6 ms·

I think this is where Hackintosh comes in. You can buy top of the line, macOS-compatible hardware for 1/3 of the Apple premium. It takes effort to set up, but

I think this is where Hackintosh comes in. You can buy top of the line, macOS-compatible hardware for 1/3 of the Apple premium. It takes effort to set up, but not that much.

mulmen 9y ago
To me the value of a Mac is not macOS. It’s having a complete device solution that just works. I don’t want to fight with my workstation all the time. I want to use it to do... work.
- poletopole 9y ago
  I have been battling Apple about my 2013 mac pro for a year. You have to be careful about the monitors you buy because Apple will say it's not their problem when your monitor knocks your wifi offline (personally) or some weird shit. Personally, I think for anyone deliberating between an iMac Pro and a Mac Pro, you should go with the iMac Pro because Apple has always been an all-in-one company--it's one of the few things they are still good at these days. I used to work on the older mac pros in high school and never had problems, but those days are over. If I knew hardware well enough to fix it I would have gone Hackintosh.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    I used to have a '14 RMBP with the Apple display and it was wonderful. Now I have a '17 13" MBP and it only has two USB ports so I have a third party dock and monitors because Apple doesn't offer a solution. The entire experience is awful but still more reliable than any Windows laptop I have ever run, although the gap is closing. Hackintosh doesn't work for me because my business isn't fixing laptops. Apple used to provide a full solution and it was really great.
    - chrisper 9y ago
      Hackintosh run very stable these days even more so now with Clover. But you need to have fun at doing that
      - mulmen 9y ago
        Yeah I get it, I even consider that kind of thing fun in my spare time although I have other hobbies these days. In a professional (corporate) environment I don't have time to fix my laptop. I'm lucky to work in a place that has an outstanding IT department who provides what we need (including outstanding Macintosh support) but a Hackintosh is not on the list.
        chrisper 9y ago
        I am also sure the legal department would shut down a hackintosh real quick.
- prolikewhoa 9y ago
  You can't knock everything else just because it's not a Mac. I've personally had my fair share of Mac problems and when I worked Help Desk we had our fair share of Mac Laptop problems that were comparable if not greater than our failure rate of Thinkpad's. This was in 2017 too.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mulmen 9y ago
    I’m not knocking it because it’s not a Mac. I’m saying when Apple sells a complete solution it is generally trouble free.
    - ropeadopepope 9y ago
      That may have been the case 5 years ago, but it certainly isn't now. I work in a mostly mac office and not a single one of my mac fanboy coworkers has a single nice thing to say about the 2017 macbook pros.
      - mulmen 9y ago
        Right because it's just a laptop and you have to buy a bunch of other stuff from third parties to go with it. I explained this in a sibling comment. In 2014 Apple would sell you a monitor that doubled as a dock which worked great with the RMBP and Apple's own wireless KB and Mouse and even Time Machine. Today you're stuck with USB-C docks which are pretty awful. Pretty much on par with a Dell or HP laptop dock. The new Macbook Pros are the worst device I have used from Apple. The thread you are replying to is about hackintoshes. The point of a Mac for me is that it Just Works (tm). If I want to fight with something I'll buy a Thinkpad and install Ubuntu. I have no interest in fighting with macOS, it's only useful to me if it is easy.
        ropeadopepope 9y ago
        > Right because it's just a laptop and you have to buy a bunch of other stuff from third parties to go with it. No. Their complaints are about the laptop itself. The keys are constantly breaking. The software constantly crashes. We're all a bunch of consulting devs and the 2017 macbook pros have cost every single one of them at least a week's worth of billable hours in the past 6 months. Most of them have gone back to their 2015 models.
jackhack 9y ago
Perhaps this is part of the reason why Apple is moving away from Intel chips to some of their own creations?
- jonknee 9y ago
