Talk me into or out of a Hackintosh

[Rakehellion]

Just a tip: be careful with those newer macbook pros and airs, they are coming with everything solded, thus unupgradable, I had this problem with a macbook air (had to exchange with a mbpro retina and add money)

Meh, a lot of people like to buy a crappy laptop and install a third party SSD, but then that SSD is bigger, heavier, and slower than the stock drive in a MacBook, so why bother? If you're on a budget, just get the 2011 model.

 

[aman74]

My take as a Hackintosh nerd: (TL;DR - GL!)

1. I refer to Hackintoshes as "science projects". If you're careful with buying parts & doing the installation, you can have a super-reliable machine for a fraction of the cost of the Mac Pro & iMac. I've had mine running for years, very stable & solid. But, they can also make you pull your hair out from glitches. A lot of people go in thinking they'll have a turnkey budget Mac Pro; you CAN do that, but you have to be careful in your approach (finding a guide where someone has worked out all of the kinks, buying the right hardware, making sure the software supports your system, etc.). But it's equally as easy to buy a huge headache of parts if you're not careful.

What is meant by software supporting the system? My software needs aren't all that exotic really. Mostly Garageband/Logic and associated audio programs. Lightroom/Photoshop and associated.

If I end up getting a decent GPU I might game a bit, but this isn't a focus. Speaking of GPU's though. How are the IGP issues going if you happen to know? I saw it was a problem initially, but they're tackling it. The thing is though at first it looks like they say "it works" and then you do some reading and then this or that acceleration, etc.. is not. I don't mind a bit of research in the beginning to get it going, but if I'm going to do that I want to know there's a pretty good solution. Some compromises might be needed, but I'd like as much as possible working 100%.

This is also important because if I need a GPU it changes cost, but more importantly it could mean I can't go mITX. I don't mind too much if that's the case, but it's something I need to know in advance. If ATX is easier overall I'll stop researching smaller cases and boards.

2. The absolute easiest route to go is to buy hardware listed on the Tonymac website. It was just updated for March:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/building-customac-buyers-guide-march-2015.html

On another Mac, you create a USB install stick using Unibeast:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/announcements/155558-unibeast-5-1-update.html

After installation, you install third-party drivers & other configuration stuff using Multibeast:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/announcements/156184-multibeast-7-2-update.html

It's odd though. Recommended doesn't mean there's an official guide necessarily. So I'm not sure what buying outside of their list means exactly. There's people in the boards complaining that some optical drives and CPU's listed aren't fully supported, leads to doubt. Not sure what this list actually certifies.

If you read a guide, pick compatible hardware, use Unibeast, and use Multibeast, it's hard to go wrong. The problems come when people go into it blindly or make bad hardware decisions. There's only a limited number of video cards that work really well, for example, and that's what causes most of the headaches. And you're pretty much stuck using Intel processors if you want maximum compatibility with minimum headaches. Clover & stuff like that is available if you want to turn it into a research project (I've used a few different bootloaders...there's others available too), but if you just want a personalized machine on a budget - buy compatible hardware & follow a guide, especially if your computer skills are a bit rusty. Also not sure if this is still relevant, but the boot drive limit was a one-terabyte drive max, so you'd either need a drive that size or smaller, or probably partition off a segment. Been awhile, and I mostly only do smaller 240gb or 500gb SSD's for boot anyway.

This is what I thought at first and maybe it is the case, but I see people on the boards following guides with the same hardware and everybody having different issues as if the same exact hardware and bootloaders can lead to different experiences. Maybe this isn't true and they are just messing up somewhere, I don't know.

3. You can take it one step further & make a "double vanilla" system, which is what I run. That basically means:

1) Using a PCI NIC card & USB sound card (no drivers required)

2) Keeping the bootloader on a USB drive (boots to USB, then the bootloader on the USB boots the hard drive). This keeps all of the Hackintosh stuff off the hard drive.

You can literally swap drives between a real Mac & a Hackintosh this way...there's no Hackintosh drivers or bootloader stuff on the boot drive itself using this method. I like it because then I can tweak things via the USB stick easily. It's not for everyone, but I like it...the hard drive is 100% Mac.

Interesting. I didn't know about this. What is harder about tweaking off the OS drive though? Just trying to fully understand the benefit.

Why must the NIC card be PCI instead of onboard to do this? I don't have a problem with external soundcard as I'd be using one for recording anyhow.

I assume once booted up the USB drive is out of the equation completely then, so nothing is actually running on it to cause slowdowns or any issues?

