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Comment by reimertz | Hacker News Reader

I bought an EGPU 1.5 years ago with the idea of replacing my gaming computer with my MacBook Pro running Windows. But due to the limitations of Thunderbolt 3 and the throughput from my enclosure, I cannot get consistent frame rates which is critical for playing fast-paced competitive games like Apex legends. It really sucks and this point, my $1000 EGPU is currently acting as a fancy adapter + charger + enabling smooth scrolling when surfing the webz.

But I have been exploring the idea of converting my gaming computer to a Hackintosh instead. This looks very promising since I require stability and security.

I just wished there was a combination of above solutions; no need to compromise between stability and performance.

Finally, some might say; just buy a Mac Pro! Well, I cannot motivate $6000 Just because I want to game every now and then.. :)

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Why bother with Mac? I've just built a Xeon E5-2640 using a Chinese X79 motherboard. NMVe, proper Radeon RX580 GPU - in an open build test bench frame. All in all, something like $250 on eBay for everything. Runs the games I like well and looks great on the table, especially with two big red LED fans in front. :-)

Some people just greatly prefer using macOS over windows or linux and don't want their entire computer experience to be windows just because they play games now and then.

macOS isn't exactly perfect, but I don't know any other desktop operating system that comes even close to macOS in terms of polish and user experience.

I understand that Microsoft can't just redesign Windows over night, but I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better. Better as in more consistent and more responsive.

As much as I like to consider other operating systems, the reality is that I don't want the hassle and macOS just works.

Apparently consistency isn't a part of the majority's vocabulary and they can ignore 5 different styles of typography and dialogs, among many other issues. It's a disaster and officially not a priority for MS. Nothing comes close to macOS indeed.

The majority is on Windows not because they don’t care about the inconsistencies but because Apple is too expensive and Windows too entrenched at lower price points.

I understand being thrown off by inconsistencies in typography and it’s exactly the kind of thing that bugs me too... but it’s also an objectively tiny thing to worry about in the broader context of which computing platform you’re going to use.

The bigger argument for macOS is the ergonomics of the hardware. Precious few Windows laptops hold a candle to a MacBook.

Windows went down a six year long dead end with 8.x trying to be both a desktop and a phone/tablet OS at the same time, while also doing it twice as fast as was actually feasible and without taking the time to think it through, in an attempt to catch up with iOS.

Windows 10 actually doesn't seem too bad, except for the vestigial Metro crap. Power Shell looks interesting. They seem to have worked out what to do with .NET at last. WSL2 seems decent too so they finally seem to be back on a productive track.

Not all of Apple's features are hits either.. for example, when's the last time you used Dashboard or Launchpad?

Completely true, but there are way more hits than misses on macOS. Dashboard no longer ships with the OS. Launchpad is useless to me but I can completely forget it exists & never use it.

I think the issues windows has had over the years come down to the fact that the 'misses' they've had are core parts of the OS that you can't avoid using.

I do genuinely think Windows 10 is the best version of windows though, and with WSL they're definitely headed in the right direction.

Apple ran experimental features that failed and we're easy to remove.

Microsoft trashed the core UX twice (Vista and 8)

I use Launchpad frequently. I rearranged my most common apps to be on one screen. I four finger swipe down on my MBP, and there's my apps. I still use Spotlight search too so I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard.

Cmd-tab allows to switch to an app, but the Dashboard view lets me get to a specific window within an app directly from whatever view I'm currently in. 4 finger swipe up, and clickity click, I'm in the document I'm wanting

> Cmd-tab allows to switch to an app, but the Dashboard view lets me get to a specific window within an app directly from whatever view I'm currently in. 4 finger swipe up, and clickity click, I'm in the document I'm wanting

That sounds like Mission Control.

