Hey guys, I'm in the middle of upgrading my MacBook pro ( 2012 ) which is starting to slow down. I simply cannot justify getting the price of the New macbooks with features I won't require. I've been looking down the line of the Hackintosh and was hoping to get some insight from you guys of how stable the system is, and if the OS can be updated etc? Thanks!

 

Astonishinly it´s rock solid, but You´ll have to do a lot of research to get to this point. Of cause it´s updateble.
Refer to TonyMac site, You´ll find all info there.
Karl

 

My current Hackintosh runs more stable than years ago my Apple Mac G5.
The only downside of doing Hackintosh is in my opinion when you like to report bugs to developers.

It might get strange if you have a iMac with a PCIe Audio Interface or a really phat Graphic Card in the specs

Unfortunately Apple let some people like me no other way to keep using OS X thats why we built our custom computers

 

Full stable, had 10.6, 10.7, 10.8 and now 10.9 for years and didnt have a single problem

 

Rock solid if you do it right. As others have said, go to https://www.tonymacx86.com/ and as long as you follow the instructions and buy the known-to-work hardware, you will have zero issues from my experience. Here is the latest buyers guide for a Mac Pro equivalent: https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/november/2016#CustoMac_Pro

 

I'm not a Mac guy and probably never will be but I find it cool that you have some good alternatives to the institutionalized rip off from Apple.

 

I'd say that karlarsch nailed it: It's more about how long it'll take you to build a fully working system, and that depends on what hardware you choose. If you've achieved this, the system will be as reliable as your hardware.
On the other hand I really cannot say that a hackintosh was ever more stable than original Mac hardware.

 

I guess stable is not the question. It's OSX, which is a very stable operating system. The real question to answer is if you'd be comfortable with building and configuring a Hackintosh. The guys at TonyMac have made it much easier over the years, but you still have to know what you're doing, or have someone do it for you. I recommend to watch a couple of Youtube vids on building Hackintoshes, and start reading the TonyMac guides & forum.

 

Stable for me. You have to dig into it though, it took me a couple of reinstalls to get it running properly. Its working now though, and I'm very happy with it. The only issue I have is that my intel HD 4000 is not as fast compared to windows. But thats because OS X is more GPU intensive. If you choose to go the laptop route, id recommend quality and a good amount of ram storage, a good GPU (slightly better then a intel HD 4000 would be fine and a good cpu off course.

Though you have to be careful when you go shopping, that you get the right hardware components, because when your picking the wrong ones, you have to do several workarounds, like patching your own DSTD. Which is quite hard to do.

Though, I recommend you take a look osxlatitude.com. They provide bootpacks for specific laptops, which makes installing OS X a breeze. Pick a laptop on that website, or on tonymac, and you should have no real hassle installing OS X.

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2016

Guys, thanks for all the replies, Im new to this forum - didn't realise they were so many replies ! I'm not familiar with hardware in all honesty and it seems you need to know what you're doing.., so I'm most likely going to end up getting a PC.

 

Rock solid for 4 years now. I've been on all the systems since 10.6 and am now on sierra 10.12.2, with 3 UAD OCTO, NVIDIA GTX 980ti, Pro Tools HDN.

 

i like my hackintosh..
it is the only way for me to run Logic pro x
i don't have the money to buy a Mac.
even 600 euros for a mac mini are too much for me this period.
Hackintosh <3

 

How stable is a Hackintosh ?

Mine rests on a three legged table, so I have to be careful esp when I'm drunk.

 

Built mine about 4 months ago because I refuse to pay Apple's crazy prices anymore! It is running great and I'm even running the latest 10.12.3 beta build. Use www.tonymacx86.com to know what parts to purchase for your needs etc, software needed etc....

 

Last edited: Dec 24, 2016

For the first time I'm considering Hackintosh. I'm currently running a mid-2011 27" iMac i7 with 32GB of RAM and I don't believe I can justify dropping well over 3K to get a new, similarly spec'd 5K retina iMac ... especially as they're dropped optical audio input support ... and I don't give a shit about the increased monitor resolution.

I'm pretty sure if I build a HackinTosh (and use my current iMac as its monitor), that it won't end up being much better than the new 5K retina iMac in terms of performance, but I will be able to configure it a little bit more to my likes/needs initially and have more flexibility in upgrading it in the future… Not to mention it will be a considerably cheaper venture.

... and it will be a little bit of a f*ck you to Apple, which will feel devine.

 

Why do folks buy such expensive stuff? When I touch Apple stuff my productivity goes down to zilch and my irritation goes off the scale.

Why do people buy this stuff? It "just works"? Not on a Snow Leopard 4.9.3.2 it doesn't. Not on a Fluffy MegaCat 2.3.9.1.5b it doesn't.

Apple profit margins are insane. They're monetising "cool"? Even if it works "better", it isn't worth that much, is it?

 

Running a X99 Hackintosh with Yosemite for about 2 years now and it's stability is insane.
I can't "feel" the difference between a real mac and my Hack.
It's just rocksolid and it flies.

In januari, i am gonna do an upgrade to 10.12, which is supposed to be running even better (performance wise) than 10.10.

Only culprit is that i have to make sure some usb gear like my Maschine Studio and Nektar Panorama midi keyboard
are turned off when i start my Hack, or else it would just hang on startup.
A typical usb hack problem that problaby could be solved but i am too lazy to dig into that issue.

And furthermore:

I let my Hack build by a very experienced Hackintosh builder who also has great experience
with installing OSX on a Hack, for years.
I really found it too cumbersome to built it and install it myself ; imho it's complete rocket science to do that.
I don't have the time and interest to learn rocket science, i just want to make music.
So you should leave this work to an experienced hack builder,you luckily know, or you have to dig in pretty deep and do it yourself.

If you succeed you will get great value for half the price of a real mac :0)

Just my 2 cents.

 

already built like10 hackintoshs for myself,friends and customers,the only build that i had some issues was with this motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H and Yosemite but after upgrade to El Capitan no more issues!! right now i have 2 hackintosh 1 in my home and 1 on my office,1 for music and 1 for editing video.

 

i had the money to buy an imac or a pro book but i prefer to build my own macs.

 

Before doing a hackintosh, I strongly recommend trying to find a Mac Pro 4.1, 8 core for sale. If you try hard, searching through various craigslist, it's best to go through various places online, where the masses around the world don't go to buy Like eBay.

Bottom line is, these are easily upgradable to 12 core. Last year I bought a used Mac Pro 4.1 for $350. I put another 350 into it buying the CPU's, and upgraded the CPUs to a 12 core. Today I have geek-bench scores of over 30,000, and the specs of the performance match the trashcan Mac Pro that sells for around six grand. I've got a total of about $700 to $800 in it altogether.

Then you don't have to worry about the challenges of every time you upgrade an operating system or some other querks that happen with Hackintoshes

You can also upgrade the 4.1 quad core Mac Pros to a six core. But that's not a sexy is upgrading the eight core to a 12 core!

When you're done, the 4.1 Mac Pros, are essentially 5.1 Mac Pros !