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Anyone now considering a Hackintosh computer after a hoehum update?

Ca$hflow

Ca$hflow

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 7, 2010
447
67
London, ON
After observing the Macbook Pro updates I can't help think about trying a Hackintosh project. I always looked at apple's Macbook pro in the past as a premium revolutionary products to always have the "1st ..." For example. They were the 1st to get rid of floppy drives. Early adopters of USB 2.0. Early adopters of current CPU roadmaps. That is why I was paying premium $$ for and also I love OSX.

Today I see Hackintosh as a much more financially viable option. I can still have the OSX and have a more current updated computer. Apple seems to has become less aggressive/lazier on MacBook Pro refreshes. I do not see myself as a complainer. I am just comparing my experiences with apple in the past and what I'm noticing currently today.

Would you consider Hackintosh?
 
Are you ready to learn how to patch your DSDT? Learn what kernel extensions you need? Install bootloaders? Figure out what to do when your system kernel panics? Learn to use the command line and single user mode? Maybe (depending on hardware) not have sleep function at all? If yes, then a Hackintosh may be for you.

I've got a 13" MBP and a quad core PC Hackintosh running here and went thru a lot of trouble to get the PC running. Sleep still doesn't work for some reason (won't wake up properly). Yes, the machine is very powerful but most of the time my MBP is almost just as fast for all the everyday things.

For a laptop, I wouldn't bother with Hackintosh. I've yet to see a single PC laptop that comes even close to MBPs. Yes, they may have better specs on paper, but they don't have great multitouch trackpads, support external displays all the way up to 2560x1600, aren't stylish and thin and many don't have Firewire which for me is a must.

People go crazy over specs and forget that the previous gen as well as current gen Macbook Pros are still very fast machines that will suit most people's needs just fine.
 
This did pop in my mind. Are there any i5/i7 laptops that people have running well with OS X?
 
kasakka said:
Are you ready to learn how to patch your DSDT? Learn what kernel extensions you need? Install bootloaders? Figure out what to do when your system kernel panics? Learn to use the command line and single user mode? Maybe (depending on hardware) not have sleep function at all? If yes, then a Hackintosh may be for you.

I've got a 13" MBP and a quad core PC Hackintosh running here and went thru a lot of trouble to get the PC running. Sleep still doesn't work for some reason (won't wake up properly). Yes, the machine is very powerful but most of the time my MBP is almost just as fast for all the everyday things.

For a laptop, I wouldn't bother with Hackintosh. I've yet to see a single PC laptop that comes even close to MBPs. Yes, they may have better specs on paper, but they don't have great multitouch trackpads, support external displays all the way up to 2560x1600, aren't stylish and thin and many don't have Firewire which for me is a must.

People go crazy over specs and forget that the previous gen as well as current gen Macbook Pros are still very fast machines that will suit most people's needs just fine.
Click to expand...

You do bring up valid points. 10 years ago I used to mess around allot with pc's so it would take some work getting back into the saddle and adding additional software research. I know that would turn many off right there. It just seems like there is a spread big enough financially to try.

Here's a million dollar idea. If a jailbreak program was created similarly to the iPhone but on the mac that would install mac OSX on any pc. I'm sure that would change things. I'm sure law suits would follow somewhere in there. It's always about the money.
 
it did cross my mind.. now that newer graphics chips and motherboards are supported, the hckbook version should be right around the corner, and with the improved installers, it shouldn't that big of a problem.
 
Absolutely not. I'm very happy with 10 hour battery life in the 13". iX would have been nice, but I will probably never use the C2D to its full potential.
 
Thought about it, considered it, compared prices...

Decided that, even for a better computer $1k cheaper, it wasn't worth the hassle or the disrespect for creators' rights to their software.

Ordered my MBP, gonna see how it works out. (17", i7, 8GB/250GB, matte screen).
 
kasakka said:
Sleep still doesn't work for some reason (won't wake up properly). Yes, the machine is very powerful but most of the time my MBP is almost just as fast for all the everyday things.
Click to expand...

