[nutjob2]

I agree with your first point, but strongly disagree with your remaining ones.

For me at least, the process of putting together a hackintosh isn't very hard at all.

First I research hardware that is compatible that I can source at a good price. This is the key step since non-compatible hardware is a world of misery. I'd say in the order of 50% of motherboards and 75% of graphic cards have this attribute. This is the hardest step and the community could make life easier for everyone if it maintained a database of such parts but sadly it's mostly geared toward people getting the hardware they already have to work.

Second I get a flash drive of some variety, format it and run the Clover installer on it, then I drag the EFI folder from the standard archive from olarila.com onto the EFI partition of this boot drive. The Hackintosh is now bootable as a vanilla Mac. The boot drive remains attached at all times to enable this.

Finally I install macOS as it was a real Mac, from an installer flash drive, booting through the Clover boot loader on the boot drive of course.

The reason I use macOS (and always have, previously on Apple hardware) is because it delivers a superior user experience. The OS software is far and away more usable than Windows and Linux machines. There is no sign either of them are catching up.

[aspenmayer]

Next steps I did on my last hackintosh were install Clover Configurator to mount the hackintosh EFI, back it up, and update it with the functioning one from your boot flash drive. I still keep it just in case an update breaks the bootloader.

[nutjob2]

Yeah I have numerous copies. They're useful if the first one fails of course but also to try out updates of bootloader software or settings tweaks.

But I really don't understand why people make their OS drive their boot drive. Besides the potential for catastrophe it also means you can't move the OS drive between machines or do OS drive backups freely.

[9935c101ab17a66]

As someone who built a hackintosh (on 10.12) with what were widely considered to be 'compatible parts' (I did a lot of research), I think you're downplaying how easy it is and how often issues can arise. I didn't have much trouble doing the initial install after following steps/guides online, but there were a lot of small niggling issues and problems that can arise that make me hesitant to recommend it (like for example, getting imessage/facetime activated was a huge hassle). There may be better tooling now, but it's still not for the feint of heart.

That said, I've switched to an eGPU setup with a Radeon Rx580 and my 15" mbp, and it largely gets me to where I wanted to be with my hackintosh. Using an eGPU with macos is surprisingly easy.

[nutjob2]

All you really have to do is check that someone has already used a particular set of hardware with the level of support you desire, and you're golden.

The software has improved a lot recently. Plugins like WhateverGreen and VirtualSMC means there is broader hardware support out of the box without fiddling with settings.

But yeah if you are happy with Mac hardware then Hackintoshes are entirely pointless. Laptop Hackintoshes are also more challenging without really competing with comparable Mac hardware.