Jargon — Does “EFI” mean something different on this forum from what I thought it meant?

[Captain Flack]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

I've been learning Hackintosh jargon by browsing this learned forum and linked articles elsewhere, but one thing is still puzzling me.

 

I see posters here asking other posters to provide a copy of their EFI, and correspondingly I see posters attaching zip files with the string “EFI” in the file-name. My initial reaction was that building a Hackintosh must be very complicated indeed if it requires flashing the firmware — since EFI stands for Extensible firmware Interface. But then I noticed that there's not a lot of discussion of either the hardware or the software that's used for flashing firmware (I've used both while switching a Coreboot laptop's payload from SeaBIOS to Tianocore, but am no expert, so just followed a recipe).

 

So I'm wondering if people here are using the acronym “EFi” to mean something else. Is it, for instance, being used as a snappy name for “the EFI system partition's ‘EFI’ directory and all the delights contained therein”? Or was I right to begin with? Or something completely different?

 

Thank you!

[iWin32]

In Hackintosh circles, sending a copy of your EFI means what you said second: "the EFI system partition's ‘EFI’ directory and all the delights contained therein".  However, I would caution you as someone new to Hackintoshing that if you do ever ask for help and are asked to share your EFI, you don't want to share your config.plist with the serial number in.  Apple has in the past seen serials used to create Hackintoshes online (whether in config.plist or screenshots of About This Mac) and blacklisted them and potentially any Apple IDs associated with it.

 

As far as getting started, I would suggest looking at the Dortania's OpenCore Install Guide to get started.  But for the most part, you don't have to flash your computer's BIOS or anything just to set up a Hackintosh.  The only time I could see that as necessary is using a modified BIOS to remove whitelists on WiFi cards so you can install a compatible Broadcom card for Hackintosh.  Older Lenovo and HP laptops are particularly the ones to look out for in that regard, otherwise, you shouldn't have to flash anything.