You may be right. I don't really pay attention to BrandName(TM) of a simple feature. All I know is I never browse the /Applications folder to find an app. I also know that these features are NOT available on Windows. That with the missing spacebar press in Explorer for Quicklook access to a file in Windows makes not using macOS frustrating

Sure they are: hit win+tab for a Mission Control/Expose-like view, and you can get a Spotlight-style search by just hitting Start and beginning to type.

Dashboard was the name for a widgets system in mac OS.

The most annoying thing for me on MacOS is no 'New' menu on right-click to create a new file, only a folder. I'm just so used to doing that in Windows that it really annoys me in the Finder. There are ways to hack that in yourself though.

Are you primarily a mac OS user? I am primarily a Windows user and when I occasionally have to use mac OS, I find myself regularly facing many seemingly inconsistent behaviors that really surprise me. I'm inclined to think it is a matter of familiarity more than anything.

This is likely a huge part of it.

I'm primarily macOS but have a LOT of experience with Windows.

I still feel like I'm fighting against Windows to do anything. I just think different people are suited to different workflows & macOS and Windows are very very different to each other.

I'm in the same boat as you. I was primarily Windows for many years, but reluctantly made the switch to MacOS for my daily driver a few years ago and I'm glad I did.

Still have a Windows 10 machine, and although I do have some love for a few Windows-only applications, it just feels like an uphill battle whenever something isn't working.

Tell me about it - I work a support desk for an MSP; all Windows. I can't tell you how many times I've struggled with file permissions or partitions that I know would be very easy to fix in a *sh shell... Imagine being told "access denied" when you're running the command prompt as "administrator"!

> Imagine being told "access denied" when you're running the command prompt as "administrator".

Coincidentally, I run into this on macOS due to System Integrity Protection.

But what I like about SIP is it's easy to turn off and never be bothered by it again...

Having done dev on OSX you are going to be constantly fighting the machine. Apple is worse about walled gardens than MS is. With Apple, you need to do exactly what they want or you will have pain.

Where exactly do you feel like you’re fighting with macOS?

My entire C/C++ development cycle. I haven't touched it in years because of this. If what you want to do is bang out a GUI in Xcode you'll have a pretty good time, if instead you want to interact with your hardware or other software in ways Apple didn't predict then you're probably just not going to be able to do it.

I can accept that this works for most people. They don't want to mess with the UI and want to "solve problems." But for me the two were linked, and I had to ditch OSX. I had similar problems on Windows but Windows lets you work around the OS if you really need to.

Have you looked into Macports (or Homebrew) at all? At the command-line level macOS is really quite like other Unix systems, once you install a bit of standard tooling.

The semi-exception where I occasionally run into problems is TCC. It's usually not a bother on the command line, but starting with Mojave it can occasionally interfere. But, since Mojave came out in late 2018, if you haven't touched macOS in years you didn't run into that. :)

(I really really really hate modern TCC...)

Yes, I used homebrew extensively. It helps but does not solve every problem. There's still things Apple does not want you to do and you will not do them.

Okay, I'm still quite curious what specific development tasks you're able to do in Linux but feel restricted from doing on macOS. If you turn off SIP (takes five minutes), you can rewrite kernel memory if you want to. Which is of course a different thing than ease-of-use, but I'm not sure what would be so different.

I'll echo this, I develop C/C++ on OS X every day. Have no issues with it at all.

My experience is the exact opposite - but we're probably looking for different things.

That walled garden approach is why, in my opinion, the OS feels as good as it does. MacOS feels like a mature operating system that Apple have created with restraint and control - where to me Windows feels like a piece of legacy enterprise software with a shiny UI.

If I wanted out of a walled garden, there's no way it'd be to a non *nix based OS - especially not to one that uses it's start menu to pump ads at me.

> MacOS feels like a mature operating system that Apple have created with restraint and control - where to me Windows feels like a piece of legacy enterprise software with a shiny UI.

Quibble, I don't think this has to do with being a walled garden—or at least, I think you may be using the term in a different way than I generally think of it. Apple could have much better legacy support and an equally well designed OS.

