How much longer will Hackintosh be possible?

We should be extremely worried as to the future because of Apple's ongoing and intensifying effort to shut out Hackintosh from future install compatibility. This is being slowly put into place by binding their future OS X versions directly to serialized hardware on at least the communications side. This has happened already with iMessage and FaceTime.

Apple is so far being nice in letting your Hackintosh communicate with iPhone and iPad calendar, notes, reminders, etc. the same way they have invited the Windoz crowd in with iTunes for Windows. So, they have not yet interfered with letting Hackintosh run iTunes to manage these devices and share content. It is not likely this will change in the short run.

However, I think the handwriting is on the wall. In Yosemite you can already see the install itself becoming the gateway for future roadblocks to non-Apple hardware installs. Specifically we have just seen the iMessage and FaceTime communications authentication put into service. If they go but one step further and engage encrypted, two way authentication of the upgrade process itself, there will be hell to pay and no bucket for the hot pitch.

There is also a rumor that Intel is going to surface mount CPU for Broadwell and beyond, which puts a lot of pressure on board makers intent on supplying suitable motherboards, as they will be forced to also provide pre-mounted CPU's. Rumor or not, it is the specter of serial number authenticated upgrades that looms, based on clues in Yosemite's install line item messages.

I will be very happy to be wrong about this. It is just a strange thought I had on awaking this morning.

Why worry, this gloom and doom as been predicted for years and probably will continue... If and when the time comes that you can't hack, which is very unlikely, buy a Mac, Apple isn't going anywhere...

Thanks! You are correct that we have value with what we have. None the less, and however good or bad appearances be, foresight is a virtue I shall not abandon.

If one had a business need, the new Mac Retina is actually a good value. Since I am retired, not looking forward to a $2500-3000 new anything when $300 net of selling the old rig gets me new MB and CPU. Besides, we would all miss the chase!

i just got a 4790k and the Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming5 working 10.9.5. Twice as powerful as the i5-2500K and USB3 is working correctly. Besides the normal paying bills, email and surfing, it is used to process digital photographs. Looking forward to making it work smoothly on 10.10.x.

Would make a transition to 4k displays when prices of 4k monitors and powerful video cards come down in price. Should be set no matter what happens, I guess.

Surely serial number authentication can be worked around, kind of like SMBIOS.plist-generated serials? I had a serial number problem with the App Store recently and all it took to fix was reinstalling Mac Pro 3,1 SMBIOS.plist, which generated a new serial.

So, IMO, there might be ways around it. Guys like TonyMacx86, Rehabman and other heavies will surely find ways to develop workarounds to these limitations?

Or is serial number authentication an indecipherable cipher?

Cheers

It is exactly my point: Those days are numbered. Hacks will still get built, but it is getting more and more complicated and Apple has already crippled key software features based on their database of serial numbers. This will continue to expand. Even Safari now has spurious messages related to Java setups on third party web pages with the latest "Security" update.

Apple has two things we do not have. Infinite resources and time. My Mavericks 4790k is probably the last build for me. If you want to try and build what iMac Retina is today, it is much less expensive just to buy the damn thing! And, I say that expecting hardware is going to get better and cheaper for everyone, but this includes Apple as well. Once they get their price points and tech into reasonable territory, why build a Hack anyway? That said, what they did to the Mac Mini was pretty much "in your face".

What bugs me is the Hackintosh community are also some of Apple's best technical sales advisors and diagnostic technicians. For free. I'm 65 and retired. I'm not buying anything new these days...yet I tell people to buy a MAC, not build a Hackintosh, except in rare cases. Apple: Why poison the well?

Being a creative professional I would just jump ship and go back to windows. I switched to osx about 7 years ago for their Final Cut studio suite. Since they continue to neglect their professional users Adobe became more relevant again. Besides the better user experience there would be no benefit to stay on the mac platform anymore.

I think the smart money is on Apple developing a desktop version of their ARM-based AX chips.

The most recent processor on the iPad Air 2 is astonishing. Plus, the form factor is very, very small, something that Apple strives for.

Mike_S said:

There is also a rumor that Intel is going to surface mount CPU for Broadwell and beyond, which puts a lot of pressure on board makers intent on supplying suitable motherboards, as they will be forced to also provide pre-mounted CPU's. Rumor or not, it is the specter of serial number authenticated upgrades that looms, based on clues in Yosemite's install line item messages.

I will be very happy to be wrong about this. It is just a strange thought I had on awaking this morning.

Click to expand...

It's true that some motherboards in laptops and mini pcs will have the Broadwell chip soldered
on. Next Summer though the K series Broadwell CPUs for desktops will be released. My current
Z97 motherboard will be Broadwell compatible. To me that means we'll still be able to get Intel
desktop CPUs that are not soldered on. Why Worry ? Enjoy what you've got right now. The
future is always going to bring change. You miss out on the present if you're always worrying
about the future and what might happen.

The rumor of the day based on CPU supply chain estimates is that Apple will switch to using custom CPUs for some Macs by 2016.

http://www.9to5mac.com/2015/01/14/apple-a-series-chips-mac
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15...m-a-series-chips-in-new-macs-within-1-2-years
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/14/apple-diversifies-arm-chips-macs/

This is interesting, but it's the same old ARM Mac rumor with a date attached to it. Obviously it’s eventually happening- regardless of any rumors it’s not hard to surmise. It’s just a matter of when and how far does it go. The MacBook Air with ARM would be an amazing machine- it would allow iPad like battery life, while maintaining moderate ultra low voltage CPU performance.

When ARM Macs arrive, that doesn't mean that Intel Macs will disappear overnight. It will likely be in the iMac, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro for a long long time. OS X support will remain until all current and future Intel Macs are obsolete. ARM Macs may even open new doors as far as more machines that are able to use OS X. The trick will be supporting apps. Some kind of Universal Binary probably, but who knows- could be an entirely new version of OS X that only ARM macs use?

Looking forward to seeing what Apple brings in the coming months/years.

Just today, Intel CEO Brian Crzanich publicly stated that their relationship with Apple is still "strong" and that the possibility of ARM-based Macs is highly unlikely: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/16/intel-krzanich-arm-mac/