4. There's always the risk that Apple will shut the Hackintosh project down, or switch from OSX to iOS or something crazy, although it would be difficult due to the open-source nature of the base *nix/BSD operating system. I got into Macs just as they were migrating to Intel; my first exposure was working on the porting Windows onto the Intel Macs, and then migrating to the reverse. I've been doing Hackintoshes since Snow Leopard (10.6); they have done zero to stop it, aside from shutting down people who were commercially selling pre-loaded systems (Psystar), but they haven't stopped anyone from selling enablers commercially (EFI-X boot chip & Quo modified motherboards). My suspicion is that in the spirit of hacking that led to Apple's creation, they're leaving it alone (partly thanks to the Woz, I'd imagine), as well as for the legal openness of the underlying Unix stuff. So there's a risk, but it's been years with no issues, so as long as you're not selling it commercially, it's been a non-issue.

I'm not so much worried about them shutting it down intentionally, but that something in an OS point update or new OS entirely would make something in my system not have a workaround, causing me to have to buy a new board or CPU. I suppose this is unlikely or it doesn't really work that way. I'd imagine if we're able to run off Z97 which isn't even native that the community gets most things going again. I don't fully understand everything so it was just a thought.

5. There are a lot of politics in the Hackintosh world, which is somewhat odd as the other projects I've been involved in (mostly open-source stuff) are typically far more unified from a community POV. I got a lot of hate mail for writing some step-by-step guides & making software with other devs (like 1-click) to make things easier...a lot of the people in the original group felt that Hackintosh needed to be done manually through endless manually-typed commands & whatnot because they viewed it as a learning experience; however, some people just want a fast, cheap Mac & don't want to learn the nuts & bolts, which is fine - different people have different goals, and not everyone wants to become a master of the inner-workings of OSX. You kind of have to figure out what level you want to approach this project at: turnkey, tinker, developer, etc.

Anyway, once the software idea caught on, a lot of competing groups came out with their own versions of the software, and for some reason got all up in arms about it, which is kind of silly since everyone is working towards the same goal on a volunteer basis, and was really unfortunate because there were a lot of talented developers who chose not to work with each other, so now we have a zillion different software packages available But politics aside, there are a lot of approaches to setting up a Hackintosh:

Well, I guess tonymac uses a lot of stuff written by other folks and is just putting it together in an easy format for people. This along with the commercial aspect of the site seems to have raised the ire. That's just what I gleaned from the other side. I don't know if it's accurate or fair, just that it's their position.

I don't agree with the premise that a Hackintosh must be done in a way to promote learning, etc...that's all fine and well, but it sounds more like sour grapes.

1) The manual way (using a lot of Terminal commands)
2) The hardcore developer way (creating custom DSDT's & SSDT's & really digging into the lower-level hardware type of stuff)
3) The pre-made installer CD way (Kalyway, iDeneb, iPC, iAtkos, Leo4All, etc.)
4) The software package way (Tonymac, myHack, Kakewalk, etc.)
5) The hardware way (EFI-X, Quo Computer, BIOS mods, etc.)
6) The alternative bootloader way (Clover, Chameleon, rEFIt, etc.)

I do seem some stuff on RampageDev about the guy creating some of this stuff if you send him some info from your motherboard, etc... I can't be specific because I don't understand it and they aren't friendly towards noobs, even though it seems as if it would only take one good article and guide to clear it up for people. I don't know if this is the case, but it seems like the appeal there is you can get most any board going?

I hear talk of Clover being "better". That's the only attraction....if the results are actually better.

I hear about adding fixes after being better than during the install? I don't know...I want to do everything optimally and this info is not in one place. I pick up tidbits here and there. It's frustrating when the guides just say "do this" and you want to learn, but the people who do know have no interest in making it user friendly.

Isn't Chameleon part of Multibeast/Unibeast? I probably have that wrong, but I thought that's what people were using.

6. My opinion is this: Apple makes fabulous hardware and they charge a premium for it; that's great, if it fits your budget & you don't like to tinker, because they are as turnkey as you can get. If you would like a more customized system & are on a budget, Hackintosh is a really fun route if you're either (1) willing to follow a guy & buy the right parts, or (2) are willing to play with it until it does work. Like I said, there are a lot of great tools available now...my first guide was 15 or 20 pages long of ridiculous strings of commands; now you can simply stick in a USB stick, push a button, and you can now boot into OSX to install on a PC, it's amazing! So building a Hackintosh is not without risk or effort, but the reward can be hundreds or thousands of dollars in cost savings, a fun experience, and a machine built exactly to your specifications, one that you can repair yourself without having to take it to an Apple store. Those things are really appealing to me.

Yes. I actually wouldn't mind a slight premium, I don't take issue with that. It's just that when you start talking flexibility, upgrading, repairing, having to get rid of a perfectly good built in screen, etc...it starts to really add up. I like to get some years out of system, so after Applecare ends you are just counting the days till doomsday. Their repairs are very expensive, etc...

