Hackintosh Is Almost Dead
Aleksandar Vacić (via Hacker News, Ric Ford):
It’s true that latest macOS 14 (Sonoma) still supports the latest generations of Intel Macs and it’s very likely that at least one or two major versions will still be compatible. But there’s one particular development that is de-facto killing off the Hackintosh scene.
In Sonoma, Apple has completely removed all traces of driver support for their oldest WiFi/Bt cards, namely various Broadcom cards that they last used in 2012/13 iMac / MacBook models. Those Mac models are not supported by macOS for few years now thus it’s not surprising the drivers are being removed. Most likely reason is that Apple is moving drivers away from
.kext(Kernel Extensions) to.dext(DriverKit) thus cleaning up obsolete and unused code from macOS. They did the same with Ethernet drivers in Ventura.Those particular cards were the key ingredient to many fully functional Hackintosh builds for simple reason: they worked out of the box with every single (so-called) iService Apple has: Messages, FaceTime, AirDrop, Continuity, Handoff - you name it. Everything worked. Despite the valiant efforts of OCLP crew to make workarounds, those cards can work in Sonoma only if you seriously downgrade the macOS security.
Previously:
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Okay, showing my age here, but when I ran Hackintoshes they definitely had Broadcom WiFi/Bluetooth cards because they worked really well with MacOS. This was so long ago, the newest version of Mac OS was probably 10.7 Lion, maybe Mountain Lion.
I mean, we kind of knew the writing was on the wall when Apple announced the ARM transition. Either way, I have no desire to run MacOS on "whitebox" PCs anymore because the software itself is no longer compelling (our esteemed host's sofware and similar indie stuff accepted, I mean the platform itself). I also lost interest in running non Apple OSes on Apple hardware too. While I have an old MacBook in service running Arch Linux, I no longer bother shopping Mac hardware, even used models to run Linux, Windows, or anything else. Not worth the hassle, when there are so many other devices that will run these OSes and all are generally easier to repair and more open for tinkering.
Still, a sad day. Going back further I miss running OS X on older Macs with XPostFacto, that was a fun adventure too.
Yeah, that's cool. The only Hackintosh you'd want to run nowadays is a VM, anyway. And, God willing, the fine folks at VMware and the QEMU/KVM projects continue to support macOS guests. At this stage my Intel Mac fleet is most useful for running non-macOS, and as Nathan rightly says, it's just very hard to justify that on an ongoing basis; likewise, macOS as a platform, except for portable computers, that run non-macOS VMs, or Mac Minis, that do likewise, as servers with capability to build for Apple platforms, for use by non-macOS clients. Oh, how times change!
I started using Macs because of Hackintosh. A family member and I were both Linux users and we thought it would be fun project to try to run Hackintosh. OS X 10.4 did run on his hardware, but not on mine. After I heard him rave about OS X, I decided to pick up a Mac Mini to see what all the fuzz is about and now I have used Macs for almost 17 years..
I object to people saying that disabling SIP and disabling secure boot will "seriously downgrade" a mac's security. macOS didn't have them before 10.11, and back then the mac had great security. The mac still has great security now if you disable them, which I do, because I like using my mac the way I like to and not only the ways Apple ordains.
The trick to mac security is the same as it always was: don't run malicious software. If you do, SIP and secure boot isn't going to save you.
@Bri
I don't disagree. Lot of fear mongering without explaining what purpose the actual feature serves. I think people willing to run MacOS on whitebox PCs understand some risk involved anyway and can decide for themselves what they want to do.
My Hackintosh never had wifi or card-based bluetooth. I used a USB bluetooth dongle thing.
Messages and FaceTime worked for me with that configuration. Don't know if that changed with Sonoma.