Hey jaymonkey,
Thanks for your reply.
@morph21,
Thanks for the feedback but I don't understand why you think you need to Pay Apple for support on iMessage ?, no one on this thread has had to do that .... have you tried using the method to Contact Apple in Part-2, Step-8 ?
You're absolutely right about everything you said about the Apple Support Team. Despite the hours I had spent previously fixing iMessage, I followed your guide thoroughly, and despite not having success, I also found myself stuck at the automated phone filtering from Apple.
Turns out that I had registered my late 2009 iMac, and when I said Mac issues it used that registration as a baseline, and told me I had to pay for it.
Next call, I just did the standard answer: "What product you want support for?" and I kept replying "Apple ID", until at some point it gave up and redirected me to a person.
However, they used a SN that I had on record for my old iMac. I don't know how it would have been without that step.
Basically the big problem was the initial automated filter.
There will always be compromises when using a hackingtosh, with the way things are right now as long as you have good/supported hardware you should be able to get everything working, just be careful when install Combo updates - sure a bit of fine tuning is required to get certain hardware working but you should see that as a challenge rather than a chore.
I agree. However, it really gets the worst out of me when I come to the computer to work with something and that something suddenly has just stopped working. Drives me crazy. In this case, I think what messed up the ID was the update to iOS 8 on my phone and iPad. 10.9.5 shouldn't have brought that problem up, but who knows.
One more good thing about Clover. You can do the vast majority of fixes from its folder and that allows me to apply combo updates without having to do any extra thing afterwards. It really looks like a mac.
I won't deny though, when it stops working out of the blue like that, it feels like a chore.
I've always found Appel Phone support very professional and fantastic considering I don't own a MAC, not sure why you say its 'sad' you have to do the same for your other machine. If you follow the guide and get everything correct and persistent and use the same ID's in the future then you'll not see the problem again. The only reason your AppleID/Device got blocked is that your Hackingtosh was not set up correct in the first place .... you should always consider everyday with a Hackingtosh as a school day .... everyday you'll learn something.
That is the problem, I didn't change ANYTHING, and the setup has been around with the same numbers and IDs for a very very long time, over a year.
The reason it got blocked is probably years old, because when I started with the whole hackintosh thing I did several changes here and there and probably got flagged, but yet, iMessages and Facetime were working two days ago. So probably Apple implemented a more restrictive rule or something recently.
The sad part I mentioned was that I would have to call again because I didn't have my wife's customer case number with me. I could have used the same phone call.
The good part is that I'll probably update her computer to iMac 14,2 too, from the old Mac Pro 3,1. I didn't want to touch those old SMBIOS settings, but hey, since I'll have to call Apple, might as well update them for her as I did for my computer.
If I may say, Clover is THE BEST loader ever. Half of your guide was covered with all the variables and additional steps for NVRAM. It took me a while to get it going, but I wanted UEFI boot and today, I don't regret.
The great part? Once you get a good working Clover config, you can just put that in your USB installation pen drive and even if you have to use it as a backup to boot, it will have all the same information and configuration.
Thanks again for the guide.
