eskimo macinoid Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 Greetings fellow macheads. I wanted to discuss my experiences switching to a real Mac so Insanely Mac visitors could make informed decisions if they are contemplating the same move. A little background: the first experience I had with Mac OSX was with a Powerbook a Soldier was using during my 2005-2006 Iraq deployment. I was immediately impressed with the elegance and ease of use of the operating system. At the time, I thought it wouldn't be feasible to make the change because of the investment I had in Windows software, specifically an Adobe Creative Suite. In January 2008, I discovered the OSX86 community and downloaded iAtkos 10.5. My system was a 2.4 Core 2 Duo, X1950XT video card, 8 GB RAM, on an Asus micro ATX board (I forget which one exactly). Though it took quite a few workarounds to get Windows XP running with sound on that setup, everything worked out of the box with iAtkos (last time that would ever happen). I was shocked and well pleased. I crossgraded the Creative Suite with a simple call to Adobe, and I substituted a lot of Windows programs with free counterparts like OpenOffice. All was well, though it took quite a few workarounds once I upgraded to a Q9550 quad-core processor and the P5E-VM DO motherboard (I do remember that one). The workarounds became more difficult and, over time, sometimes impossible dependent on what parts I sourced. For instance, though I successfully upgrade to a 4850, I got a GTS-250 working. Though I had updated to 10.5.8, I couldn't get Snow Leopard working after several attempts. Still, I was happy with Leopard and saw little reason to upgrade to 10.6. Then I had another problem. I seriously got into video editing. It took quite a few workarounds to get my legitimate copy of Final Cut Studio 3 working. That wasn't an insurmountable problem. What got me considering a real Mac for video duty was I couldn't upgrade to Final Cut 7.0.2 (much less 7.0.3) without the whole house coming down. Then, my motherboard died. A fuller explanation in the next post. I actually purchased a real Mac long before my hackintosh motherboard died. Because I needed mobile capability for my job (photojournalism), I purchased a refurbished late 2006 Macbook Pro for $1,200 (originally MSRP'd for around $2,000). This forum indicated to me, at the time, it was an order of magnitude more difficult to get OSX86 running on notebooks, so I opted for the MBP. Though the MBP was fine for mobile work, I still needed my quad-core hackintosh to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. Back then (late 2008), if you wanted a quad core Mac, you had to pony up $2,500+ for a Mac Pro. My system was made for around $1,100. So, the two lived in perfect harmony with each other, the MBP for road work and the hackintosh for nitty-gritty daily work. For more than two years, I didn't see a reason to switch to a Mac desktop. The benefits vs. cost just didn't add up. Times have changed a lot since my first hackintosh in January 2008. Back then, the Apple tax was dear. Though it is still, for the most part, dear today, I would argue it was far more back then. My $1,200 overclocked hackintosh performed better than Macs which sold for $3,400, at least on synthetic benchmarks. Why wouldn't I go the hackintosh route? Then things changed in the Fall of 2009. Apple comprehensively upgraded the iMac line, adding LED backlit displays backed by powerful processors and GPUs. Though the interim desktop many had asked for between iMac and Mac Pro failed to materialize, the 27" iMacs were certainly showing the horsepower to be an intermediate step between the Macbook Pros and the Mac Pro desktops. Though the numbers still didn't add up at retail prices, they looked mighty good refurbished. I bought a refurbished iMac 27" Quad Core Nehalem 2.8 with 512MB 4850 for $1,699, $500 less than its original $2,199 MSRP. A refurbished Mac is like new and comes with full warranty. From my research, refurbished Macs purchased from Apple are computers found to have a defect during inspection and are sent back for the defect to be rectified. My 2006 MBP is a refurb and I am typing on it for this post. They are rock solid. Well, for $1,699, a 27" iMac i7 is heck of a lot of computer. The screen sells separately for $1,000 and the guts purchased separately cost more than that. For the first time, Apple made a computer which was cost effective in my eyes. My iMac worked perfectly out the box. Why wouldn't it? Then I had a problem. I figured the iMac was like every computer, desktop or notebook, I had owned in the past eight years. I figured I could work on it myself. I wanted to take the solid state drive from my dead hackintosh and install it in my iMac. I followed an online how-to and a simple mistake ended up breaking an internal display cable port which connected the logic board to the LCD. You see, I got used to solid and durable connections, CPU