As much as I used to love MacOS as an operating system, the more I spending time on it, I'd rather wish that my Macbook can run Linux, hopefully Asahi Linux will eventually support M5 :(
That’s so cool. It makes it even more of a bummer that iDevice bootloaders are locked. It’s an ongoing tragedy there’s still no macOS on iPads. Looks like if you want that, you’ll have to go with non-Apple hardware.
Seeing that Macs can now run Switch 1/2 games natively because of the ARM CPU is actually incredibly. And to me personally the first hand on sign of the end of x86.
During grad school, Dell sold a 10 inch mini laptop that just happened to have hardware compatible with an easy Hackintoch install. The change between the slow, bloated Windows install and OS X was stunning.
I loved that thing. Light, easy to take anywhere, battery life for days. I once caught someone snooping over my shoulder trying to see if it was really running OS X. Used it for years.
funny enough, the only use case I want to run macOS on non-Apple software is a headless build machine. Without Apple hardware, using macOS is less useful to me.
> the feat of running macOS on non-Apple hardware, and has a history dating back to the late 1980s
Wait, so people were somehow running macOS on non-Apple PowerPC machines? I've always assumed that hackintosh is specifically about IBM PC compatibles.
I think he's underselling Qemu/KVM side of things, quick search shows that Tahoe works for instance. It was always a better route for this, going back to patching kexts isn't an improvement in my book. I'm sure near-native performance should be possible on ARM machines.
Such a throw back, I built a hackintosh back in x86 days and had it mostly working for a year, but of course tried to apply an update (10.08 I think?) and it blew up.
Ended up selling the hardware to some guy who insisted he would get it working and I am sure it was possible, but I pretty much switched to using Mac after that as I loved the dev experience.
Rather than straining to make macos work where it isn’t meant to, and its corporate overlords won’t allow it to run. Why not sink the same effort into bringing what you like back into Linux or FreeBSD?
I am not forbidding anyone from having hobbies (though Apple probably is) - but whatever you build will be undone in a year or so - Apple will never permit it.
However, writing a series of mac-like apps for a FreeBSD/Linux desktop, or even a new desktop environment which closely follows Mac, will continue to be relevant work.
There used to be a use-case for Hackintoshes maybe a decade +/- 5 years ago, especially when macOS started working with x86 and x86-64 Intel-based CPUs. But it always felt subversive and it seemed like one update away from breaking due to some unforeseen, artificial limitation.
Is there a use-case now? I don't know. Linux has made serious strides in part thanks to very user-friendly distros like Ubuntu. People may have individual grievances and I don't want to downplay those, but we're not dealing with oddball Shrike issues anymore.
Apple should seriously consider allowing their OS to be used independently of the hardware, especially the build tools, the server stuff (whatever is left of it, not a market they had a big part to play in anyway). But, it is unlikely of them to do this.
Well done nonetheless. I think it is more likely that the old PowerPC-MacOS-on-Wii will be more stable long term than any of these new releases.
Edit: I'll also add: I am questioning what value MacOS itself has, the raw OS and kernel stuff. Linux, BSD and Windows each have their own -isms which are curiosities that one can, and should, consider as pros and cons. People might say "Windows is bad", and I agree, Win 11 experience as a daily driver is god awful. But the kernel and OS itself is something else. I don't know if MacOS has any of that "meat" that we can look at and say it's worth looking deeper into.
This explosion of "hacking" is interesting. Like wow I can run X on Y or wow I decompiled Z and I can add feature A and B.
So there is this wow factor, but really we just enjoy mathematic transformations on a greater scale than we used to have just few years ago.
My guess is that the legal system will catch up with it, but also people will get bored.
Like, I can run macOS on thinkpad! Great! but ultimately this is a crap hardware in comparison to Mac. Will it have backdoors, will it be stable? Who will maintain it? and so on.
On one hand, this is kinda cool.
On the other hand, why would I want to run MacOS in the first place?
Modern versions I mean. With the deterioration general quality, Liquid Glass and all that.
The only reason I do that is because I _have_ to do that due to MDM and the fact that Asahi doesn't do the Standby. Excellent hardware, bound by a sad OS.
Why take normal hardware and add a sad OS without being forced to do so?
I suppose "for the sake of it" is a good answer here. For the fun of making computers do something they really do not want to do.
The Hackintosh Reborn
(naut.ca)395 points by rubatuga 5 November 2026 | 231 comments
Comments
I loved that thing. Light, easy to take anywhere, battery life for days. I once caught someone snooping over my shoulder trying to see if it was really running OS X. Used it for years.
Wait, so people were somehow running macOS on non-Apple PowerPC machines? I've always assumed that hackintosh is specifically about IBM PC compatibles.
More secure than windows, more supported for bank apps etc than Linux and with most of the same software and looks amazing as a media center pc haha
Became Linux for servers , hackintosh for everything else lol
Ended up selling the hardware to some guy who insisted he would get it working and I am sure it was possible, but I pretty much switched to using Mac after that as I loved the dev experience.
Refreshing to hear it called its proper name instead of Apples marketing terminology.
Didn’t you omit the “by relying on a technology which is built on far-reaching copyright violations and significant ecological impact” part here?
I am not forbidding anyone from having hobbies (though Apple probably is) - but whatever you build will be undone in a year or so - Apple will never permit it.
However, writing a series of mac-like apps for a FreeBSD/Linux desktop, or even a new desktop environment which closely follows Mac, will continue to be relevant work.
Is there a use-case now? I don't know. Linux has made serious strides in part thanks to very user-friendly distros like Ubuntu. People may have individual grievances and I don't want to downplay those, but we're not dealing with oddball Shrike issues anymore.
Apple should seriously consider allowing their OS to be used independently of the hardware, especially the build tools, the server stuff (whatever is left of it, not a market they had a big part to play in anyway). But, it is unlikely of them to do this.
Well done nonetheless. I think it is more likely that the old PowerPC-MacOS-on-Wii will be more stable long term than any of these new releases.
Edit: I'll also add: I am questioning what value MacOS itself has, the raw OS and kernel stuff. Linux, BSD and Windows each have their own -isms which are curiosities that one can, and should, consider as pros and cons. People might say "Windows is bad", and I agree, Win 11 experience as a daily driver is god awful. But the kernel and OS itself is something else. I don't know if MacOS has any of that "meat" that we can look at and say it's worth looking deeper into.
So there is this wow factor, but really we just enjoy mathematic transformations on a greater scale than we used to have just few years ago.
My guess is that the legal system will catch up with it, but also people will get bored.
Like, I can run macOS on thinkpad! Great! but ultimately this is a crap hardware in comparison to Mac. Will it have backdoors, will it be stable? Who will maintain it? and so on.
For me, that's meh.
The only reason I do that is because I _have_ to do that due to MDM and the fact that Asahi doesn't do the Standby. Excellent hardware, bound by a sad OS.
Why take normal hardware and add a sad OS without being forced to do so?
I suppose "for the sake of it" is a good answer here. For the fun of making computers do something they really do not want to do.