13 ms·

Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it? Apple clearly doesn't want to support thi

by oauea 7y ago

Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it? Apple clearly doesn't want to support third party hardware and from what I've heard, you have to live in constant fear of updates.

morid1n 7y ago
It’s that good. And the software on it is even better.
lawik 7y ago
I think there are plenty of reasons. You might like the OS a lot but not care about Apple's feelings. Spite is another one. Or fun. It's a neat thing to do. Hacking-wise. You might want the high performance hardware without the premium price. I've considered it but will probably go Linux for my next desktop work machine.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Spite is another one. This is a bad reason to spend any of your life on something.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    If in earnest, yes. But if more like in jest, than actual hurt feelings spite, why the heck not. It can be fun. My somewhat humorous take back in the day - the terms said the OS must only run on Apple labeled hardware. So I labelled the hardware with a couple of Apple stickers. That should do it, right?! :-D (If I recall correctly the stickers even came with the Snow Leopard DVD...)
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > I think there are plenty of reasons. You might like the OS a lot but not care about Apple's feelings. Apple is a company. Companies do not have feelings; they have interests. Who are you (financially) hurting by running Hackintosh?
dewey 7y ago
> Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it? Because for a variety of reasons they don't want to pay for a "real" Mac I'd assume. Personally I'd not consider it as the value I get from a Mac is that I don't have to worry about updates, hardware, drivers and spending hours reading up on Hackintosh forums what's safe to do.
nordsieck 7y ago
> Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it? If you're a developer, OS X is great. Windows is a second class citizen if you aren't using Visual Studio. Linux is great - it's basically your deployment environment - but you often have to mess around with it a bit. OS X is 90-95% of the benefit of Linux, but it just works™. If you want to get work done, that's a pretty good feature. The trouble is that, if you want to run a desktop, there are basically no good options. Mac Mini is very limited, same with the iMac. The Mac Pro is not limited, but it supports such enormous expansion that the base config is extremely expensive, while not being very performant.
- FpUser 7y ago
  I am a developer and have no problems developing Linux software on Windows desktop (namely C++ rest servers). It just works™ for me
- adgasf 7y ago
  A Hackintosh does not just work. It requires far more upkeep than a Linux system. I certainly wouldn't do it again!
  - cutler 7y ago
    As long as you choose your hardware wisely all you need is UniBeast and post-install MulitBeast. All I've ever had to do in over 10 years of Hackintosh use is re-install my MultiBeast config after an OS update.
  - mantap 7y ago
    You have to think of a hackintosh like an android phone. You might get OS updates or not but mostly whatever OS version it starts with will stay on it for life. You will certainly not be able to update immediately. For some people that's fine, for others who are dependant on Xcode which needs constant OS updates, it's not fine. Really depends on your use case.
    - 7y ago
ErneX 7y ago
I just can't stand Windows, I boot there to play games only.
- jimnotgym 7y ago
  Anything in particular?
  - rapsey 7y ago
    * Consistent keyboard shortcuts. One can get by with a keyboard for way longer on macOS. It makes general usage very efficient. * Native bash terminal. * Just works and the defaults are fine. * homebrew package manager is quite nice. * iPhone integration is pretty awesome (file air drops, calls, messages all available from macOS)
    - unnouinceput 7y ago
      I think he meant what games you play.
    - oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
      Agree with you on native bash and general fit and polish of the OS. However, when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, I strongly disagree. I used windows for about ten years, then moved over to Mac for the past ten. I still am not as comfortable with the keyboard under macOS as I was windows. Main culprits are tabbing between controls (many just don’t seem accessible) and different interpretations, across apps, of things like home, page up, etc. Best example is finder: windows explorer, I could basically navigate by keyboard alone. Finder pretty much requires the mouse.
pjmlp 7y ago
I also don't get it. Anyone doing this should support any of OEMs selling the BSD or Linux based hardware instead, like System76, Tuxedo, Dell, Asus. Either one buys into the full Apple experience, or not.
- nik736 7y ago
  With a Hackintosh you have the full experience, since you have macOS installed. The underlying hardware is basically the same.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Try to take the Hackintosh to an Apple store to see how the Apple Care repair experience plays out.
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      Why on Earth would anyone do that.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        The point is that Hackintosh is not the Apple experience, rather being cheapskates to buy Apple's hardware and Care plans. That being the case, better contribute to BSD and Linux OEMs.
        FireBeyond 7y ago