Some older applications might look out of place, but that's preferable to not letting them run at all—you can still choose to stick with newer software and have the same experience. Alternately, Apple could stop overhauling the OS's visual design for no reason every seven years...

A definition courtesy of wikipedia

> A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content.

By this definition Mac OS isn't a walled garden, save for kernel modules, although it could become so in the future thus its cohesive design is to be pedantic a product of itself rather than a closed ecosystem. A product of actually having a mental picture of how the whole thing works and a cohesive set of applications to go with it.

Historically windows has without third party applications been a pretty garbage experience even its image and text editors were so bad that you could randomly generate urls until you hit an alternative and most likely get a better choice. Its not shockingly that a platform that doesn't even know what good look likes doesn't have an ecosystem full of anything that represents this.

I've upgrading a Macbook early 2011 to Mojave using the dosdude1 patches and the uploaded app keeps crashing when the reviewer tries to open it. It worked fine with no issues locally and with the High Sierra XCode 10.1. I can't figure out a solution. I would not recommend a hackintosh for iOS development with regards to provisioning issues.

I find the opposite, every time I find myself using Mac OS I find myself fighting to try and do things that should be easy but are instead convoluted.

Can you give some examples? There are exactly two things that I wish macOS would copy from Windows: full paths visible and interactive in Finder, and the ability to create new files within Finder (how is that not a thing?!)

Finder has been able to show interactive, full paths since Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard; it’s just not enabled by default.

To enable it, make Finder the active application, then click View → Show Path Bar (or use the keyboard shortcut ⌥⌘P).

I agree that UI between the two is largely just a personal preference thing. But the POSIX underpinnings of MacOS is objectively useful for a great many developers. I appreciate what MS is doing with WSL but it’ll always be a poor substitute.

I agree with it being familiarity. I grew up with Macs in school, and have been using them since OS 8 and 9, some experience with System 7 (uncommon for how young I am). There's lot and lots of little details that have carried on throughout all the years that just seem "normal" to me.

I find myself facing inconsistent and surprising behaviors with Windows despite it being my primary OS at work.

Growing up with Mac and Linux makes Windows seem quite strange :)

Familiarity is a huge part of it. Windows is getting better very slowly but consistently. Really the only major pain points where I say MacOS is objectively better are:

- Window flickering on resizing, both have it but MacOS has a lot less of it.

- Being able to customize any shortcut menu item in any app

- Finder, Document proxy icons and open/save dialogs are just leagues ahead of Explorer.

I head up our IT department and I use both; Windows for business apps, MacOS for creative apps. 10 is mindbogglingly inconsistent from the way the UI changes between old and new control panels to the way graphic scaling is horribly broken. The cloud side is getting better and works great for users. We've slowly peeled away 3rd party (Dropbox, Slack, Webex) services.

Everything in Windows 10 feels like it's in beta. There is no polish, that final 1%, to any of it.

Counter: I grew up with Windows, using Macs only occasionally in stores and such. Never really liked Windows. Tried Linux for a year when I was 12 or so, ended up coming back to Windows.

When I was 16 I decided to Hackintosh my Dell and absolutely fell in love with Snow Leopard. I've used OS X in some form ever since.

If hackintoshes becomes popular enough to threaten their bottom line the very next version of OS X and those thereafter will include countermeasures designed to make your life difficult. This doesn't seem to be a sustainable love affair with a counterparty that will never share your affection because you represent a potential loss not a customer.

I have bought real Macs since, it just so happened Hackintosh was my introduction, because I didn't have money when I was a teenager. It worked out very well for Apple, actually.

Another anecdote: I was a Linux user and had to use a Mac for apps development, and the transition was smooth. I imagine transitioning from windows to unix system would be pretty jarring because not only the ui is different, but the underlying system is different too.

I bought a gaming pc a few years back with the intention of using it for gaming only, and continuing to use my aging macbook for literally everything else.

