5 ms·

Ditto. I built one last week. Everything was straightforward and the documentation great. My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount

Ditto. I built one last week. Everything was straightforward and the documentation great. My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo cult advise out there. Figuring out my Audio took longer than it should as finding the layout-id for my ALC892 was buried in threads where everyone kept parroting “use ID 1, 2, and 3 or just keep trying numbers until it works.” My board needed layout-id 7 and it took a while to find out that I could use IORegistryExplorer to search for “HDAS” (my ACPI device name) and read the value from the table listed.

lukevp 7y ago
I agree, that's always the biggest problem is how much time you have to spend researching what tweaks you have to make for a specific piece of hardware. It seems like there's not that much effort in making the process automatic and more in making the process flexible. I'd rather it either work without any configuration on my end, or fail in predictable ways so I could contribute fixes. For example, for each specific iteration of hardware, there'd be a github issue and everyone with that hardware could swarm it and build an automated fix. There's too much one-off patching that goes on in the hackintosh process these days. Having said that, I do really appreciate all the work and I think it's great that hackintoshes exist. I just feel like a lot of good research and work is thrown away because it's hidden away within forum threads instead of inlined into the solution. I was planning on building a hackintosh today (my mac mini just isn't fast enough these days). I'll give Open Core a try. It's been a couple of years since I last built one.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  > There's too much one-off patching that goes on in the hackintosh process these days. I've been a Hackintosh user for more than a decade, and it has always been this way. On the whole, it's much easier now than it used to be. I don't know why the bootloaders aren't better at detecting your system and automatically configuring themselves, but I assume it's a legitimately difficult problem, or someone would have done it.
  - austinheap 7y ago
    KextUpdater tracks/downloads releases for the kexts you have installed from their upstream repos. I was in the “never update a working hackintosh” camp for years but this tool changed that.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      That's neat, but it doesn't get around the initial setup process, which is what I thought (?) the GP was talking about. You need to know which kexts to use, what weird bootloader options to set, etc etc. I've actually never been in the "never update a working Hackintosh" camp. For better or worse, I've always installed point releases, and I can't recall a single time when they've broken something. (Whole version upgrades are a different matter, but I'm cautious about those on real Macs too!)
      - austinheap 7y ago
        Initial setup I’ve always done with as much disabled as possible — ideally zero custom kexts — so I certainly may have read GP through the wrong lens!
        derefr 7y ago
        Not that "initial setup"; the initial setting-up process of getting your Hackintosh from "a stock install where most things don't work" to "customized with drivers and patches that make everything work." That's the time-consuming part; and that's the part that could be automated. It's the thing that MultiBeast tries (but mostly fails) to do.
mmm_grayons 7y ago
> My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo cult advise out there. Absolutely right. I think the issue behind this is that many people are repeating advice without understanding why it matters because it worked for them. So, you end up with people cargo-culting SSDT overlays, boot arguments, and other miscellaneous settings. This is somewhat inevitable with something technical, but it's exacerbated by a couple things: 1. many people in the Hackintosh community are very gatekeep-y. While others are very nice, I remember a few years ago being told to "go read the entire ACPI standard and the come back!" Reading about stuff is important, but it's pretty hard to figure out what the correct stuff is to read. 2. A lack of a centralized documentation repository (this is being fixed by OpenCore and others) to explain when different pieces of advice apply or don't. This is especially important on laptops where there may be some obscure quirk of one's particular hardware revision that is much easier found if everyone puts documentation in the same place. I mostly gave up on hackintosh a few years ago because of all this, but have found it so much better and nicer as of late. Big thanks to the acidanthera guys who seem to be driving a lot of this change.
- improbable22 7y ago
  These are true. But also, I think some of the weirdness is that a lot of people only do this once, struggle, and then move on. So the forums are full of people trying to find others with the same problem which none of them understand.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  I think that the main issue is people who lack technical expertise and just want to install macOS but do not want to buy Apple hardware. They don't understand technical manuals and they'll spread gossip knowledge.
interactivecode 7y ago
I think there hsould be a place where people could list their hardware and their settings/kexts for successfull builds. And you could just input your hardware and get a list of settings and kexts for your build. Or like dynamic documentation like the stripe docs, but then for your hackingtosh... Hoping to setup one myself this week
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Good luck! One thing I think has really tripped up past attempts is there are a lot of variables that can make a difference: What version of macOS are you running? What are your BIOS settings? Does sleep work? Do CPU C-States work or is it always using full power? Do all the ports on your GPU work, or only some? Somehow, these things all need to be tracked, and users need to be able to see both exact configuration matches and ones that are just similar.

