As a Mac user disappointed with Apple's current direction with its hardware line, there are some risks with using Hackintoshes:
1. It requires considerable more work to set up and maintain a Hackintosh system than using Linux or *BSD, and it's completely unsupported. When I researched this last time, there were three sore points: (a) Upgrades between even minor point versions could sometimes mess up installations, (b) finding compatible hardware can be difficult (especially in the case of laptops), and (c) using Messages and iCloud on a Hackintosh could risk getting locked out of those accounts.
2. Installing macOS on a non-Apple product is a violation of the macOS EULA. Because of this, a Hackintosh may be a liability in professional environments.
3. Apple could make moves, intentional or unintentional, that could disrupt or even end the Hackintosh ecosystem. In the early days of Hackintoshes Intel Atom processors were supported, which resulted in people installing Hackintoshes on netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9. This ended when Apple stopped compiling support for Atom processors. A more serious showstopper would occur if Apple abandons the x86-64 in its Mac lineup. Then the Hackintosh community would be stuck with whatever is the latest version for the x86-64 architecture.
With the right hardware, installing macOS is easier than installing Windows. I've been using hackintosh on and off for the past 10 years and if you buy tested hardware, installing it is a breeze most of the time, something that I cannot say about installing Ubuntu, which I do before going the hackintosh/windows route. I've had a very hard time to get Ubuntu/Arch to play well with my multiple monitors setup, including one 4K.
The biggest downside in my opinion are the updates, as they're mostly guaranteed to break the setup.
Overall, I recommend to at least try it, having a beast of a PC AND macOS cheaper than Apple can offer might be worth for some, it certainly is for me.
Again, I want to emphasize that's necessary to have the right hardware.
4. Installing a Hackintosh often requires installing binary kexts of questionable origins. It is beyond me why people give some random person on the net ring-0 access.
I agree with your first point. But something must be said when people still forge on creating a Hackintosh system despite the considerable effort required to do so.
I wholeheartedly agree. I wish one of the following three things would happen:
1. Apple notices the popularity of Hackintoshes (as well as certain long-time Mac users switching to Windows or Linux) and makes Macs that fit their needs in order to win these customers back.
2. Apple legitimizes the Hackintosh by selling licenses for PC use.
3. A competing operating system with a well-polished UI designed with time-tested UI practices and is built on a stable and secure foundation emerges for generic PCs. I have a dream of an operating system with a Mac OS 8/9 interface with a foundation that is highly influenced by Lisp machines, the Smalltalk environment, and Apple's OpenDoc component UI.
Apple have noticed high end users complaining, hence the iMac Pros and upcoming new Mac Pros.
Outside that, there is no perceptible loss of users. The much maligned Macbook Pros with butterfly keyboards and the touch bar are selling like there's no tomorrow.
> A competing operating system ... for generic PCs.
Never gonna happen. Mac's are very secure and polished exactly because there is no PCs and only Apple hardware. Think Secure Enclave and EFI. No freaking vendors and their requirements, done right because they can. Amen.
>Mac's are very secure and polished exactly because there is no PCs and only Apple hardware.
This seems obviously false, given the untold thousands of people running Hackintoshes (i.e., non-Apple hardware) with no reported security issues. I've run a Hackintosh for 5+ years and I've never had a problem with security. As for polish, my selected hardware is far better than what I could get from Apple, at 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the nearest comparable (but still inferior) offerings from Apple.
I'm talking desktops. Laptops might be a different story. For desktops, Apple engineering has been lagging and just generally underwhelming for at least half a decade now, and I don't think they have the interest or even the ability (culture, etc.) to regain their hardware chops.
> false, given the untold thousands of people running Hackintoshes
ROFL :)) Had you read above? I'm running one myself. Your 'false' refers to what exactly? My statement was that there is no point for Apple to release MacOS for PCs. They will not be able to lock it down security wise.
BTW, how did you secure your hack from booting from install USB and resetting admin password on the main drive? Or from booting to Recovery partition and do stuff?
Asking, because you said you never had a problem with security, well, I Am the Problem, I will access your hack tomorrow :D
Cool, just got your home address ! www.youtube.com/watch?v=76wSk1j02_4
I doubt it'll grow to compete with Apple on any measurable level. It's still way too 'hackish' for many Apple users to even consider, and them receiving a hackintosh system still requires more effort than they are willing to spend to maintain/update it.
We don't have to beat a dead horse, but a significant chunk of MacBook Pro 2016/2017 and MacBook 2015/2016/2017 users (including me) have had issues with the new keyboard (keys get stuck). Current MacBook Pros a maximum of 16GB RAM (yes, I know, Intel is to blame) and insane prices for upgrades to the base model. In older MacBooks, you could just replace the memory and hard drive. The current MacBooks and MacBook Pros only have USB-C connectors and a stereo jack, requiring dongles for VGA, HDMI, USB-A, MicroSD, etc.