The macbook hard drive died and so I decided to try to use the PC as the daily driver.

There are many reasons for it, but it boils down to the fact that I enjoy using macOS and I don't enjoy using Windows.

If I'm not enjoying using a piece of tech, it's not worth the investment - regardless of price.

Yes, Macs are expensive, but I don't mind paying more money to get an experience I actually enjoy. That to me is value, and why mac / pc benchmarks and price / performance comparisons are irrelevant to me as a person.

I'd quit my job if they forced me to use Mac OS over my Linux desktop, so it really depends on what you're looking for and how much you are willing/able to customize your interface.

Absolutely true, and I’d probably feel the same about using Windows. For some reason interacting with the Windows UI causes my hand to cramp up.

I have, and do use Linux semi regulary, but I customize NOTHING. I don’t want to manage my computer. The defaults in macOS is sane enough.

I've never used mac os, but definitely get you on sane defaults. From what I could tell, the few linux desktops that were actually meant to be used with their defaults and not customized immediately were the ones on elementary OS and Gnome, and they've actually gotten pretty nice and consistent in their design, and pretty good about spacing.

> I also fail to understand why Windows isn't better

It's simple: Microsoft doesn't prioritize making it better. They prioritize funneling people into more Microsoft products like One Drive. They are following the general trend of IT: Fuck users.

I would say the problem is exactly that they redesign Windows overnight, repeatedly. If they left the UI roughly where Win2k was I think there would be much fewer complaints. Instead you have successive generations of some team trying to make their mark. It's all additive, too, with vestiges of each wave left in place.

By the way there are other operating systems besides macOS and Windows. Seems to be lost in a lot of these discussions.

Having moved from Ubuntu/Unity to Mac, it feels like in my day to day use, the Mac and Unity have similar levels of polish and consistency (neither is perfect) but somehow Unity is way more usable, both out of the box (small things like the number of open App windows indicator) and with minor tweaks (5% less brightness for unfocused windows).

I do use Firefox/Thunderbird on both, so perhaps I’m missing some special apple sauce.

Just buy two computers then, one for gaming and one Mac. An eGPU box costs as much as one anyway.

If you're blowing that kind of money on gaming I would hope you take it more seriously than "just now and then". Even so, with that kind of expenditure you can easily justify just having a dedicated gaming rig.

IMO it's more optimal to buy a separate gaming computer with Windows and use some reasonably priced Macintosh for other tasks.

> reasonably priced Macintosh

What models would you consider "reasonably priced" ?

All of them except Mac Pro. At least their base configurations. As you configure more disk or RAM, sometimes they become unreasonably priced.

This is a very fair question.

For me, the reason for a hackintosh is just that I am tired of all the cables and having to swap between the two setups (like having one monitor for working, and one for gaming) while utilizing the performance when working.

I also want to utilize my iCloud Drive symlinking hacks to sync files / dotfiles between systems.

My gaming rig is currently running i4790k with a fairly decent motherboard (Asus Maximus VII) that I bought used for $200 a two years ago. It still performs like butter as long as you have a decent gpu connected to it. I seriously recommend this setup if you want to save some dough (or maybe the new Ryzen CPUs are better now tbh).

A sidenote regarding monitors: These are some exciting times to be working from home combined with having an interest for gaming due to the new monitors coming out, working for both.

I am currently thinking about the LG 38WN95C-W. Really expensive, but if you use it 8 hours a day for 5 years, I think I calculated it to be like 50 cent a day. :)

edit: Oh, and yes, as someone below mentioned, I love macOS and a lot of the things I work on require me to work on it.

You can share a monitor between two computers.

What do you on macOS that isn't available on Windows? Really curious.

It's not always about what you do, but what tools you use to do it.

I don't want my fundamental tool to be windows because I don't enjoy using it for hundreds of reasons - there's really not much more to it for me.

