
Modern “Hackintoshes” show that Apple should probably just build a Mac tower - Errorcod3
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/05/hackintoshes-keep-giving-apples-frustrated-pros-a-place-to-go/
======
toddmorey
Boy did they drop the football in this area. I always thought the advantage to
making the switch to more common PC architectures was the ability to keep pace
and support a wider array of components and technologies.

Instead, they over-designed the enclosure and froze the high-end range of the
platform. Creating a simple, but reliable tower design (optimized for speed
rather than size) would have been extremely well received, would be nearly
free money, and would have done wonders for the brand and their connection to
creative pros.

Most of the pros I work with in the industry have gone from loving the mac to
tolerating the mac. They are certainly looking around. I don't love Windows,
but I have to admit that the Adobe Creative Suite now sings on a modern
Windows machine.

~~~
iamatworknow
Deleted this comment because it's apparently rubbing people the wrong way that
I experienced poor performance using Adobe programs on a Windows machine and
decided to share that experience.

~~~
jsight
I am very suspicious of the benchmarks that you pointed to. Maybe some users
are reporting erroneous data?

Take a look at the Passmark list here:
[http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php](http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php)

The i5 scores in at 7995, and the i7 4960HQ is 9770. If you are really CPU
bound, there are going to be some big advantages for the i7 here.

Of course, if performance is so bad on the Windows machine that it is nearly
unusable, then there is probably something else causing the issue.

~~~
iamatworknow
Maybe that's the case, then? I just googled the comparison and that site I
linked came up.

~~~
jsight
It is definitely possible. I switched to using Passmark almost exclusively
after having some of the other sites give me some really horrible data a few
times (CPU Boss, in my case).

------
basseq
The problem isn't that the Mac Pro isn't upgradeable. That is a _symptom_ and
a _potential solution_ , but not necessarily the best one.

The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn't been able to keep up with
demands. If they were able to enhance and sell a "new model" of Mac pro every
6-12 months, the problem would go away. Nobody _wants_ a hackintosh, barring
the long tail of people who like building PC's _anyway_. (And that's an
enthusiast market, not worth catering to.) A vast majority of pros would just
buy a new machine every couple years. So the _problem_ , then, is that there's
no "new machine" for them to buy.

Positing that the solution is to offer an upgradeable tower implies that Apple
can't keep up with demand. Which, let's be honest, _they can 't_. But the
better solution here is to build a Mac Pro that _Apple_ can upgrade in the
form of a new model. That enthusiasts can upgrade it as well is a moot point
(or an additional benefit).

Hell, they could even have a Genius-led support model that swaps out the guts
of your machine every 12-24 months. Apple-Hardware-As-A-Service?

~~~
paublyrne
_The real problem here is that Apple itself hasn 't been able to keep up with
demands._

I think the problem is they chosen not to update the Mac Pro, not that they
haven't been able to. Resources should not be an issue given their cash
reserves.

And frankly, even if the Mac Pro were not a profitable machine for Apple
overall, they would be better served by choosing to keep it up to date, and to
keep is desirable, in order to keep their developers happy.

~~~
basseq
I suspect they got wrapped around the axle on too much industrial design and
painted themselves into a corner where they _couldn 't_ upgrade it easily. The
ROI of going back to the drawing board so soon was a non-starter.

They're not yet at the point where their developers' grumblings are having a
material negative impact on the bottom line. Yet.

I hope they don't make the same mistake twice. But I don't think a hackintosh-
inspired tower with the upgrade path left solely to the buyer would be a good
strategy.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I think the grumblings are impacting the bottom line, and have penetrated the
Cupertino distortion field.

The slightly panicked assertion that "Hey we're working on new Macs for pro
users" earlier this year is evidence of that.

Previously the strategy seems to have been to put minimal effort into the Mac
line and push it towards a closed kind-of-good-enough commodity platform
designed to maximise margins not performance - basically a step up from the
iPad range, for people who have an inexplicable legacy interest in real
keyboards and bigger screens.

That was a _very_ bad mistake.

It seems to be the case that Cook doesn't understand the pro market, and may
even be vaguely hostile to it, for some reason. In fact there doesn't seem to
be anyone at senior level cheerleading for professional users, and no reaching
out for input from professional communities.

I hope the grumblings have been loud enough to steer management back to
reality. If not, we're just going to hold our noses and move back to Windows
for professional creative software and Linux for everything else - which might
seem like a small immediate loss, but will do massive damage to the Apple
brand image.

~~~
basseq
It's not the "pro" market: Apple considers ~30% of their user base to be
"pro". You wouldn't ignore that.

Now, within the pro market, notebooks are far-and-away #1, iMacs are #2, and
the Mac Pro is #3 (and is described as "single digit" sales percentage). Would
you care about 1-3% vs. the other 97%?

The problem is that that 1-3% are probably very vocal and the "trend-setters".

------
panglott
Why not allow developers to build their own Macs?

The situation today in completely different than 1995-1996, when Apple briefly
allowed Macintosh clones, before Jobs killed the project because they were
cannibalizing Apple's high-end desktop sales. Now high-end desktop sales are
such a small part of Apple's line that they let the products stagnate for
years. Are Mac Pro motherboards really going to compete with notebook sales?