lukevp 7y ago

I agree, that's always the biggest problem is how much time you have to spend researching what tweaks you have to make for a specific piece of hardware. It seems like there's not that much effort in making the process automatic and more in making the process flexible. I'd rather it either work without any configuration on my end, or fail in predictable ways so I could contribute fixes. For example, for each specific iteration of hardware, there'd be a github issue and everyone with that hardware could swarm it and build an automated fix. There's too much one-off patching that goes on in the hackintosh process these days. Having said that, I do really appreciate all the work and I think it's great that hackintoshes exist. I just feel like a lot of good research and work is thrown away because it's hidden away within forum threads instead of inlined into the solution. I was planning on building a hackintosh today (my mac mini just isn't fast enough these days). I'll give Open Core a try. It's been a couple of years since I last built one.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> There's too much one-off patching that goes on in the hackintosh process these days. I've been a Hackintosh user for more than a decade, and it has always been this way. On the whole, it's much easier now than it used to be. I don't know why the bootloaders aren't better at detecting your system and automatically configuring themselves, but I assume it's a legitimately difficult problem, or someone would have done it.
- austinheap 7y ago
  KextUpdater tracks/downloads releases for the kexts you have installed from their upstream repos. I was in the “never update a working hackintosh” camp for years but this tool changed that.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    That's neat, but it doesn't get around the initial setup process, which is what I thought (?) the GP was talking about. You need to know which kexts to use, what weird bootloader options to set, etc etc. I've actually never been in the "never update a working Hackintosh" camp. For better or worse, I've always installed point releases, and I can't recall a single time when they've broken something. (Whole version upgrades are a different matter, but I'm cautious about those on real Macs too!)
    - austinheap 7y ago
      Initial setup I’ve always done with as much disabled as possible — ideally zero custom kexts — so I certainly may have read GP through the wrong lens!
      - derefr 7y ago
        Not that "initial setup"; the initial setting-up process of getting your Hackintosh from "a stock install where most things don't work" to "customized with drivers and patches that make everything work." That's the time-consuming part; and that's the part that could be automated. It's the thing that MultiBeast tries (but mostly fails) to do.

mmm_grayons 7y ago

> My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo cult advise out there. Absolutely right. I think the issue behind this is that many people are repeating advice without understanding why it matters because it worked for them. So, you end up with people cargo-culting SSDT overlays, boot arguments, and other miscellaneous settings. This is somewhat inevitable with something technical, but it's exacerbated by a couple things: 1. many people in the Hackintosh community are very gatekeep-y. While others are very nice, I remember a few years ago being told to "go read the entire ACPI standard and the come back!" Reading about stuff is important, but it's pretty hard to figure out what the correct stuff is to read. 2. A lack of a centralized documentation repository (this is being fixed by OpenCore and others) to explain when different pieces of advice apply or don't. This is especially important on laptops where there may be some obscure quirk of one's particular hardware revision that is much easier found if everyone puts documentation in the same place. I mostly gave up on hackintosh a few years ago because of all this, but have found it so much better and nicer as of late. Big thanks to the acidanthera guys who seem to be driving a lot of this change.

improbable22 7y ago
These are true. But also, I think some of the weirdness is that a lot of people only do this once, struggle, and then move on. So the forums are full of people trying to find others with the same problem which none of them understand.
vbezhenar 7y ago
I think that the main issue is people who lack technical expertise and just want to install macOS but do not want to buy Apple hardware. They don't understand technical manuals and they'll spread gossip knowledge.

interactivecode 7y ago

I think there hsould be a place where people could list their hardware and their settings/kexts for successfull builds. And you could just input your hardware and get a list of settings and kexts for your build. Or like dynamic documentation like the stripe docs, but then for your hackingtosh... Hoping to setup one myself this week

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Good luck! One thing I think has really tripped up past attempts is there are a lot of variables that can make a difference: What version of macOS are you running? What are your BIOS settings? Does sleep work? Do CPU C-States work or is it always using full power? Do all the ports on your GPU work, or only some? Somehow, these things all need to be tracked, and users need to be able to see both exact configuration matches and ones that are just similar.