I have no issue with them. They are doing very well for themselves. I'm just very surprised that this business model works so well in todays economy. Even if I was willing to spend 2K on an iMac I'm still having to figure out an external drive situation that's most likely going to be inferior to internal. Again, good for them, but I'm surprised that they have abandoned the enthusiast power user market so successfully. Power users without 3K plus or more that is.

Honestly it's been awhile since I built a new machine...my old Hack has been working flawlessly for many years now, no need to upgrade (I think it has 32 gigs of RAM or something nutty), plus I can just add a faster chip or a bigger SSD down the road if I need to, you know? So that's nice. Just make sure you think about all of the stuff above...if your goal is simply to have a DIY budget Mac, then I'd go with the Tonymac stuff since it's all laid out on a silver platter for you (that's what I use on my main rig).

How often does a CPU upgrade come into play though? You're talking used? Usually sockets are abandoned pretty fast and then the older chips stop being sold, no?

Silver Platter? That's the part I'm grappling the most with as it doesn't seem to be the case exactly.

I very much appreciate your help. You're fueling my desire to try it again. It's hard to resist what I can build. I figured about 1100-1200 dollars all in...monitor, all the drives I need, etc...anything close in Apple land is at least another 1K I don't really have nor could justify if I did really.

 

[Childs]

solarflare SN6121F with 10gbase-SR dual optics for $100 ebay. Drivers work excellent and are free for OSX!

That was a good price. Seems like $300 is the going rate.

Whats funny is while I was looking at parts I came across X5690 cpus for $220. The Mac Pro I'm rehabbing now only as 2.4Ghz quads. So I bought a couple! Combined with the 280x (or two...since I have two spare), this is going to be one beastly machine.

 

[Emulex]

Yeah it is amazing how far the mac pro can go! Plus if you can run ESXi you can use standard PC hardware like M5014 megaraid, and intel/Emulex 10gbe nic's since the drivers are built into ESXi!

I've got a bunch of L5639 cpu's - but haven't seen if the MAC PRO supports those! $50 each for 6core/12thread just couldn't pass that by!

 

[Kaido]

Yeah it is amazing how far the mac pro can go! Plus if you can run ESXi you can use standard PC hardware like M5014 megaraid, and intel/Emulex 10gbe nic's since the drivers are built into ESXi!

I've got a bunch of L5639 cpu's - but haven't seen if the MAC PRO supports those! $50 each for 6core/12thread just couldn't pass that by!

That's awesome dude! I love that you're running ESXi on a Mac Pro with a 10 gig card! Awesome hacker projects FTW :thumbsup:

 

[Kaido]

What is meant by software supporting the system? My software needs aren't all that exotic really. Mostly Garageband/Logic and associated audio programs. Lightroom/Photoshop and associated.

Sorry, I was referring to the Hackintosh software there. If you are not careful about picking correct hardware & installing the correct software, the glitches will drive you batty. I had many a sleepless night working on mine, haha. Of course, I was in college full-time back then & had nothing but endless free time on my hands, which made tinkering easier

If I end up getting a decent GPU I might game a bit, but this isn't a focus. Speaking of GPU's though. How are the IGP issues going if you happen to know? I saw it was a problem initially, but they're tackling it. The thing is though at first it looks like they say "it works" and then you do some reading and then this or that acceleration, etc.. is not. I don't mind a bit of research in the beginning to get it going, but if I'm going to do that I want to know there's a pretty good solution. Some compromises might be needed, but I'd like as much as possible working 100%.

This is also important because if I need a GPU it changes cost, but more importantly it could mean I can't go mITX. I don't mind too much if that's the case, but it's something I need to know in advance. If ATX is easier overall I'll stop researching smaller cases and boards.

I am a huge, huge fan of mini devices (Baytrail-T, NUC, microcomputers, etc.) & was originally really big into the Mini-ITX & Apple G4 Cube scene (the Cube is actually what got me into Macs!), so I totally understand where you're coming from. If you want to go the IGU route, make sure you do careful reading on what is supported. I'm not up-to-date; a quick search for a guide from last summer with a support matrix:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/...lags-igpenabler-igplatformid-igpdeviceid.html

imo graphics are THE biggest headache in the Hackintosh scene, so you want to be absolutely 100% confident that you are getting supported equipment that will not act quirky. I've been extremely careful with my GPU choices & have been very happy with what I've purchased (8800GTX & so on, rock-solid - no glitches or hacks or other funny business). Best advice I can offer is do your research - do a lot of reading on the Tonymac, InsanelyMac, and other big OSx86 forums, and post questions if you have them in their respective graphics sub-forums.

It's odd though. Recommended doesn't mean there's an official guide necessarily. So I'm not sure what buying outside of their list means exactly. There's people in the boards complaining that some optical drives and CPU's listed aren't fully supported, leads to doubt. Not sure what this list actually certifies.

