
Building a Hackintosh Pro - milen
https://www.dancounsell.com/building-a-hackintosh-pro/
======
jwr
I used to use a Hackintosh. It was a time-consuming thing, I feared OS
updates, and I could never be sure about the reliability (you can get _really_
weird problems sometimes. I then switched over to a Mac Pro (cheese grater)
and was very happy with it. Unfortunately, since the trash can Mac Pro I'm
left out in the cold, so I'm considering running a Hackintosh again...

Unfortunately, the information is still very fragmented and it takes a lot of
time and effort to get one running. Actually building the thing is the easiest
part, it's the booting, installation and OS patches/fixes that eat up time.

~~~
matt4077
It's quite easy to do now, but the community is incredibly annoying.

The software is usually on sourceforge or something even shadier, it's rarely
actually OSS-licensed, and configuration/documentation/interfaces are a
nightmare of incomprehensible incoherence. There cannot be a software
community less professional. I've seen Minecraft plugins by 8 year olds much
better in these categories.

~~~
wmf
Android ROMs are the same way. Maybe something about the semi-illegality of it
brings out the old DOS scene culture.

~~~
Larrikin
Honestly the most annoying thing about that community is that you're expected
to wade through hundreds of pages on forums, piecing together information, and
people get furious because the answer to your question was on page 63 out of
124. The custom roms will list the very specific things that differentiate
them but there are hardly any guides with best practices except maybe if you
have the most popular phone out that year.

~~~
clubm8
So basically the installability of Linux circa 2003, but with the bonus that
security updates might brick my system?

------
doctorpangloss
As a Hackintosh user, I'd recommend an NCASE M1 v5 or the Shuttle SZ170R8 for
a significantly better chassis.

With the NCASE, you can get a LGA 2011-v3 mini-ITX board and get as fast of a
computer as you want. Though truthfully, I don't think there's much of a
point.

Likewise, an old NVIDIA card for a Hackintosh? Also not much of a point. The
web drivers are so bad. Who knows when Apple will ship another NVIDIA chip in
a Mac?

If you need "CUDA stuff," use Linux or Windows. Software like Octane is so
buggy and suffers from worse performance on Mac anyway. Final Cut and After
Effects both support OpenCL acceleration. Besides, the RX 480 is $189.

If you're doing "VR stuff," well pity on you if you're developing for an
Oculus on a Mac. The Vive doesn't, and probably never will, support Mac.
Whatever VR solution Apple releases will obviously run great on the video
cards they support, so that again strongly points to purchasing an AMD card at
this time over your alternatives.

With regards to this specific build, a high DPI display will greatly improve
the enjoyment of this computer. The Dell P2715Q is the best deal. Mac OS has
such good HiDPI support compared to Windows (and especially Linux). Enjoy the
features you pay for!

Truthfully, I'm hard pressed to see the point of a Hackintosh, and I own one.

~~~
itg
a GTX 980 Ti is considered old now? Unless you're working with datasets where
the 6GB is limiting, it is quite capable for both CUDA programming & gaming. I
tried CUDA programming on Win10 and it is an exercise in frustration, and find
macOS a more pleasant environment compared to linux in part b/c of software
library and it's what I'm personally used to.

~~~
Cacti
It's quite capable, but if you need more than 6GB, the other capabilities are
essentially irrelevant. Lack of support for the newer NVIDIA cards is
increasingly becoming a major issue for many people.

------
jrnichols
I'm in the same boat this author is. It's disappointing to see the desktop
market lagging so far behind. For all of the 68k/PPC years, we could at least
say "different architecture" and Intel hadn't caught up. Now we're all Intel,
and it's Apple that isn't keeping up. It's frustrating, and I'm not
necessarily a "Pro user" anymore at all. I have a current generation Mac Mini,
and it's over 2 years old now. What I can buy from the Apple Store right now
for the same price is what I got 2 years ago.

I wish I know what Apple was thinking. One would have thought that the "iPhone
halo effect" was something that they would have wanted to give momentum to.
Instead people are looking at Windows units again.

~~~
CPLX
> I wish I know what Apple was thinking.

It's literally incomprehensible. Just make a really good fast desktop
computer. They're one of the largest companies in the world now with
essentially unlimited financial resources, and decades of core competency in
making high end desktop computers. So like why don't they just fucking do it.

~~~
snom380
The problem is that they still have a pretty small product design department,
and they're committed to not shipping "crap" products.