  Statistically there are almost no hackintoshes, it would be a very dumb reason to switch from Intel chips. The much more likely reason is that Intel chips have hit something of a performance wall and Apple also runs a much more popular ARM based platform.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    More likely still is that one chip set convergence lowers the cost of OS development by combining both platforms into one.
ovao 9y ago
I simply cannot imagine running something like that in a professional context. For me, "maybe this next update will install correctly" is a non-starter. For consumers who just really want to run macOS, I can see the appeal.
- jackhack 9y ago
  I agree, in an educational institution or large corporation, no way. But in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity, where one can't (won't?) migrate away from MacOS, a Hackintosh may be the only option available. It's the market filling in the gaps of Apple's engineering & marketing plan.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    > in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity A computer that takes a bunch of fiddling to set up and might not work if updated doesn't seem like a productivity booster to me.
    - walterbell 9y ago
      IT does the fiddling. Creators gain performance and productivity.
      - saagarjha 9y ago
        You're a small shop. Do you even have the funds for IT, or is it just one of the hats that your main system admin or reliability engineer puts on?
        walterbell 9y ago
        That depends how much your creators' time is worth, i.e. the return on increased performance. If Hackintoshes have motivated Apple to release a new Mac Pro after a multi-year gap, then Apple-only shops will benefit from the Hackintosh investments of other shops.
atonse 9y ago
This is a myth that keeps going and going. A Core i7 is not the same as a Xeon. ECC memory matters. The Apple premium simply isn't that much higher. I also wanted to add that the cost of a person's time eclipses the cost of hardware (especially with computers). As a business, I simply wouldn't risk having days of downtime from a bad update, just to save $2,000 for something that's used for years, when the lost time in paying a creative person's salary will eclipse that.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  And everytime, someone mentions how ecc memory is important. But it's just not. There is a performance penalty, and the real use case for ecc memory is vanishingly small for a workstation. What could you possibly be doing on a workstation that requires ecc? For every 8 gb of memory, you are potentially looking at a single bit flip every 9 years. With ecc, only once every 45 years. And in exchange, you are looking at a 10% performance penalty. What could you possibly be doing on a Mac pro that would need that kind of accuracy?
  - jnwatson 9y ago
    The error rate is significantly higher than that. ECC also makes RowHammer much harder to pull off.
    - strictnein 9y ago
      ECC for security on a desktop to combat RowHammer?
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      Even if it is higher, what are you doing on a workstation that would benefit from lower rates? This study found 2 (yes, 2) "suspected" soft errors in 300 machines running for multiple months. http://www2.ece.rochester.edu/~xinli/usenix07/ http://www2.ece.rochester.edu/~xinli/usenix07/ And not that Row Hammer should really be a concern for a workstation, but ECC does not necessarily protect against it. Some types of ram are vulnerable and some aren't. But ECC is not necessarily a factor. http://www.thirdio.com/rowhammer.pdf http://www.thirdio.com/rowhammer.pdf
gervase 9y ago
This solution is fine for individual developers, or even small shops / startups, but it would never fly in a more corporate environment. Coincidentally, those environments are also the most likely to drop $5K+ on a development machine without batting an eye.
jonknee 9y ago
Not even close to true: https://www.cultofmac.com/485914/imac-pro-pricetag/ https://www.cultofmac.com/485914/imac-pro-pricetag/
- wuliwong 9y ago
  Why would you need to buy a 1080 ti graphics card when imac pro has an amd vega. That makes the entire parts list suspect to me.
- xanderstrike 9y ago
  This list is a joke, that's not even close to a 1:1 comparison. It looks like they intentionally picked the most expensive options for everything. You don't need a $160 AIO water cooler, a $250 1000W power supply, or a $650(!?!?!) motherboard. The Vega in the iMac doesn't compare to a 1080 at all. To anyone with an understanding of PC hardware it's clear this list was composed specifically to justify the iMac pro's price. Here's a much more reasonable list: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/xanderstrike/saved/mNDWXL https://pcpartpicker.com/user/xanderstrike/saved/mNDWXL