Not OP- but I do a lot of work with containers and orchestration- and being on a Unix filesystem with native POSIX shell is very helpful

Docker on MacOS is notoriously slow though - I use it myself sometimes, and it's never a good experience.

I’m not sure if it’s true anymore. I experienced good performance when they switched to using xhyve/bhyve (basically use docker for mac). Can you shade more light on your experience? When was this? What circumstances? Which kind of apps?

Using Docker Desktop (which I believe runs Docker in a Linux VM - basically a friendly version of when when it was Docker Machine), with different containers - RabbitMQ, EMQ, Postgres, Minio, lots of our own images. I haven't used it for perhaps 6-9 months, but it was never fun - would grind the whole macbook to a painful pace.

If there's some kind of alternative for MacOS now, I'm keen to know more.

WSL2 on Windows is quite nice now.

Usually it’s either iOS/macOS development or media editing.

Sounds like you should get a monitor with built in support for KVM. I can do that on my Benq PD2700U.

The problem is that there hasn’t been one monitor that support 144hz for gaming while maintaining accurate colors and resolution for working.

This is the first year that kind of monitor exists. :)

I've noticed sharing one monitor with multiple computers has always been a pain point... over most of my life.

By the way, I've always found having a dumb usb switch (for each device) and a dumb video switch to be the best way to eliminate incompatibilities. But everyone wants to get fancy and "smarten up" their kvm to use hotkeys and it screws with latency or keyboard state or just adds weirdness.

So I think the smartest place to put kvm functionality is probably at the keyboard, in the mouse and the monitor.

Or we should have an open kvm solution

I have a similar set up. I got some Thunderbolt dock for the mac and a USB input switcher that I connect all my peripherals to and can press a button to switch between the Macbook dock and my Windows PC. The only unoptimized part is I just use the DisplayPort input on my monitor for the PC and the HDMI input to the Macbook dock. So to swap all I have to do is press the button on the USB switcher and then change my monitor's input setting. Not quite one click switching, which could be done, but it's two clicks and cheaper than most KVM switches I've seen.

That sounds great! Can you please share some good models/links for the usb switcher thingy?

(I had no idea such a thing existed in the first place!)

Here's the one I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07T89NTXK

I can't vouch that it's not a keylogger given it sounds like some brand you'd find on AliExpress, but it does what it's supposed to do.

Since it's plugged into my desktop and I leave that running it's powered by that, but it also has a micro USB input for external power.

> I am currently thinking about the LG 38WN95C-W. Really expensive, but if you use it 8 hours a day for 5 years, I think I calculated it to be like 50 cent a day. :)

Exactly the same monitor I'm planning to get to my home office/games computer combo. In fact, despite the price, this seems to be the most awaited monitor of all year -- finally something that combines great performance, adult design without garish gaming elements, and office style needs (looking at TB3/USB-C with PD&DP).

I was going to ask if that wasn't as loud as hell.

But it looks like the 2640 is a 65W part, so not excessive. Huh, not a bad buy for a few bucks, looks like you could get a 6C/12T board and cpu for about £60 from ebay.

(I don't need more computers, I don't need more computers...)

I was going to go that route for my 3D work, but at the time eGPU chassis and card was almost as much as an entire PC anyway. Decided to just go for the PC with the intention to hackintosh it but in the end Windows worked well enough for what I was planning to use it for, good thing I did too because now Nvidia doesn't work at all on modern MacOS so would have all been a waste of money if I'd gone the eGPU route.

I'm done investing workstation level costs into Apple platforms, I just can't risk them dropping support down the line anymore. Zero guarantee that another GPU will ever be released/supported for that Mac Pro.

Some might say "Surely they are not just going to develop that whole computer then discontinue it", why not? They did exactly that for the computer it was created to replace.

Similar thing here. I actually ended up finding that I downright preferred Windows, and I honestly find it a lot more stable and reliable in day to day use.

Good call! And they actually will do it again -> see move to ARM!

