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OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

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Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#61

Post by nkrisc »

reimertz wrote: post #13
blackhaz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother with Mac? I've just built a Xeon E5-2640 using a Chinese X79 motherboard. NMVe, proper Radeon RX580 GPU - in an open build test bench frame. All in all, something like $250 on eBay for everything. Runs the games I like well and looks great on the table, especially with two big red LED fans in front. :-)

This is a very fair question. For me, the reason for a hackintosh is just that I am tired of all the cables and having to swap between the two setups (like having one monitor for working, and one for gaming) while utilizing the performance when working. I also want to utilize my iCloud Drive symlinking hacks to sync files / dotfiles between systems. My gaming rig is currently running i4790k with a fairly decent mothe…

I have a similar set up. I got some Thunderbolt dock for the mac and a USB input switcher that I connect all my peripherals to and can press a button to switch between the Macbook dock and my Windows PC. The only unoptimized part is I just use the DisplayPort input on my monitor for the PC and the HDMI input to the Macbook dock. So to swap all I have to do is press the button on the USB switcher and then change my monitor's input setting. Not quite one click switching, which could be done, but it's two clicks and cheaper than most KVM switches I've seen.

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#62

Post by e12e »

vbezhenar wrote: post #59
breakfastduck wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just greatly prefer using macOS over windows or linux and don't want their entire computer experience to be windows just because they play games now and then.

IMO it's more optimal to buy a separate gaming computer with Windows and use some reasonably priced Macintosh for other tasks.

> reasonably priced Macintosh

What models would you consider "reasonably priced" ?

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#63

Post by ricohboy »

shawnz wrote: post #24
mrweasel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS isn't exactly perfect, but I don't know any other desktop operating system that comes even close to macOS in terms of polish and user experience. I understand that Microsoft can't just redesign Windows over night, but I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better. Better as in more consistent and more responsive. As much as I like to consider other operating systems, the reality is that I don't want the ha…

Are you primarily a mac OS user? I am primarily a Windows user and when I occasionally have to use mac OS, I find myself regularly facing many seemingly inconsistent behaviors that really surprise me. I'm inclined to think it is a matter of familiarity more than anything.

I agree with it being familiarity. I grew up with Macs in school, and have been using them since OS 8 and 9, some experience with System 7 (uncommon for how young I am). There's lot and lots of little details that have carried on throughout all the years that just seem "normal" to me.

I find myself facing inconsistent and surprising behaviors with Windows despite it being my primary OS at work.

Growing up with Mac and Linux makes Windows seem quite strange :)

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#64

Post by ricohboy »

breakfastduck wrote: post #27
shawnz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you primarily a mac OS user? I am primarily a Windows user and when I occasionally have to use mac OS, I find myself regularly facing many seemingly inconsistent behaviors that really surprise me. I'm inclined to think it is a matter of familiarity more than anything.

This is likely a huge part of it. I'm primarily macOS but have a LOT of experience with Windows. I still feel like I'm fighting against Windows to do anything. I just think different people are suited to different workflows & macOS and Windows are very very different to each other.

Tell me about it - I work a support desk for an MSP; all Windows. I can't tell you how many times I've struggled with file permissions or partitions that I know would be very easy to fix in a *sh shell... Imagine being told "access denied" when you're running the command prompt as "administrator"!

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#65

Post by my123 »

nutjob2 wrote: post #50
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #33

What are everyone’s thoughts on the future of Hackintoshes now that Apple is switching to ARM?

It's probably 2030 before Intel Mac are no longer usable, which is forever in tech time. ARM seems to be spreading its wings when it comes to high end CPUs at the moment (for example, the 96 core 4 thread ThunderX3) and it's not a big stretch to think that they will become commodity parts for desktops and servers in the near future, especially if Microsoft follow Apple's lead. Given brisk competition and open ARM lic…

macOS arm64 can run on non-Apple hardware using a relatively lightly changed KVM (and the Qemu-side changes are even less intensive than the iOS on Qemu project). However, it doesn't come without compromises on most hardware.

What I can enumerate as risk factors for running macOS arm64 in a VM:

- ARMv8.1 atomics are mandatory. This excludes Cortex-A72 devices, like the RPi4, and earlier generations.

- 16KB page support are mandatory, excludes the RPi4 and other devices too.

- Rosetta uses an MSR to switch the memory model, this makes x86 threads have to all run only at one core at once on Arm CPUs where there isn't a stronger memory model. Notably, some Arm server CPUs provide TSO, making this a non-issue, and Nvidia's Tegra Xavier CPUs provide sequential consistency, making it a non-issue.

