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Comment by RecycledEle | Hacker News Reader

I wish Apple would apin off their x86 OSX as a separate company.

I would love to see it compete with Microsoft Windows.

Every Christmas break I always hope I'll have the emotional energy to dig back into https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin#readme and see if I can get it to boot, even on VirtualBox, let alone some hackintosh friendly hardware like OP did

I am super, super cognizant that the devil's in the proverbial details, but they sure do seem to publish a lot of macOS into the open <https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/distribution-macO...> so my interest is to map out the parts that are missing

I'm also aware that Darling exists (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38423469 ) but if it's anything like Wine -- no, thank you. The only reason Wine (and their CrossOver friends) are required to exist is because there's no suitable open source release of Windows, so emulating the bugs is glucose cheaper. I had high hopes for ReactOS when I was in college, but I think they're just pushing that rock uphill (although I am super glad the project exists)

Having said all of that, don't overlook that even if I snapped my fingers and had a PureDarwin built 14.3 .iso this very second, the supply chain for x86_64 applications for any such OS is likely going the way of the dodo, since it won't be in a vendor's best interest to dedicate resources to building releases for what they assume is a dead platform

Why? To decrease their hardware market with own hands? Never going to happen.

Apple is not very frequent in self-shooting in the foot.

They’re really a hardware company that builds appliances.

Microsoft is a software company that builds some hardware.

They’re coming from opposite directions.

> They’re really a hardware company…

Nah, they're a software company that builds physical runtimes.

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." — Alan Kay

How much longer do you imagine x86 will be supported, given how much better Apple Silicon is in every metric?

According to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624\

It seems they consider hardware obsolete 7 years from availability to purchase. Intel mac pro was selling last year so sometime around 2030?

Likely Apple will stick to their usual support cycle of "Current minus N" and eventually x86 will be dropped

As someone who uses macOS for 11 years as the daily driver for his work, I can just say that it would be a bloodbath.

Not only is the driver support abysmal, kext are gone, and the actual quality of macOS has declined significantly over the years.

10 years ago, there was the rule of thumb to wait one update before you do the “big” OS upgrade, now it's better to wait for 3–4 updates as Sanoma crashes on our working machines (1500 people company) frequently.

Speaking of crashes, my m1 MacBook Pro 13, still running Ventura, has crashed more than ANY OTHER mac before. And I'm talking about crashes like, you close the lid, drive to the airport, take a seat, open the lid and just see that macOS starts completely fresh and presents you with a system crash message.

And this is the first Mac where I don't use any kext, strange tools, and completely abandoned software development…

The only thing that let me keep the m1 is the battery life...

Try creating a new user profile (keeping the old untouched). I had the same problems on my M1 MBA and assumed complex hardware or OS issues. But all problems are gone on the new profile (still existent on the old one when used). Strange.

On the topic of Hackintoshes: They are becoming more and more obsolet with Apples focus on Apple Silicon, Neural Engines and so on. Not spec or price wise, but regarding feature parity and Apples OS support for the Intel architecture. Lots of old „Hackintoshers“ abandoning the hobby.

It's interesting as my M2 machines of which I have two, have never crashed on me once. However, I'm very choosy about the software I run on them, and the said software doesn't do weird bollocks like trying to extend builtin frameworks with plugins. I mean, those are not weird bollocks per se, but Apple seems to be actively abandoning any and all effort it has done to make their own stuff (for example, Mail) extensible. So be it. One day I'll surely flip them a bird as I install Linux on my remaining mac.

Wonder if your M1 might have a hardware defect lurking, though — the vast majority of kernel panics on real macs come from hardware malfunctioning.

Why would they want to encourage people to buy x86 machines from vendors other than them?

Not that they would encourage people to buy machines from anyone but them, but, for x86, at least they don't make any machine with those chips anymore.

In a couple years they won’t make any software for those chips either

Lure a wider class of people into buying things from the App Store to generate more recurring revenue? Make macOS a more promising alternative to Windows in the corporate space?

Last time I checked it's not like they have excess inventory. And Macs are quite viable in the corporate space - so far, in the past 10 years or so, I have been issued precisely one Windows laptop. All other machines were Macs.

For tech and art, yes, that's been a solid Apple domain for decades. But your average paper pusher bureaucrat? They get a crap 500$ Dell/HP that constantly has issues because there's no budget for better stuff and 90% of the non-Web/SaaS software in that area is solid Windows-only.

From my past couple years, I only saw Windows laptops in accounting and HR. You could get a Windows loaner when you needed to check something a customer was experiencing you couldn’t reproduce on the Mac.

Linux has been rare mostly for compliance and regulatory issues - corporate IT thinks it’s too easy for a determined Linux geek to take over the machine and bypass all safeguards.

> Linux has been rare mostly for compliance and regulatory issues - corporate IT thinks it’s too easy for a determined Linux geek to take over the machine and bypass all safeguards.

And that's because it is... when Grub boots, press e, add init=/bin/sh (or rdinit), and boom you have a root shell. In case the admins did think far enough to deal with implementing Grub password protection or secure boot of some kind, wait a couple months, and there will be some sort of local privilege escalation exploits (there's about one a year).

In addition to that, Linux doesn't exactly play nice with corporate snake-oil solutions - these are more hassle than they're worth it as they constantly break.

> 500$ Dell/HP that constantly has issues because there's no budget

So they wouldn’t buy any macOS licenses unless they are <$50 either? Which makes it totally not worth it and would result in a significant decline in revenue for Apple

Of approx 5,000 employees there are less than 20 Macs at my workplace. We're a Dell/Windows shop with Ubuntu as a popular option for devs.

Outside of the tech departments staff usually get generic corporate hardware for light desktop/browser workloads.

The point isn't that there are many shops that don't really do Macs. The point is that there are many that do support Macs. It's pretty common in tech-company circles, at least. That's not everything, but it proves it's not weird.

Of course, most companies aren't going to spend on a Mac laptop; a $500 Windows laptop (or whatever) is usually good enough for many roles.

They would probably earn more money from selling those 20 macs than 200+ official hackintosh licenses.

They would cannibalize their hardware products and with the massive margin (especially on upgrades) that’s not worth it at all. The App Store revenue is peanuts (on macOS but I would assume on iOS as well relative to hw sales).

> I wish Apple would apin off their x86 OSX as a separate company.

They tried to do such a thing with IBM back in 1995-96. Didn't work out.

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