros, etc.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#164

Post by uberman » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

Funny that the article is titled "WHY YOU SHOULD BUILD A HACKINTOSH" yet links to an article by the same author with a conclusion of "I would never recommend to anybody to build a hackintosh..."

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#165

Post by nwhatt » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

vasili111 wrote: post #152

nwhatt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my experience as well. It reminded of running Gentoo Linux a long time ago. Awesome feeling of accomplishment, but not practical if you have a day job.

Gentoo? I don't think it is quite good comparision.

Fair enough :) The complexity that my brain could handle 15 years ago has decreased, and the amount of real work I need to get done has increased.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#166

Post by redial » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

Gys wrote: post #83

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…

My main (additional) consideration: to develop for any Apple platform its required to use MacOS. There is no alternative way for developing and publishing in Apple App Stores.

Only for iOS, tvOS and watchOS, because ironically, you don't really need a Mac to develop for macOS.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#167

Post by pixel_fcker » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

tokenizerrr wrote: post #37

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…

I really don't get why I would want to run an operating system where the vendor refuses to support my hardware. Also, the font color on this blog is absolutely horrible.

There’s not really a vendor here since macOS is free. Linux isn’t exactly free from the need to choose well-supported hardware either, particularly of you need to run a more stable distro

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#168

Post by dkonofalski » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:08 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #77

dkonofalski wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run into this all the time with Windows users switching to a Mac. I do a lot of training for new users when it comes to using Macs and the Windows users are always the worst when compared to people learning for the first time because Windows users always want to do it "the Windows way" and so they get frustrated when all their right clicking doesn't pan out. They bought a Mac because they were frustrated by Windows…

> He could not get over the fact that everything was flat and that he couldn't view his folder structure and was so frustrated because he couldn't find anything. It took me days to get the point across to him that a library system was much more powerful than a strict hierarchy because he could tag sounds with multiple keywords instead of just relying on his memory to remember which folder he had put a particular clip…

>workflow organized in a particular way that worked for him

Except that it didn't, at all, he'd just become used to it. It still took him 3x-4x as long to use the structure that he had devised as opposed to the "new" one. On top of that, a good majority of the sounds that he was using were already tagged via ID3 tags with descriptors so he wasn't even using tools that were available to him the whole time. I didn't tell him that it was better that way and that he should just accept it, you're assuming that. What I actually did was ask him to just trust me and the designers at Apple for 2 weeks and try using the system as it was intended. If it didn't work for him, I would teach him how to use it the way he was used to using it (the option is always available and it's not like MacOS forces you to do it that way).

It took him 3 days to agree that the library method that MacOS used was far more efficient and better suited to what he had been doing the whole time. Additionally, it opened up even more avenues for him because he could extend those same paradigms to video and actual music files (as opposed to audio/sound effect files).

>I wish they'd actually do that in 2018

I work as a developer in digital media production and I love my Macs because they do actually do exactly that. I literally never have to mess with the OS and can focus exclusively on getting my work done. The only exception to that rule is the rare case where I have to use Adobe tools. Some of them are just unstable, regardless of if you're running them on a Mac or PC.

Also, to stop any further assumptions or insinuations, I'm also a PC gamer and have extensive background in web development so I'm extremely familiar with both Windows and Linux (mostly CentOS and Ubuntu). My Mac is the only machine that actually gets out of the way and lets me work.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#169

Post by dkonofalski » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:10 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #85

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He could not get over the fact that everything was flat and that he couldn't view his folder structure and was so frustrated because he couldn't find anything. It took me days to get the point across to him that a library system was much more powerful than a strict hierarchy because he could tag sounds with multiple keywords instead of just relying on his memory to remember which folder he had put a particular clip…

> Right, so he had his workflow organized in a particular way that worked for him, but rather than allow him to work like that his computer forced him into a workflow management paradigm and then you told him it was better that way and he should just accept it. You can't opt out of strong opinionation when it comes to operating systems or applications in general, sadly.

Nor should you. An OS where every person gets to customize every aspect to their own liking is mostly a recipe for disaster from a support experience standpoint unless you really know what you're doing.

Take Linux for example. You can customize a ton to get your workflow exactly right if you really know exactly what you're doing. If you don't, though (and I'd argue that most people don't), it's a nightmare. One wrong step can take down the entire workflow completely.

Re: Why You Should Build a Hackintosh

#170

Post by dkonofalski » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:15 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #116

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He could not get over the fact that everything was flat and that he couldn't view his folder structure and was so frustrated because he couldn't find anything. It took me days to get the point across to him that a library system was much more powerful than a strict hierarchy because he could tag sounds with multiple keywords instead of just relying on his memory to remember which folder he had put a particular clip…

I think the ideal solution would have been some sort of automatic tagging based off the folder structure. It would have allowed him to keep his previous workflow (maybe? I have never touched itunes) while allowing him to transition to tagging. I for one love tagging search systems, but still need folder structures for organization. I feel itchy when all my shit is just slopped into a single folder, especially when I…

Well, the folder structure was actually still setup exactly the way it had been, he just didn't see it inside of any of the apps he was using. I offered to show him how to use his folder method if he would just try my (read MacOS's) method of doing it. All the files were already tagged via ID3 or some other metadata as they were either MP3, OGG, or FLAC files.

His big realization was that he didn't actually care about how the files were organized so long as he could find the sounds he was looking for. He cared before because there wasn't any way to efficiently search for them by any meaningful method (finding "metallic" sounding effects, for example) and so he filed things away in folders so that he would only have to browse through a subsection of folders (in that case - materials->metals->metallic). Now he just searches the library for "metallic" and all the sounds come up and he can combine search terms for "loud metallic" or "warped metallic" or "wobbly metallic" and get exactly the sounds he's looking for.