4 ms·

What drives the Hackintosh community?

by bmitc 4y ago

joshmn 4y ago
It’s really quite fun. Maddening at times, but fun. For me, back in the day, it was about power: I wanted a Trash Can Pro for development (I had a fully-specced retina MacBook Pro) but I didn’t want to pay Apple tax; I already had a gaming rig. So I dual booted.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  At some point “Because it’s technically possible” is a huge motivator for some reason. I was doing Hackintosh circa 2014-2015 and even then, barely knowledgeable about software, I was able to hack through all sorts of esoteric kernel and kext issues to get my machine running. A decade later as a software engineer I still can’t explain half of the issues I encountered and overcame back then. Mostly due to incredibly intelligent hackers and other enthusiasts like myself sharing issues and how they resolved them on forums.
gary17the 4y ago
iOS development has to be performed exclusively under macOS. Effectively, many iOS developers not only do not want to pay for Apple hardware that is usually grossly overpriced for its capabilities, but also strongly desire to use absolutely top-of-the-line non-Apple hardware that is way more powerful than what Apple is offering, to run their daily macOS development workstations. ... And hacking entire operating systems under virtual machines is just fun :).
- Maursault 4y ago
  > do not want to pay for Apple hardware that is usually grossly overpriced for its capabilities This is the myth that just won't die even though every fair comparison of Mac hardware to available PC hardware, carefully matching feature for feature, reveals prices within $100 of each other. What you don't want to pay for is the features that you're not interested in, such as perhaps Thunderbolt ports.
  - deadlocked 4y ago
    And of course the physical characteristics - yes, that ASUS laptop has the same or a slightly better technical spec than the MacBook Pro that I want, but it's also made out of plastic and it's half-an-inch thick!
  - gary17the 4y ago
    I don't know about cost effectiveness of Apple laptops, since I never use small-screen devices for daily work, but if you are willing to put together a desktop workstation with your own hands from components you hunt down individually at online sales and install the free Linux, you will not spend even half of the cost of a Mac Pro, which has not even been upgraded by Apple since 2019. The 2023 Mac Pro is to cost from $6K to the insane $10K.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > if you are willing to put together a desktop workstation with your own hands from components you hunt down individually at online sales and install the free Linux, you will not spend even half of the cost of a Mac Pro Show me this put together beige box, and I will show you a machine with missing features found in the Mac Pro. Then you will say, "I didn't want that stuff, I would never use it," but when added in, the prices will be within a close margin.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - gary17the 4y ago
        > when [all Apple-chosen hardware features] [are] added in, the prices will be within a close margin I do see your point, but even if that's so, the problem of Apple hardware inaccessibility to an average computer hardware buyer cannot be considered as "resolved" or "unavoidable", but only pivots from the circumstance of "Apple forcing high profit margins on hardware buyers" to "Apple forcing a set of (unwanted, yet costly) hardware features on hardware buyers" (through the lack of appropriately varied hardware models and hardware configuration options). Which is too bad, because if Apple hardware was appropriately inexpensive while delivering the features that I do care about, I would probably consider switching to their hardware and macOS as my primary O/S. (... But then again, maybe not - I really like the latest Linux KDE/Plasma.)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Those aren't part of what means to be part of Apple culture, rather UNIX folks that would do better sponsoring Linux/BSD OEMs. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233647272_The_Cult_of_Macintosh https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233647272_The_Cult_...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TradingPlaces 4y ago
Can’t speak to others but I at the beginning of all this (late 2000s?), I used to build Hackintoshes and briefly sort of made it my life’s purpose to turn all my friends’s Windows PCs into dual boot. For myself, I needed a lot of parallel processing, and Mac Pro back then just got you so far. For friends, it was because I’m a Mac shill. This was my way of getting them to buy a Mac when the future of the platform was still a little uncertain. I still have a “MacBook Nano” which was an ASUS netbook that dual booted
skrowl 4y ago
Apple's insane hardware pricing

What drives the Hackintosh community?

by bmitc 4y ago

What drives the Hackintosh community?

