Minutes 2025-09-25: Difference between revisions

*# HackintoshingHackintosh by Simone!

**## What is Hackintoshing

***### Running MacOS on non-Mac hardware

**## Why

***### Cheaper, Macs are $$$

***### More powerful

***### More repairable

***### Can run Mac exclusive software

**## History

***### Pre-2008

****#### PowerPC chips

*****##### “Special snowflake chips”

****#### 2006 Intel macs

*****##### People realized: “wait, what’s so special about these macs anyway?”

*****##### Immedietly set out on getting MacOS working on other manufacturer’s hardware

**## How it works

***### Bootloader

****#### Clover is old, OpenCore is used nowadays

*****##### mimicks Mac boot enviornment

***### Kexts (kernel extensions)

****#### macOS krnel modules

*****##### adds support for more hardware

***### ACPI patching

****#### fixes firmware issues

**## Compatability

***### CPU

****#### Intel works best

****#### AMD possible with more work

*****##### issues with Adobe/32-bit/audio

***### GPU

****#### NVIDIA is dead

****#### AMD

*****##### Natively supported dGPUS (<RX6000)

*****##### Some iGPUs can work with patches

****#### Intel GPUs (<= 10th gen) work natively

***### Ethernet/Bluetooth/Wifi usually require community drivers

***### Ultimatrely, if it’s not in a Mac, you’re gonna have to do some legwork to get it working

***### Community drivers

****#### Wireless (few supported cards)

*****##### Intel works because it was ported from OpenBSD

****#### Input

*****##### Voodooinput supports non-USB devices

****#### Audio has drivers

****#### Some hardware just won’t work

***### Install process

****#### Download MacOS

*****##### It’s free!

***### USB preperation

****#### Bootloader config takes time

****#### Simone also took a super long time getting the display working

***### Updates/Maintenance

****#### Small updates like security patches usually fine

****#### Otherwise have to wait for community patches

****#### X86 support gone by 2026

*****##### Effectively kills hackintoshing

*****##### ARM is probably unfeasible

******###### Apple silicon specific instructions

******###### No GPU support

******###### Chips on the market are too varied from eachother

*******####### Qualcomm chips

*******####### And others

*******####### All different from eachother

***### Current status

****#### Still works for now

****#### Strong Community keeping it alive as long as possible

***### Dane wonders if it’s possible for someone in the future to create a chip close enough to a real Apple chip that would work for ARM hackintoshing

****#### Kinda like how sellers on aliexpress sell desktop chips in laptop motherboard sockets for Thinkpads

****#### It’s possible, but unlikely

***### Hackintoshers get tempted to just pick up a legitimate M-series macbook

****#### They’re (regrettably) actually quite nice

****#### Dane did

*****##### can confirm he hates how much he likes an Apple product

***### Windows on ARM sucks (well, more than Windows normally does)

****#### The OS itself works great!

****#### … until you try to run an application

****#### the majority of applications don’t even distribute ARM builds

*****##### You see the “download for Windows x86/x64”, because even though there’s still ''someone'' out there using a 32-bit computer, notice there’s usually not an arm build

****#### Windows’ x86 compatability layer sucks

**## Legacy hackintoshing is still a strong community

***### so long as you run the same applications you would have run back then, they’ll be just as fast

***### the problem is if you try to run something modern

****#### like a browser

****#### …or a single electron app

**## Most compatible hardware

***### Thousands of models of machines

***### Best bet is following a guide on hardware support

****#### Intel/AMD iGPU from right era

****#### Machines from pre-2020 is generally your best bet

****#### No matter what machine you’re on you’ll have to do ''some'' extra configuration and work to get it running

*# Simone tries to give noah the slides for the talk

**## mfw 45MB odp file

**## transfer takes forever

**## Simone shows off the fancy USB 3.0 to 2.0 downgrader

***### real bleeding edge technology over here

*# People shuffled out until ~8:30-PM ish