HACKINTOSH
I enjoy building computers. I am a fan of the price point, customizability, bang for the buck, and the experience. The problem is that most of the music industry is Mac/Apple based, and they are expensive and difficult to customize. For the past few years, though, I have been working off a hackintosh system. Essentially, you are building a Mac OSX system on “after-market” parts. Because of the community around hackintosh, there are plenty of resources and the systems are now extremely stable. And beyond that, the process has become more and more simple over time. I just finished my 5th successful Hackintosh build in under an hour of work.
Why pay 400% for a Mac when you could have the same power (or even more) for far less money. Glean from my story and my new hackintosh build. Be inspired, reach out to me. I’m not an expert, nor a coding wiz, but with help from google searches, hackintosh forums, and some trial and error, I have some wisdom to share. This could be a great option for your studio and I’d love to help you.
In the spring of 2014, I converted my 2010 custom built PC into a hackintosh simply by following installation guides. This was like remodeling an old house. I was repurposing and making it work. That system had been great for me since. Needing more processing power, I ventured into a brand new build. Since then, I have optimized and customized the system even more. I have 5 custom built hackintosh systems and over 10 installs under my belt. I cannot begin to express how rewarding it has been to learn the process of building a hackintosh and experience the results.
I built this new system in November 2019. I got all my parts from Newegg.com and I utilized their deals and discounts. Though I already had some of these items, so my total was lower, the complete, all in price is right at $2000. And the most important part, I’m running UAD Apollo x8 with Thunderbolt3 through the motherboard. Geekbench5 scores this i9-9900k computer around 8500 (multi-core score) which is toward the top of mac’s lineup.
I previously have utilized the tonymacx86.com forums for all part computability charts, install guides, and software to install. For this new build, my two main resources for this build were CaseySJ’s Build and Morgonaut’s Build. I’m running Mojave through a Vanilla install.
At it’s very basic: you put the OSX on a flash drive using a free hackintosh program called Clover. You then follow the guides to setup bios and install. There may be issues with start up and you just have to tweak the boot drive EFI folder.
This may sound complicated, but you can do this! Contact me for notes that I made during this installation and build.