I think this is where Hackintosh comes in. You can buy top of the line, macOS-compatible hardware for 1/3 of the Apple premium. It takes effort to set up, but not that much.

mulmen 9y ago

To me the value of a Mac is not macOS. It’s having a complete device solution that just works. I don’t want to fight with my workstation all the time. I want to use it to do... work.

poletopole 9y ago
I have been battling Apple about my 2013 mac pro for a year. You have to be careful about the monitors you buy because Apple will say it's not their problem when your monitor knocks your wifi offline (personally) or some weird shit. Personally, I think for anyone deliberating between an iMac Pro and a Mac Pro, you should go with the iMac Pro because Apple has always been an all-in-one company--it's one of the few things they are still good at these days. I used to work on the older mac pros in high school and never had problems, but those days are over. If I knew hardware well enough to fix it I would have gone Hackintosh.
- mulmen 9y ago
  I used to have a '14 RMBP with the Apple display and it was wonderful. Now I have a '17 13" MBP and it only has two USB ports so I have a third party dock and monitors because Apple doesn't offer a solution. The entire experience is awful but still more reliable than any Windows laptop I have ever run, although the gap is closing. Hackintosh doesn't work for me because my business isn't fixing laptops. Apple used to provide a full solution and it was really great.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Hackintosh run very stable these days even more so now with Clover. But you need to have fun at doing that
    - mulmen 9y ago
      Yeah I get it, I even consider that kind of thing fun in my spare time although I have other hobbies these days. In a professional (corporate) environment I don't have time to fix my laptop. I'm lucky to work in a place that has an outstanding IT department who provides what we need (including outstanding Macintosh support) but a Hackintosh is not on the list.
      - chrisper 9y ago
        I am also sure the legal department would shut down a hackintosh real quick.
prolikewhoa 9y ago
You can't knock everything else just because it's not a Mac. I've personally had my fair share of Mac problems and when I worked Help Desk we had our fair share of Mac Laptop problems that were comparable if not greater than our failure rate of Thinkpad's. This was in 2017 too.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mulmen 9y ago
  I’m not knocking it because it’s not a Mac. I’m saying when Apple sells a complete solution it is generally trouble free.
  - ropeadopepope 9y ago
    That may have been the case 5 years ago, but it certainly isn't now. I work in a mostly mac office and not a single one of my mac fanboy coworkers has a single nice thing to say about the 2017 macbook pros.
    - mulmen 9y ago
      Right because it's just a laptop and you have to buy a bunch of other stuff from third parties to go with it. I explained this in a sibling comment. In 2014 Apple would sell you a monitor that doubled as a dock which worked great with the RMBP and Apple's own wireless KB and Mouse and even Time Machine. Today you're stuck with USB-C docks which are pretty awful. Pretty much on par with a Dell or HP laptop dock. The new Macbook Pros are the worst device I have used from Apple. The thread you are replying to is about hackintoshes. The point of a Mac for me is that it Just Works (tm). If I want to fight with something I'll buy a Thinkpad and install Ubuntu. I have no interest in fighting with macOS, it's only useful to me if it is easy.
      - ropeadopepope 9y ago
        > Right because it's just a laptop and you have to buy a bunch of other stuff from third parties to go with it. No. Their complaints are about the laptop itself. The keys are constantly breaking. The software constantly crashes. We're all a bunch of consulting devs and the 2017 macbook pros have cost every single one of them at least a week's worth of billable hours in the past 6 months. Most of them have gone back to their 2015 models.

jackhack 9y ago

Perhaps this is part of the reason why Apple is moving away from Intel chips to some of their own creations?

jonknee 9y ago
Statistically there are almost no hackintoshes, it would be a very dumb reason to switch from Intel chips. The much more likely reason is that Intel chips have hit something of a performance wall and Apple also runs a much more popular ARM based platform.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  More likely still is that one chip set convergence lowers the cost of OS development by combining both platforms into one.

