My experience using Hackintosh low-end PC for 3 years

https://my-site.now.sh/hackintosh

by devcriollo • 9 years ago

55 44 9 years ago

my-site.now.sh

Cheeseit86• 9 years ago

Really interesting to hear this story and to leave the personal context to the end makes it even more impactful. The perseverance and creativity that this person obviously had to show to get this to work for so long are really inspiring, even if lots of other people have done similar things before. I really hope things get better for your country soon.

devcriollo6• 9 years ago

Thank you.

abhinai• 9 years ago

Is this a standard blog design or is the author of this post also a very creative designer? I am really impressed both by the content and the design of this post.

paradite• 9 years ago

As the author noted at the bottom, it's taken from https://rauchg.com (the guy behind now.sh)

afghanPower• 9 years ago

Nothing beats minimalistic design. Too bad the majority thinks more is more.

aw3c22• 9 years ago

It's very hard to read for me due to the low contrast and monospace font.

sundvor2• 9 years ago

The black on white monospaced font? As a programmer I found it great.

devcriollo6• 9 years ago

I like minimalism I'm a fan of rauchg.com and zeit.co

leonroy• 9 years ago

Really reminds us who are able to pickup RAM or a graphics card for a few quid that not everyone in the world is so lucky.

Very impressed with what Jhonny managed to do.

It does beg the question though - what's next for Apple's cheapest Mac, the Mini.

I think there is a real opportunity for Apple to release a low powered Mac Mini say the size of an Apple TV which is ARM based and allows schools, universities and folks unable to buy the latest and greatest to have a stable, Unix based development and media platform to work on.

a_bonobo• 9 years ago

I don't know, I was under the impression that Macs are almost Veblen goods, expensive to raise their status in the eyes of the customer. A cheap Mac could break that impression and cause damage to the brand.

arthurfm2• 9 years ago

It does beg the question though - what's next for Apple's cheapest Mac, the Mini.

If the MacBook Pro is any indication, a price increase (due to the addition of Thunderbolt 3 ports and an Intel CPU with Iris Plus Graphics) and zero user-upgradeable parts (soldered RAM/SSD)?

If the new entry-level Mac mini has a Fusion Drive or 128GB SSD as standard this would also result in an additional price increase.

I can see more and more people going the Hackintosh route as Macs generally become more expensive.

walshemj• 9 years ago

Apple really need a SKU that is step up from the mini using full fat processors in a SFF case - if they did I think our place would defiantly buy them as replacements for our aging mac minis.

scarface743• 9 years ago

Apple just reduced the price of the 13" MacBook Pro to $1299. That seems to be inline with PCs from Dell with similar specs.

ig0r02• 9 years ago

It is not true you cannot use Store or iCloud because it is not a real Mac. I have been running a hackintosh for half a year now and I use iCloud, Store even iMessage works.

landave• 9 years ago

I am pretty sure that you need a Board Serial Number (SN) from a real Mac. At least about a year ago this was the case. Did you use a SN from a real Mac? If not, then you probably got lucky.

I think there is also the possibility of calling Apple's support hotline and letting them manually activate a randomly generated Serial Number.

ig0r02• 9 years ago

For the Store and iCloud you do not need anything. For iMessage you need to generate a motherboard SN and other stuff, it is not so easy but doable with the right tutorial.

devcriollo6• 9 years ago

It's hard to make it work, I've tried it many times.

ComodoHacker• 9 years ago

Later on I got to read a lot about the Kexts that basically are the equivalent of the drivers in microsoft windows and look for the ones that would serve me for my video card, Everything worked fine.
A few months passed until Yosemite came out, with a renewed interface a lot of improvements, and even included support for my set up
But I did the same again when buying my new GT520 card. And to this day everything has worked perfectly

This makes me wonder whether his hardware happened to be used in some Macs or Apple deliberately made those drivers for Hackintosh users?

microcolonel• 9 years ago

The NVIDIA drivers are written by NVIDIA. I'm sure they use the same codebase across platforms because I've seen the same shader compiler crashes (doh!) on OS X with NVIDIA as on Windows and Linux. They have to support a pretty wide array of hardware in case somebody plugs it in to one of the PC-style Mac Pros which nobody seems to remember.

wtallis2• 9 years ago

Apple tends to ship drivers that will work with almost any GPU from the same product family and generation as the chips Apple is actually using. They could definitely do more to lock things down if they wanted to.

I suspect that the slight lost hardware revenue is significantly offset by the App Store revenue and long-term benefits of keeping users on the Apple platform, so Apple doesn't have strong motivation to get in the way of Hackintosh use.

Hnrobert42• 9 years ago

He isn't missing much by not having the app store. I've used a mac as my primary computer at home for since before the app store opened in 2010 and have yet to find a indispensable app on the app store.

k__2• 9 years ago

I started using macOS 2 months ago (iOS development) and had the impression I needed the app store for OS upgrades and xCode.

I there another way?

vetinari3• 9 years ago

At least Xcode is downloadable from the developer portal. Not sure about OS upgrades.

roblabla• 9 years ago

You can get XCode and OS Updates through https://developer.apple.com/download/more/ (you need a login, but it's free AFAIK).

EDIT: Actually just checked, looks like there is no update for el capitan or sierra on the dev portal. Drats.

My app store works on my hackintosh so I never actually had to use the dev portal anyway ^^'. I used an old mac's ID.

mnm12• 9 years ago

Have you tried the softwareupdate cli tool? https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/apple-mac-os-x-update-software...

ssutch3• 9 years ago

Someone should send this guy an iMac

smnscu• 9 years ago

That's a wonderful idea. If somebody sets up a gofundme I'd be happy to pitch in.

devcriollo6• 9 years ago

Thank you. Here in my country is very difficult to buy a real mac. It costs about 50 minimum monthly wage salaries.

willtim• 9 years ago

Linux would provide support for old hardware far in excess of what Apple provides. It's an OS for the many, not a priviledged few; and needs your support.

It's also a big security gamble downloading these hacked OSX images from questionable sources.

ekr• 9 years ago

Linux ran on 80386 until not long ago. Now it requires an 80486.

mtreis86• 9 years ago

486 was released 28 years ago

devcriollo6• 9 years ago

I love linux and I also use it, but I'm a fan of all operating systems.

My experience using Hackintosh low-end PC for 3 years

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