So it's a fuzzy approach: there is hardware that pretty much always works, basically natively supported by OSX. Then people will buy different board & card combos, try them out, and sometimes write a guide. I like to follow guides because someone else has pioneered the path for you & certified that it works. Generally, the stuff listed on Tonymac's hardware listing has a high degree of compatibility, but I still recommend looking for a guide on their forum just to see if there's any weird glitches or compatibility issues or installation quirks. Nothing is perfect, but if you're aware of the weirdness ahead of time, you can be prepared for it.

Best advice I can give you is (1) buy Tonymac recommended hardware, and (2) follow a guide on their forum for the hardware configuration you want. Most people are pretty helpful & friendly and if the thread is still active, can give you some support. But don't expect support & don't be upset if nobody helps you, because again, this is all volunteer work - people do it for fun & don't necessarily stick around for support after sharing a guide. The main reason I did it was to further refine my own installation - having a bunch of people sharing their experiences helped pool the knowledge together, and we built some pretty good Hacks out of it, which was a lot of fun & actually saved me a ton of money (I was a broke college student at the time, so even $800 was an enormous expense for me when I started out - but completely doable in comparison to the literally $10,000 Mac Pro I was lusting after back then!).

This is what I thought at first and maybe it is the case, but I see people on the boards following guides with the same hardware and everybody having different issues as if the same exact hardware and bootloaders can lead to different experiences. Maybe this isn't true and they are just messing up somewhere, I don't know.

In my experience:

1. Most people don't read. They'll ignore the BIOS settings, or not check the right boxes in Multibeast (or whatever tool variant they're using), or buy some weird version of a video card that doesn't have proven support.
2. Sometimes people who write guides are not thorough. I have a light combination of ADD & OCD and would go overboard with mine, but that's not the case for most people.
3. There are revisions between motherboards, cards, etc. And even using different CPU's can create different installation procedures (re: IGU setup).

I ran into these issues early on with my first Hackintosh board, the Intel Bad Axe 2 (love the name!). There was like a version 1.0 board, 1.1 board, and 1.6 board. I don't remember the specifics (holy crap...that was 8 years ago!), but they changed the NIC hardware or something between revisions, so I had to put in notes about those since I only had one board to play with & not the others. So there's a lot of variables to consider. Again...this is a science project, a research project - sometimes it goes smoothly, somethings there are very, very strange problems. Depends on your persistence in sticking with it to solve them.

Interesting. I didn't know about this. What is harder about tweaking off the OS drive though? Just trying to fully understand the benefit.

Why must the NIC card be PCI instead of onboard to do this? I don't have a problem with external soundcard as I'd be using one for recording anyhow.

I assume once booted up the USB drive is out of the equation completely then, so nothing is actually running on it to cause slowdowns or any issues?

Nothing is harder, in fact it's more of a pain to setup the USB stick because you have to point the BIOS & stuff to it. I like to use the USB boot stick because it keeps the bootloader information off the hard drive. One advantage to that is that it's a 100% Mac hard drive - pop it into an iMac via a USB to SATA adapter & boot it right up, or stick it into a Mac Pro & boot it up, no difference. Another advantage is that the bootloader basically creates a hidden partition that doesn't get cloned over (if you're into that, for backup & drive upgrades), so if you use Superduper to upgrade from say a 256gb to a 512gb SSD, you have to reinstall the bootloader. Which is VERY simple (and quick) to do, it's just a personal preference. My wife doesn't like having the USB stick option, and since she uses hers as her primary work station for her photography and NEVER updates (100% locked down for ease of workflow - no OS updates, no application updates, unless she reviews them beforehand), installing it straight to the hard drive works out very well for her.

Some onboard NIC's are 100% supported. Some are partially supported (they might have timeout issues, or Bonjour won't work or Airdrop or whatever). Some are not supported. You can get either a PCI or PCIe NIC that is natively-supported so you don't have to install any third-party drivers or patches or mods. Same with audio...audio can be a really big headache due to the driver configuration, and when you run Apple updates, some drivers require that you re-patch after every point release because a system kext will get overwritten, which is annoying to have to remember. Again - VERY easy to reinstall, literally just a couple clicks & a few seconds, just a personal preference. Not for everybody. I just don't like to every have to think about remember to reinstall the bootloader or NIC driver or Sound driver when I update. Plus, I always do a quick system image clone using Superduper before update, so if something borks, I simply zap the drive image back over & I'm up & running in minutes with no fuss. Super duper easy.

I'm not so much worried about them shutting it down intentionally, but that something in an OS point update or new OS entirely would make something in my system not have a workaround, causing me to have to buy a new board or CPU. I suppose this is unlikely or it doesn't really work that way. I'd imagine if we're able to run off Z97 which isn't even native that the community gets most things going again. I don't fully understand everything so it was just a thought.