ovao 9y ago

I simply cannot imagine running something like that in a professional context. For me, "maybe this next update will install correctly" is a non-starter. For consumers who just really want to run macOS, I can see the appeal.

jackhack 9y ago
I agree, in an educational institution or large corporation, no way. But in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity, where one can't (won't?) migrate away from MacOS, a Hackintosh may be the only option available. It's the market filling in the gaps of Apple's engineering & marketing plan.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  > in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity A computer that takes a bunch of fiddling to set up and might not work if updated doesn't seem like a productivity booster to me.
  - walterbell 9y ago
    IT does the fiddling. Creators gain performance and productivity.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      You're a small shop. Do you even have the funds for IT, or is it just one of the hats that your main system admin or reliability engineer puts on?
      - walterbell 9y ago
        That depends how much your creators' time is worth, i.e. the return on increased performance. If Hackintoshes have motivated Apple to release a new Mac Pro after a multi-year gap, then Apple-only shops will benefit from the Hackintosh investments of other shops.

atonse 9y ago

This is a myth that keeps going and going. A Core i7 is not the same as a Xeon. ECC memory matters. The Apple premium simply isn't that much higher. I also wanted to add that the cost of a person's time eclipses the cost of hardware (especially with computers). As a business, I simply wouldn't risk having days of downtime from a bad update, just to save $2,000 for something that's used for years, when the lost time in paying a creative person's salary will eclipse that.

jjeaff 9y ago
And everytime, someone mentions how ecc memory is important. But it's just not. There is a performance penalty, and the real use case for ecc memory is vanishingly small for a workstation. What could you possibly be doing on a workstation that requires ecc? For every 8 gb of memory, you are potentially looking at a single bit flip every 9 years. With ecc, only once every 45 years. And in exchange, you are looking at a 10% performance penalty. What could you possibly be doing on a Mac pro that would need that kind of accuracy?
- jnwatson 9y ago
  The error rate is significantly higher than that. ECC also makes RowHammer much harder to pull off.
  - strictnein 9y ago
    ECC for security on a desktop to combat RowHammer?
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    Even if it is higher, what are you doing on a workstation that would benefit from lower rates? This study found 2 (yes, 2) "suspected" soft errors in 300 machines running for multiple months. http://www2.ece.rochester.edu/~xinli/usenix07/ http://www2.ece.rochester.edu/~xinli/usenix07/ And not that Row Hammer should really be a concern for a workstation, but ECC does not necessarily protect against it. Some types of ram are vulnerable and some aren't. But ECC is not necessarily a factor. http://www.thirdio.com/rowhammer.pdf http://www.thirdio.com/rowhammer.pdf

gervase 9y ago

This solution is fine for individual developers, or even small shops / startups, but it would never fly in a more corporate environment. Coincidentally, those environments are also the most likely to drop $5K+ on a development machine without batting an eye.

jonknee 9y ago

Not even close to true: https://www.cultofmac.com/485914/imac-pro-pricetag/ https://www.cultofmac.com/485914/imac-pro-pricetag/

wuliwong 9y ago
Why would you need to buy a 1080 ti graphics card when imac pro has an amd vega. That makes the entire parts list suspect to me.
xanderstrike 9y ago
This list is a joke, that's not even close to a 1:1 comparison. It looks like they intentionally picked the most expensive options for everything. You don't need a $160 AIO water cooler, a $250 1000W power supply, or a $650(!?!?!) motherboard. The Vega in the iMac doesn't compare to a 1080 at all. To anyone with an understanding of PC hardware it's clear this list was composed specifically to justify the iMac pro's price. Here's a much more reasonable list: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/xanderstrike/saved/mNDWXL https://pcpartpicker.com/user/xanderstrike/saved/mNDWXL