lands instead of chintzy pins which could break easily, bricking the computer. The inside of an iMac is chock full of chintzy, delicate connectors just begging to break which have more in common with 1995 technology than with the modular, robust equipment us system builders have become accustomed to. It was an expensive mistake which was completely my fault. I knew the logic board had to be replaced. The local Mac store quoted $1,400 for it! $1,400 for a piece of a $1,699 computer. The tech said it was because the logic board was effectively the entire computer (there are several logic boards inside a Mac for major components). Besides the GPU, CPU, aforementioned $1,000 screen, hard drive, casing, keyboard, mouse, disk drive, and other major logic boards, I suppose I could agree with the tech. I ran into the first major pitfall in the real Mac world: though the RAM was user upgradeable, nothing else was. User upgradeability is, for many, the greatest reason for the hackintosh, even over and above initial purchase price. Luckily, at the time, I had more money than sense. The iMac worked, I just needed to connect an external LCD to it. Which sucked, because I had this beautiful, dead 27" display sitting behind my crappy 23" HP monitor. Not cool. So I saved a little bit more money and purchased a 2010 iMac 2.93 quad core...Pretty much the same computer, but slightly updated. It runs a 1GB 5750 instead of the older 4850. This time I turned in the computer to the Mac store to have them install the drive. They break it, they buy it. Then there was the second pitfall: having to rely on Mac techs for support. First off, it's a miracle they decided to put a non-standard drive into one of their precious Macs. Then, I paid a guy $100 for 15 minutes worth of work (they charge for a minimum of an hour), who wasn't the tech. The tech came in the next day and said he wouldn't install the drive because it didn't fit into the bay perfectly. I explained how I installed the drive in the other iMac, and he said he didn't do "ghetto" work. So I brought him an OCZ sled which came with the drive. Though it mounted on both sides with two screws and could be stabilized with the iMac's chassis standoff, he STILL wouldn't accept it because it didn't mount securely in all four points. I already paid this guy! So I ordered a Rosewill full-perimeter sled and he finally installed it. It took nearly a week and a half from the time I dropped off the computer, did the runaround with the tech, ordered another sled and had it installed. For years, I have replaced my own parts in all of my computers and now I was reduced to groveling to a tech who knows how to replace parts, but doesn't know anything about computers. To most Mac techs, a Mac is a black box. They don't understand Socket 1366 vs. 1166 or GDDR5 vs. GDDR3, and I am now wholly dependent on these people! Gah! As a note, the iMac's stock hard drive has a heat sensor. If you put in an SSD, this heat sensor is disconnected and the fan will run at full blast, becoming super loud (louder than any PC). This is where hackintosh experience came into play. The fix required SMC Fan Control and some terminal work. It was like the good old days! When I spoke to the Mac techs about the workaround, they gave me a blank stare... With the iMac, everything just works (for the most part). Updates are simple, both for the OS and for Final Cut Studio. The display is brilliant and almost worth the cost, especially with an external second monitor (the aforementioned crappy HP). I don't spend time trolling forums to see if the latest video card is supported. I don't worry about updates (again, for the most part). It goes to sleep and wakes up again without any theatrics. So, I'm pretty happy with the machine. It's super stable, but so was my hackintosh. The biggest thing I miss is having drives carried internally. The only thing I have on the internal SSD is the OS and the programs. I have three external drives (which were internal SATA on my hackintosh) which cover long-term storage, short-term storage (for raw AVCHD files), and scratch drive for rendered video files and NEF files. I like to be able to read from one drive and to write to another, making for faster IO times. One drive is Firewire 800 and the other two are USB...WAY slower than SATA drives. It takes a lot longer for them to wake up and I have to turn them off manually when I turn off the computer. Storage hard drives are definitely my new performance bottleneck. I could have bought a Mac Pro for internal storage, but I can't justify their costs under any circumstances and they use a gimpy error correcting codes memory which isn't as efficient as standard DDR3 found in iMacs. About every other week, I get a problem with super slow startup (2+ minutes) followed by the blue screen of death. I have to start in safe mode, and change ownership in the terminal (thanks again, hackintosh experience), and the problem goes