My policy is this:

1. I disable automatic system updates

2. Before each update (manually), I (1) review other poster's experience on the forums, and (2) make a full backup clone of my boot drive - I'd hate to have to reinstall (and re-register, ARG!) all of my crap (Office, Adobe, yada yada yada) just because something borked. That's rare these days thanks to the awesome work the Hackintosh community has put in to make things smooth, but it's still a risk, so I safeguard myself.

So I take updating very seriously because I don't like hassles. I also like convenience, which is why I like to use a USB boot drive, PCI(e) NIC, and USB sound card. Just makes it easy & I don't have to remember to reinstall stuff after I restore a clone or whatever.

Well, I guess tonymac uses a lot of stuff written by other folks and is just putting it together in an easy format for people. This along with the commercial aspect of the site seems to have raised the ire. That's just what I gleaned from the other side. I don't know if it's accurate or fair, just that it's their position.

I don't agree with the premise that a Hackintosh must be done in a way to promote learning, etc...that's all fine and well, but it sounds more like sour grapes.

Basically everyone is good at different things. Some people work on bootloaders, some on drivers, some on tools to do things like customize a DSDT or extract system information for driver creation or kext modding. The next level is the meta-tools that integrate those tools & commands into a suite. I like Tonymac because they stay on top of everything (for free!) & have really great, super easy tools. The basic setup is like this:

1. On a Mac, download Yosemite from the Mac Store.
2. Download Unibeast & Multibeast. Use Unibeast to setup an 8GB USB stick (bootable installer) & dump Multibeast on it to use post-install.
3. Install OSX on the computer & run all system updates
4. Run Multibeast & install whatever you need (bootloader, special GPU driver, whatever).

That's it...you never have to touch a command line if you don't want to. As far as the politics go, there is a commercial aspect to his site, which has caused two issues: (1) he's profiting from it (which I personally am absolutely fine with...he makes his tools available for free, so who am I to argue if he wants to put up some ads to get some revenue from his efforts? He's paying for hosting, putting in his time to make tools & keep up the forum, etc., so more power to him for monetizing it, wish I had done that!), and (2) he is very careful about dancing around the legalities of Hackintosh on his site & in the discussion & links therein (i.e. no links to torrents that have a modified, bootable copy of OSX for installation, like Kalyway - bad example as it's pretty outdated, but that's the idea).

At best, Hackintosh is a very gray area; installing OSX on non-OSX hardware is against Apple's terms of service, but a company's ToS is not law, and there are the further considerations of the open-source underpinnings of OSX, and to date, Apple hasn't done anything to crush the scene (been 8+ years, don't think they care much as long as you're not directly profiting off of it by selling preloaded Hackintoshes). So going back to monetization, Tonymac does not allow discussion of unreleased operating systems (per Apple's developer agreements, you basically have an NDA...work is going on in the Hackintosh community behind-the-scenes, obviously, you just can't talk about it publicly for legal reasons). So he skirts around the clear legal issues, which irks some people since it's kind of hypocritical, but the bottom line is that (1) he is making great, easy tools available to the public for free, and (2) he is avoiding any clear-cut legal complications with Apple, and thus his site has been able to run uninterrupted since inception (afaik).

Yes, there are a lot of different mentalities in the community. The first one I brushed up against was some pushback against the concept of making it easier. To me, development is about making things more accessible - I don't want to grow my food just to eat it, it'd be nice if I could do other things for a living & buy someone else's product, you know? Same with Hackintosh - I enjoyed learning about the inner workings of OSX, but I recognize that not everybody did, and I shared my installation notes to help guide people along. It got to be really fun working with people all over the world on it, but negative feedback starting piling up against "making it too easy" and "taking the learning experience out of it". That's great, if that's your personal goal, but seriously - screw that, most people just want a cheap Mac! I mean, c'mon. Here's a great one:

http://myhack.sojugarden.com/guide/

myHack: Taking the iFail out of iHack

...

It is NOT a replacement for the human brain and is not intended as a 1-click solution to install OS X on PC. Such “1-click install solutions” ultimately fail (just like “OSx86 Distros&#8221 because they do not educate the end users as to why something is done, how something is done and where something is done.

Originally, one of the Hackintosh combo tools PCwiz & I developed was a 1-click installer that put all of the command-line stuff in one control panel so you could walk through setup easily without having to reference a big long guide or memorize a bunch of commands. This was especially important to me as I had no desire to become a developer or Terminal expert; I was building my Hackintosh to make a video editing station on a budget. I could go my whole life without hopping into Terminal & be perfectly happy, because being a command junkie was not my goal - editing videos was.