~~~
pinaceae
The core business model of Apple is to sell hardware.

That simple.

That's why macOS, etc are free now. That's why they're ramping up their
enterprise partnerships behind the scenes to ensure big apps run best or even
first on iOS and macOS.

IBM, SAP and especially Cisco (the latter has special hooks in the networking
stack in iOS, giving Cisco routers an edge).

You can argue if that is the correct approach or not, but it is Apple's DNA
now - and all the issues in the pro segment stem from it. Not enough hardware
to be sold, why bother, etc.

~~~
astrodust
As much as that's true, Apple has been trying to dig deeper into "services"
over the last decade. App sales, music sales, movie sales, cloud services,
anything they can do to expand their software ecosystem to make it more
versatile and useful on hardware they never produced.

If in some conceivable future Apple could make enough money on the "pro"
market looking for OEM-style rigs to fund development of macOS through the
macOS App Store, or through OS sales, they would probably at least consider
it.

The problem Apple has is success. If you're managing a team of top talent and
you have two products, one of which rakes in hundreds of billions, the other
which is mere tens, which team do you think gets the best people?

It must take a lot of determination to keep really great people on the macOS
team instead of poaching them for iOS. Apple's strategy of using the same OS
core for both platforms probably helps in that regard: They can put their best
people in the middle without concern about their full potential being wasted.

It's a really tricky spot to be in. If Apple had no phone business at all
they'd be a tiny company, but they wouldn't have the same stress about where
to place people.

~~~
rahoulb
As I inderstand it, Apple isn't organised that way. They have OS teams, app
teams, design teams, which work on whichever product at a given time. They
don't have product-specific teams.

As for Apple being tiny without the iPhone; it's huge but Apple Watch
(commonly described as a failure) is estimated to be a bigger business than
Microsoft's Surface business.

~~~
astrodust
What I mean is that the OS people get prioritized for phone features first,
computer features second. The filesystem team, which is a great example, did
work for both products, but note that it hit the phone first.

Apple minus iPhone means no watch, no tablet, and marginal market share since
these products help spur sales in the computer area. Using a MacBook as a hub
for all your Apple devices is a compelling reason to get one.

Look at how hard it has been for Microsoft to grow market share being what is
basically an OS company with no significant hardware sales to speak of.

------
peatmoss
For people wed to commercial design apps, I can totally understand the draw of
running macOS on commodity hardware. But as someone who skews more to the
hacker end of the spectrum and doesn't depend on commercial software, the day-
to-day qualitative experience of Linux is head and shoulders above macOS these
days. Ditto OpenBSD, etc. I'll never go back.

At least it does if you've already come around to using a desktop formfactor.
For me I get lots of physical RAM (R / Pandas) a mechanical keyboard, and one
of those straight-out-of-the-90s Logitech marble mouses that you'll pry from
my cold dead fingers. Hardware support in Linux/*BSD for any Intel graphics
based system is a total non-issue.

~~~
eropple
Uhhhh. I put my time in with a Linux desktop for nearly a decade until a job
bought me a Mac and there's no way I'd go back. And I think my "hacker end of
the spectrum" bona fides are pretty good--but those bona fides aren't
incompatible with a preference for a pleasing UX that has been considered with
users in mind, which for my money _no_ open-source desktop environment has
even approached (and I have my beefs with OS X but they're small fry compared
to even just "why is there no terminal emulator on par with iTerm2 in 2017?").
Wanting to enjoy using the thing you spend much of your waking life in front
of is a pretty reasonable ask, and the indicative give-a-damn of well-thought-
out polished experiences is worth it to me to the point where I don't even
bother to boot the way faster desktop with way more RAM that sits under my
desk when I can just plug in my MacBook Pro and everything just works. (Also
that the window system doesn't randomly lose heads, which still happens on my
dual-boot desktop, in 2017, to the point where I don't even bother with it.
I'll probably Hackintosh that next time I'm bored.)

