Do I want to wean myself off Hackintoshing?

I've got a great Sandy Bridge Hackintosh. i7, 16GB, SSD, Radeon HD 6850 1GB, dual 1920x1080 displays. On the El Capitan side I use it for iTunes and web and email and photos, and then I dual-boot into Windows 10 for games (this older card does just fine, even for Star Wars Battlefront). And, by and large, I've enjoyed the technical challenge of getting it to work and keeping it running smoothly. I built it a few years ago, but it's still really quite powerful and I haven't felt any need to upgrade (except the GPU).

Lately, though, I've been getting a little tired of Hackintoshing. Upgrading to El Capitan required upgrading to Clover, and that was a real chore. I am afraid of trying to upgrade my video card to a GeForce 970 because, if it doesn't work, then I've got to figure out why (like, I might have to change my system definition from iMac12,2 to a newer model that shipped with nVidia, and I don't know what else that would affect). And USB3 doesn't work (possibly also because of iMac12,2), and wake/sleep doesn't work, and I'm just tired of tinkering with these with the knowledge that one slip-up could make my Hackintosh stop booting and then that becomes a priority to figure out too...

So I'm thinking about going straight Windows on the PC, and getting a KVM to connect my MacBook Pro to the keyboard/mouse/displays so I can switch between Mac and Windows at will.

I can't be the only person who's been faced with these doubts. I want to know what other folks have decided. Have you never looked back? Or did you realize you lost something?

You know, it is pretty much for all the reasons you cite that I have elected to avoid Yosemite, and now El Cap... my little Mav just hums along, with the 4.5g I7, 32gb, and the Nvidia 650 Turbo Plus or whatever it's called... it just works like gangbusters.

And really, are there any changes to the os that are significant enough to upgrade for? I'm unaware of any... particularly since the potential grief factor is so high.

I do not like the 'new look' introduced by Yosemite, and furthered by El Cap. I think Mav is just beautiful, and, once again, no system protection headaches, none of the other BS we've read about. Yes, I'd love to go to bed knowing I have the latest and greatest on my hack but at the end of the day, does that really matter?

I just hate that "oops, maybe I shouldn't have tried that" feeling when you fade to black and start thinking about recovery. It's just over-rated.


pg

I did this. I went cold turkey Windows 10. I had the same mindset: It wasn't worth the effort, and I mainly played games on it anyways. To make a long story short, I'm typing this on Mac OS X. Windows was just not good enough. The built in Mail app sucks, the Windows store is empty and has zero good apps, the errors you get when trying to load a game are constant, and the updates... Good Lord the updates. Your computer will randomly start up in the middle of the night to finish updating and it won't turn back off or go to sleep (Alteast mine did). Booting into Mac OS after windows was a breath of fresh air. A clean, modern interface and apps and programs that simply work. Don't go to Windows. You WILL look back.

I was worried I'd get flamed, but instead I got thoughtful responses. Thank you!

Yeah, since there's no specific reason for me to give up on Hackintoshing at the moment, and nothing specifically breaking, I suppose I'll continue on. I was going to upgrade my graphics card so I could play Star Wars Battlefront on high settings until I learned that low settings look mostly the same in that game - and at whatever later point I do decide to upgrade my graphics card, it looks like the nVidia drivers are a lot friendlier now (they no longer look at the system definition to decide whether they should run). And I can live without sleep/wake and USB3.

And if at some point I am faced with a change that breaks something ... then I'll question whether I really want to change it at all.

Thank you for the viewpoints!

bkendig said:

I was worried I'd get flamed, but instead I got thoughtful responses. Thank you!

Yeah, since there's no specific reason for me to give up on Hackintoshing at the moment, and nothing specifically breaking, I suppose I'll continue on. I was going to upgrade my graphics card so I could play Star Wars Battlefront on high settings until I learned that low settings look mostly the same in that game - and at whatever later point I do decide to upgrade my graphics card, it looks like the nVidia drivers are a lot friendlier now (they no longer look at the system definition to decide whether they should run). And I can live without sleep/wake and USB3.

And if at some point I am faced with a change that breaks something ... then I'll question whether I really want to change it at all.

Thank you for the viewpoints!

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I've been thinking basically the same thing. I primarily built my Hackintosh as a video editing machine (I'm a freelance videographer and sUAS pilot), except I strongly prefer using Adobe programs (Premiere Pro, After Effects, etc) vs FCPX (because they ruined FCP with X). Because of this, I have an Nvidia GPU. Even though Adobe programs are cross platform and I could easily do everything I need to do in Windows, I simply prefer the OS X environment. I have my system dualbooted with Windows 10 so I can play Fallout 4, which is the only thing I do in Windows. And like you I also do not have my USB3 ports working. I messed around with my system profile (was MacPro3,1 and changing to iMac14 actually fixed no audio after wake) to get USB3 working and ended up breaking my ability to boot from my SSD (wouldn't boot from USB Unibeast installer either). Luckily, I was able to put my SSD into an external enclosure and using my MacBook Pro I was able to edit my config.plist in Clover Config to change my system profile back to iMac14 and, upon reinstalling my SSD into my machine, all was good. After that, I decided I wasn't going to mess around with the system profiler anymore, and if USB3 is the only thing that doesn't work with OS X, I can live with that.

On the plus side, I can tell you my EVGA GTX 970 works perfectly within 10.11.3 with the latest nvidia web drivers. I'm about to start an ambitious editing project dealing with camera RAW video footage, so we'll see just how this card performs for me in Adobe CC.

That was an unnecessarily long way of saying I'm sticking with OS X even though a compelling argument could be made to switch to Windows 10 primarily. I haven't had a Windows system since Vista (not including messing around with Window 7 a few years ago when I dualbooted it on my MacBook Pro for all of a month) and I actually kind of like Windows 10 to be honest. I just simply prefer OS X - Windows just doesn't do it for me.

I have just built a box with Windows 10 and tbh it's pretty good but I would never do without my OS X.

donsjgm said:

I have just built a box with Windows 10 and tbh it's pretty good but I would never do without my OS X.

Click to expand...

Yes, same. I do everything within OS X. I literally use Windows for Steam and that's it.

Off topic - Fallout 4 isn't doing it for me; tbh I don't think it's that great. I'm a huge fan of the series, and I'm a bit disappointed with 4.