What I really don't understand is why they didn't foresee this, and just
updated their cheese grater Macs. After all, it's way easier to simply update
a motherboard to fit a faster CPU than it is to rearchitect the Garbage Can
design every time there's a new CPU and GPU architecture out there.

The only thing I can think of is that they've either just downprioritized a
lot to focus on $new_secret_product, or that they've developed a new Mac Pro
that for some reason didn't pan out, so they needed to start over again.

~~~
derefr
They've invested heavily into new manufacturing processes since they designed
the cheesegrater. Those processes can produce things like the garbage can
easily enough, but they can't be made to produce the old cheesegrater parts
as-is. They'd need to effectively redesign the cheesegrater at this point
_anyway_ , if they wanted to build more of (something that looks and works
like) them using the suppliers+factories they have today.

------
ak217
Just to provide a counterpoint, I recently did a new desktop build and
installed Windows 10. It's not bad, and very different from the Windows 10
beta that I gave up on in frustration two years ago. With the Ubuntu subsystem
I can do useful work right away. After turning off some of the annoyances (via
the Services and Group Policy control panels), it really does a decent job of
just working. You can download and install with a USB stick (no more stupid
DVDs). It still demands a license key, but runs indefinitely without
registration with a little watermark.

If you haven't built a desktop in the past few years, the performance boost
from PCIe NVMe SSDs is great, and Intel i5-7600K (now retails for $200) can
run at 4.5 GHz reliably and stay cool. I'm impressed.

~~~
LeoPanthera
If you're relying on the Ubuntu subsystem to do "real work", why not just
install Ubuntu?

~~~
bigdubs
Probably because of the myriad of things that have shaky hardware support on
ubuntu.

------
binaryapparatus
This is both informative and interesting from other angle. If Dan Counsell,
well known owner of Realmac Software, has to build hackintosh then wtf is
Apple doing?

~~~
coldtea
Catering to the majority (of its niche, which is non-Windows, easy to use,
all-in-one, curated experience, upmarket PCs) and not to even further niches?

~~~
Drdrdrq
Their niche will soon figure out there are some people (like OP) running the
same software on much better hardware for much lower price. How much longer do
you think they will keep buying original macs?

~~~
wayn3
I buy an original mac because I want a machine that does what it does without
all the overhead of assembling it myself. if i spend just 2 hours of my time
assembling something equal for 400 bucks less, ive gained nothing. and chances
are itll take a lot longer than those 2 hours. with a mac, you click a button
and receive a machine that is "pretty fuckin good", for 1700-2500 dollars. do
I know I could do better? Sure. Do I give a shit, though?

i could almost turn "could macs be good value?" into a mandatory interview
question, because those who say no don't understand how trading money for time
works. working with such fools is incredibly tedious and painful.

~~~
drkstr
"i could almost turn "could macs be good value?" into a mandatory interview
question, because those who say no don't understand how trading money for time
works. working with such fools is incredibly tedious and painful."

I would advise against that, unless you are in the habit of interviewing
people who value their time at $200+ per hour, such as in your above example.
Otherwise, their answer may be coming from a slightly different mindset.

~~~
wayn3
thats the whole point.

------
coned88
My concern with these hackintosh systems is safety. Tools like Unibeast/Clover
and whatever else. They manipulate the OSX install image. It all seems to work
but then you type in your credentials for the bank or work into a browser and
who knows if the OS is compromised.

Is it safe? That is the question.

~~~
roblabla
Clover is fully open source. And it's not too complicated to follow along, so
it's actually a fairly auditable piece of software.

I've been using hackintosh for a while, and it's almost a vanilla OSX with the
exception of Clover and FakeSMC. I doubt there's any malware in there...

~~~
op00to
> I doubt there's any malware in there...

Famous last words. Unless the builds are verifiable, they're not trustable.
Open source doesn't do you any good if you don't know that the binary that you
download and run doesn't do something weird.

~~~
roblabla
I doubt you verify every bit of binaries you download.

Open source gives you the possibility of knowing your binary is good, by
compiling it yourself. I chose not to do so, because I couldn't really be
bothered. But others who need this kind of security could, and I would hope
they do.

------
tangue
I started to build a Hackintosh using this kind of setup but I realized that I
no longer love the OS (I already own a Macbook) and that there's no reason for
such a hassle.