Sleep doesn't work on a large percentage of the Hackintoshes out there. Also, you can't always get the latest version of OSX (this is hardware dependent). I'm still waiting for a stable version of SL for my Dell XPS. And without it I can't run iLife 09'......which is a problem for me.

Hackintoshes are fun hobbies........but I wouldn't want one for my main machine.
 
depends if you are desperate for os x. My Toshiba laptop triple boots windows 7, OS X and ubuntu.

I'd say with a hackintosh machine where you don't get all the fancy hardware support of OS X, ubuntu is much better.
 
Ca$hflow said:
Would you consider Hackintosh?
Click to expand...

The amount of hacking required to get OSX installed and then updated over time makes a hackintosh a lousy experience - it will constantly be breaking and you'll constantly be fixing, having issues with certain components, etc. Just run Windows 7 on a PC, its just better than OSX on a hackintosh.
 
I have a hackintosh netbook. I don't see the comparison b/t a flaky hackintosh and a real computer. Hackintoshes are toys not reliable work machines.
 
I did the Dell 9 hackintosh netbook, probably the easiest way to do it, but still found the aggravation over waiting for the devs to patch the software updates to make it not worth it to me. I would only recommend a hackintosh for someone likes to be technical with computers. Don't plan to make one to give to your grandmother.

That being said, if you are a highly technical user, have at it. (Just be sure to buy a copy of the leopard os so you can be ethical, even though it might violate the Eula.). As far as I know apple's Eula clause that it's os can only be installed on a mac has never been challenged in a us court.

Best of luck!
 
Hellishness said:
Absolutely not. I'm very happy with 10 hour battery life in the 13". iX would have been nice, but I will probably never use the C2D to its full potential.
Click to expand...


do you truly get anywhere near 10 hours? I just took home my i5, 15" mbp with supposed 8-9 hours. I turned down backlight, turned off keyboard light and still don't even get 5 hours...with nothing open!
 
While i'd agree that hackintosh isn't for everyone, it's not quite as difficult as everyone is making it out to be. The main thing is to purchase a notebook with hardware you KNOW works, don't just go out and grab a laptop that looks good and expect it to work. If you can find a notebook that closely matches one of the macbook pros, there is a good chance that it will work just fine. (No ATI cards, no Intel wireless, etc)

I have a Dell m1530 (C2D 2.4, 8600GT, WUXGA, 4GB memory, etc) that runs 10.6 amazingly. (Yes, sleep works fine) Make sure you have a Dell branded Wifi card and you'll have a very cheap, yet very functional hackintosh.

Insanelymac.com is a great resource for all of this info. Do yourself a favor and do some research on the notebooks that your considering purchasing before you pull the trigger. ;-)
 
ajsnow6234 said:
do you truly get anywhere near 10 hours? I just took home my i5, 15" mbp with supposed 8-9 hours. I turned down backlight, turned off keyboard light and still don't even get 5 hours...with nothing open!
Click to expand...

I think you either got a screwy computer, or, like what happened with mine when I got it almost a year ago, the battery took a few charges before it actually got up to around 5 hours which is what they said for it. I have noticed that with just about all devices with lithium-ion batteries that it takes a few cycles for the battery to work as long as intended (multiple cell phones, iPods, etc.)
 
kasakka said:
Are you ready to learn how to patch your DSDT? Learn what kernel extensions you need? Install bootloaders? Figure out what to do when your system kernel panics? Learn to use the command line and single user mode? Maybe (depending on hardware) not have sleep function at all? If yes, then a Hackintosh may be for you.

I've got a 13" MBP and a quad core PC Hackintosh running here and went thru a lot of trouble to get the PC running. Sleep still doesn't work for some reason (won't wake up properly). Yes, the machine is very powerful but most of the time my MBP is almost just as fast for all the everyday things.

