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Hackintosh - Experiences with Major OSx Updates


Dubesor
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I know this is kind of broad, but if I build a workstation that's well supported on High Sierra now, how likely is it to still work well with the next major OSx release next fall?

 

If you had to guess, what % chance do I have of encountering major issues when trying to update next fall? The kinds of issues that would seriously interfere with my day to day work of photo and video editing? For example, kext/kernel panics (is that even a thing still?) or major pieces of hardware suddenly not being supported, and so on...

 

Has migrating your Hackintosh to the latest release has gotten easier in recent years? So for those of you who have been making builds for a while, is going from Sierra to High Sierra causing you fewer problems than Mavericks --> Yosemite for example or Yosemite --> El Capitan etc? 

 

Sorry if this is a bit broad and ignorant, but I've been away from the forums for quite a while and just trying to get a sense of how "stable" and "future-proof" Hackintoshes are these days - compared to Apple's own desktops ...

 

I'm OK not updating incrementally ie v13.1 to v13.2 if I need to, but I'm worried about having to start completely from scratch with each new main version.

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well FWIW, I made my Hackintosh with Mavericks, when that was current, and upgraded it ever since with almost no problems... until the upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra which, after a couple of false starts that just failed but left me with a working system, finally killed it when I tried harder to push the upgrade through. So my Hackintosh is currently not a hackintosh but just a PC running Ubuntu Linux, which has thankfully chosen this moment to finally get usable HiDPI support (with caveats).

 

I may yet try again. Its partition still awaits... According to discussions around here the fault may have been in having an nVidia GPU, so I may try taking that out and doing a fresh install of High Sierra on the onboard Intel HD4600 and then putting the nVidia back in and sorting out its drivers, and finally restoring from the backup I made before the failed upgrade. That's an effort to go through if Ubuntu manages to annoy me too seriously, or I, once again, just want a change in scenery that badly!

 

However, I must say, while the previous upgrades did go through relatively painlessly, the stress and worry about them failing, as eventually happened, was always the biggest fly in the ointment. If Apple made the desktop machine I want, I'd totally buy it, and pay more than I could build the hardware equivalent for, for that peace of mind. But they don't. They're all either underpowered, ridiculously overpowered, or just-right-powered but with an unwanted and expensive screen welded to the side.

 

(After all it's not as if I don't already have two real apple laptops - on which Linux runs OOTB better than it does on this PC too, as it happens... I will buy the Apple kit if the right kit exists.)

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Thanks for that input, StrangeNoises! Anyone else?

I've had hackintoshes for years. In my experience each new platform lasts for a few major OS upgrades, or more, but as it gets older you have to jump through more hoops. I just upgraded my hardware to X299 and a Vega GPU, both of which are pretty well native with High Sierra and I imagine they'll survive the next 2 or 3 OS upgrades if not more.

One great thing recently is whatevergreen kext which allows most AMD GPUs to work without a lot of hassle.

I'm not an AMD fanboy, but it seems that the Nvidia cards are more trouble and users are stuck with waiting for new drivers every major or sometimes minor upgrade to the OS.

The X299 and the Vega are great for my design work and happen to be very close to the upcoming Mac Pro, so should last for as long as Apple supports that machine.

 

So, to answer your questions, I'm betting on my system to survive the next upgrade 100%, the one after 95% and after that I'll be getting a new machine haha.

In fact, I think the next OS will run my stuff better because that's when the new Mac Pro will be out there and Apple users will be helping my hack to run better (Things like EIST support).

The i9 runs without kernel or kext patches and I only use a few kexts for USB and network, so no panics unless I do too much experimenting with the EFI.

Upgrades are just done through the App Store now.

 

Hope this helps :)

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Thanks for that input, StrangeNoises! Anyone else?

Well as @StrangeNoises and @surfinchin stated their success stories I can tell you this, I've been using hackintoshes for over 10 years from macOS Tiger to macOS High Sierra and I never used windows for my day to day tasks for past 10 years, I have few PCs and as you can see in my signature and they still work great with macOS (except my oldest build which I haven't installed macOS High Sierra on yet). So to answer your question about the stability and being supported in the future releases of macOS if you choose your hardware wisely (being more compatible with macOS) you can use it until they get really old.

 

There are many great people in the hackintosh scene and they are working nonstop to improve the hackintosh support and they are really doing a great job. There are many success stories under the "Installation Guides" that you can review and find the best config that suits your needs.

 

Building a Hackintosh is not as easy as having to install windows or linux on your PC and it can be frustrating sometimes specially if you are new to this.

 

About the future of the hackintosh I can't say for sure if it's going to go on forever or if Apple decides to use their own processors in their next computers like they did back in the day (before 1996 that they switched to intel from PowerPC Architecture).

 

But for now we can enjoy the elegance of macOS on our computers thanks to our developers and coders.

 

Cheers 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update kext, clover bootloader, apfs.efi (if you use apfs) -> Update nVidia Web Driver (if you use nvidia gpu) -> Download the update -> Reboot -> Select the Installer entry -> Wait -> Done

 

I updated from 10.12.6 -> 10.3 -> 10.3 (with a update). Also, if you install Windows 10 as dual-boot you can install/uninstall/modify kext, config.plist any time you broke your system. You can use Time Machine to restore your system back to the working state, I tried it before

 

edit: also if you have some data on your Mac hard drive, you can use MacDrive from windows to backup it 

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