~~~
hedora
Yeah, I'm hitting this dilemma on the laptop front. It is hardware refresh
time at work, and there is a concerning dent near the fan on my MBP, along
with a light spot on the panel.

I despise MacOS's keyboad shortcuts. I just want a stable linux laptop that is
fast enough for emacs + web browsing and has an impeccable
screen/keyboard/trackpad/battery.

My HW budget is high enough to buy a high end apple laptop and tiny (27"?)
apple-ish display from LG.

If I move to a overkill-nice PC laptop, and also buy a 43" 4K (non color
matched) monitor, I think I'll be able to buy a ryzen cluster with the left
over cash.

I'm not sure if that will be faster or slower than my xeon VM in the data
center, or if I want to spend the time setting up distcc.

~~~
jseliger
_I just want a stable linux laptop that is fast enough for emacs + web
browsing and has an impeccable screen /keyboard/trackpad/battery._

Isn't that a Dell XPS? [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-
dell-c...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-dell-
continues-to-build-a-reliable-linux-lineage/)

------
nottorp
Problem is, Apple doesn't have anything for power users or developers right
now. I'm currently hackintoshing, but with every "dumb it down" decision (like
remove the battery life time estimation), hardware mishap (LG monitors not
working near wifi, come on) or new hardware announcement that _still_ doesn't
serve my demographic i wonder if i shouldn't just switch back to Linux.

I used to say that their laptops are fine, and it's only the desktop where i
need to hackintosh, but ... touch typing hostile emoji keyboard?

~~~
swah
I'm on Linux now, and people that like design and attention to detail can't
really be happy using this... I don't expect massive migration to Linux from
OSX. People will go back to Windows and OSX in a few months.

~~~
nottorp
For the record, I've been using Linux as my main OS for 10 years when I
finally decided to switch to OS X about 4 years ago. I have no problem
switching back if Apple stops offering me enough flexibility. After all, you
don't need to recompile your kernel to install drivers any more :)

~~~
wingworks
You don't need to deal with drivers period on MacOS. I use Linux every day as
a server, and have tried a few times to use it as a desktop platform, but
never last longer than a few hours. (I'm a graphics person)

~~~
dawnerd
My HP printer begs to differ. Wouldn't show up on my mac until I installed
their garbage software. On my ubuntu desktop, it works right away without any
fiddling. Graphics, on the other hand, are definitely pretty finicky,
especially HiDPI

------
thyselius
I built a crazy fast Hackintosh using the intel 8 core 5960x CPU. 17000 on
Cinebench. However I sold it a week ago.

Being iOS developer really sucked, as I needed to upgrade OS X for Xcode but
the CPU wasn't supported with Sierra for 6 months.

Also I spent at least 2 weeks of work on it during the year I had it. So not
worth it. But there are slower cpus that are better supported. It was fun the
days it worked though:)

~~~
bartvk
> Also I spent at least 2 weeks of work on it during the year I had it

To me, this is the most interesting, and the article doesn't really specify
it. Excluding the building itself, why did you have to spend time on it? What
kind of problems occurred?

------
elmigranto
I'm wondering whether it would be easier to run macOS in VM. No more fear of
updates with snapshots, and I imagine ease of installation and less
compatibility issues.

Anyone does it, how's performance and keyboard "tunneling" (CMD vs CTRL)?

~~~
joshgel
Ive found it pretty tough to get macOS up and running in a VM. Anyone know of
any easy way?

~~~
matthew-wegner
VMWare ESXi officially supports Mac Pro hardware as a host. Guests will just
work--you don't need to use any of the hackintosh bootloaders.

If you _aren 't_ running ESXi (or VMWare Workstation) on Apple hardware, you
can use this to enable the functionality:
[https://github.com/DrDonk/unlocker](https://github.com/DrDonk/unlocker)

------
kilroy123
While this PC looks great, visually, and spec wise; isn't this missing the
point?

It seems like a company needs to build a _very_ good linux distro with design
first principles. It needs to work on a number of devices. More importantly,
it needs to be a paid OS. It can have an open source distro underneath, but
the UI needs to be created by people who are paid well.

~~~
wezm
This is pretty much what the elementary folks are trying to do
[https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)

~~~
string
I've been using elementaryOS for a while now, and it doesn't really compare to
macOS yet unfortunately.

