[Wowfunhappy]

I set up my first Hackintosh in 2011 while on Spring Break in High School.

It was the most difficult computing project I'd ever done up until that point--partly because it was legitimately more difficult back then, partly because I was using a pre-built Dell instead of a custom machine with parts targeting Hackintosh, and also probably because I was a stupid teenager who didn't know what he was doing.

But once I was done, it was absolutely stable. Everything worked[1]. I installed every point release update[2] through the normal software updater without problems. This was actually my first experience with OS X, and I completely fell in love with the platform.

Many people who haven't used Hackintosh seem to assume it's an unstable mess, and it certainly can be a mess if you don't set it up correctly, or attempt to use not-quite-compatible hardware. But my experience has been that if and when you set it up properly, Hackintosh can be every bit as stable as a real Mac.

---

[1] Except for sleep. Getting sleep working on Hackintosh is very doable but usually annoying, and it's not needed on desktops.

[2] Ie 10.6.5 ==> 10.6.8. Upgrading Snow Leopard ==> Lion almost certainly would have failed had I tried it, although such upgrades are sometimes possible nowadays with Clover, and I assume OpenCore.

[1MachineElf]

Thank you for this comment. I was looking for anything here that might be relevant to me, and it looks like we both had hackintosh builds at the same time / version of OS X. In fact, it was the Snow Leopard->Lion upgrade which turned me off from the whole scene. Great to know things have evolved beyond that in a positive way.

[Wowfunhappy]

To be clear, whole version upgrades have still always been a crap-shoot for me (with Clover, haven't used OpenCore).

Total aside, I can't remember for sure if I ever upgraded my High School Hackintosh to Lion. I think what happened is I got it working, but decided I didn't like Lion as much, and restored an image of my SL install.

[throwlaplace]

>on desktops.

how about on laptops? not sleep itself but hackintoshing a laptop? i really want workspaces on whatever laptop i use but i don't want to pay through the nose for a macbook - i have a loner 2013 mbp right now and even those are still selling for like $800.

[Wowfunhappy]

Fully working Hackintosh laptops are possible, but much harder. You can't mix and match parts for compatibility, and there's actually a lot of extra hardware that needs to work properly--e.g. you don't need a driver to change monitor brightness on desktops.

You need to make sure you get a laptop that other people have Hackintoshed successfully--and make sure you're clear on what exactly "success" meant for the other person. Does internal wifi work, or do you need to keep a USB dongle perpetually plugged in? Is the battery life terrible because OS X can't switch between the dedicated and integrated graphics? Etc etc.

I've never done it, although it's actually something I want to try in the near-ish future. I really want a tablet that can run OS X 10.9...

[PascLeRasc]

I did it with a Dell XPS 15 last summer and it was easier than installing Windows. Sleep worked fine, the wifi card was the only thing that had to be changed.

[doteka]

So this is a genuinely surprising attitude to me. You appreciate the software features and hardware stability of a platform, yet you do not want the creators to be paid for their work?

I mean, it must be obvious that doing these things well apparently costs tons of man-hours and someone needs to be compensated for it? How do you maintain that degree of cognitive dissonance?

[Wowfunhappy]

I don't disagree with this sentiment, but Apple laptops can be limiting in a lot of ways:

* Want a keyboard with more travel? (Or, until recently, one that just won't break.) Too bad.

* Want USB A ports? Better track down a 2015 MBP.

* Want a touch screen? Go buy an iPad.

So, basically the same reasons you'd want to build a Hackintosh desktop.

Back when OS X releases were sold, though, I always made a point of buying and using a physical disc. I'm sure they weren't priced to truly cover development costs, but I felt like I was doing something.

[greendave]

Everybody has their pet peeves. Mine is upgradeability.

You can't get a Mac laptop where everything isn't soldered in. You can't get a Mac desktop with built-in expansion options under $6k.

I don't begrudge Apple their design choices. I'm even willing to pay a substantial markup for their hardware. But deliberately crippling systems to prevent them from remaining useful over the long-haul is really unfortunate and wasteful.

[kick]

Apple is a pile of cash that has a few developers on hire. Most of the developers who made the Mac really great left Apple years ago, and the Mac's been a third-class citizen at Apple for over half a decade. Some guy deciding not to pay for Mac OS, for whatever reason, isn't going to break the bank at Apple.

Apple could make nothing from the Mac and it'd still be more than worth it for them to continue maintaining it because of the benefits it brings to their mobile ecosystem.

[derefr]

> you do not want the creators to be paid for their work?

Er, no, likely more like "I have what hardware I have, and zero money to buy better. I would like to find the way to tune my existing hardware [e.g. by installing different operating systems] to give me the best possible experience that I can without putting any money into it, because I don't have any. When I have money, then I'll actually buy the thing I think is the best; but for now, a simulacra of it will have to suffice."

You know, the same reason college students pirate Photoshop instead of using GIMP.

[microtonal]

It's a shame that they do not have a cheap baseline Mac anymore. When I was in college, I bought my first Mac (2007). I didn't have a lot of money, but I bought a Mac Mini for 499 Euro or thereabouts. It was also relatively cheap to upgrade memory afterwards. I actually bought the Mac Mini because my brother and I were experimenting with Hackintosh. It didn't work on my computer, but it did work (somewhat) on his Dell laptop and he was raving about it.

