Any Hackintosh users?

[plurgid]

I did it a couple years ago.
It was a hassle. Eventually I broke down and payed my "apple tax" for supported hardware.

Here's why you don't want to go there: software updates.
they break shit CONSTANTLY.

And when they do it sets off a days long goose chase to get your video drivers working agian, to get your audio device drivers working again (it fucked up my firewire audio driver every last time).

When this happens you are relegated to googling answers from 15 year old H4x0rz in shady forums and downloading patches from megadownload and shit.

I'm telling you ... if you want to make music on a hackintosh you're gonna be frustrated as hell. Better off to install Linux + Reaper or something if you really want to go cheap. Otherwise just pony up and get the apple hardware and you can get back to making music.

On the other hand if you want to fuck around with computers instead of making music, it's a fantastic learning experience.

That was my take away from the experience anyhow. Your milage may vary, as they say.

[calaverasgrandes]

as far as the apple tax goes, it varies. The Mac Mini is an insanely good deal. It's well under a grand and is perfectly adept at doing most work you ever need to do on a Mac. Shame it doesnt come with and i5 or i7!

The notebooks are kinda apple taxed, you can certainly find cheaper i5 and i7 based notebooks out there. But one you start looking at notebooks that have decent firewire and well actually look good (as opposed to the trendy ugly designs that HP and Dell try and foist on us) the price gap narrows. It's also worth mentioning that the built in audio on a Macbook Pro is actually useable. Not to mix a freaking record with, but you can certainly do your edits and such with Logic and a pair of headphones. Try that on your Lenovo or Dell. For whatever reason the built in audio on other notebooks is always pitifully bad. As in will not work without absurd buffer sizes and even then sounds so bad you cant tell a kick from a snare.

I do agree that the Mac pro needs a mid sized sibling. It is a behemoth. I love how much room they have inside and how eaasy they are to work on. Alse how silent they are. But most users never install any other cards and rarely go beyond a second disk. iMac is not an alternative for many reasons, difficulty of upgrading, lack of second hard drive, single firewire port etc. The iMac is somewhat of a good deal for what it gives you, but compared to notebooks the only thing that really makes it a good deal is the size of the display.
I dont think we will see a halfpint mac pro because I just dont see too many mac pros sold at all. Heck they just killed off the xserve and now want folks to buy minis or mac pros as servers. Too bad, the Xserve had most of the things that make the mac pro attractive. But in a smaller box.

[kslight]

as far as the apple tax goes, it varies. The Mac Mini is an insanely good deal. It's well under a grand and is perfectly adept at doing most work you ever need to do on a Mac. Shame it doesnt come with and i5 or i7!

The notebooks are kinda apple taxed, you can certainly find cheaper i5 and i7 based notebooks out there. But one you start looking at notebooks that have decent firewire and well actually look good (as opposed to the trendy ugly designs that HP and Dell try and foist on us) the price gap narrows. It's also worth mentioning that the built in audio on a Macbook Pro is actually useable. Not to mix a freaking record with, but you can certainly do your edits and such with Logic and a pair of headphones. Try that on your Lenovo or Dell. For whatever reason the built in audio on other notebooks is always pitifully bad. As in will not work without absurd buffer sizes and even then sounds so bad you cant tell a kick from a snare.

I do agree that the Mac pro needs a mid sized sibling. It is a behemoth. I love how much room they have inside and how eaasy they are to work on. Alse how silent they are. But most users never install any other cards and rarely go beyond a second disk. iMac is not an alternative for many reasons, difficulty of upgrading, lack of second hard drive, single firewire port etc. The iMac is somewhat of a good deal for what it gives you, but compared to notebooks the only thing that really makes it a good deal is the size of the display.
I dont think we will see a halfpint mac pro because I just dont see too many mac pros sold at all. Heck they just killed off the xserve and now want folks to buy minis or mac pros as servers. Too bad, the Xserve had most of the things that make the mac pro attractive. But in a smaller box.

I'm not a fan of the iMac because of the "disposable" nature of it...as in well you can't really upgrade anything "in" it, it has to be plugged in. If it blows up I either have to take it back to Apple (assuming it failed within warranty, or within Applecare), or take it to a tech (which I hate doing, because I prefer to work on things myself...car, guitars, computers...), or chuck it. The iMac "might" be a sell for me if I could get one with an Expresscard slot and/or at least another dedicated firewire port... I know some folks may like huge screens but a 27" screen is a bit on the overkill side of things for my purposes, I'd rather save some money and get a quad core 21.5" screen...which can't be configured. Or actually what would be really preferable IMHO is if they made a Mac mini with a quad core i5 or i7, 2 firewire ports... If they offered such a thing for $1500 how many people do you think would buy it instead of a Mac Pro, or instead of wanting to build their own system?