- PAC, not a big risk factor, trap once and then patch to the non-PAC variant at worst for instructions that aren't in the NOP space.

- FP16/dotproduct: provided in HW from quite some other manufacturers, and even when it isn't, you could feasibly emulate those fast enough.

On GPUs, Metal paravirtualization exists in macOS 11, maybe would be better to target that for reverse-engineering purposes.

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#66

Post by rubin55 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #46
reimertz wrote: post #2

I bought an EGPU 1.5 years ago with the idea of replacing my gaming computer with my MacBook Pro running Windows. But due to the limitations of Thunderbolt 3 and the throughput from my enclosure, I cannot get consistent frame rates which is critical for playing fast-paced competitive games like Apex legends. It really sucks and this point, my $1000 EGPU is currently acting as a fancy adapter + charger + enabling smoo…

I was going to go that route for my 3D work, but at the time eGPU chassis and card was almost as much as an entire PC anyway. Decided to just go for the PC with the intention to hackintosh it but in the end Windows worked well enough for what I was planning to use it for, good thing I did too because now Nvidia doesn't work at all on modern MacOS so would have all been a waste of money if I'd gone the eGPU route. I'm…

Good call! And they actually will do it again -> see move to ARM!

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#67

Post by whywhywhywhy »

shawnz wrote: post #24
mrweasel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS isn't exactly perfect, but I don't know any other desktop operating system that comes even close to macOS in terms of polish and user experience. I understand that Microsoft can't just redesign Windows over night, but I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better. Better as in more consistent and more responsive. As much as I like to consider other operating systems, the reality is that I don't want the ha…

Are you primarily a mac OS user? I am primarily a Windows user and when I occasionally have to use mac OS, I find myself regularly facing many seemingly inconsistent behaviors that really surprise me. I'm inclined to think it is a matter of familiarity more than anything.

Familiarity is a huge part of it. Windows is getting better very slowly but consistently. Really the only major pain points where I say MacOS is objectively better are:

- Window flickering on resizing, both have it but MacOS has a lot less of it.

- Being able to customize any shortcut menu item in any app

- Finder, Document proxy icons and open/save dialogs are just leagues ahead of Explorer.

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#68

Post by yardie »

shawnz wrote: post #24
mrweasel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS isn't exactly perfect, but I don't know any other desktop operating system that comes even close to macOS in terms of polish and user experience. I understand that Microsoft can't just redesign Windows over night, but I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better. Better as in more consistent and more responsive. As much as I like to consider other operating systems, the reality is that I don't want the ha…

Are you primarily a mac OS user? I am primarily a Windows user and when I occasionally have to use mac OS, I find myself regularly facing many seemingly inconsistent behaviors that really surprise me. I'm inclined to think it is a matter of familiarity more than anything.

I head up our IT department and I use both; Windows for business apps, MacOS for creative apps. 10 is mindbogglingly inconsistent from the way the UI changes between old and new control panels to the way graphic scaling is horribly broken. The cloud side is getting better and works great for users. We've slowly peeled away 3rd party (Dropbox, Slack, Webex) services.

Everything in Windows 10 feels like it's in beta. There is no polish, that final 1%, to any of it.

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#69

Post by vbezhenar »

e12e wrote: post #62
vbezhenar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's more optimal to buy a separate gaming computer with Windows and use some reasonably priced Macintosh for other tasks.

> reasonably priced Macintosh What models would you consider "reasonably priced" ?

All of them except Mac Pro. At least their base configurations. As you configure more disk or RAM, sometimes they become unreasonably priced.

Re: OpenCore bootloader – open-sourced Apple UEFI drivers, enabling Hackintosh

#70

Post by drewg123 »

francis_t_catte wrote: post #37

I use OpenCore, on my 2010 27" iMac of all things. Needed to enable target display mode and native brightness control on the new K610m GPU. So in essence, my actual Macintosh is now a Hackintosh in Apple's eyes. If you have a 2010 or 2011 iMac with a dead GPU btw, check out this thread on the MacRumors forum: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card...

I did something similar.. I had an original Mac Pro, which didn't support 64-bit MacOS because Apple's UEFI ran in 32-bit mode and Apple's boot loader / kernel never supported switching into 64-bit mode from 32-bit mode. So to use that machine for 64-bit driver development, I had to make it into a "hackintosh", where they had a UEFI that would run in 64-bit mode..
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