Casting your own preferences as implicitly "hacker" and pulling out some
"qualitative experience" (which among nerds is best read as "subjective
preferences") stuff is pretty silly.

~~~
fps
I've found Gnome-terminal to be better than iTerm2 in the areas that matter to
me - speed, color/font rendering, and configurability. I switched from OS X to
Ubuntu and i3 because I was tired of how slow iTerm2 was compared to Gnome
Terminal, and haven't regretted it even slightly.

My main workstation is a Lenovo Thinkpad with dual 1440p external monitors,
and haven't run into issues losing heads, however, I wrote my own auto-detect
and screen layout wrapper for xrandr so that it would consistently do what I
wanted. Basically, my window manager makes calls like: `xrandr --output DP-2-1
--left-of eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-2 --left-of DP-2-1 --auto
--output eDP-1 --auto` when I connect to my docking station and `xrandr
--output eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-1 --off --output DP-2-2 --off
--output HDMI-2 --off --output HDMI-1 --off` when I disconnect. MacOS's screen
arrangement consistency was pretty great, though - on par with the consistency
of my own script.

I think the improvement of moving from MacOS to Linux for me has been that I
don't have to try to figure out how the OS "magic" works to make it do what I
want, because there is no magic, it's just scripts I've written myself and I
understand them because I wrote them.

~~~
peatmoss
Yes, magic is a great way to describe it. Sometimes it's delightful and
benevolent magic, while other times it's more like a trickster's curse.

For me, there came a point when making Free nixen do what I want became easier
than making macOS not do what I didn't want. Returning to Linux/*BSD from my
decade long sabbatical to macOS, I've been delighted by the things that have
changed, but even more delighted by some of the things that haven't.

------
vbezhenar
May be it's just me, but I don't really care about design at all. I'm
perfectly fine with huge tower or some reasonable fan noise. What I care is
price, durability, extendability, repairability, and, of course, performance.
I'm not really into macOS, I can use Linux or Windows just fine, but macOS is
not that bad.

I'm actually opposed to thin things or design aberrations like trash can mac.
I'm paying for that after all, with money or engineering trade-offs.

The best of both worlds would be officially supported hackintosh (that is,
curated list of hardware parts, which are guaranteed to work for some
reasonable period (15 years or something like that). But I don't think that
would happen, Apple is greedy corporation and wants piece of pie from
everything.

~~~
azeirah
> Maybe it's just me

It is. I don't care a lot about design either (although I care a lot about
user experience), but many people /do/ care for design, and are willing to pay
a premium to get that design.

~~~
gnicholas
Honest question: what percent of Pro Mac users care more about design than
performance? I get that lots of creatives (who might care about design) use
Macs, but in the Pro community the sense I get is that performance (and
expandability) are relatively more important. That's why the trash can Mac Pro
was not particularly popular, to say the least.

~~~
potatolicious
The trash can Mac Pro is definitely too much form for too little function -
but letting the pendulum swing back the other way is IMO also bad.

The previous tower Mac Pros are _massive_ machines - massive beyond the point
of practicality for many purposes. They're also insanely heavy to the point of
impracticality. Not all pros want/can live with something 3 feet tall that
consumes several square feet of floor space.

The "right" path forward for the pro-desktop Mac is IMO something in between -
something that maximizes extensibility and versatility without completely
embracing the gigantor-ATX-case-on-the-floor direction.

I'm wondering about the practicality of something more like mini-ITX - small
enough to be practical, but allowing access to all the core bits (RAM, CPU,
GPU, HDDs).

~~~
tracker1
Having max settle on desktop-class ITX motherboards would be huge... having
the MB themselves be user purchasable would be beyond awesome. Buy a known
quantity board with wireless/btle and an apple boot system, throw in your own
cpu, ram, ssd, either onboard or offboard video, and you've still got a decent
DIY system.

Apple could sell the full systems with a great looking case, and DIY
enthusiasts could have a fast path to a hackintosh with a MB that's far less
likely to blow up when updates happen.

------
vondur
Apple could literally just release the new Mac Pro in the old case, with
updated hardware and ports, and _if_ it was priced closer to reality, it would
make a lot of their pro users happy. I doubt it would cost them much to do so
too. I'd start it off at around $1500 for an entry level 4 core Xeon with an
mid-level graphics card (GTX 1060 or Radeon 480).

~~~
Synaesthesia
I believe that's probably what they will do in 2017 from Tim Cook's comments.

~~~
lostlogin
There is zero chance it will look the same though - they couldn't eat that
particular humble pie.

------
paulrpotts
Absolutely. I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it is still going strong, an absolute
workhorse of a machine with 4 hard drives; incredibly reliable. At least, it
was incredibly reliable with Snow Leopard, but MacOS X has been a bit downhill
from there as far as reliability of the audio subsystem. The only real
downsides to this machine have been that it is loud, which is problematic when
using it for recording. But I would happily buy a modernized version of the
same machine, and I'd be _especially_ happy to do so if it was much quieter.

