One of Lifehacker’s most-loved posts, our guide to hackintoshes, is starting to show its age. It’s time to give this article a fresh coat of paint, but before renovation work begins, I wanted to hear about your experiences with every geek’s big dream: the ability to run macOS on a non-Apple device.
I’m asking for your stories, comments, suggestions, and tips for two reasons. First, I haven’t built a hackintosh in awhile—a long while—and I remember it takes a bit of configuring to get going. I’m sure there are resources out there that are pretty up to date with the information and apps a person would need to get started with a hackintosh. I’d love to hear about where you get your information, apps, and utilities for making this arcane process work.
(A hackintosh, after all, isn’t really something most people want to build, even though many of us have dreams of running Messages on a not-Mac. Someday, Apple. Someday.)
Second, I recall this entire process taking a lot of time for research and configuration. And even after all that, I remember that I wasn’t thrilled with the results. Admittedly, I went the “lazy” route and instead set up a Windows virtual PC running macOS—not quite a hackintosh, but easy to play around with and delete should frustration set in.
Still, my desktop PC is pretty high-performing, which is why I was a little surprised to find that the experience of running macOS in a virtual environment was laggy and unpleasant. So much so that I remember thinking that I would rather walk across the room and wait for my older MacBook to load than deal with the virtual version.
Maybe it was me? Maybe the virtual PC route isn’t the way to go after all? Maybe building a hackintosh has improved in the few years since I last tried it? Regardless, I’d love to hear your experiences—what has worked well for you? Where did you go wrong in your build? What system specs are you running? Do people even hackintosh anymore?
Let me know in the comments, and I’ll start planning my not-a-Mac build—while I still can, at least.