Or just make a Mac Pro without the registered memory and Xeon processor...I could be wrong but I feel like a Xeon is excessive for most audio applications that I'm aware of, and that the difference between it and a comparably spec'ed i7 is probably not as huge as the price tag.

What drives me crazy about Apple is that they really expect you to be content with either a basically non-expandable system (which applies to all of their laptops now since they don't have an expresscard slot anymore), or a server class system (which I have no doubt is fast and comes in a neat case, but is likely to be overkill for a lot of people that buy it). I think they make cool devices (hell I have an iPhone 3GS and think its great and plan to buy my wife an iPad when the next gen comes out) but their computer marketing strategy leaves something to be desired. I probably don't matter to Apple as a consumer because I'm not 100% blindly thrilled with their computer options (which I feel that if I'm going to spend $2200+ on a computer, I really should be...well you know that quad core iMac looks okay but comes with a huge screen which I don't have desk space for, the Macbook Pros look nice but no expresscard slot and not quad core, the Mac Pro looks neat but 3gb of memory for the entry level model....give me a break no I'm not paying $200 to make it what it should be in the first place...screw the fancy video card I'd rather have a somewhat cheaper video card out of the box personally than get cheaped out on the RAM).

Better off to install Linux + Reaper or something if you really want to go cheap

Have to use Pro Tools and no plugins I use work under Linux. I don't have a problem with the idea of Linux as an OS but I'm not sold on the software options....Windows 7 seems much more appealing than Linux to me, which is kind of like picking out which Porta-John is most appealing at Warped Tour near the taco stand. Okay maybe not quite that bad...but..

1-I figured out a while ago that buying the retail version (instead of hacked) entitles me to support and interim releases (the x.1.2 bug fixes etc). This goes for all software, OS and plugins.
2-I don't want to deal with drivers. This has been a major bane of my existence as an IT guy since 64 bit has started gathering steam.
3-I actually really like the way macbooks look. Come on, you know you want one.
4-Firewire is Macs baby, they pioneered it, so it MUST work on their hardware.

1. I have no intention of pirating any software, OS/plugins/or otherwise, and agree with the foundations your statement.
2. Agree.
3. Agree they look great and perform well but somewhat disappointed that I have to pay extra to get a screen that does not glare and can't get an express card slot any more (unless I buy a previous gen model, which forgoes the first point). Does this drive anyone but me crazy? I have a Dell laptop that is a couple years old when they first started doing the glossy screens...it looks good in the right light but I'm not a fan of the glossy screen and don't understand why every laptop has one now.
4. Hot damn agreed.

[calaverasgrandes]

It's kinda a minor controversy among my friends and family that I bought a mac laptop. I have advised all of them against buying macs in the past. They dont "just work". Like all computers they require a certain amount of user intervention. They only place I really place them above PCs on the casual user level is for virii. But with a decent firewall/AV client and some proactive user education (dont install anything from the web you arent sure about!) they are just as solid.
The MAC is a perfect fit for me as a creative pro and IT guy. There really isnt anything else I should be looking at. You can use Adobe CS5 on Windows for example, but I have yet to see anyone working in a professional design capacity that does.

As far as the Mac form factors, I swear Jobs has some kind of weird aversion to reasonable form factors. Apple stuff is always at extremes. WAY too big (imac and mac pro) or way too small (mac mini, mac air, nano etc).
If they came out with a mac tower that was half the size of the mac pro tower, maybe only 2 PCIe slots, 2 drive bays, one optical bay and the sam number of ports I would so be on it. Maybe reserve the single die multicore machines for a half size mac pro and the multi CPU multi core setups for hte full size.

Possibly Jobs recalls the mid 90's Apple when there were too many mac models. You had nearly identical versions of the 9000 and 8000 series that were only distinguished by the size of the box. Well I think certain 9000's had a juiced up memory buss or a processor that was 10mhz faster. But still it was very confusing! So I think Jobs wants apples product categories to be more clearcut. Though honestly, seeing how few towers they sell compared to notebooks, imacs and minis I think we are lucky they are still around. I know one person with a tower. All the producers I know have iMacs or laptops these days.
All the macs I supported at my former day job are 95% laptops and a smattering of minis, imacs and mac pros.

What is kinda odd to me is that nobody has yet beat the imac for design. It's kinda clunky to me, but the HP/Dell/Asus clones are even worse!

[kslight]

Hmm didn't know they had firewire on Mac Minis now, but the processor speed definitely leaves something to be desired...and so much for UAD on there... My current desktop isn't hugely slower than the Mini and I run into a lot of bottlenecks on the sessions I run...I don't think that would be a big enough upgrade.

[calaverasgrandes]

all macs except the AIR models have firewire. Have for years.
The UAD thing sucks. You can only use those on Mac Pros or the 17" macbook pro. The 15" model lost its expresscard slot a while ago.

[jnTracks]

Definitely did not see that (I remember when Alienware was great stuff and everything). Although it doesn't have as good graphics card, uses the i7 family Lynnfield processor versus the Xeon family Nehalem, which is usually a hefty price jump.