The MacBook line has regressed in quite many ways the last few years. The 'current' Mac Mini and Mac Pro are from the stone age. Heck, the current Mac Mini was a downgrade in many respects compared to the Mac Mini 2012.
I have been a Mac user since 2007. But frankly, the whole line has gone down the drain, unless you can drop a few thousand Euros on a 27" iMac with an SSD and a reasonable amount of memory or the iMac Pro.
The Dell Precision workstation that I bought 3-4 years ago second hand for ~400 Euro is more than twice as fast as my 1700 Euro MacBook Pro, has three times as much memory, and is expandable (added a 512GB SSD harvested from my 2012 Mac Mini).
FYI: you can still buy the MBP 2015 which was the last iteration before the 2016 version. Mine doesn't sport a force feedback touchpad and has the slowest CPU of the 3 versions available but other than that its a great device. The touchpad is apart from the force feedback one (which I tried out in a demo store) the best touchpad ever, hands down. Nothing comes close. And the force feedback touchpad actually has a disadvantage: it is so large that my hands accidentally touch it while typing. And well, the butterfly keyboard sucks if not for one reason alone: too loud. Mine has left 2x TB2, 2x USB-A (1 left, 1 right), magsafe, audio out, and right HDMI, SD (I'm using a microSD adapter which fits perfectly to close the port against dust). It doesn't have VGA, but I don't need that. It also doesn't have the nifty battery indicator my MBP 2010 had. Its lighter as the MBP 2010 though. Approx 2 kg vs approx 3 kg. But I cannot replace the HDD myself, or the RAM. Which I both did with the MBP 2010. I bought the MBP 2015 as soon as I found out the MBP 2016 was a big step back & I saw a deal for it.
> unless you can drop a few thousand Euros on a 27" iMac with an SSD and a reasonable amount of memory
even then, you need some good luck if you want the machine to last. if one of the HW components goes bad it will cost a lot of time and money to repair. iMac parts can be quite scarce and expensive. and working on an iMac requires more patience and skill than working on a typical home-built PC.
I didn't state that other laptops beat the shit out of a specced MacBook (though I am sure they exist). If I need performance, I will use a workstation or a server, they pack Xeon CPUs, CUDA-capable GPUs, etc. Moreover, their CPUs don't throttle under high load. For me, using a Mac for high-performance computing is a long-passed station.
My criticism was that MacBooks have become bad laptops for their price. They have a limited number of ports with USB-C, which is not well-supported yet. They keyboard has serious problems, which I don't assume to be a fluke, since I know multiple persons with stuck keys. They are not expandable. And macOS has regressed quite a bit in the last few years. Some of these problems are acceptable in isolation, but regressions are piling up.
Then there is crap like that the first generation of Apple's USB-C multi port adapters didn't actually support USB-3.0 transfer speeds, but contain a USB 2.0 hub. Back then I dropped 160 Euro on two adapters (this was before the MBP 2016-related price drop) to use my MacBook with existing screens, projectors, and USB devices. They give you a whole lot of crap about the transfer speeds, but sell you USB 2.0 adapters (!).
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Again, I have been a Mac user for 10 years. In that time I probably bought 5 or 6 Macs, since for some time I used both a Mac Mini and a MacBook. For may years, they were so far ahead of the competition, it was not even funny (excellent suspend support in 2007, MagSafe, battery indicator LEDs, OS X was simply better). I was a strongly advocating Macs among friends and family. Unfortunately, I just can't do that anymore. The risk is too big that they get a flawed keyboard or that they are too frustrated with the 1/2/4 USB-C ports.
'bad laptops for their price' - market says they are OK for the price :)) Look in 5 years, you'll resell your macbook for half the price. Dell laptop? You'd have it in trash bin 2 years ago.
I careful with my stuff. Whats the price of changing keyboard by apple?
- Emacs (non-X11 version) regularly triggers a bug in the display server that freezes it hard. Haven't been able to debug it further. I have mostly stopped using Emacs on macOS because of this bug.
- Every few reboots, my Mac freezes and I have to do a hard reboot.
- Every few days or so, sound stops working. I have to do a sudo killall coreaudiod and then everything is fine again. Well, except the volume control in the system tray, that comes back after a couple of hours.
- Keynote doesn't open some older Keynote presentations correctly anymore (e.g. things converted with PDF2Keynote).
Also, longer-term: Spaces was much nicer for power users than Mission Control. The Mac App Store seems to become slower all the time. Airport Utility is pretty limited compared to the older version. The killed genuinely useful Pages features like linked text boxes when they rebased on iOS iWork (they are finally back after years). Etc.
I guess I don't have to mention the embarrassing security bugs that we had since the High Sierra release.
Those are fair concerns. I got some of these issues as well, and others as well. AFAIK though the htop bug got fixed, and I agree with auslander that these are open source products (you're on your own w/them; don't blame Apple unless its clearly a bug in macOS which it looks like it was with htop). I do think 10.13 had some security disasters (and those regressions are widely known, documented, and discussed including on HN). Apple's focus moved from macOS to iOS. macOS appears an afterthought.