If Apple offered me a dead-silent Mac Mini, even one with not much CPU
capability, I would use it for tracking -- that is, right in the room where
I'm recording. Also for Skype stuff for podcast recording, and streaming;
probably two of them. These machines don't need to have a lot of CPU to
record; they only have to do a modest amount of live audio processing. They
don't have to run dozens to hundreds of instances of plug-ins like when I'm
mixing.

Then the Mac Pro can go in the room where I'm mixing and mastering. So quiet
is important but dead silence in the Pro is not really a requirement for me.

~~~
covercash
I helped my friend run conduit last week to solve this exact problem... a
100'($500) thunderbolt cable lets him keep the machine and storage in a
separate room outside of the studio. Probably cost close to $600 when you
factor in the conduit materials and the Korean BBQ wings he fed me!

------
protomyth
How about Apple create a "Custom Hardware" program ala their Developer program
and basically charge $99+ a year for a legal install usb image. Then they can
skip building a Pro and concentrate on the portables and iMac they like.

~~~
imron
Because the cost for supporting random hardware will probably run to more than
they make from running such a program.

Not to mention Apple doesn't seem to care about the developer and/or
professional consumer anymore.

~~~
walterbell
There is a middle ground between "random hardware" and one Apple device,
clearly evidenced by the Hackintosh community. The difference is that Apple
can more effectively support a whitelist of components than the Hackintosh
community that is _already doing it on a volunteer basis_.

------
walterbell
HP has stepped up to compete with the sealed Mac Mini. Their "Z2 Mini
Workstation" is small, has user upgradeable RAM/disk, optional Xeon and Nvidia
GPU, and can drive six monitors,
[http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z2mini.html](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/z2mini.html)

~~~
justinclift
Looking at the specs, none of the Z2 configurations have ECC memory.

That's extremely disappointing for a "workstation". :(

~~~
walterbell
ECC memory is available when you select a Xeon CPU.

~~~
justinclift
Ahhh thanks, didn't notice that. :)

------
captainmuon
I've heard they are worried about brand dilution.

If that's the problem, then why not create a subsidiary firm and call it, I
don't know, Pear, Gala, McIntire, Darwin or something. Let this firm build
hackintoshes from off-the-shelf components. The trick is then to remove any
reference to Apple and every logo from the OS. People "in the know" would be
able to buy a Pear and use it just like a Mac.

This would be really cheap to pull off, just give some people a factory and a
few million dollars, and would put next to no strain on Apple proper. It's
really just buying a few blessed components, putting them together, and
creating a boot disk with the needed kexts. Any mom and pop computer shop can
do that if it weren't for legal issues. In the next year's iteration you can
talk about custom hardware / buying at scale.

~~~
camhenlin
They tried this before with clones in the 90s. It didn't end well for anyone
involved.

~~~
captainmuon
I don't know what you mean, the model worked extremely well and IBM PC clones
took over the market completely.

Oh, you mean Mac clones ;-).

What I'm trying to say is it depends entirely on execution if it works or not.
I wouldn't go the way of outsourcing it to others. I would make the clone
company a 100% daughter company of Apple, and at the same time I would crack
down hard on other Hackintoshs (legally and technically). Apple can milk their
cash cow and eat it, too (aehm, I mean their cake).

~~~
nikanj
And how much of the PC desktop market did IBM retain? Apple probably prefers
100% of a smaller cake.

------
Shivetya
There is a lot of opportunity for Apple to still make a design statement with
a tower. One that people willingly display. The key is that is not only does
it need to look good but cooling fans need to be deathly quiet. Then offer it
up in aluminum or black enclosure.

Dimensions are pretty much locked down by what types of video card technology
they wish to support, really would love a new solution that doesn't use the
typical slots we still have today.

With regards to the mini, my only beef was when I wanted to integrate with my
home theater white boxes just don't fit. It had to hide.

------
itomato
Apple never wanted to be part of the DIY PC movement.

They adopt industry standards when convenient, but would be perfectly content
to make a Pro machine locked to Moore's Law and 3-year turnovers.

Dongles. Dongles are your Pro future.

Apple don't want to be associated with the "Gamer".

------
kuon
I already linked it, and I don't want to make it feel like I'm hammering the
link, but as the subject come up often lately. I wrote a small serie of
article sharing my moving experience away from macOS.

[https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos-
part-1-moti...](https://medium.com/the-missing-bit/leaving-macos-
part-1-motivations-b10accc10889)

------
ksec
Steve Jobs - Apple Is Software - YouTube
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs)

Apple is a Software company, You just have to buy their Hardware first to use
it.

Apple lately has been too focused, or too worried about the Design of the
product and lost sight of its main direction.

To more accurately phase it, Apple is an Ecosystem company. You use its
Software, Hardware and Services across all ( most ) segment.

I'd argue Mac Pro should be the one of those segment, ( representing 1% of the
total Mac Sales, and more like 0.1% of Apple's total revenue ) where they
should make it impossible for average consumer to come up with a similar spec
Machine with similar price. It doesn't mean Apple is making a loss, it is more
likely Apple is just making very little profits on it.

The Apple now, or the Mac Ecosystem now is very different to 20 years ago.
iPhone manage to pull in Lots of new developers and Pros.

------
watertom
Apple doesn't need to do shit.

What are our options?

Windows? Where Microsoft is collecting every bit of data possible while
pushing ads.

Linux? I'm a geek and Linux is annoying, I've been a Unix guy since 1984. I
run it on my daily laptop only because I'm not willing to spend $2,000 extra
for a Macbook Pro with the same specs as a $750 Dell Laptop because it weighs
9oz less

MacOS is the only real game in town.

Apple knows they are in the drivers seat and they are skull fucking the public
to the best of their ability. If you doubt it, see their quarter of a Trillion
in cash. If they release just a Mac tower it might just break the spell and
convince people they are getting skull fucked.

------
iplaw
This is what they used to do with the venerable Mac Pro tower, built as
recently as Mid 2012. The heavy gauge aluminum construction was a work of art.
People pick up Mac Pro G5 shells and use them to build tables, benches, etc.

I am hoping that Apple returns to this sort of design philosophy. It's quite
frustrating that many of their iMacs are not (easily) user upgradable.
Upgrading an HDD to an SSD requires cutting adhesive, suction cups to remove
the display, disconnecting not-meant-to-be-disconnected cables from comically
delicate sockets, and similar feats of delicacy.

The Mac Pro redesign applied the same sort of anti-consumer bullshit.