It seems to me there is a disconnect between developers and designers. When I
ask devs why there isn't a nice looking Linux distro, they ask me why I care
about what the UI looks like. Designers don't use or care about Linux because
of the lack of decent design software. As much as I love the concept of GIMP,
it is not a realistic alternative to Adobe software (especially things like
InDesign and XD) or Sketch, for example.

As a designer-developer, Linux is still not an easy choice for me, as much as
I'd like it to be. elementaryOS is a nice start, but I still end up using
macOS if given the choice.

------
haltandsleep
I bought my Mac the first month they appeared in 1984. I won't bother you with
the ensuing history, but I will raise a question related to it:

I remember when Apple could not offer a retail OS, not without cannibalizing
hardware sales. If Pro desktops fade, is that still true for that segment? Or
could they offer something Xeon only (to keep out commodity laptops) as a
legal Hackintosh? Or do certified configurations a la Oculus? If their profit
is in mobile, and cloud services, it might help more than hurt.

FWIW I like Debian now, and the non-intrusive UI.

------
atemerev
I have a Ubuntu desktop (i7 6700K, nVidia GTX 1080, like everybody else's),
and a recent MacBook Pro.

Each time I open the latter, I have a mixed feeling of "how beautiful
everything is!" and "how slow everything is!"

(I am a Scala software engineer occasionally working with GPU-based machine
learning)

------
kuon
I have been using a similar (a bit lower specs) hackintosh for 2 years.

About two weeks ago, I decided to stop and look elsewhere.

I started a small serie on my experience if you are interested:
[https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos-
part-1-moti...](https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos-
part-1-motivations-b10accc10889#.k6ccx7dt5)

I am still testing my current setup, but I guess I'll soon publish the last
bit, with the setup I found and my conclusions on the switch.

~~~
harrygeez
> FUCKING FULL SCREEN MODE WHEN THE GREEN BUTTON IS CLICKED

Man this is so me when I updated to El Capitan. What is Apple thinking??? Now
I have to hold alt just to increase my window size. At least give us an option
to change it! How hard is that, Apple?

~~~
kuon
I used the Moom to help me with that.

Another good point for windows, it has nearly all the features of Moom, at
least those I need.

------
djsumdog
I had a Hackintosh for years. I used the stock/retail CD from my former
mackbook, used some custom kexts and a guide to generate the right plist edit
to unlock my nvidia card. I never had issues with updates either.

It ran Snow Leopard and I used it for all my development, video editing, photo
editing, etc. Eventually I left for Australia and decided to get a real
MacBook and unfortunately it had Lion on it.

I hated Lion. Gone was Expose. Gone were rows of virtual desktops (Missing
Control had one row with multiple columns. I hated that shit). There was no
way to get the old functionality back. Eventually I started using Linux again
in a VM as my primary OS.

Today I'm back on Linux with i3 as my tiling window manager and I don't think
I'd ever go back to macos. I think many of their design decisions since Lion
and onward have been terrible. I just keep around a Windows laptop or VM for
when I need commercial products or to play games.

------
bluedino
>> Maybe Apple have been waiting for the recently released Ryzen CPUs from
AMD?

You can't even run the stock kernel on AMD chips. How much QA and other work
Apple would have to do, I have no idea.

~~~
adar
The crew over at amd-osx.com figured it out, can't imagine it'd be much more
difficult for Apple to do so.

~~~
bluedino
There's more to it than just getting AMD to boot the kernel. Features like
AirPlay that are Intel-specific.

------
poyu
I'm a Hackintosh user for almost 10 years (from 10.6!), though I do have a
MacBook Pro with my when I'm out.

As other people stated, yes, it is very time consuming to get it straight.
Treat it as a hobby, you'll understand things about the Mac (or computers in
general) other people don't, such as DSDT patches, how drivers are loaded, and
Mac power management, etc.

If you use Clover, and get all the patches right, you can almost get an
update-proof setup (Except when you go from say 10.11 to 10.12). But even at
the worst case, usually people on the Internet will figure out fast enough for
you to apply the new patches. Minor updates are really really easy and fine. I
always click Update without batting an eye.

