I think the “hackintosh” (as we have intended it since Apple’s transition to Intel in 2006) effectively died yesterday. The idea that “Macs” will be relatively

I think the “hackintosh” (as we have intended it since Apple’s transition to Intel in 2006) effectively died yesterday. The idea that “Macs” will be relatively generic x86-64 machines made by a specific company to run its OS preferentially is gone. Macs’ inner workings will go back to being comparatively exotic, as they were in the PowerPC days and before: incompatible with the prevailing wintel hegemony, which for Apple has the pleasant side-effect relieving them of many competitive forces (but I digress). In future getting macOS to run on non-Apple hardware will be far more difficult. The Ax series SoCs are ARM-based but contain loads of Apple-specific implementations and additions. Think of the T2 chips and the Secure Enclave. Those won’t be turning up on commodity silicon before the relevant patents expire! Look at it the opposite way: how successful, really, have efforts to get Linux running on Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and AppleTV platforms been? Why? Because it’s undocumented. That’s what ARM macs will be like in the future.