as a fun fact, I left Sonar for Reaper because I was fed up with Windows 10, and Reaper provided most seamless transition from Win to Mac of all DAWs on the market years back (I was also considering Studio One that time, which was v.3 only), if you like Reaper, it's worth using it, for me personally the reliability during recording was the key point of my decision,
whatever happens with Apple's MacOS/iOS architecture, you can be sure they will provide best support for Logic Pro they can (unless making an entirely new DAW) so if you're comfortable with Logic, you shouldn't be really worried about ARM-based Macs few years from now,

 

LOL

 

I never did rely on EFI folders, really. Started with Niresh, had plenty of issues and then discovered how it's really done, haven't looked back ever since. The problem is people don't know what they're doing when they download some random EFI folder. Someone told them to go to this website, buy the exact laptop they show as compatible, download the files, spend 2h learning where to put said file only to discover your laptop has a new version of BIOS or some hardware revision that bricked the EFI config. These people don't know what's wrong or where to even look. Spreading the "just buy the hardware and download the ready to go config" is the worst part of the hackintosh community. They add a graphics card like they did in a Windows PC and they don't know the config needs to be changed. Hackintosh is - as the name suggests - a hack. This means it's a miracle we got this working as well as it does nowadays, and there's truly amazing people working hard on improving things. This also means people who aren't willing to learn what's going on in their computers should probably stay away, because nothing can be truly guaranteed and there's a fair chance they will have to troubleshoot, now or sometime later. Promoting hackintosh as a "get a Mac but cheaper in 5 easy steps" to the general public feels plain wrong to me. I know problems aren't that common and serious nowadays, but it should be clearly said to everyone interested that they will need to learn new things in case of any trouble.

Because the posts are mostly build reports, quick questions and release news. The guides are in the sidebar, and for more information there's the Discord (which is great btw)

Stealing works of others was related to tonymac. The issue with youtube is:
- it promotes the same "get a perfect 100% working mac but cheaper" mentality
- it becomes outdated quickly
- some of it is running paid consultation business, Patreon or whatnot, really just reselling freely available tools and guides (taking advantage of people interested in hackintosh who didn't find other resources first)
- it attracts the kind of people who probably shouldn't be getting into hackintosh

InsanelyMac is a great one, too. It's also where most of the people who actually develop the software hang around (since tonymac has strict moderation and ridiculous rules to promote their site and get more affiliate income)

 

I have a spare Zbook Studio G5 kicking about and was close to installing MacOs, that is until I found out the damn wireless device is not supported and won't work. I can't use ethernet because the damn laptop doesn't have an ethernet port.

No, I won't buy a USB ethernet dongle because the damn laptop only has 2 USB ports. You'd think a semi-high end laptop would have more connectivity.

 

I was one of the pawns you refer to here but after my initial fumbling through trying to install Mac I ended up with a damn good PC. I'll try Hackintosh again but with Intel instead of AMD. .. probably right when everything shifts to ARM though

 

For anyone seriously considering an AMD based Hackintosh, do a internet search for 'Ryzentosh'. Look for guides/info posted within the last 1 - 2 months. You should find clear & concise guidance for such a build.

Keep in mind that these types of builds require research, time & patience. No half-measures. All in effort.

Happy tracking!

 

I just did my hackintosh a few months ago using a ryzen 3700x and an Asus Prime Pro x570 board. Works perfect.

 

This is only because they don't have a hackintosh to test on, and they don't want to waste support's time on people who set up their hackintosh wrong.

Both software-only and iLok dongle work with no issues at all

Literally every single piece software and plugin that works on Macs.

Literally every single interface that works on Macs.

They don't. It's the same operating system and mostly the same hardware.

Unlikely that you'll ever be able to use any ARM processor that's ready to use. I'm not aware of any desktop ARM platforms, that is: motherboards and ARM CPUs that you can just buy for yourself and use. ARM itself is just a set of technical documentation, you make your own processors with those. Apple does this, Qualcomm does this and lots of other people do this, but they all make wildly different processors as a result. The only ARM hardware you can buy is a full computer, and it's unlikely to be similar enough to run macOS without significant modifications.

Don't. AMD is not worth it for macOS, it's barely working with numerous issues like no power management (temperature monitoring, changing clock speed on-demand), random crashes, the last time I checked all of Adobe software didn't work, Logic had issues, Final Cut had issues as well, webcams would randomly freeze, sleep would not work, etc, etc. And in the end the powerful Ryzen CPUs work slower than Intel when running macOS, plus there are random issues that are hard to fix. Not worth it at all. Threadripper also doesn't work at all, and IIRC Ryzen APUs (the ones with integrated graphics) also don't work.