It's a tinkerer's hobby. If you like doing researches and being fine with
spending time figuring out stuff on the Internet, I will say go for it and try
it out! The process is fun and the result is very rewarding.

~~~
baudehlo
So just like using Linux then? /s

------
jlgaddis
I know I could Google and read about some experiences but since this made me
think about it... have any of you HN'ers tried to virtualize OS X or run it
virtualized (on anything other than an OS X host) on a regular basis?

I've got a (still pretty new) high-end MacBook Pro sitting at the end of my
desk but -- after putting together a new, _extremely_ over-built workstation a
few months ago -- I haven't even turned it on since I don't know when. I've
got KVM/qemu, VMware Workstation, and VirtualBox all installed on my
workstation, though, and it might be interesting to try to get OS X running
under one of them.

~~~
Baeocystin
I got Snow Leopard running under VMware a few years back. It 'worked', in that
I could do most things, but sound was glitchy, and updates would regularly
break things.

My ultimate answer was just to give up on Apple on the desktop and stay in the
Windows/Linux worlds. I'm just not going to invest any further time on a
system that is owned by a company that clearly doesn't care about it, and is
actively hostile to attempts (like virtualization) to use the system in a
larger context.

------
gfiorav
Best mac I ever had is my Hackintosh. I built a fusion drive for it and use
Clover instead of Chimera for a boot loader, so I can update from major
versions without trouble.

I've never had any issues, i just shop for compatible chipsets. I've had tons
of issues with Linux on the desktop in comparison to Hackintosh. Never
understood how people say it's time consuming to do it!

~~~
NegativeLatency
It's time consuming, depending on the particular hardware you have. The
updates usually go smoothly, but then a sound driver or something will break
and you have to go and fix it. Which is pretty annoying if you want to spend
your time getting something else done with your computer.

------
Xeoncross
One day I want the Adobe suite to run on linux (natively) then I can leave OS
X just like Windows. Local Media editing is the last reason for windows/os x
to exist.

Everything else (games, calculations, social networks, model rendering) is
better served by a web or mobile app backed by a server running linux.

~~~
alleycat
What really needs to happen is a big name company with money (like Google), to
go all out and get a decent linux distro on the market for professionals that
everyone can get behind, and also subsidise the development of big name
products from Adobe, drivers, game developers, in the short term get the OS to
gain traction.

~~~
karlshea
But knowing how Google works they will lose interest in it in three years and
then that OS would be in the same position as macOS.

------
mark_elf
There are some comments here as to motivation: why go through all this? I make
video money using after effects, mainly. I'm chained to the oars. The choice
of intermediate codec (ProRes) is surprisingly important, there are other
solutions that don't make it for my workflow. And it's not just codec, lots of
things about windows 10 make it an unprofessional choice. I was planning to
build a windows box anyway, with i7 6900K, 128GB ram, ASRock X99 Taichi, GTX
1080, NVMe, all that. When I overlaid that over a hackintosh, it seemed a bit
past what is possible, at least from a cursory look at tonymacx86. It's worth
a week of work to me, maybe I'll look harder. Thanks for listening!

------
taksintikk
Wonder why OP didn't use PCIe NVMe drives.

Night and day better than standard ssd on homebrew macs.

~~~
tumblen
I believe hackintoshes are unable to boot from NVMe drives at the moment (this
may have changed)

~~~
nik736
This is false information.

------
rallycarre
I custom built my PC before knowing of what a hackintosh was so I didn't
purchase my hardware specifically for it. According to the compatibility wiki
my config was compatible.

I remember during college of wanting to do some Ios development but afford a
MAC. I spent atleast 20 hours of tweaking kewts settings and trying different
distros. I finally got it to boot but it crashed whenever I tried to run the
emulator.

I haven't touched hackintosh stuff for several years but the grief and time
wasted makes it not worth it. It's a shame apple is limiting their development
tools to MacOS. They could learn a thing or two from Microsoft.

------
mmrr88
I have a Toshiba Satellite Radius 11 L15W-... its a cheap 300 dollar laptop
runs windows 10. changing the OS is not supported and actually blocked my the
manufacturer. I was able to find a few tools to remove some of the counter
measures set in place. It is now a Ubuntu Laptop, I would use a Mac for
development but Macs are expensive. I have built 2 PC gaming rigs that were
more expensive then the 1500 price tag of a hackintosh. Bottom line is you can
get any modern OS working on almost any machine. It just starts to get really
hacky and information can be hard to find.

------
UpDownLeftRight
Or you can get a Windows 10 machine from a reliable integrator (like
Supermicro or ThinkMate) and it will "just work."

------
flyingfsck
This seems reasonable:
[http://hackintoshmethod.com](http://hackintoshmethod.com)

------
notlisted
I'm not a Hackintosh builder, have considered it many times. From the video's
I've watched, the big trick, especially if you use Final Cut Pro X with
OpenCL, is to avoid NVidia and use AMD Radeon video cards. Supposedly this
makes the build process a lot easier/less finicky, and even faster. Can anyone
confirm?

------
lisper
Has anyone here tried running OS X under Parallels Desktop on Linux?

[http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v4/wl/docs/en/Parallel...](http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v4/wl/docs/en/Parallels_Desktop_Users_Guide/22555.htm)

------
adamnemecek
> I've switched off auto-updates in Sierra. While system updates should work
> just fine, I prefer to hold off until the community over at tonymacx86 have
> confirmed there are no issues.

Does anyone know why some of the updates can brick the machine? Also how often
does this happen? Or like what percentage of updates break things.