~~~
mjn
The current philosophy is pretty solidly in line with the historical Apple
design philosophy, so I wouldn't necessarily expect it to change. The iMac is
basically today's evolution of the original Mac [1], a single-piece
computer/monitor combination with no user-serviceable parts. Jobs said in 1984
that hardware customization is unnecessary to support, because "customization
really is mostly software now".

The Mac Pro towers were pretty different, but if anything they were the
aberration, going in a more Unix workstation direction.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K)

~~~
iainmerrick
You're cherry-picking. That is definitely _one_ of Apple's design
philosophies, and it has definitely worked very well for the iPhone and iPad.
But not all their computers have followed that style. The Mac II launched in
1987(!) and was very influential. And as the earlier commenter mentioned,
before the "trash can" redesign, the Mac Pro was easy to open and had plenty
of ports.

Trying to apply that sealed appliance approach to every single product is
sometimes a mistake, as demonstrated by the Mac Pro misstep.

~~~
abritinthebay
The recent MacPro was only a misstep in that they bet on CPU/GPU design
zigging instead of zagging.

It was a technically beautiful machine (still is, really) but their choices
meant it became impossible to update.

If the market had gone the other way we'd likely be talking about the 2016
MacPro instead.

~~~
iainmerrick
But they didn't have to make a bet at all.

They wanted to make a tiny, silent Pro machine to make a statement, but nobody
seems to have cared much about that. I haven't seen a single person saying "I
hope the new Pro is still really really small, even if that means it's more
expensive and less expandable!"

~~~
abritinthebay
> But they didn't have to make a bet at all.

Sure, neither does anyone... on anything. If the bet had succeeded though we'd
all be calling them geniuses and suchlike. If no-one made bets like that we'd
still have boring beige boxes. Hell the original Mac was a bet like that (the
design was radical at the time).

The MacPro is an _awesome_ machine. Everyone I know that has used one _loves_
it. That's great for a pro-machine. That's exactly what Apple likes to do -
create hardware that people _love_

They lost the bet, but it was a good bet to make. I'll take a company that
makes bets like that over one that doesn't, long term.

~~~
iainmerrick
Sorry, I was unclear about the "bet". I don't mean they shouldn't take risks,
more that in this case it would have been easy to hedge the bet -- launch a
bigger expandable box at the same time.

In their recent discussions around the upcoming redesign, it sounds like they
didn't realize they were making a bet at all. If they had, they should have
monitored it more closely and been a lot quicker out of the gate with the
redesign.

A possible defence is that Apple had other priorities at the time, and wasn't
paying full attention to the Pro. But it's mystifying why the world's biggest
company by market cap can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

 _The MacPro is an_ awesome _machine. Everyone I know that has used one_ loves
_it._

It's funny it hasn't been more successful, then! Although I certainly believe
you. It's definitely possible for it to be popular with a niche while failing
in the wider market.

~~~
abritinthebay
High end desktops _are_ a niche, a small but important one, and the MacPro was
_wildly_ successful... at first.