away. Apple forums seem to indicate my non-standard drive as the culprit. What?!? Whatever, it's annoying but not crippling. One thing about the SSD: with genuine EFI, startup happens in about 12 seconds with desktop ready to go! Whoa. No more slow BIOS and EFI emulation. Then there was the 10.6.5 update. The iMac I broke is now running my home theater system which is sweet because I can watch ripped blu-rays (through an external blu-ray drive and MakeMKV) on my 40" TV and Bose surround system. It works far better than my buggy HP HTPC. However, the 10.6.5 update completely broke external displays in this particular setup. There was a nasty flickering problem which basically bricked the machine. Again, forums identified this as a relatively widespread issue with 10.6.5 and external displays. So much for updating without fear, I was forced to to reformat that iMac and download the combo 10.6.4 update. I was getting hackintosh flashbacks with a GENUINE MAC. WTH! I thought I was done with cat and mouse games In conclusion, was the changeover worth it? For me, it was and is. For 95% of you, you will want to stick with your hackintosh. I appreciate my genuine Macs for their build quality, design and (most of the time) lack of drama. No more kernel panics, no more broken QE/CI. Best of all, Final Cut Studio works better than it ever did in a hackintosh (EVERYTHING else always worked well). For most of us hackintoshers, the switch isn't worth it because of the lack of freedom to upgrade, the extra costs, having to deal with techs who know less than you do about computers, and dealing with bugs which aren't unique to hackintosh. I for one, am sticking with real Macs and I believe my hackintosh days are behind me. For most of you, I suspect, the hackintosh will always be the way to go. Let me know if you have any questions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poplars Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 very interesting.... I think I fall into the 5% because I want to record and make music on Mac OS X.. and I"m inclined to think if final cut pro doesn't work well like that protools and garage band wont work as well in hackintosh either.. but I will tinkner with it and all that jazz. have had good success with it on my dimension 4700... thanks for writing that up though, I enjoyed reading it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frostit Posted December 5, 2010 Share Posted December 5, 2010 That's a great post thanks sharing the the problems with your iMac I thought they would have better hardware inside I always thought apple had better hardware and I think the Mac book pro is built better than any other notebook because of the unibody case. I have a i7 pc that I built and I never got snow leopard working perfectly so I switched to Linux for now but I will try again later when I have mor time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eskimo macinoid Posted December 6, 2010 Author Share Posted December 6, 2010 Poplars, Honestly, I haven't had trouble with with Final Cut Studio until the 7.02 update (current version is 7.03). The 7.01 update is solid and I never had trouble with it. Not being able to update bothered me for illogical reasons. I never had trouble with iDVD or iMovie. Never worked with Garage Band. Still, if you make a living with Apples Pro Applications, like I do, I think it pays to own a Mac. However, that being said, I think the stretch to a Mac Pro may be worth it with its capability to carry internal drives...but then the Apple tax is too dear. Xeon chips' premiums over their Core counterparts just isn't worth it in my opinion. Frostit, The hardware is top notch from a build quality perspective, just fragile from a service perspective. One of the Apple techs said Apple does that to ensure they are only worked on by certified personnel who know what will break and what won't. I was shocked to see how fragile the iMac insides were considering I've taken my 2006 MBP apart numerous times with no trouble. Still, Macs certainly aren't user serviceable (the Mac Pro besides) without some sort of risk of bricking your expensive machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ntsmkfob Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 There are excellent tutorials on ifixit.com covering dismantling most iMac models. Well worth a look to see if you feel up to it before getting the hammer and chisel out. I bought a defective early 2008 24" earlier in the year and have now replaced every major electronic part, other than the display. It's on it's 5th GPU, as the replacement parts from Apple are all refurbs, and only come with a 90 day warranty, and yet they charge £200 for effectively a 8800GT. Fortunately, all the failures after the first have (just) been within the 90 day period. As the parts are so expensive from Apple, parts on eBay tend to be stupidly priced as well, considering they are pulls from failed 2/3 year old machines