It’s really quite fun. Maddening at times, but fun. For me, back in the day, it was about power: I wanted a Trash Can Pro for development (I had a fully-specced retina MacBook Pro) but I didn’t want to pay Apple tax; I already had a gaming rig. So I dual booted.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
At some point “Because it’s technically possible” is a huge motivator for some reason. I was doing Hackintosh circa 2014-2015 and even then, barely knowledgeable about software, I was able to hack through all sorts of esoteric kernel and kext issues to get my machine running. A decade later as a software engineer I still can’t explain half of the issues I encountered and overcame back then. Mostly due to incredibly intelligent hackers and other enthusiasts like myself sharing issues and how they resolved them on forums.

gary17the 4y ago

iOS development has to be performed exclusively under macOS. Effectively, many iOS developers not only do not want to pay for Apple hardware that is usually grossly overpriced for its capabilities, but also strongly desire to use absolutely top-of-the-line non-Apple hardware that is way more powerful than what Apple is offering, to run their daily macOS development workstations. ... And hacking entire operating systems under virtual machines is just fun :).

Maursault 4y ago
> do not want to pay for Apple hardware that is usually grossly overpriced for its capabilities This is the myth that just won't die even though every fair comparison of Mac hardware to available PC hardware, carefully matching feature for feature, reveals prices within $100 of each other. What you don't want to pay for is the features that you're not interested in, such as perhaps Thunderbolt ports.
- deadlocked 4y ago
  And of course the physical characteristics - yes, that ASUS laptop has the same or a slightly better technical spec than the MacBook Pro that I want, but it's also made out of plastic and it's half-an-inch thick!
- gary17the 4y ago
  I don't know about cost effectiveness of Apple laptops, since I never use small-screen devices for daily work, but if you are willing to put together a desktop workstation with your own hands from components you hunt down individually at online sales and install the free Linux, you will not spend even half of the cost of a Mac Pro, which has not even been upgraded by Apple since 2019. The 2023 Mac Pro is to cost from $6K to the insane $10K.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > if you are willing to put together a desktop workstation with your own hands from components you hunt down individually at online sales and install the free Linux, you will not spend even half of the cost of a Mac Pro Show me this put together beige box, and I will show you a machine with missing features found in the Mac Pro. Then you will say, "I didn't want that stuff, I would never use it," but when added in, the prices will be within a close margin.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - gary17the 4y ago
      > when [all Apple-chosen hardware features] [are] added in, the prices will be within a close margin I do see your point, but even if that's so, the problem of Apple hardware inaccessibility to an average computer hardware buyer cannot be considered as "resolved" or "unavoidable", but only pivots from the circumstance of "Apple forcing high profit margins on hardware buyers" to "Apple forcing a set of (unwanted, yet costly) hardware features on hardware buyers" (through the lack of appropriately varied hardware models and hardware configuration options). Which is too bad, because if Apple hardware was appropriately inexpensive while delivering the features that I do care about, I would probably consider switching to their hardware and macOS as my primary O/S. (... But then again, maybe not - I really like the latest Linux KDE/Plasma.)
pjmlp 4y ago
Those aren't part of what means to be part of Apple culture, rather UNIX folks that would do better sponsoring Linux/BSD OEMs. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233647272_The_Cult_of_Macintosh https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233647272_The_Cult_...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

TradingPlaces 4y ago

Can’t speak to others but I at the beginning of all this (late 2000s?), I used to build Hackintoshes and briefly sort of made it my life’s purpose to turn all my friends’s Windows PCs into dual boot. For myself, I needed a lot of parallel processing, and Mac Pro back then just got you so far. For friends, it was because I’m a Mac shill. This was my way of getting them to buy a Mac when the future of the platform was still a little uncertain. I still have a “MacBook Nano” which was an ASUS netbook that dual booted

skrowl 4y ago

Apple's insane hardware pricing