Watch this:

 

Now that is interesting. Tell us more. Or PM me.

 

Nothing interesting in that, really. It's the same as any other hackintosh build, and he likely has the same problems as any other laptop hackintosh. WiFi and possibly Bluetooth won't work in macOS unless you buy a replacement card. NVIDIA graphics cards won't work at all and have to be completely disabled, unless you have a 10xx in it and are okay with using 10.3.6 High Sierra, which is the last version of macOS that has working drivers. 20xx and 16xx don't work at all, no drivers for these - you must disable it completely and use just integrated Intel graphics in macOS. Hackintosh doesn't make nearly as much sense for laptops as it does for desktops and require much more experience and time spent to get everything working as it should. I'm seriously considering getting a MacBook someday as an addition to my desktop Hackintosh, since I appreciate the battery life, build quality and weeks of effort installing (and any time I decide to update) saved. On desktops, you can pick compatible parts, with laptops it's often a lottery unless you really spend months looking up exactly what model of wireless card works.

 

Yes that's correct, I don't have wifi or bluetooth but network works perfect. Who need WiFi anyway for a mobile production machine anyway. Also the card is metal supported so I can still upgrade to newer OS without hw acceleration. If shit hit the fan, I can still use it as a PC mobile rig. My 3.33 12 core 2010 macpro works just fine as an actual studio computer.

 

So, I upgraded my Hackintosh last weekend with an i9 10850k and a Ggabyte Z490 Vision G and a Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer II 280. Everything is working smooth so far. I just replaced the EFI Folder of my previous system and once I had the correct config the system booted right away.

The only issue I am having is that the GTX 760 Graphics Card does not support UEFI Bios so it stays off until any OS has booted. I am using the iGPU for now to get into the BIOS. Once macOS starts, the Monitor connected to the iGPU turns off again since HDMI doesn't seem to be patched correctly. But Display Port is reported to work, so I am buying a cable later the day.

I also made a request for an updated vbios for the GTX760 in the MSI forum but I am still waitung for a reply. All audio stuff works so far. But I had to re-authorize some Plugins, because they are tied to the MAC-Addrees of the Board (Arturia, IK Multimedia, Plugin Alliance). There are probly more that I will come accros – like Waves which also uses MAC-Address for autorization.

I am glad, I didn't get an AMD System, because I think would have taken a lot more effort to get it running.

 

Last edited: Sep 1, 2020

which MacOS version are you using?
GTX760 is not supported on anything newer than High Sierra, and 10th gen Intel chipset isn't supported by older MacOS versions on the other hand, perhaps you're using Intel igpu in the MacOS actually?

 

@5teezo Nice to hear you got pretty much everything so far, I also run a Hackintosh on opencore for over a year without any problems now. If you have a bit of money I would suggest swapping the gtx for a low end amd card for future compatibility, I don't think the 760 will be supported much longer and a low tear amd card is pretty cheap these days, especially if you buy it used.
As for amd cpus, I'm pretty deep into the german hackintosh scene and none of the people that really know their stuff and are using a hackintosh as a work machine, which includes music production, use amd. It works somehow, but intel systems just work better and require much less tinkering.

 

I've had a 2012 Lenevo Thinkpad x201T I bought awhile ago for this purpose. For $175... it's got a dual i7 2GZ, a 12" rotating touchscreen/tablet (...which... I doubt will function in OSX). Also included was a docking station with a removable DVD/hard drive bay and HDMI, extra battery charger, 3 more USB slots,and... a car kit.
I haven't had any success hack'n it (yet)... but there are a couple mentions and a badly written 'how to' in several Hack groups.
Funny seeing this post now... I was going to attempt Mojave on it this week. Thanks for the aforementioned links!
I really, really love to do a dual boot of same hard drive (like I've done with BC on a mac)... but have heard its not wise..
Hey, if anyone has one of these (kinda doubt it) and has had luck hack'n it... I'd love some insight!

specs:
https://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-thinkpad-x201-tablet-3093-core-i7-620lm-2-ghz-12-1-tft-series/

 

Last edited: Aug 31, 2020

High Sierra, Catalina and Big Sur Public Beta 3 are working with SMBIOS iMac18,3. But on High Sierra I have no Intenet. It's just my Fallback system if other's don't boot. Catalina is my main OS right now and BigSur is for testing/transistion phase. If I use SystemDefinitions iMac19,1 only Catalina boots.

