Great article and thanks for the info.

It’s such a shame that the current Mac Pro is so out of date, and in many respects not much quicker than the model it replaced. I don’t want to build a Hackintosh. I really, really don’t want to build a Hackintosh… but this article is pushing me closer to the edge.

So in exchange for $1k (the difference between what you paid and a top of the line 5k iMac) you are not only getting a long list of major issues / missing features (sound not working reminds me of the days of windows XP when you had to find a working driver for your sound card before you had sound), you are also not getting any support, no updates, no 5k display, a considerably less reliable system in a less practical form factor. Not to mention the ton of work it takes to build and maintain that thing.

Good choice.

I would absolutely not recommend a hackintosh as your daily driver. Hackintoshes always sound great in theory, but never turn out well in practice (in my experience, but also in experience of a few friends of mine). Sound issues, random kernel panics, the guarantee that your entire system will probably not work anymore if you do a update are some of the reasons I switched my home rig back to Windows. And yes, all parts of my setup were considered 'approved'.

I've been running OSX on my desktop since February this year, and so far it is super stable. Sure, I had my fair bit of tweaking around, specially with audio in the first week, but as soon as I got everything working, I've been more than surprised by the performance and stability. I haven't had a single crash, ever. I would be fooled to think it was a real Mac. The big downside imo is that you can't really update the Hackintosh without doing proper research, and even then it's risky. But if you don't update... it's basically rock solid in my experience. Maybe I was lucky.

Although, I'd probably not make my Hackintosh my "primary" machine. If you can, have a MBP as a cover, in case something goes wrong (on both of them). This way you can have a backup machine to keep working no matter what. Just make sure you keep your important files in the cloud and a Time Machine for each of them for recovery.

I've run a hackintosh for 6 years now (Snow Leopard to Yosimite) without any issues. I'm not sure what people are doing to their systems to make them so unstable.

Built a Hackintosh last year with unibeast and clover, have had some hiccups here and there like most people. But, nothing that can't be fixed with a little searching. Best thing I've done. It's incredibly powerful!

iMessage on my Mac doesn’t work.

I was seriously considering a Hackintosh as my next machine until I read that.

Been fiddling with Hackintosh for a year or so, with a Windows notebook. Things are definitely harder when you don't get to choose the parts and when your internal parts are customized for laptops while bearing the same name. Things have definitely gotten easier now—I still remember how I struggled with boot commands and Kexts just to get transparent menu bars and proper audio output on Snow Leopard.

Thou shalt not be tempted.....Never!!!....

I used to have a hackintosh, nice if all you can afford is a windows box, but don't see the point of this otherwise, you just end up with an ugly windows setup but running OS X, like this guy. If you like building your own machine, ugly setups etc then get windows.

Been running on hackintosh for over a year.. Vanilla Yosemite then El Capitan.. It's been perfect. Although I do lots of 3D rendering and find the same apps better performant on Windows on the same system.

Hey Mike, nice article. I will build hackintosh as my summer project since im not that happy with working on i7 mbp. So I'm going to put 64gb ram, i7, 512 SSD and some tonymac recommended gpu. Could you shoot me your email so I can ask you some questions if I get stuck in osx installation process?