~~~
djsumdog
I ran a Hackintosh for years, but I used the stock/retail ISO along with a
couple of custom kexts and the nvidia enabler (the drivers will run other
nvidia/ati cards, they're just not officially supported and the stock kernel
models have a white-list of the models that were sold with macs).

I remember leaving the stock updates on and rarely ran into issues. I think I
had video screw up once or twice, which just involved getting some of the
latest kexts off the forums.

------
softinio
Is the motivation to use a hackintosh over linux apps you cant get for Linux
mainly?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Pretty much, and it's a very polished is overall. It's especially good for
some niche things like audio, video and media. Photoshop has always run like a
dream on macs and I use Logic Pro on my hackintosh for which there's really no
alternative on Linux.

------
crazy5sheep
a bit off topic. NVIDIA driver for mac is kind of suck. the bug, which showing
a transparent window whenever you try to open an epub file with ibook.app, is
been there for a very long time, and still no fix yet.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Still! I was hoping for a fix for that. I hear if you activate your onboard
intel grapics it will work but I haven't managed to do that yet

------
robk
Those cases still look really ugly. Reminds me of the look I was going for
twenty years ago when i was a teenager w all the neon. The Macs at least look
elegant and like something I'd want in my house.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
That's your only criticism? Maybe choose a different case?

~~~
dom0
Well, and the airflow looks a lot like "uhm, I'm just gonna slap fans all over
it, that's probably fastest ^W best, k?".

------
amelius
Curious: is there a window manager for Linux that behaves much like OSX?

~~~
yoavm
In what way? IMHO window managers is something Linux excels in.

What does macOS has in its window manager that Linux lacks? (other than "no
you can't maximise easily" feature...)

~~~
Drdrdrq
I love Linux, but the WMs are not its strong point IMHO. There are many of
them and each tries to invent some new desktop paradigm instead of polishing
existing experience. It's OK to be boring - just do your job and don't get it
my way. I'm currently using Xfce and hope they don't take the KDE4 route for a
long time... (not that the experience is bugless or even great, but it's
better than alternatives).

~~~
Nullabillity
Huh? Uncustomized Kwin is about as boring as WMs get.

------
jeffjose
After years of making fun of Linux folks for having to "know everything about
the computer" to get things working, Mac folks seem to be embracing the
culture these days.

~~~
MrScruff
I can't speak for everyone, but for me there's a big difference from wanting
to know everything about the computer and needing to, particularly when I'm
not at work.

~~~
bitexploder
These days setting up a Windows or Apple system means fighting lots of
relatively confusing dialogs and options to avoid using cloud services, etc.
Modern consumer operating systems want to analyze every bit of your activity
they can get their grubby mitts on and you really have to fight them and say
"No thanks!" about 15 times on a modern phone and less, but still a lot, on
Win/Apple.

I care about privacy, like most people, but I am able to control mine far
better than the typical, non-technical computer user. I am reaching a point
where these operating systems are becoming untenable for day to day computing
use. They lure you in with "everything just working" including the privacy
invasive "cloud" features. Increasingly these things are using ML to mine your
behavior. I can run Linux. I don't even mind paying for a privacy with a
little bit of my time and convenience. I don't want to look back 25 years from
now and say "I really wish I had not given up this bit of privacy".
Alternately, I am hoping when I look back I can say, "It was worth the
relatively small time sacrifice to avoid these things."