There's a reason people complained about the lack of upgrades and it wasn't
because no-one bought one.

Your suggestion would be the most un-Apple thing I've heard. They _never_ do
stuff like that because they _believe in their solution as being the best_.

They could have been right - that was the bet. What you describe is not a bet
at all!

~~~
iainmerrick
_What you describe is not a bet at all!_

Of course it is! Not all bets have to be all-in. Having a backup plan would
have reduced the downside if the Pro wasn't a hit. It would also add a little
risk, sure, of being perceived as cowardly or unfocused by going for such an
"un-Apple" approach.

When a product like the Mac Pro is widely perceived as a failure, and you have
to resort to the extremely un-Apple thing of discussing your future roadmap,
it seems to me very reasonable to ask what might have been done differently,
and why.

I still say that if Apple had kept their eye on the ball, they would have
known within a couple of years that the Mac Pro wasn't working as intended.
They could and should have started work on a more modular replacement a year
or two ago. It would have been shipping _now_ and they wouldn't be in the
embarrassing situation they're in.

Wikipedia's summary seems fair: "By 2016, reviewers started to agree that the
Mac Pro was lacking in functionality and power, and should be updated by
Apple. Apple later revealed in 2017 that the thermal core design had limited
the ability to upgrade the Mac Pro's GPUs and that a new design was under
development, to be released in 2018 or 2019."

Either it took them a year to figure out the problems with the current design
and realize they needed to go back to the drawing board, or (I'm guessing) it
was just allowed to languish and no serious investigation was done until
fairly recently.

(Take all this with a pinch of salt, of course! I'm a random internet pundit
and not actually running one of the most successful businesses of all time.)

------
jacquesc
I'm not sure why everyone is so gung-ho for a big tower. I want expandability,
but with Thunderbolt3, you can add now external GPUs, fast external drives,
and (almost) anything else. And you then don't have to worry about the thing
heating up.

I owned a late 2013 Mac Pro for several years and it had the vision right. It
was just too early and they gave up on it too quickly. I want v2 with a
similar design, slightly upgraded CPU, thunderbolt 3 ports, and integrated
graphics. Then pair it with an eGPU enclosure (like razer core), and get OSX
to support this feature natively.

I also own a Razer Stealth along with the Core, and it's a great setup. Only
downside is they have to work with some shit software (Windows and terrible
drivers). Apple would have the ability to own this experience from top to
bottom.

I don't think trying to stuff everything into a box makes sense anymore. Apple
has paved the way with connectivity options, fast graphic switching, and fast
bus speeds. Continue forward instead of going backwards.

------
kstenerud
Can anyone tell me their experiences running a virtual hackintosh?

In my current job I don't need a mac anymore, so I'm switching to a NUC which
I'm thinking it'll be best to run Qubes on. But I do have existing mac/ios
projects that I'd like to support, thus the need for a virtual hackintosh.

~~~
marceldegraaf
I've tried running OS/X in VMWare on Windows. Technically it works fine but
there's no video acceleration and that's annoying enough to not make it a
viable option for me.

------
bischofs
I wonder what the OS and software guys at Apple think about the lack of
options in their own hardware department. It must be a little frustrating to
be invested into the software as a developer but know that a lot of pro users
(people like themselves) are moving away from the platform.

------
kirykl
You dont need a hackintosh to run a great mac for cheap(er). I picked up a
2012 mac mini off CL with 2.5 i5 and dropped in a SSD and maxed RAM to 16GB.
Runs silent in a small package. Also added a 28" 4K off craigslist (although
it'll only drive up to 2k). All for under $900

~~~
danieldk
The Late 2012 was a great model. Easily accessible memory as in previous all-
aluminum generations and replacing the hard disk is just a few screws. I also
have a Late 2012 with 16GB RAM and SSD (500GB) like you. I bought it new for
IIRC 600 Euro. So, it's been a great investment --- had it almost five years
now and it still flies.

I really hope that they'll make a new Mac Mini extensible like the 2012 again.

------
eli
I'm not sure it follows that Apple should build it just because some people
want it. Some people build Hackintoshes because they like building things or
they want to save money. Neither would be addressed by an official tower.

~~~
bischofs
Well to me it is important to remember _who_ the people are that want it -
These are professionals and developers that create applications for the OS
(mobile and desktop) as well as creatives who have kept Apple afloat in rough
times. I would think there is strategic value in keeping these people somewhat
happy.