The GTX760 (Keppler) is natively supported by Apple. Everything newer is not. But there are no Webdrivers, so no Cuda acceleration support. At some point I will switch to RX560 or RX580. The issues I am having with the GPU is mainly that it is not supported by UEFI Bios. But there's some firmware I can flash. Once the DisplayPort Cable arrives, the iGPU output should stay on ones the OS has booted

 

Last edited: Sep 1, 2020

Getting Notebooks to work is really hard if you are not familiar with using terminal and IORegistryExplorer. Luckily, I found some EFI Folders for my Lenovo T530 I could use as a starting point to build on. I wouldn't use clover for it. OpenCore is much more efficient and you get more performance out of the system.
This guy has some great guides on Lenovo Hackintoshes. It's for an X220 but maybe this is helpful? http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/
I don't know how different the specs are. If the chipsets are different then it's probably not a guide to follow.
If you do want a dualboot system with windows and macos on one disk, do yourself a favor and don't use opencore. It's a nightmare to get it to work if both OSes are on one drive. Clover is much easier in managing Dualboot off of one disk.

 

Last edited: Sep 1, 2020

Just in case somebody is curious about the capabilities of this built. I ran the Logic Pro Benchmark test… I was getting bored of addding tracks at some point and I was glad when it stopped at 167 Tracks at 64 samples buffer size. This should last for the next decade. And it's not even overclocked yet.

 

Last edited: Sep 2, 2020

Hey,
has anyone done some A/B testing between OSX and Windows on a Hack?
I did and I'd like to verify my results because it was not the deepest testing.

DIVA (in Multicore mode, complex Pad with 5-note voicing)
100% more performance on Windows than on Mojave

Kontakt (Berlin Strings Violin Legato patch, all mics)
30% more performance on Windows than on Mojave

Serum (5-note voicing, rather complex than simple pad)
120% more performance on Mojave than on Windows

Random Test-project containing Kontakt, Diva, Serum, Ableton Stock Plugins and T-RackS Plugins:
10% better performance on Mojave

Also I realized, that especially with the first two testings, where OSX ist performing worse than Windows, the CPU power consumption is just half maxed out, where as on Windows it's almost peaking (same for the core usage, meaning the CPU meter you see outside of your DAW). Intel Power Gadged is a good tool to monitor these things. Would be interesting to know why this is so and how to access more power before glitches start. Also, with Serum it is not the case. There I can reach 90% core usage on OSX.

My test was done with an i9-1040X on 512 Buffer Size. I tried these tests on Live, Reaper and Logic, but stuck to Live after a while as the results were nearly the same.

For me it seems like Windows is doing way better on "heavy" tracks - probably better multicore performance for a single track, where as OSX manages to get the mass done. So for a Film composer working only with Kontakt und u-He Synths, Windows looks like the way better choice, but for a normal producer using a little bit of everything, OSX competes fine. Just my impression. Would be great to see other tests like this.

 

Hi all,

Thanks for posting your test results!

My 2p. would be to be 100% sure we're not comparing apples and oranges here as Windows and Unix based system have a completely different CPU scheduling mechanism which could favour different use case.

Also, hardware comparison should be taken into account. My guess is the closest you can be from comparing OSX and Windows would be to run both on the same platform (eg. Windows Bootcamp w/ EFI boot, etc. which is feasible but takes a bit of funny IT fiddling since the forced introduction of APFS).

Anyways, to cut a long story short - and from my humble comparisons - Windows will schedule foreground applications like there is no tomorrow and won't context switch as often as it should when maxing out a single core (yes, everything can be tweaked and tuned but I'm talking about stock behaviour) whilst OSX will lay out a more appropriate multi-tasking schedule to task that are multi-threaded ADN written w/ multi-threading in mind (eg. 'large projects w/ numerous tracks'). Thus, with 100% same hardware, recording on a single channel w/ plugins 'should' be better achieved on Windows (at least in theory) whilst opening huge projects 'should' run a little smoother on OSX.

Bear in mind that this is pure theory (as well as educated guesses) and there is too much in hardware management that differs in between the tow Oses so that can sustain plain comparison.

My gut feeling is that one should use the OS they're the most comfortable with so that they spend less time doing IT and more time doing music ...


Cheers guys!