It was annoying having passive-aggressive stuff like this posted by people who were all working towards the same goal; I participate in other project-oriented communities that never had this kind of childish behavior going on, even in similar ones like XBMC or more more technical ones like PFsense (of course they all have their own set of politics, haha). And what's funny is that they ultimately ended up creating the same kind of tools - stuff like myHack essentially gives you the tools to walk through the setup & installation process, so there was a lot of hypocrisy going on, which was frustrating because all of us should have been working in a pooled collective instead of creating so many different tools that really would have been better as a single set. That's essentially what Tonymac & Macman did - they created their own branch (Chimera bootloader, based off the Chameleon bootloader) & added an installer & post-installer toolset:

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/04/chimera-unified-chameleon-bootloader.html

Macman is a pretty hardcore dude in terms of OSx86 development:

http://macmanx86.blogspot.com/

Pretty much all of this stuff stemmed from David Elliot's (dfe) work on BOOT-132 (the original bootloader for this project), which netkas (another hardcore guy, did truly awesome work when we were all first starting out on this - this was back when we were burning CD's all night with bootloader modifications to test, haha) morphed into the Snow Leopard-booting Chameleon bootloader. From there it just kind of took off - lots of tinkering, command lines, scripts, programs, kexts, DSDT's, SSDT's, BIOS modifications, etc. But then it splintered out into all of the quasi-religious groups around the major developers, some people thinking code-based was best, some thinking that tools that educated you were best, some thinking easy walkthrough solutions were best...they're ALL fine, it just depends on if you wanted to make it a hobby or not. It's the same with PFsense...I loved working with that, but getting a handle on CCNA stuff was enough of a chore; I didn't necessarily want to become a BSD dev, but that didn't mean that the project's goals weren't awesome for creating an easy firewall distribution.

So anyway, that's pretty much where the contention stems from. It's all pretty silly, really. I was super involved with writing guides back in college & helping people out in order to create better guides & a better system, but kind of got burnt out from being overloaded with creating procedures, writing guides, and helping people, & dealing with the criticism, and kind of dropped the ball a few years ago on my own efforts. Fortunately Tonymac came along & made a much more polished system, and more power to him! I for one really appreciate his efforts, he adds a lot of class & slickness to the scene imo. People can get all up in arms about that feeling if they want to, but my focus isn't arguing about who & what, it's just about making & using good tools & good guides to help myself & others out. I haven't really gotten back into it because (1) started a family & work 70 hours a week for the last 5 years or so, and (2) my Hacks have been rock-solid, and Tonymac's stuff still applies (and is updated monthly), so things have definitely gotten easier from the old days. Plus, I'm no central figure in all this, all I really did was write a couple of guides and help out on a couple of neat tools, so that's just my perspective as someone who had a lot of fun doing it for awhile.

I do seem some stuff on RampageDev about the guy creating some of this stuff if you send him some info from your motherboard, etc... I can't be specific because I don't understand it and they aren't friendly towards noobs, even though it seems as if it would only take one good article and guide to clear it up for people. I don't know if this is the case, but it seems like the appeal there is you can get most any board going?

I hear talk of Clover being "better". That's the only attraction....if the results are actually better.

Ultimately, my definition of "good" is how approachable it is & how stable it works. Can I install it? Is there documentation to do so? Does it crash? Clover (and other projects) are super awesome, but Tonymac's Chimera lets you zap a USB stick automagically with Unibeast & do a quick post-install driver package installation using Multibeast with the latest & greatest tools available. Or you can go hunting for them individually yourself, per your specific hardware, in the various forums where different tools are developed, supported, and discussed.

As far as the unfriendliness to noobs, you have to understand some history. In addition to the playground politics that went on, one of the really difficult things to deal with was people expecting to be spoonfed for free - people who didn't buy the hardware you recommended, didn't read through your guide thoroughly, and wanted you to spend five hours a night helpig them for free. I'm all for helping people who are stuck, once they've exhausted all available resources, but there were a lot of super needy, pushy people who would grate on you. It got old quick. So a lot of these guys have been dealing with literally hundreds or thousands of people posting on their forums, PM'ing them, messaging them, etc. & they develop a wall of frustration, which is totally understandable.

The super difficult thing right now is that there's such a huge quantity of information (again, goes back to the "developer war" where everything splintered out...different devs, different forums, etc.) so you really have to do a lot of reading to get a clear idea of what's what, and a LOT of those tools are now completed outdated & antiquated thanks to development from other groups.

So that's why I like Tonymac...it's one place to go, with one set of tools, with an up-to-date hardware list, that is available free, and that I don't have to personally manage on a weekly basis to stay on top of every single new development that comes out. So that's where you have to ask yourself what you want to do...I still ping into the community once in awhile to keep abreast of general developments, but you can suck your life away following all of this stuff if you want to, or you can grab Unibeast, install Hackintosh in an evening, and enjoy your new toy. Again, just depends on your personal goals, and there is NOTHING wrong with no wanting to get a low-level education about the inner workings of OSX.

