Is this the real end of hackintosh? M1 Macs

[Deleted member 2311103]

Actually does not matter if intel and/or amd will move on the arm side, computers started a long time ago to go on arm, now on the market are a lot of arm laptops, microsoft surface pro x, few lenovo 5g, hp, acer, all of them with almost the same arch qualcomm 865+ or 8cx, a bit expensive for developers right now, but, there are a lot of cheaper devices with same CPUs, tablets or phones, imagine osx on your phone or your tablet....

 

[Deleted member 2311103]

As an educational experiment, it's fine, but I think it's a complete waste of time if you are trying to get a realistically useable macOS system like current X86 hackintoshes.

Even if (and that's a pretty big "if") you manage to boot macOS on a generic Arm CPU, there won't be any Neural Engine and there won't be any drivers for whatever GPU comes with the aforementioned generic Arm CPU.

It might be possible to run macOS without any GPU acceleration but would anyone want to?

Porting Linux GPU drivers may theoretically be possible, but it's a pretty monumental effort. Even on the current Intel macOS, no one has even ever attempted to port RDNA2 or Ampere drivers.

Custom drivers would probably also be needed for things like Wi-Fi, USB, etc. Have a look at the progress made with the OpenIntelWireless project and you can see how challenging it is. Even after all this time, it still isn't fully working with features such as AirDrop still not working.

Well... challenge is fun, this does not mean impossible, generic drivers for GPU already exists, the framebuffer ones, does not have 3D but who cares... custom drivers exists since hackintosh, so why stop now?

 

[pastrychef]

Well... challenge is fun, this does not mean impossible, generic drivers for GPU already exists, the framebuffer ones, does not have 3D but who cares... custom drivers exists since hackintosh, so why stop now?

You may not care about 3D acceleration, but I would think most do. Without it, macOS would be pretty useless. Don't forget, even Finder uses Metal now.

As I said, look a the progress of the OpenIntelWireless. It's still not fully functional. Look at the custom USB drivers that have existed, spotty, at best.

With Intel hackintoshes, you get a lot of help from Apple. They provide the GPU, Wi-Fi, USB, etc drivers. On Arm, you're not going to get the same amount of help. It will be all left up to the community.

There's also the Neural Engine...

 

[Deleted member 2311103]

You may not care about 3D acceleration, but I would think most do. Without it, macOS would be pretty useless. Don't forget, even Finder uses Metal now.

As I said, look a the progress of the OpenIntelWireless. It's still not fully functional. Look at the custom USB drivers that have existed, spotty, at best.

With Intel hackintoshes, you get a lot of help from Apple. They provide the GPU, Wi-Fi, USB, etc drivers. On Arm, you're not going to get the same amount of help. It will be all left up to the community.

I am not sure where 3D is involved in OSX rendering but for sure works over the framebuffer too, i am not saying that this will be easy, i am saying it is doable and for sure will work.

 

[pastrychef]

I am not sure where 3D is involved in OSX rendering but for sure works over the framebuffer too, i am not saying that this will be easy, i am saying it is doable and for sure will work.

Just use FakeID = 12345678 for your IGPU on your G531GT and try running with no acceleration. It's doable and will work for sure.

 

[Deleted member 2311103]

Just use FakeID = 12345678 for your IGPU on your G531GT and try running with no acceleration. It's doable and will work for sure.

Man, it was just an idea, almost all ARM cpus have 3D now, and neural engine too, i really don't understand why do you think this is impossible, it is hard indeed, but from hard to impossible is a long shot.

 

[pastrychef]

Man, it was just an idea, almost all ARM cpus have 3D now, and neural engine too, i really don't understand why do you think this is impossible, it is hard indeed, but from hard to impossible is a long shot.

All Arm CPUs may have 3D acceleration, but the GPUs are different and require different drivers. The Adreno drivers from a Snapdragon will not work on Raspberry Pi 4s because they use Broadcom GPU or on an Arm CPU with Mali GPU.

Look at Intel hackintoshes... As much as users want to use Turing and Ampere GPUs with macOS, no one has even attempted to port drivers to macOS.

AMD RDNA2 GPUs didn't work until Apple included drivers in 11.4 betas. This was the help from Apple that I mentioned above.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Nothing is impossible, but I don't think it will ever work well due to lack of native drivers.

How many hackintoshes do you see running on AMD APUs? Barely any because the lack of GPU drivers and acceleration is debilitating. But, yes, macOS can be made to boot on them so it's doable and works for sure...

 

[Deleted member 2311103]

All Arm CPUs may have 3D acceleration, but the GPUs are different and require different drivers. The Adreno drivers from a Snapdragon will not work on Raspberry Pi 4s because they use Broadcom GPU or on an Arm CPU with Mali GPU.

Look at Intel hackintoshes... As much as users want to use Turing and Ampere GPUs with macOS, no one has even attempted to port drivers to macOS.

AMD RDNA2 GPUs didn't work until Apple included drivers in 11.4 betas. This was the help from Apple that I mentioned above.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Nothing is impossible, but I don't think it will ever work well due to lack of native drivers.

How many hackintoshes do you see running on AMD APUs? Barely any because the lack of GPU drivers and acceleration is debilitating. But, yes, macOS can be made to boot on them so it's doable and works for sure...

Well... looking at how many developers are involved you probably are much near the truth than me, 45 developers working on OpenCore, 10 on Clover, 13 on VoodooI2C... and all of them in their spare time.. so probably this is just a dream... however, a dream which already started to be real

 

[S3Atze]

I bought a Mac mini M1 16/250 in January and I really like that machine. Silent, small, super efficient, powerful! Ok, it does not have too many ports, but for me ok. I'm waiting for the next Mac mini (M1X?) that is rumored to be released this year. Then I will send this one to eBay...
Since 2010 I have been building Hackintos machines. I learned a lot and always had powerful machines for relatively small money. But the last year or two, I experienced more and more trouble in the hackintosh world: Hardware not really compatible (especially graphics cards...), macOS updates breaking things and what not... This started to bug me and I was thinking more and more about buying a Desktop Mac again (I always had and have a MacBook Pro besides). And then the Mac mini M1 was introduced - perfect timing for me!
I´m still using my hackintosh machine for windows gaming, but I stopped the hackintosh adventure there with macOS Catalina. Maybe we will see a similar hackintosh development when more and more operating systems support the ARM architecture, but honestly I think Apple will tie macOS so deep into their silicon that it will be impossible to run macOS even on other ARM hardware. I think the hackintosh systems will be stopped at maybe macOS 14 or so, if Apple breaks Intel support.

my two cents.

 

[CameraGuy]

I’ve done 4K video production on a Hackintosh I built in 2014. Flawlessly. It was a higher power machine than anything Apple had except the garbage can.

id build one again. M1’s have atleast 5 years to prove themselves.