and probably about to die themselves. If I get another mac, it'll need to be a late model, with applecare, and a calendar reminder to sell it before the applecare runs out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoganDrummer Posted April 4, 2011 Share Posted April 4, 2011 Greetings fellow macheads.I wanted to discuss my experiences switching to a real Mac so Insanely Mac visitors could make informed decisions if they are contemplating the same move. A little background: the first experience I had with Mac OSX was with a Powerbook a Soldier was using during my 2005-2006 Iraq deployment. I was immediately impressed with the elegance and ease of use of the operating system. At the time, I thought it wouldn't be feasible to make the change because of the investment I had in Windows software, specifically an Adobe Creative Suite. In January 2008, I discovered the OSX86 community and downloaded iAtkos 10.5. My system was a 2.4 Core 2 Duo, X1950XT video card, 8 GB RAM, on an Asus micro ATX board (I forget which one exactly). Though it took quite a few workarounds to get Windows XP running with sound on that setup, everything worked out of the box with iAtkos (last time that would ever happen). I was shocked and well pleased. I crossgraded the Creative Suite with a simple call to Adobe, and I substituted a lot of Windows programs with free counterparts like OpenOffice. All was well, though it took quite a few workarounds once I upgraded to a Q9550 quad-core processor and the P5E-VM DO motherboard (I do remember that one). The workarounds became more difficult and, over time, sometimes impossible dependent on what parts I sourced. For instance, though I successfully upgrade to a 4850, I got a GTS-250 working. Though I had updated to 10.5.8, I couldn't get Snow Leopard working after several attempts. Still, I was happy with Leopard and saw little reason to upgrade to 10.6. Then I had another problem. I seriously got into video editing. It took quite a few workarounds to get my legitimate copy of Final Cut Studio 3 working. That wasn't an insurmountable problem. What got me considering a real Mac for video duty was I couldn't upgrade to Final Cut 7.0.2 (much less 7.0.3) without the whole house coming down. Then, my motherboard died. A fuller explanation in the next post. I actually purchased a real Mac long before my hackintosh motherboard died. Because I needed mobile capability for my job (photojournalism), I purchased a refurbished late 2006 Macbook Pro for $1,200 (originally MSRP'd for around $2,000). This forum indicated to me, at the time, it was an order of magnitude more difficult to get OSX86 running on notebooks, so I opted for the MBP. Though the MBP was fine for mobile work, I still needed my quad-core hackintosh to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. Back then (late 2008), if you wanted a quad core Mac, you had to pony up $2,500+ for a Mac Pro. My system was made for around $1,100. So, the two lived in perfect harmony with each other, the MBP for road work and the hackintosh for nitty-gritty daily work. For more than two years, I didn't see a reason to switch to a Mac desktop. The benefits vs. cost just didn't add up. Times have changed a lot since my first hackintosh in January 2008. Back then, the Apple tax was dear. Though it is still, for the most part, dear today, I would argue it was far more back then. My $1,200 overclocked hackintosh performed better than Macs which sold for $3,400, at least on synthetic benchmarks. Why wouldn't I go the hackintosh route? Then things changed in the Fall of 2009. Apple comprehensively upgraded the iMac line, adding LED backlit displays backed by powerful processors and GPUs. Though the interim desktop many had asked for between iMac and Mac Pro failed to materialize, the 27" iMacs were certainly showing the horsepower to be an intermediate step between the Macbook Pros and the Mac Pro desktops. Though the numbers still didn't add up at retail prices, they looked mighty good refurbished. I bought a refurbished iMac 27" Quad Core Nehalem 2.8 with 512MB 4850 for $1,699, $500 less than its original $2,199 MSRP. A refurbished Mac is like new and comes with full warranty. From my research, refurbished Macs purchased from Apple are computers found to have a defect during inspection and are sent back for the defect to be rectified. My 2006 MBP is a refurb and I am typing on it for this post. They are rock solid. Well, for $1,699, a 27" iMac i7 is heck of a lot of computer. The screen sells separately for $1,000 and the guts purchased separately cost more than that. For the first time, Apple made a computer which was cost effective in my eyes. My iMac worked perfectly out the box. Why wouldn't it? Then I had a problem. I figured the iMac was like every computer, desktop or notebook, I had owned in the past eight years. I figured I could work on it myself. I wanted to take the solid state drive from my dead hackintosh and