Why Hackintosh is superior to The Real Thing

[x86kexts]

At work we all have brand new mac's. One of the guys mac's is down. I helped him with the Command + Option + R + P to wipe the NVRAM and try again. Also they have shutdown problems on real mac's. I see lots of Outlook corruption of the mail file for the mailbox, probably due to shutdown, sleep, etc.

There's really nothing to do with these SSDs, you can't pull 'em and then put them into my tower and diagnose or fix. I don't use SSDs at home, dont trust them (I use only RE4's). So with a hackintosh there's no NVRAM to get corrupted, you can pull the drive out and put a new one in (try that on a MacBook Pro), and shutdown is cleaner than on a real mac.

Now I have them all opening a terminal, sudo su, and shutdown -h now on their real macs because they've had problems with sleep shutdown on their macs.

Once a real mac with integrated SSD goes bad or gets corrupted, and the NVRAM goes south, a hackintosh is a lot easier to fix.

Jim

 

[tian]

for me it's just moneh. and the beauty of building the thing yourself. love that. oh and you can exchange parts easily.

i thought hackintosh would just be a side project for me and my next rig would be a real mac again, but it all runs so smoothly i think i'll stick with it.

 

[rockinwaggy]

On the side of portables, I'm a firm believer that Apple's machines are probably the best out there. Now, both of the Macbook Pros that I've had have had issues. My first, bought used via eBay with AppleCare still on it, had the typical Late 2008 graphics artifacts problem. It took them a screen and a logic board later to figure it out. I went back to get it fixed and then got a phone call later that day saying they were going to replace my computer with a new model because it was beyond economic repair.

Got the Mid-2010 and it was problem free for a couple of years. Started having issues with garbled graphics on cold boot/reboot that was only solved by sleep or switching the graphics card being used via GfxCardStatus. It never reoccured after that until a restart/shutdown. Then the iSight wouldn't work and the SD card reader started only allowing Reads, not Reads and Write.

They replaced the screen (couldn't just do the bad cable, as told by Apple) then I went back later for the SD reader problem. They replaced the logic board. The move to mountain lion may have fixed my graphics issue, but I'm not sure. Since then, the machine runs like a top. Well, as fast as the slow hard drive will allow.

Even with all of the issues I've had, my MBPs have always WORKED. Not 100% flawlessly 100% of the time, but nothing that prevented me from doing my work. I still love their machines, but if you ever get one, especially a laptop, buy the damn AppleCare! It may seem like a lot up front, but you get free diag and repair for quite some time. When you're done with the machine around end of AppleCare, sell it for 800-1000 and go get a new one for half price. Not a bad deal once you get started.

I've considered selling my MBP as I now have a Hackintosh rig, but I know as soon as I do, I'll regret it. It has been just too handy of a machine for me to sell it off. I intend to put in a 240/256GB SSD soon and roll with it as long as I can. Maybe put a battery in it in a couple years too. As I use it as a secondary machine to the Hackintosh, it works just as I need it to; light usage away from home and photography work on the road/at school.

On the desktop side of things, I can't see myself ever buying an Apple unit. The Mac Mini is a Macbook Pro in a box; no way. I like the iMac, but I wouldn't want to be tied to a particular display for its entire life. If I want to bump up to a 30" anti-glare 4k screen, I damn well better be able to. The Mac Pro is nice (old model, new defeats the notion of true upgradability like a laptop does), but too expensive for what it is. Apple also **** on Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 owners by not having EFI64 firmware. You can get around it, but what a crap move for them to make.

If you're going to build a desktop, you probably are savvy enough to set down and resolve any issues that come up during installation of OS X. Load it to the gills with speedy hardware and run it until something fails. Buy a replacement part for a hundred bucks or so and keep going. Try doing that with an Apple machine.