        As someone who has spent, as best I can tell, $50,000+ on Apple gear at home over the last decade, tell me again why I'm a cheapskate because I take issue with the world's richest company charging me nearly five times market rates for memory? Oh, for the "Apple experience"? Please. The last two Apple experiences I had involved them wanting to charge me $900 to repair a charging circuit in an otherwise perfectly functioning MacBook, and another where they repeatedly denied me warranty service on a maxed out MBP which could repeatedly be made to crash, oftentimes multiple times a day (due to what Apple begrudgingly admitted nearly six months later was in fact a design issue). To be clear I'm perfectly happy with Apple hardware and software and realize that my experiences are outliers. But "because I'm a cheapskate" isn't really a valid argument here.
cutler 7y ago
Massive savings and modability. A Hackintosh can be significantly cheaper and you're free to upgrade your disk, RAM and cpu.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  I still struggle to see the point these days -- swapping CPUs and RAM makes little sense even on Windows; RAM sizes have remained stagnant for years and the small generational speed increases on CPUs mean you'll likely need a new motherboard anyway by the time the cost/benefit is there. Disk is a non-issue as there are external enclosures that aren't expensive, and performance over Thunderbolt is as good as PCIe (because it is PCIe). Performance-wise a MacBook Pro is and has been a great machine and not incredibly expensive, plus you get the portability aspect. For the "semi-professional" market that a Hackintosh is appealing to, most folks would be better off with a MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt dock. You also miss out on a number of core features of the OS because the hardware that supports them doesn't exist. Combined with the headache of keeping the machine current, it's not really a good tradeoff for a couple hundred bucks. You'd be better off buying a used MacBook Pro.
  - morid1n 7y ago
    Try a couple of thousand dollars. My build is 1K cheaper than a similarly specced Mini without an eGPU. A comparable Mac Pro (yes, Xeons and ECC) is 7.2K USD.
  - cutler 7y ago
    I was thinking more about what happens when parts fail, especially if you're nowhere near an Apple retailer. I used to be able to swap out disks and RAM with my MacBook Pro. Not any more.
Zarel 7y ago
I ran a hackintosh setup for most of my university days. I loved OS X on my MacBook but I wanted more power and a larger screen, and I couldn't afford a Mac Pro. Compared to both Windows and Linux, I preferred OS X's behavior in: - the systemwide emacs keybindings in every textbox - the consistent keyboard shortcuts (Cmd+C was always Copy, Ctrl+C was always Interrupt) - the dedicated keyboard key (Option) for typing non-ASCII characters - the general higher quality of apps that were available (Transmit was a better FTP client, TotalTerminal a better terminal, Preview a better PDF viewer, iBooks a better ebook reader, MplayerX a better video player, iTunes a better music player, Adium a better chat app, Transmission a better torrent app, Parallels a better VM, than anything for Windows or Linux) - the consistent look-and-feel of apps - the centralized notification system, Growl (before any OS had built-in notification support, the third-party Growl library was the de-facto standard on Mac, at a time when in other OSes, every app used their own notifications that constantly got in each other's way) - QuickLook Compared to Windows, I liked: - the presence of a bash terminal underlying everything - multiple desktops (Windows has this now, but didn't back then) - Exposé (the thing that showed all open windows so you could click the one you wanted to easily switch to it) Compared to Linux, I liked: - Homebrew, a package manager which actually installed up-to-date packages instead of years-old packages (this was before Linuxbrew) - official support for various paid apps like Photoshop and MS Word - the ability to do many important things in a GUI (and therefore, the ability to do new things without needing to Google them) Aside from the complications updates posed, I ran into no major problems with the hackintosh setup, other than I think the microphone didn't work? Everything else worked fine. I had overall much fewer problems than I have with Linux.
- JoelTheSuperior 7y ago
  What made you stop using one?
  - Zarel 7y ago
    This is one of my favorite stories. When I updated to OS X 10.7 Lion on my Hackintosh, I got a weird issue where the hard drive would wipe itself every few days – like, I would turn on the computer, and it would tell me the hard drive was blank and had no operating system on it, and I had to reinstall everything all over again. (To be clear, this was the first issue of any kind my Hackintosh had ever gotten.) At that point, my business had gotten successful, so I could afford to buy a 2013 Mac Pro and stop worrying about what went wrong. So I bought the Mac Pro... and its SSD still wiped itself after a few days. Turns out, the problem was in Lion's exFAT driver. I'd partitioned it into HFS+ for Mac, NTFS for Windows, and a shared exFAT partition, like on my Hackintosh, and Lion just couldn't handle that. I gave up on having an exFAT partition after that, but kept the Mac Pro because it was so nice (it was also much quieter and smaller, which let me put it in my backpack for hackathons).
wor3q 7y ago
You can't develop and deploy IOS or hybrid apps on any other system, and OSX is a pain to run on a VM...
H1Supreme 7y ago
I run mine for audio production, exclusively. I have some mac only software that is critical to my workflow, so I keep a hackintosh (which works perfect btw) running. Updating an audio rig, in my experience, is done only when absolutely necessary. So, I don't bother (still on 10.12.6).

