4 ms·

> Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. Can you provide a citation for this? Havi

> Which nicely explains the rising popularity of Hackintosh's, particularly among developers and other technologists. Can you provide a citation for this? Having worked with literally thousands of engineers, I have never seen a hackintosh in real life.

rumanator 7y ago
I personally know of a iOS software house where all developers use hackintosh, so yeah it's popular.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Which you can derive from there being at least one hackintosh shop?
  - rumanator 7y ago
    It's the only iOS software house I personally know, so in my POV it represents 100% of macos/iOS shops. YMMV.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    You put together all your information from anecdotally never seeing one.
1123581321 7y ago
I believe he’s wrong and they are not meaningfully rising in popularity. Hackintoshes started as soon as the Intel transition, and they do exist (I’ve seen a couple personally, both built around the Leopard era when tools were mature and the desirability of iCloud/iMessage integration was lower.) Today there aren’t many people who need to push computing beyond the relatively affordable Mac Mini and iMac configurations. Most Hackintosh practitioners want Apple to release the “XMac,” a cheap and configurable desktop tower* and operate their Hackintosh in its stead. It’s a respectable hobby, though, like iOS jailbreaking or emulation, and for persistent people it does let them run MacOS on more powerful hardware than they could afford. * https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/
austinheap 7y ago
Not sure a citation exists for such an assertion -- but I'm a decade deep and numerous production (profitable) iOS apps shipped without ever touching Apple hardware. MacOS is a joy but the hardware is consumer rot.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I’m sure if it was indeed popular, there would be some way of demonstrating that. Aside from the fact that I have never seen one in my entire career as a consultant, working with hundreds of organisations, the reason this sounds ridiculous to me is that Apple has a long history of making very little effort to obstruct the hackintosh community. Which suggests very strongly that the community is too small for Apple to bother with. There are a few topics on HN that seem to bring out people claiming that incredibly niche interests are actually very common and popular. Apple is one of them. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that somebody making such an incredible claim should have at least some way of substantiating it.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    I’m sure if it was indeed popular, there would be some way of demonstrating that. Google Trends suggests that searches for 'Hackintosh' peaked around 2009 and have been steadily declining down to around a half since then. Searches for 'Ubuntu' dominate so much it makes the Hackintosh graph look flat by comparison, but Hackintosh seems about as popular as 'Manjaro' (Linux Distribution) currently is, fwiw: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=hackintosh,manjaro https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=hackinto...
comprev 7y ago
The only reason I'm using a Mac now is by pure good luck as all my PC components at the time (back in 2011-ish) were OSX Snow Leopard compatible, right down to Wi-Fi, bluetooth, motherboard, soundcard, etc. I admit it wasn't completely vanilla due to the infamous tonymacx86 software method but it did get me running quickly. I gave OSX a test drive and found it much more simple compared to Windows. As I already had an iPhone/iPad it made sense to switch. Come upgrade time I bought a Macbook Pro and have been on OSX since.

rumanator 7y ago

I personally know of a iOS software house where all developers use hackintosh, so yeah it's popular.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
Which you can derive from there being at least one hackintosh shop?
- rumanator 7y ago
  It's the only iOS software house I personally know, so in my POV it represents 100% of macos/iOS shops. YMMV.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  You put together all your information from anecdotally never seeing one.

1123581321 7y ago

I believe he’s wrong and they are not meaningfully rising in popularity. Hackintoshes started as soon as the Intel transition, and they do exist (I’ve seen a couple personally, both built around the Leopard era when tools were mature and the desirability of iCloud/iMessage integration was lower.) Today there aren’t many people who need to push computing beyond the relatively affordable Mac Mini and iMac configurations. Most Hackintosh practitioners want Apple to release the “XMac,” a cheap and configurable desktop tower* and operate their Hackintosh in its stead. It’s a respectable hobby, though, like iOS jailbreaking or emulation, and for persistent people it does let them run MacOS on more powerful hardware than they could afford. * https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/

austinheap 7y ago

Not sure a citation exists for such an assertion -- but I'm a decade deep and numerous production (profitable) iOS apps shipped without ever touching Apple hardware. MacOS is a joy but the hardware is consumer rot.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
I’m sure if it was indeed popular, there would be some way of demonstrating that. Aside from the fact that I have never seen one in my entire career as a consultant, working with hundreds of organisations, the reason this sounds ridiculous to me is that Apple has a long history of making very little effort to obstruct the hackintosh community. Which suggests very strongly that the community is too small for Apple to bother with. There are a few topics on HN that seem to bring out people claiming that incredibly niche interests are actually very common and popular. Apple is one of them. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that somebody making such an incredible claim should have at least some way of substantiating it.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  I’m sure if it was indeed popular, there would be some way of demonstrating that. Google Trends suggests that searches for 'Hackintosh' peaked around 2009 and have been steadily declining down to around a half since then. Searches for 'Ubuntu' dominate so much it makes the Hackintosh graph look flat by comparison, but Hackintosh seems about as popular as 'Manjaro' (Linux Distribution) currently is, fwiw: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=hackintosh,manjaro https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=hackinto...

comprev 7y ago

The only reason I'm using a Mac now is by pure good luck as all my PC components at the time (back in 2011-ish) were OSX Snow Leopard compatible, right down to Wi-Fi, bluetooth, motherboard, soundcard, etc. I admit it wasn't completely vanilla due to the infamous tonymacx86 software method but it did get me running quickly. I gave OSX a test drive and found it much more simple compared to Windows. As I already had an iPhone/iPad it made sense to switch. Come upgrade time I bought a Macbook Pro and have been on OSX since.