------
resoluteteeth
I wonder if Apple would prefer to simply not be selling computers at all at
this point, but can't stop without seriously hurting their image.

~~~
deelowe
They've been pretty open recently that the issue with their desktop platform
is that the trashcan design assumed SLI would be the future. It isn't.

------
flooq
Worse than the Hackintosh users, Apple have just about lost me completely to
Windows.

Apple held my attention for years because I need Adobe software and prefer a
Unix enviroment. I'm pretty happy using using a Windows 10 desktop with
Windows Subsystem for Linux now. My workflow is pretty much the same as it is
my MacBook now. So much so that I'd probably do the same with my next laptop.

------
tachion
I was looking into hackintoshes a lot in past, mainly in hope to build a
custom Mac Pro that would fill my needs, but failed to find even a single
build that wouldn't require overly complex and risk fun with custom kexts on
build and then with every minor OS update. Has anything changed today?

------
deagle50
Profit margin, plain and simple. I'm willing to pay a premium for the best
laptop, been using macbooks exclusively for years and they are actually a
great value for the quality of the components. But I will not pay 3x for
comparable desktop that I can't upgrade just to run MacOS.

~~~
lallysingh
Yeah, and upgrade parts are far too much of an an (ahem) apples to apples
comparison. Seeing a 20-30% markup on a graphics card might make people
reconsider the value they're getting on their macbook or iPhone.

There's some brand reputation to protect here.

------
jcrei
Stackable Mac Minis anyone? daisy chained and with a single OS controlling all
the RAM and CPU power

~~~
itomato
So, "'Zilla" or Xgrid?

------
post_break
Honestly, Apple should make a Mac tower, and then incentivize graphic card
manufacturers to write drivers. Imagine a Mac with not last years cards, but
current generation cards. No custom bios BS like they had before, just buy a
card, put it in, install the driver.

~~~
wand3r
As of last week newer (newest?) NVIDIA GPUs work and are supported for
hackintosh and presumably Mac desktops

~~~
post_break
So once, in the past like 10 years have we been able to run a newish gpu.

------
melling
Do we really need a full tower? Isn't most of the space in a traditional PC
"trash can" form factor wasted? The graphics card size would need to change,
but it would be great if we could shrink the case and still have all the power
of a desktop.

~~~
rtkwe
Full towers have a couple benefits against smaller cases, thermals and space
for expansion (internal hdd's, additional graphics cards, etc.). Smaller cases
really suffer from lack of expansion space and often severely restrict the
components you can use just based on the volume you can work with.

~~~
melling
Yes, the expansion capabilities are well understood.

Applying an 80/20 rule, one or two graphics cards, and a couple of drives
should pretty much cover it.

Apple could offer a large and small form case. The real problem is heat,
right?

~~~
rtkwe
Heat is a big problem but given that they barely seem to want to be in the pro
business at all these days given their laptop choices lately I doubt they'd
want to have 2 different desktops.

------
dangayle
I run a Hackintosh for my home studio and it simply comes down to
cost/performance ratio. I can build a legit Hackintosh for less than the cost
of a Mac Mini. EVEN IF they offered a new Mac tower, I'd probably still build
my own.

------
aranajhonny
I've been with my hackintosh for 3 years, first it was mavericks, yosemite and
now i use el capitan. My pc is 2.99 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb ram and nvidia
gt520 use only to develop. And works quite well.

------
emersonrsantos
If Apple can put an authentication chip in a phone cable, what is stopping
them to lock down macos? They don't want to do that.

~~~
hbosch
They have this in the form of a legal note, don't they? Last I heard it was
technically "illegal" to run macOS on anything other than Apple hardware per
the TOS. Or is that just an urban legend?

~~~
abritinthebay
Not illegal, just against the EULA. Basically they could revoke your usage of
the software and _probably_ legally fine you.

It is a software license issue. Technically it would be something like
unlicensed distribution/copying.

Practically speaking they _don 't care_ though. The machine building market is
_vanishingly_ small and the licensing gives Apple plausible "we never said it
would work" deniability.

~~~
robhu
I think the illegal bit is using an illegal copy of their OS to install as you
don't hold the copyright and so aren't allowed to make a (modified) copy of
the installer that works on the non-Apple hardware.

~~~
abritinthebay
Potentially. Of course if you're just downloading a modified version then it's
not _you_ that modified it.

It's a bit of a strange area. Either way - it's not illegal due to any
specific thing _Apple_ does. Other copyright/IP law may apply though.

~~~
robhu
I think downloading an illegal copy of something is still illegal though
right? If I download a copy of a DVD for instance I've committed a crime in
the UK at least.

I agree it's not due to anything specific about Apple - it's just that it's an
illegal copy as you are not the copyright holder and so have no right to make
a modified copy or download a copy or modified copy.

~~~
abritinthebay
> I think downloading an illegal copy of something is still illegal though
> right?

Mostly not! _Seeding_ a torrent however _counts as distribution_. Using the
software is against the EULA on ToS usually though.