The i7 in the Dell is the 870 for $280:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115213

The comparable (NOTE: Not the Xeon in the Mac Pro) Xeon is the X3470 for $353:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

A 2.8 GHz Nehalem processor goes for a whopping $1,208:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

There is also a hefty price difference in motherboards (server versus consumer) and RAM as the Dell uses standard RAM and the Mac Pro uses ECC with thermal sensors, as well as built-in bluetooth and 802.11-a/b/g/n (wifi) (not taking up a PCI slot of any kind), wireless mouse, and a USB hub keyboard (which, admittedly, is about $5 difference, but the others are a little more significant).

Long story short, while it does look comparable at a glance...it's not really.

Server parts aren't really cheap and are generally more reliable.

That being said, I'd still rather see a consumer grade and less prosumer grade tower from Apple, but what are you gonna do about that.

i see what you're saying, but i was looking at the dell with the i7 930. (i was matching clock speed)
anyway i question the real world difference in those chips, they have the same cache and clocks... difference is xeon can use ECC ram. (whoo hooo! another big price bump!) hahahaha, so yea, those parts all cost more, but i'd love to see a real world performance comparison. i predict this is a case of paying 100% more in cost for 5% boost in performance. (like so much other gear we deal with in this field)

so, you win, those exact parts they haven't marked it up much. but i bet i could get to that performance level for hundreds less using different parts. eh?

[Jameson1895]

I built a "hackintosh". I did it just to do it, and it turned out great. I've tried a few times in the last few years, with no success. I think the actual "hack" has been made super easy of late. The only reason I tried it, was the most recent lifehacker post, and boredom. I have OSX 10.6.5 running, with Pro Tools 9. Its extremely solid too. I am using a Presonus Firestufio/Digimax (barf city) as a firewire interface, and aside from their somewhat unpredictable drivers, its even running solid. I am running an older intel quad system I built 3 years ago. PM me if you want a parts list.

Also, check out tonymacx86. Iboot/multibeast is where its at.

The trouble I ran into was the video card. I went out and bought a $35 asus card, and used the retail OSX disc, and it was smooth sailing.

I was using, and loving, Windows 7 before. I am currently dual booting, but rarely boot into windows anymore. I love building computers, but I will deffinatly buy a mac pro in the future, based on this experience alone. I'll buy a metric halo first though.....

[theDIYrecordist]

Old thread, but I thought I'd chime in.

I've been running Pro Tools (and Ableton and Logic) on my Hackintosh for three years, and it's been more stable, affordable, and upgradeable than the G5 it replaced. Perhaps I've been lucky, but I'd like to think it was more due to extremely careful planning before I made the leap.

Yes, updates can be harrowing, but I've yet to be burned (knock on wood). And you should only do it if you're comfortable?or perhaps even get perverse pleasure from?troubleshooting computers, using the terminal, configuring hardware, etc.

I wrote all about the pros and cons on my blog recently:
http://www.thediyrecordist.com/2013/06/ ... hackintosh

I'm very curious to see how many more musicians jump ship to Hac or non-Mac after the new Mac Pros come out. While they look amazing machines for graphics pros, unless the various DAW developers rewrite their code to take advantage of the dual GPUs, musicians won't see a big performance boost. Not to mention the lack of FireWire and PCI slots?and the fact that they are likely to be crazy expensive.

Happy to answer any questions.

[getreel]

Windows 7 has been very stable for me. In fact, Windows 8 has proven to be even better if you can learn how to use it or can get over it being "different".
I have 2 Macs as well but I use a custom built Windows 8 PC with Reaper as my main DAW. I also have Reaper on my Macbook Pro along with Logic tough I never use LP9 anymore.
I've never tried a Hackintosh. I would imagine that you're gonna have issues with Pro Tools if you go that route. Only issue for Windows is that supposedly the Pro Tools Windows versions are not as good as Mac OS.

[kslight]

As the OP, I thought I'd say that I did end up with a Mac Pro tower, and its been rock solid. However I am not impressed with Apple's "vision" with the new Mac Pros, and if/when I feel the need to upgrade, I will think twice about buying one of those (I like being able to expand/troubleshoot my computer internally, thank you). But I've had this tower for a couple years and I have no need for power, and I run Pro Tools 9 pretty hard (have to use old Pro Tools to maintain compatibility with my main client's 7.1 based system), 48 tracks at 96khz pretty frequently. I do a lot of rendering and out the box processing, but still runs better than I expected it to.

[getreel]

Again, so far Windows 8 has been amazing to use for me with my setup. Definitely worth a look I think.

[Shane Michael Rose]

I built a hackintosh with the intention of using it as a mix rig. It just wasn't stable enough for me. I questioned if it would start up correctly every day. It is sitting in storage now to be used as a DMX controller for a lighting rig.