I ran the same route as you, and bought a eGPU enclosure and a GTX 1060 some years ago but then gave up after it frustrated me enough. Well it didn't work that bad but I had the feeling that OSX wasn't as stable as in the past and I was mostly using Windows 10 at work anyway (Visual Studio for SharePoint development) so I switched back after 6 years of using a Mac to a PC and haven't regretted it. Windows 10 works great, there is WSL or I can run ubuntu on a Hyper-V or VBox. The only thing I directly missed are Final Cut Pro X - but I now use DaVinci Resolve and Garage Band (I now use LMMS).

> Finally, some might say; just buy a Mac Pro! Well, I cannot motivate $6000 Just because I want to game every now and then.. :)

Depending on how much gaming computer you need for the games you want to play, it sounds like the better solution is to just build a gaming computer that runs Windows. That's my setup - a Linux desktop machine (small form factor, running on a machine from two generations ago, it's sufficient for the things that I need to do locally, and if I need to spin off a big compile I have cloud resources to do that) and a six month old gaming rig that runs Windows.

Why wouldn't you dual boot with the more powerful computer? Or alternatively just use Linux, with Proton the number of games available is already quite impressive.

Separate computers removes a single point of failure. If my gaming rig goes down it doesn't keep my work from progressing, and if my work computer goes down, I can swap out drives into the gaming rig to keep working.

There’s no compromise. Hackintosh is stable and secure now. It’s totally worth doing, and quite fun to boot.

Clover was stable. OpenCore isn't. It'll take a few years yet before it gets to the same level of ease of use and stability Clover achieved.

Source: I installed Catalina via OpenCore on a new machine last weekend. It's very similar to installing Arch Linux for the first time.

Ease of use and stability are very different things, which often have conflict between each other

I installed Catalina with OpenCore earlier this year and it was the smoothest Hackintosh experience yet, especially with their accurate, clear, and up-to-date documentation.

«Stable» is such a problematic word. OpenCore is stable in the way that it never crashes, but it's unstable in the way that its configuration files always changes for every update.

That's fair.

I gave up on Hackintosh when Apple made Nvidia irrelevant.

Which is why I am finally going to make a switch to PS5 as my first dedicated game console after 2 decades of Gaming PC's. 500$ for a high performance box that will game for atleast 5 years that I can connect to my existing 4k monitors or my 4k tv is an insane deal.

I'm looking at doing the same thing. I've been struggling with my PC all week. Second time this year, usually the only good avenue for a fix is to format and re-install Windows... I've had enough. My Macbook Pro 2015 has been doing just fine for 5 years and is currently doing great with a new battery. So I'm almost officially a console guy now QQ, guess I'm getting too old for this sh!t.

I just wish console games supported keyboard/mouse controls. Playing FPS games on a controller is painful.

Another problem is the latency of many TVs.

Hopefully they'll actually support motion aiming like on the switch this generation. It makes it a loooot more bearable. A lot of the waggle games on the wii have just burned people's expectations for motion controls, but if you try it with a ps4 or steam controller on pc you'll notice it's much more mouse-like than on just 2 sticks.

>usually the only good avenue for a fix is to format and re-install Windows

This doesn't sound right at all for modern Windows. You sure it isn't a hardware issue?

did it 5 years ago with the PS4 and now a Switch, never looked back. guess i got old and my priorities changed.

I had the same setup, and have just purchased a nice Ryzen 3800X PC to replace it.

I've had enough of macos & its crappy software quality.

Windows 10 has been fine so far (though the control panel is a complete mess, they really need to start from scratch!).

Gaming on a Mac will never be a first class citizen. Just go PC

And with WSL, Windows is also now the best desktop computing environment for Unix hacking.

Eh... I'll have to try it but wont' be easy to give up Linux.

I've been very happy with GeForce Now on my MBP (I run Apex regularly). Wired connection, stable upstream connection, etc are a must, but other than that, there's not much downside.

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