It's kind of like how, back in the day, if you bought pirate software from a
guy in a market _they_ were the criminal, not you. Copyright law is mostly
about infringement which requires distribution.

It's how torrent sites stay (mostly) legal: they don't actually distribute the
files (usually).

------
alexeiz
Apple isn't making a Mac tower because there is no demand for overpriced
machines with mediocre performance. All those people building hackintoshes
want a cheap Mac desktop. They won't buy a new Mac tower should Apple produce
one. They'll continue building hackintoshes.

~~~
mark212
not true for me. I built the hackintosh I'm typing this on last summer so I
could run a large 4k display and have an Nvidia graphics card to monkey around
with. If Apple builds a nice Mac tower that I can upgrade and extend (a new,
larger SSD ... a new video card ... etc), I'll buy it. It's not really cost.

------
markaius
I purchased this ([https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell-
In...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell-
Inspiron-15-i7559-5012GRY-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.333475500))
laptop from the Microsoft store, paying right around ~$700 with a student
discount.

I bought an m.2 solid state and a wifi adapter that is known to work well with
hackintosh's (the stock wifi card wasn't compatible), and another 8gb of ram
for another ~$150.

I followed this ([https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell-
inspiron-15-75...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-dell-
inspiron-15-7559-skylake-i7-6700hq-intel-hd-530-using-clover.191921/)) guide
to get a nice hackintosh out of this laptop. Obviously this is a decent bit
more difficult for the regular computer user to do.

So for ~$850, after 'hackintoshing' this computer, I get: A laptop that gives
me the choice to boot into an SSD imaged with latest OSX Sierra, or the
regular 5,400 rpm Windows 10 drive. The last thing I want to do with this
laptop is exchange the 1tb 5,400 windows drive for a 1tb SSD.

When booted into Sierra: The software runs exactly the same as using a real
mac. I've done some video editing in Final Cut, some audio work in Ableton,
streamed 1080p youtube / netflix videos no problem. There's decent battery
life, as the guide above shows you how to disable the nvidia graphics card
entirely when running OSX (doesn't work anyways) to save battery. The specs
are comparable to a modern macbook pro, and in one case even better.

Pros \- Actually get 4k resolution/screen

Cons \- SD card reader does not work \- Mobile graphics Nvidia 960m does not
work, but intel 530 HD graphics card does just fine \- Backlight adjustment
doesn't not work (could probably spend time to get it to work, but I'm fine
without it for now) \- Trackpad is a little too sensitive

Sames \- Hardware: Core i7, 16gb ram \- Full airdrop support

Where am I going with this? In my opinion the general public is becoming more
tech savvy. If Apple does not embrace the culture of people wanting to
experiment with code (theirs or not) on different devices, then they are
putting themselves at a disadvantage. The guides to make hackintoshes are more
than likely getting easier and easier as time goes on and support grows. (this
was my second attempt and first success)

What a disappointment this macbook pro reveal was. So instead of spending
$2,399.00 on a new 15" macbook pro, I decided to hack together a very
comparable one for ~$850.

I'll take the $1,550 savings for a little software and screwdriver work, even
with a couple of minor issues, any day.

As long as those dedicated apple fans eat it up, I don't expect anything to
change anytime soon. But for everyone else who can't afford those business
practices, there are ways like what I did above to get what you want without
breaking the bank.

~~~
xenihn
Thanks for the post, do you know what other 4k laptops are currently a popular
choice for hackintoshing?

~~~
markaius
I'm getting back into it, but a quick look at
[https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/sierra-laptop-
guides.189/?...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/sierra-laptop-
guides.189/?order=view_count) tells me that it's still pretty early for 4k
hackintosh laptops. Looks like the one I got was one of the first ones.

If I had unlimited funds, I would probably just build a desktop, since they
have a really good monthly recap of what hardware works with the current
software.
[https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017](https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017)

I guess that's sort of where the line is drawn is you can't really "build" a
laptop. Seems like there are a few good Dell models that chose hardware that
works with mac, though. I'm sure in the near future we'll start seeing more 4k
capable hackintosh laptops.

------
quicksilverFTW
Quicksilver Tower was the best Mac in history IMO.

------
lightedman
Apple did. It came with a G5 processor. Most people didn't want to pay the
exorbitant prices that Apple wanted them to pay for things like Apple-
compatible AGP graphics cards and such when PCs got the same thing at
literally 1/3 the price, and they pretty quickly fell into irrelevance.

Apple would probably go the exact same route as they did the last time and
fail just as miserably.

~~~
ericfrederich
Wasn't this use case exactly what was part of their justification for
switching to Intel?... the ability to keep up faster.

~~~
lightedman
They certainly did not keep up. Their equipment has been behind as far as I
can tell when I worked for them starting back in the G3 days, and that's
including after the intel switch.