I hear about adding fixes after being better than during the install? I don't know...I want to do everything optimally and this info is not in one place. I pick up tidbits here and there. It's frustrating when the guides just say "do this" and you want to learn, but the people who do know have no interest in making it user friendly.

Isn't Chameleon part of Multibeast/Unibeast? I probably have that wrong, but I thought that's what people were using.

Same as Windows - you install OS updates & drivers after you install the operating system. In Hackintosh-speak, that means modifying your DSDT, setting boot flags, installed kexts & packages, and so on. It's a bit messy, but Multibeast keeps the majority of the latest tools in a nice package for you to click & install from.

As far as shoddy guides go, yeah. That was a big reason for the popularity of my guides...I was very thorough. It helped me make a better Hackintosh for myself, and helped out other people as we drilled down into the nitty-gritty of the install process. Not many people like to write like that, so you kind of have to take what you can get because it's all done out of the generosity of someone's heart, and ANYTHING is better than nothing. So don't take it personally if someone is rude to you or simply doesn't respond because no one really has a vested interest in it, other than maybe the forum owners who make ad money off page views. You kind of have to develop a thick skin & also be prepared to do an awful lot of reading & tinkering if you want to cut your own path down a new hardware route.

Yes. I actually wouldn't mind a slight premium, I don't take issue with that. It's just that when you start talking flexibility, upgrading, repairing, having to get rid of a perfectly good built in screen, etc...it starts to really add up. I like to get some years out of system, so after Applecare ends you are just counting the days till doomsday. Their repairs are very expensive, etc...

I have no issue with them. They are doing very well for themselves. I'm just very surprised that this business model works so well in todays economy. Even if I was willing to spend 2K on an iMac I'm still having to figure out an external drive situation that's most likely going to be inferior to internal. Again, good for them, but I'm surprised that they have abandoned the enthusiast power user market so successfully. Power users without 3K plus or more that is

Yes, exactly. Sure, if I had ten grand to blow, I would absolutely go out & buy a fully-loaded Mac Pro with triple 4K screens, because why not? But most people balk at even a $3k iMac. Plus, like you said, repairs can be a headache. I can replace every single piece of my Hackintosh myself, no problem. Absolutely LOVE that. And Apple has no mid-range, expandable tower offering for enthusiasts, so it's up to us to fill the niche.

Their model works because (1) it's a good product, and (2) it's a luxury brand. I work with a lot of wealthy clients in my day job as a computer nerd; if they don't have an Alienware, they almost always have something like a $4,000 iMac & whatnot. It's partially a status symbol. Closest thing I can think of is that it's like owning a Volvo - very reliable & very safe, and very expensive, and has some nice classiness to it. Hackintosh is more like a Subaru

How often does a CPU upgrade come into play though? You're talking used? Usually sockets are abandoned pretty fast and then the older chips stop being sold, no?

Silver Platter? That's the part I'm grappling the most with as it doesn't seem to be the case exactly.

I very much appreciate your help. You're fueling my desire to try it again. It's hard to resist what I can build. I figured about 1100-1200 dollars all in...monitor, all the drives I need, etc...anything close in Apple land is at least another 1K I don't really have nor could justify if I did really.

Correct, used. You can get some nice price drops down the road, so if you say want to buy a mid-range i5 today for a couple hundred bucks, and in a couple years get the top-of-the-line 4ghz i7 for cheap, along with a 1-terabyte solid-state drive over a starter 250gb SSD drive, that's a nice way to extend your Hackintosh's life without killing your bank account.

Silver platter - sorry yes, in my eyes at least, haha. Although I'm looking at it from a historical point of view. The closest you can get to a perfect system is to find someone who has written a reasonably detailed guide, who is actively participating in their guide thread, and then by buying the same hardware in addition to compatible parts per the most recently hardware compatibility list. Short of paying someone to hold your hand through the process, that's the best you can get, unless you can find an online buddy who wants to help you through things. Back when I was proficient in everything, I did that a lot with people because it was fun to help a brother out, and it helped make the guide better, which selfishly made my Hackintosh better So it was win/win all the way around. Not too many people are that friendly, however, so you kind of have to take what you can get, which is why it boils back to #1 - building a Hackintosh is a science project. Unless you're extremely careful in your prep work (finding a good guide, buying exactly the right hardware), things can go really wrong for you & cause balding (don't ask me how I know that...).

I think the most I ever spent on a complete Hack was around $2,000. It was a wicked setup & was my main video-editing rig for a long time; I had a custom-modded card that turned into a budget Quadro (thanks to aquamac!), had a quad-core CPU & 8 gigs of RAM (ridiculous at the time, which is funny because I build very affordable workstations with 64 gigs of RAM on a regular basis these days, haha!), just all kinds of amazing stuff that literally was not available anywhere else, short of buying a Mac Pro, which was $7k+ for the more minimum configuration that I was going after.

