Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower


Ars Technica:

People primarily build these boxes for one of two reasons: generic PC hardware is cheaper than Apple's even if it is usually bigger and uglier; and unlike in the old Power Mac and Mac Pro days, Apple doesn't sell a Mac that offers what many of these people want.

Nice feature from Andrew Cunningham who follows Hackintosh updates.

I got into Hacktosh for very much the reason of expansion. I wanted PCIe cards and beefed up GPUS. Plus a lot of drive bats for a boatload of cheap storage.

I've stepped away, however, for reasons also outlined in the article:

Sometimes, perhaps as a side effect of software updates, things just stop working properly for obscure reasons. Sleep and audio were the two issues that I saw brought up repeatedly--one developer has never been able to get his front audio ports working properly, and a TV producer I talked to sometimes has to log out and back in to get the audio jacks to work. Graphics cards and USB can also be fiddly.

The last few years I settled into a schedule of doing major OS updates around the holidays. Usually New Year's Day while watching football. I'd fiddle with my system and get it going right. Smaller updates though usually go smoothly. I just cloned my boot drive to a spare and if anything went sideways, I just swapped it out and let it sit until I had time to play around with it.

Hackintosh is sort of like a hobby of an car. It takes a commitment to tinker to keep it running.