by oauea 7y ago

morid1n 7y ago

It’s that good. And the software on it is even better.

lawik 7y ago

I think there are plenty of reasons. You might like the OS a lot but not care about Apple's feelings. Spite is another one. Or fun. It's a neat thing to do. Hacking-wise. You might want the high performance hardware without the premium price. I've considered it but will probably go Linux for my next desktop work machine.

chrisseaton 7y ago
> Spite is another one. This is a bad reason to spend any of your life on something.
- jacobush 7y ago
  If in earnest, yes. But if more like in jest, than actual hurt feelings spite, why the heck not. It can be fun. My somewhat humorous take back in the day - the terms said the OS must only run on Apple labeled hardware. So I labelled the hardware with a couple of Apple stickers. That should do it, right?! :-D (If I recall correctly the stickers even came with the Snow Leopard DVD...)
Fnoord 7y ago
> I think there are plenty of reasons. You might like the OS a lot but not care about Apple's feelings. Apple is a company. Companies do not have feelings; they have interests. Who are you (financially) hurting by running Hackintosh?

dewey 7y ago

> Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it? Because for a variety of reasons they don't want to pay for a "real" Mac I'd assume. Personally I'd not consider it as the value I get from a Mac is that I don't have to worry about updates, hardware, drivers and spending hours reading up on Hackintosh forums what's safe to do.

nordsieck 7y ago

> Can someone explain why you would want to run an operating system that actively tries to prevent you from running it? If you're a developer, OS X is great. Windows is a second class citizen if you aren't using Visual Studio. Linux is great - it's basically your deployment environment - but you often have to mess around with it a bit. OS X is 90-95% of the benefit of Linux, but it just works™. If you want to get work done, that's a pretty good feature. The trouble is that, if you want to run a desktop, there are basically no good options. Mac Mini is very limited, same with the iMac. The Mac Pro is not limited, but it supports such enormous expansion that the base config is extremely expensive, while not being very performant.

FpUser 7y ago
I am a developer and have no problems developing Linux software on Windows desktop (namely C++ rest servers). It just works™ for me
adgasf 7y ago
A Hackintosh does not just work. It requires far more upkeep than a Linux system. I certainly wouldn't do it again!
- cutler 7y ago
  As long as you choose your hardware wisely all you need is UniBeast and post-install MulitBeast. All I've ever had to do in over 10 years of Hackintosh use is re-install my MultiBeast config after an OS update.
- mantap 7y ago
  You have to think of a hackintosh like an android phone. You might get OS updates or not but mostly whatever OS version it starts with will stay on it for life. You will certainly not be able to update immediately. For some people that's fine, for others who are dependant on Xcode which needs constant OS updates, it's not fine. Really depends on your use case.
  - 7y ago

ErneX 7y ago

I just can't stand Windows, I boot there to play games only.

jimnotgym 7y ago
Anything in particular?
- rapsey 7y ago
  * Consistent keyboard shortcuts. One can get by with a keyboard for way longer on macOS. It makes general usage very efficient. * Native bash terminal. * Just works and the defaults are fine. * homebrew package manager is quite nice. * iPhone integration is pretty awesome (file air drops, calls, messages all available from macOS)
  - unnouinceput 7y ago
    I think he meant what games you play.
  - oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
    Agree with you on native bash and general fit and polish of the OS. However, when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, I strongly disagree. I used windows for about ten years, then moved over to Mac for the past ten. I still am not as comfortable with the keyboard under macOS as I was windows. Main culprits are tabbing between controls (many just don’t seem accessible) and different interpretations, across apps, of things like home, page up, etc. Best example is finder: windows explorer, I could basically navigate by keyboard alone. Finder pretty much requires the mouse.

pjmlp 7y ago

I also don't get it. Anyone doing this should support any of OEMs selling the BSD or Linux based hardware instead, like System76, Tuxedo, Dell, Asus. Either one buys into the full Apple experience, or not.

nik736 7y ago
With a Hackintosh you have the full experience, since you have macOS installed. The underlying hardware is basically the same.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Try to take the Hackintosh to an Apple store to see how the Apple Care repair experience plays out.
  - Koshkin 7y ago
    Why on Earth would anyone do that.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      The point is that Hackintosh is not the Apple experience, rather being cheapskates to buy Apple's hardware and Care plans. That being the case, better contribute to BSD and Linux OEMs.
      - FireBeyond 7y ago
        As someone who has spent, as best I can tell, $50,000+ on Apple gear at home over the last decade, tell me again why I'm a cheapskate because I take issue with the world's richest company charging me nearly five times market rates for memory? Oh, for the "Apple experience"? Please. The last two Apple experiences I had involved them wanting to charge me $900 to repair a charging circuit in an otherwise perfectly functioning MacBook, and another where they repeatedly denied me warranty service on a maxed out MBP which could repeatedly be made to crash, oftentimes multiple times a day (due to what Apple begrudgingly admitted nearly six months later was in fact a design issue). To be clear I'm perfectly happy with Apple hardware and software and realize that my experiences are outliers. But "because I'm a cheapskate" isn't really a valid argument here.