Emacs freezing the display server or location services hijacking focus are macOS bugs, not bugs in these open source projects.
I can accept that the location services bug is not fixed, since it primarily affect XQuartz. But an application should not be able to crash the display server.
would you argue that Windows is More secure? Yeah, there is Gnome and plethora of Linux desktops, but we're talking mass market. And I Am interested in enumerating the disasters, is there any not patched yet? Genuinely interested, as I'm a user :))
XQuartz and Emacs is open source, not MacOS. Checking other stuff ... lol, compare your grievances to windows folks and you'd have a nice grin all over your face forever :))
> my Mac freezes ... sound stops working
reinstall Mac OS fresh, erasing the drive. 99% you hacked your OS badly.
I don't understand what you are "disagreeing" on. What OP is saying: The new Macbooks are very expensive, and it has quality issues (keyboard). Neither is it user serviceable. Most of the product line is also out of date.
It's not about performance, which in the terms of Apple's latest hardware (that is, only part of their product line) is perfectly fine. Yes, a specced Macbook is fast, but that does not relate to anything by OP.
Pretty much any professional laptop would let you configure it with 32 GB RAM and 4K screen and boy that screen makes a difference.
These days I'm one of those who uses MacBook because they have to, not because they love to. I remember getting my first MacBook ~12 years ago and being really happy while using it.
Now, it's rarely pleasant; to repeat what countless others have said:
a) This is my third MBP since 2016, other 2 died with keyboard issues (and I could not afford waiting for repairs). This third laptop already has "right arrow" and "C" keys skipping 20% presses.
b) Dongle hell: heck, I have to get a dongle to connect the latest iPhone X.
Yeah, no. That device has coil whine (one reason not to get a butterfly keyboard is because of the noise), and the brightness cannot be adjusted manually. The keyboard isn't terrible, but the touchpad isn't as good as a Mac's. The Precision is better, but also more expensive.
Interestingly though, I did see XPS line being supported in this hackintosh guide as well as the Xiaomi Notebook Pro.
Haven't experience coil whine myself from my XPS 13 9333, or my XPS 15 9560. Dell seem happy to replace the entire device or mainboard if you do get one that has an issue though.
I was under the impression the reason not to get a butterfly keyboard was because they are prone to failure due to dust and crumbs?
I'm not even sure what you mean by the brightness cannot be manually adjusted? The screen brightness obviously can be manually adjusted, and every XPS laptop I've owned has at least 3 levels of keyboard brightness controllable via F10, software, and can even be set in the BIOS.
Precision isn't really better, just different, since you can get one with (older) Quadro GPU rather than a GTX card, and a Xeon rather than Core CPU. The chassis, display, support, build quality is otherwise identical.
I've been very happy with the Dell XPS 9650 thus far. I've used it as my primary development machine for nearly a year. The 4k screen is simply gorgeous; Linux support is fantastic, with everything working out of the box with Ubuntu (particularly 18.04).
I also use a 2017 MacBook Pro with touchbar for iOS development. And while I've long recommended the MacBook Pro to others without hesitation, that began to change sometime in the past 2-3 years.
The MacBook Pro screen actually looks blurry by comparison to the XPS 4k. Text isn't as sharp, and the colors are less vibrant (although the P3 color space is a nice improvement). It's a bit disappointing that Apple has yet to fundamentally improve upon the once unbeatable 2013 MacBook Pro "retina" screen, despite a few tweaks along the way.
However, the XPS 9550 definitely suffered from the annoying coil whine. Moreover, I was never satisfied with the touchpad, especially the palm rejection. There was even a slight delay after tapping, which was just enough to be frustrating during daily use. The fans also came on more than expected, likely due to lackluster power management support for the novel Skylake architecture.
And perhaps strangest of all was the repeating "W" key issue. Without rhyme or reason, the "W" key would sometimes repeat, as if being held down (despite not being stuck). Interestingly, there were BIOS updates to address this issue, and based on the Dell's forums, the "W" key issue has affected numerous laptop models over the years.
Fortunately, it seems that Dell has finally managed to iron out these growing pains with the 9560. After purchasing it, I quickly upgraded to 32GB of memory, installed a Samsung 960 Pro SSD, and swapped out the Wifi chip for a better performing Intel model. You'd be hard pressed to find a better spec'd machine for linux / software development.
I'll be curious to see if Apple can up their game with the 2018 MacBook Pro.
and i think one must consider the tradeoffs on both sides.
on one hand, there's the effort required to create a hackintosh in the first place and the challenge to keep it running as software updates arrive.
on the other hand, the time, effort and cost to repair a recent, flaky Mac can be considerable: multiple trips to the Apple store to convince the geniuses that there really is something wrong with the hardware that cannot be fixed with an OS reinstall. multiple days of lost productivity waiting for geniuses to take a look at it and (maybe) try to fix it. the high costs of scarce Mac replacement parts in the after market. the ultimate trip to an independent Mac repair shop that actually knows how to fix the thing.