install it in my iMac. I followed an online how-to and a simple mistake ended up breaking an internal display cable port which connected the logic board to the LCD. You see, I got used to solid and durable connections, CPU lands instead of chintzy pins which could break easily, bricking the computer. The inside of an iMac is chock full of chintzy, delicate connectors just begging to break which have more in common with 1995 technology than with the modular, robust equipment us system builders have become accustomed to. It was an expensive mistake which was completely my fault. I knew the logic board had to be replaced. The local Mac store quoted $1,400 for it! $1,400 for a piece of a $1,699 computer. The tech said it was because the logic board was effectively the entire computer (there are several logic boards inside a Mac for major components). Besides the GPU, CPU, aforementioned $1,000 screen, hard drive, casing, keyboard, mouse, disk drive, and other major logic boards, I suppose I could agree with the tech. I ran into the first major pitfall in the real Mac world: though the RAM was user upgradeable, nothing else was. User upgradeability is, for many, the greatest reason for the hackintosh, even over and above initial purchase price. Luckily, at the time, I had more money than sense. The iMac worked, I just needed to connect an external LCD to it. Which sucked, because I had this beautiful, dead 27" display sitting behind my crappy 23" HP monitor. Not cool. So I saved a little bit more money and purchased a 2010 iMac 2.93 quad core...Pretty much the same computer, but slightly updated. It runs a 1GB 5750 instead of the older 4850. This time I turned in the computer to the Mac store to have them install the drive. They break it, they buy it. Then there was the second pitfall: having to rely on Mac techs for support. First off, it's a miracle they decided to put a non-standard drive into one of their precious Macs. Then, I paid a guy $100 for 15 minutes worth of work (they charge for a minimum of an hour), who wasn't the tech. The tech came in the next day and said he wouldn't install the drive because it didn't fit into the bay perfectly. I explained how I installed the drive in the other iMac, and he said he didn't do "ghetto" work. So I brought him an OCZ sled which came with the drive. Though it mounted on both sides with two screws and could be stabilized with the iMac's chassis standoff, he STILL wouldn't accept it because it didn't mount securely in all four points. I already paid this guy! So I ordered a Rosewill full-perimeter sled and he finally installed it. It took nearly a week and a half from the time I dropped off the computer, did the runaround with the tech, ordered another sled and had it installed. For years, I have replaced my own parts in all of my computers and now I was reduced to groveling to a tech who knows how to replace parts, but doesn't know anything about computers. To most Mac techs, a Mac is a black box. They don't understand Socket 1366 vs. 1166 or GDDR5 vs. GDDR3, and I am now wholly dependent on these people! Gah! As a note, the iMac's stock hard drive has a heat sensor. If you put in an SSD, this heat sensor is disconnected and the fan will run at full blast, becoming super loud (louder than any PC). This is where hackintosh experience came into play. The fix required SMC Fan Control and some terminal work. It was like the good old days! When I spoke to the Mac techs about the workaround, they gave me a blank stare... With the iMac, everything just works (for the most part). Updates are simple, both for the OS and for Final Cut Studio. The display is brilliant and almost worth the cost, especially with an external second monitor (the aforementioned crappy HP). I don't spend time trolling forums to see if the latest video card is supported. I don't worry about updates (again, for the most part). It goes to sleep and wakes up again without any theatrics. So, I'm pretty happy with the machine. It's super stable, but so was my hackintosh. The biggest thing I miss is having drives carried internally. The only thing I have on the internal SSD is the OS and the programs. I have three external drives (which were internal SATA on my hackintosh) which cover long-term storage, short-term storage (for raw AVCHD files), and scratch drive for rendered video files and NEF files. I like to be able to read from one drive and to write to another, making for faster IO times. One drive is Firewire 800 and the other two are USB...WAY slower than SATA drives. It takes a lot longer for them to wake up and I have to turn them off manually when I turn off the computer. Storage hard drives are definitely my new performance bottleneck. I could have bought a Mac Pro for internal storage, but I can't justify their costs under any circumstances and they use a gimpy error correcting codes memory which isn't as efficient as standard DDR3 found in iMacs. About every other week, I get