cutler 7y ago

Massive savings and modability. A Hackintosh can be significantly cheaper and you're free to upgrade your disk, RAM and cpu.

wayoutthere 7y ago
I still struggle to see the point these days -- swapping CPUs and RAM makes little sense even on Windows; RAM sizes have remained stagnant for years and the small generational speed increases on CPUs mean you'll likely need a new motherboard anyway by the time the cost/benefit is there. Disk is a non-issue as there are external enclosures that aren't expensive, and performance over Thunderbolt is as good as PCIe (because it is PCIe). Performance-wise a MacBook Pro is and has been a great machine and not incredibly expensive, plus you get the portability aspect. For the "semi-professional" market that a Hackintosh is appealing to, most folks would be better off with a MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt dock. You also miss out on a number of core features of the OS because the hardware that supports them doesn't exist. Combined with the headache of keeping the machine current, it's not really a good tradeoff for a couple hundred bucks. You'd be better off buying a used MacBook Pro.
- morid1n 7y ago
  Try a couple of thousand dollars. My build is 1K cheaper than a similarly specced Mini without an eGPU. A comparable Mac Pro (yes, Xeons and ECC) is 7.2K USD.
- cutler 7y ago
  I was thinking more about what happens when parts fail, especially if you're nowhere near an Apple retailer. I used to be able to swap out disks and RAM with my MacBook Pro. Not any more.

Zarel 7y ago

I ran a hackintosh setup for most of my university days. I loved OS X on my MacBook but I wanted more power and a larger screen, and I couldn't afford a Mac Pro. Compared to both Windows and Linux, I preferred OS X's behavior in: - the systemwide emacs keybindings in every textbox - the consistent keyboard shortcuts (Cmd+C was always Copy, Ctrl+C was always Interrupt) - the dedicated keyboard key (Option) for typing non-ASCII characters - the general higher quality of apps that were available (Transmit was a better FTP client, TotalTerminal a better terminal, Preview a better PDF viewer, iBooks a better ebook reader, MplayerX a better video player, iTunes a better music player, Adium a better chat app, Transmission a better torrent app, Parallels a better VM, than anything for Windows or Linux) - the consistent look-and-feel of apps - the centralized notification system, Growl (before any OS had built-in notification support, the third-party Growl library was the de-facto standard on Mac, at a time when in other OSes, every app used their own notifications that constantly got in each other's way) - QuickLook Compared to Windows, I liked: - the presence of a bash terminal underlying everything - multiple desktops (Windows has this now, but didn't back then) - Exposé (the thing that showed all open windows so you could click the one you wanted to easily switch to it) Compared to Linux, I liked: - Homebrew, a package manager which actually installed up-to-date packages instead of years-old packages (this was before Linuxbrew) - official support for various paid apps like Photoshop and MS Word - the ability to do many important things in a GUI (and therefore, the ability to do new things without needing to Google them) Aside from the complications updates posed, I ran into no major problems with the hackintosh setup, other than I think the microphone didn't work? Everything else worked fine. I had overall much fewer problems than I have with Linux.

JoelTheSuperior 7y ago
What made you stop using one?
- Zarel 7y ago
  This is one of my favorite stories. When I updated to OS X 10.7 Lion on my Hackintosh, I got a weird issue where the hard drive would wipe itself every few days – like, I would turn on the computer, and it would tell me the hard drive was blank and had no operating system on it, and I had to reinstall everything all over again. (To be clear, this was the first issue of any kind my Hackintosh had ever gotten.) At that point, my business had gotten successful, so I could afford to buy a 2013 Mac Pro and stop worrying about what went wrong. So I bought the Mac Pro... and its SSD still wiped itself after a few days. Turns out, the problem was in Lion's exFAT driver. I'd partitioned it into HFS+ for Mac, NTFS for Windows, and a shared exFAT partition, like on my Hackintosh, and Lion just couldn't handle that. I gave up on having an exFAT partition after that, but kept the Mac Pro because it was so nice (it was also much quieter and smaller, which let me put it in my backpack for hackathons).

wor3q 7y ago

You can't develop and deploy IOS or hybrid apps on any other system, and OSX is a pain to run on a VM...

H1Supreme 7y ago

I run mine for audio production, exclusively. I have some mac only software that is critical to my workflow, so I keep a hackintosh (which works perfect btw) running. Updating an audio rig, in my experience, is done only when absolutely necessary. So, I don't bother (still on 10.12.6).