So that's basically the reality of things. The path is not perfectly clear-cut, but there are good tools available, you can get help sometimes, hardware is cheap(er) these days, the system is reliable once you get it working...just have to be persistent & have the desire to build & tinker until you get it right. I really enjoy mine, and aside from some community goofiness (I should note, the flack was from a very minority group of people...I've made a tremendous amount of good friends over the years like Zaap, MotionMan, alfa147x, mosslack, AkumaX, just too many awesome people to list (sorry for not getting you all!), so don't let mean or rude people stop you from pressing forward with your project, because there are cool people out there, just have to keep on going. Good luck with whatever you decide to go with! And feel free to keep asking questions...I'm fairly out of date, but I have some good resources to point you to, and others here are still pretty knowledgeable about things, so help can be found for sure.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

I've got a 2006 Mac Pro. My everyday machine is my 2011 15" MacBook Pro, but the Mac Pro has its place, mostly due to its storage abilities.

4x HDD slots - SSD in one for OS/etc., 3 big HDD's in the others for media storage (2 of them software RAIDed)

4x PCI-E slots. Non-Mac-specific video cards work almost-natively - a variety of "PC" video cards work just fine now (no boot screen, but everything else just works, no EFI flashing, no kexts required for a vanilla Radeon 5770 or a number of others). I could have 4 of them in my Mac Pro and have 8 monitors.

Easily upgraded RAM (FB-DIMMs = a relative pain to find + slower, would recommend a 2009-up MP instead to avoid this) and CPU's (I upgraded from 2.0GHz to 2.66GHz for basically free after I sold the 2.0's on eBay).

Everything you said in your first post is true. Especially about not trusting external drives because cords get knocked. I have a boatload of external drives, don't get me wrong, but whatever I'm working on "right now" is best on an internal drive. And with 4x internal drive bays it's very easy to do that.

 

[aman74]

Sorry, I was referring to the Hackintosh software there. If you are not careful about picking correct hardware & installing the correct software, the glitches will drive you batty. I had many a sleepless night working on mine, haha. Of course, I was in college full-time back then & had nothing but endless free time on my hands, which made tinkering easier ................

Wow, thanks so much for that! It will take me some time to read through it. I haven't had the time yet, but wanted to thank you very much for the info and your time!

I've got a 2006 Mac Pro. My everyday machine is my 2011 15" MacBook Pro, but the Mac Pro has its place, mostly due to its storage abilities.

4x HDD slots - SSD in one for OS/etc., 3 big HDD's in the others for media storage (2 of them software RAIDed)

4x PCI-E slots. Non-Mac-specific video cards work almost-natively - a variety of "PC" video cards work just fine now (no boot screen, but everything else just works, no EFI flashing, no kexts required for a vanilla Radeon 5770 or a number of others). I could have 4 of them in my Mac Pro and have 8 monitors.

Easily upgraded RAM (FB-DIMMs = a relative pain to find + slower, would recommend a 2009-up MP instead to avoid this) and CPU's (I upgraded from 2.0GHz to 2.66GHz for basically free after I sold the 2.0's on eBay).

Everything you said in your first post is true. Especially about not trusting external drives because cords get knocked. I have a boatload of external drives, don't get me wrong, but whatever I'm working on "right now" is best on an internal drive. And with 4x internal drive bays it's very easy to do that.

Thanks, this will be good info if I go that route. I haven't had time to check prices on the 2009's...anything newer looked pretty pricey and puts me back into the same boat.

 

[Childs]

Another reason to go for one of the 5,1s, not 4,1 flashed to 5,1, is the 4,1 used CPU's without the IHS, so it requires buying thermal pads or washers to account for the 2mm increase in height for most CPUs that you'd want to upgrade to. You can get the slowest dual CPU 5,1 then drop in better CPUs without having to source thermal pads.

I just did the upgrade tonight on my 5,1, and it was just like installing a CPU in a regular PC. Only thing I had to buy was a 9" 3mm Hex driver, but those are like $5.

 

[aman74]

Another reason to go for one of the 5,1s, not 4,1 flashed to 5,1, is the 4,1 used CPU's without the IHS, so it requires buying thermal pads or washers to account for the 2mm increase in height for most CPUs that you'd want to upgrade to. You can get the slowest dual CPU 5,1 then drop in better CPUs without having to source thermal pads.

I just did the upgrade tonight on my 5,1, and it was just like installing a CPU in a regular CPU. Only thing I had to buy was a 9" 3mm Hex driver, but those are like $5.

If only I knew what any of that meant.

 

[Childs]

If only I knew what any of that meant.

Upgrading Mac Pros:

https://web.archive.org/web/2013102...Photography/2013/07/08/mac-pro-2009-part-tbd/