a problem with super slow startup (2+ minutes) followed by the blue screen of death. I have to start in safe mode, and change ownership in the terminal (thanks again, hackintosh experience), and the problem goes away. Apple forums seem to indicate my non-standard drive as the culprit. What?!? Whatever, it's annoying but not crippling. One thing about the SSD: with genuine EFI, startup happens in about 12 seconds with desktop ready to go! Whoa. No more slow BIOS and EFI emulation. Then there was the 10.6.5 update. The iMac I broke is now running my home theater system which is sweet because I can watch ripped blu-rays (through an external blu-ray drive and MakeMKV) on my 40" TV and Bose surround system. It works far better than my buggy HP HTPC. However, the 10.6.5 update completely broke external displays in this particular setup. There was a nasty flickering problem which basically bricked the machine. Again, forums identified this as a relatively widespread issue with 10.6.5 and external displays. So much for updating without fear, I was forced to to reformat that iMac and download the combo 10.6.4 update. I was getting hackintosh flashbacks with a GENUINE MAC. WTH! I thought I was done with cat and mouse games In conclusion, was the changeover worth it? For me, it was and is. For 95% of you, you will want to stick with your hackintosh. I appreciate my genuine Macs for their build quality, design and (most of the time) lack of drama. No more kernel panics, no more broken QE/CI. Best of all, Final Cut Studio works better than it ever did in a hackintosh (EVERYTHING else always worked well). For most of us hackintoshers, the switch isn't worth it because of the lack of freedom to upgrade, the extra costs, having to deal with techs who know less than you do about computers, and dealing with bugs which aren't unique to hackintosh. I for one, am sticking with real Macs and I believe my hackintosh days are behind me. For most of you, I suspect, the hackintosh will always be the way to go. Let me know if you have any questions. Well I am using a real Mac, and i love it to death. However, I want a more beafy machine and have a $1200 budget. With that small of a budget, It wont get me a beefy machine. If i had $2500+; I would by a Mac pro with out even considering a Hackintosh. Mac if you can afford it, Hackintosh if you cant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hackintosh2000 Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 In conclusion, was the changeover worth it? For me, it was and is. For 95% of you, you will want to stick with your hackintosh.I appreciate my genuine Macs for their build quality, design and (most of the time) lack of drama. No more kernel panics, no more broken QE/CI. Best of all, Final Cut Studio works better than it ever did in a hackintosh (EVERYTHING else always worked well). For most of us hackintoshers, the switch isn't worth it because of the lack of freedom to upgrade, the extra costs, having to deal with techs who know less than you do about computers, and dealing with bugs which aren't unique to hackintosh. I for one, am sticking with real Macs and I believe my hackintosh days are behind me. For most of you, I suspect, the hackintosh will always be the way to go. Let me know if you have any questions. I joined the hackintosh community a couple of months ago. I think if you are joining now your experience will be better than the OP's. Now you can carefully research and select all your components to ensure maximum compatibility. I have an off the shelf PC and using the Nawcom ModUSB method I got everything working OoTB. I only have two issues. I have to unplug my rear speakers after I boot into the OS and replug them in to get sound. I don't know why. The other problem is sound fed through the line in jack does not sound as clear as when the PC is running Win 7. I aslo haven't tried my bluetooth out with the magic mouse. And that's about it. The only time I got KPs was once I started fiddling with the original install. The right kind of hardware along with the nawcom ModUSB and Madl0n patched DSDT gets me a pretty vanilla setup. I've heard of people running FCP on a hackintosh as their production machine. If you custom build and overclock you can get an impressive machine for substantially less than a mac. Besides upgrading my Chameleon bootloader I've gone from 10.6.3 Retail and upgraded without changing a single kext all the way up to Lion DP4. I tried nawcom's ModUSB on a friend's off the shelf PC and it worked too. The only thing that never worked was sleep. The desktop is going strong. No KPs. I learned from my previous errors. The great part about a hackintosh custom build is you can buy a solid case, power supply, DVD drive, and hard drive and go through a couple of upgrade cycles by buying just a motherboard, CPU and probably some RAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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