With the Macbook Air 2020, they finally have a laptop that I can recommend again and isn't much more expensive than the MacBook I bought later in 2007 (which was a base model white MacBook, just above 1000 Euro).

[read_if_gay_]

The new Mac mini is a decent machine too and while it’s not quite at 500€ it’s still relatively cheap.

I was considering buying that thing but before that decided to see if I could get macOS running on my old desktop, which turned out surprisingly well. Basically everything except sleep and WiFi works.

I’ve now ordered a compatible WiFi card (my dorm doesn’t have ethernet) off AliExpress for 50 dollars. That should be it for a usable Mac workstation. The Hackintosh experiment ended up saving me a few hundred euros.

[throwlaplace]

lol at the accusatory and indignant tone.

1. apple is a hardware company not a software company. to wit: they do not sell mac os and if they did i might buy it.

2. i don't care a lick about any other features or "stability" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845629). i simply said that i appreciated the workspaces feature. can i buy this feature ala carte? i would gladly. can i pay the devs that built it for their work? i would gladly.

3. i maintain my cognitive dissonance the same way you do when paying a 2x markup for commodity hardware.

edit: man every day i can't help but feel more and more that people in tech (at least as this site reflects) are some of the most self-righteous.

[mwcampbell]

I'm with doteka on this. I think techie entitlement is a bigger problem than self-righteousness. As Kyle Mitchell (kemitchell on HN) put it recently in his essay "No Thanks" [1]:

> From outside software looking in, “software freedom” walks and talks a lot more like “coder entitlement” or “coder privilege”. In short, a hacker on a tear should never hear the word “no”. Not when breaking into offices to steal parts for a train set. Not when contending with a printer they didn’t develop or pay for. Not when building the next hot web or mobile app … again. Not when building a war cloud or optimizing a baby-photo reinforcement schedule for grandma.

Do we not realize how entitled and selfish we are?

And no, I've never done a hackintosh, either virtual or physical.

[1]: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/04/17/No-Thanks.html

[Wowfunhappy]

I read the full essay. I don't think his points are wrong, but I think his conclusion is. It's not that "techies" are entitled, just that most of the world isn't going to understand the benefits "software freedom". That doesn't mean they shouldn't care.

A few months ago, I read Cory Doctorow's short story "Unauthorized Bread"[1]. It's an exceptionally preachy story about a refugee in near-future America, but the point it gets across is this: closed computer systems are a tool for the powerful to control the powerless, and the consequences will be felt by both tech-enthusiasts and technophobes alike.

Personally, what I want is for more people to become adept at using their computers, so they become capable of taking advantage of open platforms, and with it, agency over their lives. That's one reason I was volunteering at Girls Who Code before the Coronavirus shut everything down. I don't necessarily expect all the 10 year olds I work with to grow up to become programmers, but if they're comfortable making quick edits to a python script in order to better accomplish a mundane task, that's a really powerful skill!

---

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

[throwlaplace]

>Do we not realize how entitled and selfish we are?

jesus christ what are you talking about. i should feel morally obligated to a corporation? or maybe tim cook himself? this isn't a moral quandary or question and never will be. you people have deeply internalized a relationship to money and corporations that is perverse. like any good business person would say: it's not personal it's business - if they want to prevent me from using their software in a way that violates the EULA or whatever then cool they can try to stop me (note: they have in the past and will continue into the future and so the world will turn).

re those poor poor apple engineers: apple's market cap is 1.24T (that's a capital T for trillion). oh no will someone please think of them and their margins! i'm (100-epsilon)% sure that not a single apple engineer will ever suffer any hardship from a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their customer/user base building hackintoshes.

[Wowfunhappy]

Apple definitely isn't hurting right now.

But my question with piracy is always, where do you dry the line? Is pirating Photoshop okay? What about Affinity Photo? What about Omnigroup, which makes fantastic software, but also has to charge a lot of money for it, and was forced to do a round of layoffs recently?

What if the app is made by a single developer, but you don't like his or her politics? Or what if it's a single developer charging too much? How do you determine what "too much" is, and are you really able to be a fair judge, given that you have a personal financial stake in the outcome?

As a Hackintosh user, I don't have all the answers. I tell myself Hackintosh is okay because I used a real Mac to download the installer, but that's still a moral judgement I'm not able to make impartially. I do try to avoid pirating all forms of digital media, though, even when it means there are products I simply cannot use due to lack of finances.

[doteka]

You can pay these devs by purchasing one of the machines the software comes bundled with, that’s what pays their salary.

Apple is an integrator, they are not in the business of selling you just commodity hardware. People who buy their products do so in large part because the experience is better than what they would get buying the same hardware from random Chinese OEM 274.

But if you’re on the commodity hardware spiel: I challenge you to match the specs of any laptop Apple sells in a laptop by another manufacturer (and actually match, not replacing NVMe ssds with some random SATA part etc) and come anywhere near 50% or even 70% of the price.

[throwlaplace]

>not replacing NVMe ssds with some random SATA part etc) and come anywhere near 50% or even 70% of the price.

this has been done over and over again. i'm not going to go through the tedious process just to have you ultimately declare victory anyway when i can't source their superduper proprietary butterfly/centipede/tarantula keyboard or their retina/cornea/myopia display.

[spockz]

I used to use Desktops[1] when I still used Windows. I’m not sure whether windows supports full screen apps these days so it will be slightly different experience.

[1]: https://superuser.com/a/177046