For a laptop, I wouldn't bother with Hackintosh. I've yet to see a single PC laptop that comes even close to MBPs. Yes, they may have better specs on paper, but they don't have great multitouch trackpads, support external displays all the way up to 2560x1600, aren't stylish and thin and many don't have Firewire which for me is a must.

People go crazy over specs and forget that the previous gen as well as current gen Macbook Pros are still very fast machines that will suit most people's needs just fine.
Click to expand...

+1

Well said. This post basically wraps it up. IMO, hackintosh is much better suited for desktops, where you can customize components with ease and get a TON of power for relatively little money (additionally, in terms of the "mac factor", Apple's desktop models really don't offer anything special.) On the other hand, laptops are much harder to hackintosh perfectly. I used to have an ASUS 1005HA netbook which was 95% perfect, but even in its fully working/stable state, it came nowhere near the real thing. So in the case of portable computing, nothing really beats the real mac experience. I will say for myself (and probably many, many other users who have experience with PC laptops) that if nothing else, the MBP trackpad makes it the winner in every single case. Weaker components and Apple tax aside, Apple's use of the trackpad (for me) is nothing short of revolutionary. It's one of those things about my 1005HA that simply made it crippled, for lack of a better term.

So to wrap up, the Mac theory of software built for specific hardware, perfect unity of components, etc, may not ring as true as it did in the past. Today's hackintosh scene has made achieving a perfect OS X setup on PC hardware a breeze (the result being WAY more power for WAY less money), but as far as notebooks go, Apple is still the winner in my book.
 
neteng101 said:
The amount of hacking required to get OSX installed and then updated over time makes a hackintosh a lousy experience - it will constantly be breaking and you'll constantly be fixing, having issues with certain components, etc. Just run Windows 7 on a PC, its just better than OSX on a hackintosh.
Click to expand...

Totally disagree. It sounds like you haven't actually had any experience with it, or at least not recently. This is typically what I hear from people that have never used a hackintosh and just repeat what they hear from Apple loyalists.
 
Hackintoshing desktops takes effort, but they work (and work well). Notebooks are simply a pain in the ass. Even the simplest things like Wi-Fi will never work if their isn't a kext available. 100% hardware support is almost non-existent on notebooks. You'll need a notebook that has a GPU that Apple has had in an existing machine, which limits what your laptop choices are even further (unless you don't enjoy QE/CI). Might as buy Apple to begin with.
 
From building and using an i5 desktop Hackintosh since September, I would say I wouldn't do it again. It really wasn't terribly hard to set up, bit I've been building PCs since DOS. I do get occassional lockups, and I can't be bothered to find a fix. If the current iMacs would have come out a few weeks earlier, I never would've had this learning experience. I'll hand it down to my brother for a Win7 machine after the next iMac update. I'll also be getting a MBP or Air later as well. The tinkering was definitely fun, but I really have more pressing things to attend to.
 
Oh I hate hackint0sh. Been there, done that, and the conclusion that I came up with was nothing is better than the original.

Hackint0sh is way too broken for me. Just bootleg experience.
 
Ca$hflow said:
Here's a million dollar idea. If a jailbreak program was created similarly to the iPhone but on the mac that would install mac OSX on any pc. I'm sure that would change things. I'm sure law suits would follow somewhere in there. It's always about the money.
Click to expand...

There are plenty of these around, either as full distros that simply install OSX, the Chameleon bootloader and some generic kexts that work on most machines but you may run into problems with different graphics cards, network adapters etc, or packages that install the Chameleon bootloader and the kexts after you've successfully installed OSX on another hard drive for example by using a real Mac.

Then there are installers for specific motherboards that can be a little more effortless. Gigabyte motherboards seem to be the best for Hackintosh but even they require a fair amount of work to get running flawlessly. Frankly I'm surprised I've gotten as far as I have with my Abit motherboard considering Abit has always just basically put a basic reference BIOS with their logo on their boards and is now out of business so the last BIOS that works with my Q9550 CPU is some obscure evaluation version.
 
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