(Not confusing for technically savvy folks, but still, pretty hard).

~~~
valuearb
Yea, you might be confusing Windows and Macintosh there (or iOS and Android).
It's trivial to setup a Mac, there is one dialog to collect crash data you can
opt out of, and you don't have to use iCloud. Apple would like you to use
iCloud but doesn't make you, doesn't want your private data, and is committed
to protecting that data.

Windows is a little more frustrating, and I don't think Microsoft has the same
level of privacy commitment as Apple does, but I also don't think it's that
far behind.

Google is a special case, they are an advertising company and have virtually
no revenue streams outside of that for Android. I'm sure they'd like to
protect your privacy too if they could still serve super targeted ads to you,
but they have no way of doing that.

~~~
bitexploder
Sierra got a lot worse. That was the end of the line for me. App store,
difficult to disable System Integrity Protection with no alternative APIs to
replace lost functionality, etc. But, yes Apple is the best of the lot.
Android phones require a lot of battle to tame by default.

iOS is by default the most secure phone OS, etc. (Secure Enclave is nice and
you know it is available on all iOS devices newer than X) But it is a walled
garden that is too tightly controlled in terms of what is allowed.

Still if you enable iMessage it gets murkier. Siri, cloud backupiCloud
keychain (which is good, but not for me). Lots of small pushes to remote
services.

------
wiradikusuma
Be careful with OS upgrades. I recently upgraded my hackintosh to macOS
(Sierra) and now it can't shutdown/restart.

------
1011_1101
Unlocked CPU and Z-Board but no OC? With that config you should be easily able
to run that CPU at 4.6GHz

------
toodlebunions
Eventually you'll likely give in and install windows.

------
xaduha
If you're not doing VFIO, you're doing it wrong.

------
redsummer
Apple have made some terrible design decisions since Jobs died.

A 'thin iMac' \- whose thin-ness was absolutely pointless.

The MacBook (2 lbs) and MacBook Pro (3 lbs) were designed to weigh arbitrary
weights instead of thinking about features:
[http://www.apple.com/mac/compare/results/?product1=macbook&p...](http://www.apple.com/mac/compare/results/?product1=macbook&product2=macbook-
pro-13)

And the MacPro was possible the worst shape for upgrades.

Jobs inspired people to come up with great machines, but he also had a
pragmatism which seems to have been lost at Apple.

~~~
coldtea
> _A 'thin iMac' \- whose thin-ness was absolutely pointless._

For you maybe. Many of us (millions, judging from the sales numbers)
appreciate the thin-ness, even if it's for a desktop machine.

I had to drag my old non-thin iMac several times to different locations, and
it was no joy. Nor do I need a behemoth on my desktop.

~~~
izacus
Hmm, you're implying that everyone that bought a new iMac appreciates the
thinness and bought it because of that?

Or perhaps they bought them because they had no other choice when choosing a
reasonably fast desktop machine compatible with their software?

Seriously, the argument "oh, this feature must be popular because the whole
machine is popular" really doesn't hold water in complex machines like
computers, phones or cars.

~~~
coldtea
> _Hmm, you 're implying that everyone that bought a new iMac appreciates the
> thinness and bought it because of that? Or perhaps they bought them because
> they had no other choice when choosing a reasonably fast desktop machine
> compatible with their software?_

iMacs sold better even when the "cheese graters" were available, so yes.

~~~
OD_
The cheese graters cost between two to four times the price of an iMac
depending on the era we're talking about (price fluctuations of the
PowerMac/Mac Pro). Counting the fact that you do need to buy an external
monitor to go along with it. That counts for something.

Apple never had a usable entry level desktop computer tower. Something with
high performance on consumer class CPUs, rather than Xeon and ECC ram. The Mac
Mini was always crippled to keep it from competing with the iMac and cheese
graters among people who want something better performing.

The iMac is popular because it's the best performance to price ratio. Not
because the form factor is any good. For the longest time the entry level MBP
(and unibody Macbook before then) was also Apple's best selling laptop and
they only recently cut it out from their line-up and replaced it with the Air
as their entry level offering. The Air will also exist for as long as they
keep selling the current Macbook at those prices because most people are not
willing to spend 1449 euros on a machine that barely performs better.

------
finchisko
so you're running pirated Windows to?

~~~
finchisko
i've expected nothing but downvotes and it's hapenning. But you guys realise,
that macOS is not free in any kind of way?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Oh yeah! But honestly I still sleep ok at night with Apple making record
profits.

