Modern 'Hackintoshes' Show That Apple Should Probably Just Build a Mac Tower (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report written by Andrew Cunningham via Ars Technica: Apple is working on new desktop Macs, including a ground-up redesign of the tiny-but-controversial 2013 Mac Pro. We're also due for some new iMacs, which Apple says will include some features that will make less-demanding pro users happy. But we don't know when they're coming, and the Mac Pro in particular is going to take at least a year to get here. Apple's reassurances are nice, but it's a small comfort to anyone who wants high-end processing power in a Mac right now. Apple hasn't put out a new desktop since it refreshed the iMacs in October of 2015, and the older, slower components in these computers keeps Apple out of new high-end fields like VR. This is a problem for people who prefer or need macOS, since Apple's operating system is only really designed to work on Apple's hardware. But for the truly adventurous and desperate, there's another place to turn: fake Macs built with standard PC components, popularly known as "Hackintoshes." They've been around for a long time, but the state of Apple's desktop lineup is making them feel newly relevant these days. So we spoke with people who currently rely on Hackintoshes to see how the computers are being used -- and what they'd like to see from Apple.

Comments

Re:Why a Hackintosh?

[GuB-42]

Final Cut Pro is Mac-only. There are probably other examples.
Artists in particular tend do like OSX and a Hackintosh is an interesting option if they need a powerful machine.

Built One Was a Hassle

[Anonymous Coward]

Built a powerful hackintosh a few years ago. Gathered all the parts from tonyosx86.com (or something like that) and kludged my way through an install of OSX. Every update required more hacking to keep the thing going. I eventually gave up and went back to Windows (10).

All in all it was more of a pain in the ass to keep this thing running with sub optimal driver support, more tricking of the boot loader, and staying behind the time for patching that drove me away from bothering again. Apple will never build a desktop for the masses outside of their Mini line (which works well for desktop work). People who want to game on Mac's go get a MacBook Pro. Getting one of those trashcan towers is ludicrous.

Re:What they'd like to see

[by (1706743)]

I think it's safe to say OP exhibited a humorous and very intentional disconnect from reality...

Re:Why a Hackintosh?

[PhunkySchtuff]

It's familiarity with the platform that is the #1 driver.

I've been using a Mac since the 90's, it took me a while to become as proficient with Mac OS X as I was with Classic MacOS when it first came out, by now I've been using the OS for so long that there are a multitude of tiny things that all add up to make a significant difference.

I'm sitting at my desk here - I have a 2013 Mac pro and a newly built PC with i7 7700K, fast SSD, Decent GeForce graphics card and Windows 10 Enterprise.

I have been forcing myself to use the PC on a regular basis to become more proficient with Windows 10, but there are so many little things that are just different that it makes life harder for me. It's not even application support, other than Sketch (which I don't really use) all the major software I use is on Windows and macOS - Office 2016, Adobe Creative Cloud, Fusion 360, TeamViewer, Sublime Text, Chrome, Firefox etc... I've even got a bash shell running natively in Windows 10 for when I need it.

I won't deny that I find the Mac easier because that's what I know - but I have grown to work with what macOS delivers and when Windows doesn't do this, it grates.

Little things like automatic spelling and text replacement that on macOS largely gets it right. I'm not a perfect typer and macOS usually doesn't get in my way (except, of course, when it does) when correcting mis-typed words as I'm typing. Support for adding extended characters and emoji easily to text. Built-in password management with the Keychain.

Even some of the built-in apps - I much prefer Terminal.app over cmd.exe by defaults it uses a more readable font and it wraps text nicely (although I think Windows 10 now wraps text in cmd?)

It's also the general look of it - Windows 10 looks sharper (largely due to it's font rendering trying to align on pixel boundaries) whereas macOS is a bit softer, but to my eyes at least, easier to read (again, probably due to font rendering not aligning to pixel boundaries for individual glyphs, but trying to space characters more closely to the printed page)

I've begun the path to a hackintosh, but honestly it's too much trouble considering I've got a perfectly good Mac sitting on my desk at the moment.

The main driver for hacintosh builds that I see are either creative professionals that want to tinker and don't mind wasting some time faffing around trying to get things working and are happy that they can save some money over the cost of purchasing a comparable Mac (when you factor in your time to get it working, this equation doesn't look so one-sided) and professionals that need more than Apple is able to offer - current generation, fast NVIDIA GPUs (for CUDA), expandable internal storage and RAID, lower-cost M.2 PCIe SSD storage. Whilst some pros are getting last-generation tower Mac Pro workstations and upgrading everything in them (faster Xeon CPUs, PCIe SSDs, GTX 1080 graphics cards etc), others prefer to deal with newer hardware and work though the hassles of hacking it to run macOS.