

Ask HN: Hackintosh Thinkpad being used for Mac OSX developement - limeblack

I would like to develop OSX/iOS, but after looking at the Mac's I can't imagine
 1) Having a glossy screen (they don't appear to offer matte any more)
 2) No pointing stick (I'm addicted to the red dot)<p>I have been using a Lenovo Thinkpad for years, and was wondering if anyone successfully using one for iOS/OSX development?<p>So, Is anyone using a hackintosh(preferably with a pointing stick) for iOS developement? I need reliability and I'm slighly concerned after reading some forums http://www.tonymacx86.com/snow-leopard-laptop-support/18619-lenovo-x220-3.html<p>If you don't have advice about hackintoshes, how do you do development on multiple operating systems on a single laptop(especially if you are a pointing stick addict)?<p>So far virtual machines have been quiet painful for me, but I would still love some advice.
======
gered
"Hackintosh" and "Laptop" don't go well together. Regardless of the type of
laptop. A certain model HP laptop is a small exception, but it's not 100%
perfect.

From my own personal experience running a Hackintosh on a desktop PC I built
myself (using community recommended and tested compatible components), I can
say that a desktop Hackintosh can be very stable.

However, with a laptop you will be making compromises. The exact compromises
vary from laptop to laptop. Usually these will include Wifi, battery life and
general power management stuff (hibernate, sleep, etc) and possibly more. For
a Thinkpad specifically, I do know that you'll end up needing to use a
separate Wifi adapter as the built in one will not work with OS X.

To be honest, since you seem dead-set on a Thinkpad (and I don't blame you, I
love them myself) I don't know what to suggest, aside from "don't bother"
which you probably won't find too helpful. I would just caution you, don't set
your expectations too high, regardless of what you may read on tonymacx86 or
wherever else. As runjake said, people have widely varying definitions of
stable.

------
shrughes
The macs' glossy screens seem alright to me, I'm typing on one now and was a
former matte screen zeolot. They don't reflect very much. They're quite usable
even when you have an open window behind you on a sunny day.

If you want to develop on multiple operating systems, well, I recommend making
sure you get a CPU with VT-d. If your current machine on which virtual
machines are painful doesn't have VT-d, I recommend trying one that does. (And
of course, get sufficient RAM.) VMs seem painless to me, at least on the
machines with VT-d that I've tried, and somewhat painful on machines without
VT-d. (I experimented on the same Thinkpad enabling and disabling it in the
BIOS -- the difference was clear!)

------
epikur
I hackintosh'd my x220 to the latest Mountain Lion. My only real problem was
getting sleep functionality to work, but I didn't really see others with my
problem and didn't post asking for help. I had to buy an alternative wireless
card (Dell 1515) for $10 off ebay, as the included chip doesn't have OSX
drivers. It probably would have been fine for at least a couple months if I
had spent more time fixing the sleep issue. Except for that, it worked great,
and it wasn't difficult to add drivers or processor power management stuff.

I switched to dual-booting Ubuntu and Windows 7, but will either switch back
or buy an Air in the future.

------
runjake
If you need reliability, buy a Mac, flat out. There are people who will tell
you they have awesomely reliable builds -- and I had one or two relatively-
stable builds myself, but people have widely-varying definitions of reliable.

Just buy a Mac. Even a Mac Mini works great. I have last year's HD3000 Mini.
The lowest end model with upgraded RAM.

------
hoka
Not sure about doing it on a thinkpad, but there are ways to use OSX in a
virtualbox image. I've seen such a system (i5, 12gb ram) run rather smoothly.

