Are Hackintosh a practical reality? (genuine question)
I have used and installed Linux and BSDs for a long time, and yet I had a look at the suggested procedures and I went "nope". There is basically a 50/50 chance that it will work, some features will likely not work at all (particularly cloud-related services), and every little update might doom your machine. Fun project for the hardcore Apple hacker, but imho it would be foolish to base your day-to-day production needs on such a build.
I don't know how well the modern macOS versions as Hackintoshes, but I suspect the community is still strong. The current challenge is probably around all the specialized hardware security and encryption chips on modern Macs, as well as the newer restrictions on signed/unsigned kexts and all the recent kernel/system API lock downs.
The caveat here is: I'm still on 10.12.6. Updating, especially in regards to audio apps, is generally done very slowly. So, I'm in no hurry to run the latest and greatest. But, upgrading to this point was pretty painless.
Biggest troubles are WIFI and Bluetooth (and therefore continuity, needs one of a few selected cards), graphics (no nVidia) and keyboard and trackpad (for desktops, use used Apple peripherals) as well as sound in some configurations (might use a Bluetooth speaker if BT works).
It always can happen that you mess up (or need access to a real Mac for downloading the OS in the first place), so have a Backup and wait a few days after system updates appear, read forums about possible showstoppers and necessary precautions. That said, Catalina is still not perfect and troubles may not be caused by the hackintosh but the OS.
Agreed. But this is where "I'll pay an extra $200 to not have to worry about that" comes into the equation
No matter the distro, under Linux it feels like I’m always fighting weirdness with X11/Wayland/GPU drivers and there’s more rough edges than I can count. It’s death by a thousand cuts. It has massive potential to be great, but it’s just not.
By contrast once your hackintosh is working properly, that’s pretty much it… the fight is over and you can just use your machine. If you set it up right, minor updates are uneventful and the only real maintenance that’s required comes with major OS releases every year or so, but that can be delayed for a long time if you’re not the type to keep pace with OS updates.
That said it is a bit of a technical endeavor, so be prepared for that.