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I feel like anyone becoming too successful in this space would find the ol' Eye of Sauron pointed at them pretty quickly..

Whether through technical or legal means, I doubt Apple would sit around and let this openly thrive or grow into a viable option for the average consumer.

I do not think they would bother with technical, that has consequences (ie technical debt), legal is more than enough. Even if someone finds a loophole currently, it's pretty much guaranteed they will change the T&C of MacOS immediately to close it the moment they feel threatened.

You feel it when you try and use iCloud on a hackintosh. As you progressively lose access to your services, you begin to question the choose you have made. And that’s just a glancing blow. Never again.

I've been using iCloud on my hackintosh successfully for years now. You just need to get the SMBIOS stuff right (i.e. use a device serial number that comes from a valid production run, but which doesn't belong to any actual machine.) It's set-and-forget once it's correct. iMessage works for me. Handoff and Airdrop would too (I stuck a wi-fi card in my workstation and verified that it works, but I don't need wi-fi and it was hogging the PCIe slot.)

I think, these days, Clover does all the calculations and checks needed by itself. It used to be harder, but not any more.

Now, here's a real complaint: there's no Hackintosh driver to get the OS to treat an IBM-compatible PC speaker (you know, the one driven by an Intel PCH's onboard 8253 logic) as a sound device, so that I can configure the OS to play "System Sounds" through it, and thus have an extremely-tinny Apple "bwah" on start-up. What kind of loser OS is this? ;)

I run macOS on HP Z420s. Despite not really promoting this post, I've had a few people find it and ask various questions (sometimes about hackintosh). I always reply!

So same offer here, if anyone wants to go that route: https://www.matthewwegner.com/hp-z420-desktop-buying-guide/

Having used Hackintosh builds for several years, it's not something I want to do anymore. The whole point of using Mac hardware is to get Mac software along with it and be able to concentrate on actual work instead of endless fiddling with the system to get it to work. The Hackintosh experience is cool, but not for people whose goal is to get work done.

Well, sure. My point was that an OEM could do the "endless fiddling" for you, and then a Hackintosh would be just like an Apple-purchased computer (except with some OS update latency—a lot like the latency of Android-device OEM OS updates.)

> The whole point of using Mac hardware is to get Mac software along with it and be able to concentrate on actual work instead of endless fiddling with the system to get it to work.

To some, the point of using a Mac is to be able to develop and test software for Mac hardware using Apple's frameworks, and having to spend 3x the price tag just to get the hardware is something that makes little to no sense.

I mean, where on earth does it make sense to spend over 2k€ for a desktop computer just because you want to have more than 8GB of RAM?

"and having to spend 3x the price tag just to get the hardware is something that makes little to no sense."

But still probably cheaper than the value of your time spent building a Hackintosh and keeping it functional.

>cheaper than the value of your time spent building a Hackintosh and keeping it functional

I don't bother with hackintosh any more as I don't have any use for MacOS, but my experience was pretty seamless. I used hardware that was sitting around unused and after installing a couple of custom kexts everything just worked (^). I never had anything break even when upgrading from one major version to the next.

^ networking, sound, XCode etc. Not sure about apple services like iCloud or some of the iphone features since I never used them. Good enough for a cheap build machine when I was tinkering with some iOS dev.

> If someone could figure out a legal way to offer recommended-hardware Hackintosh builds as a service†, that'd be pretty ideal for what you're talking about, in the sense of "you could buy one for your mom", and it would "just work" (and hopefully continue to "just work" through updates, if they do it right.)

Is this not what tonymacx86.com provides via the buying guide / golden builds forum?

You still have to buy the parts and put them together yourself; and then you have it follow the scene to figure out what to do for each macOS update (e.g. whether you should wait before installing it, whether you need to tweak some setting in Clover, etc.)

I’m willing to do that for one workstation that will live on my desk; I’m not willing to do it for a computer that’s going to be used by a relative who lives thousands of miles away, who I only see for a few days a year (and don’t want to waste those days building a computer.) Let alone several such computers, one per relative.

Whereas in the hypothetical I’m talking about, you order the computer pre-built from a website shipped to your relative, and burn macOS to a USB; and then, when you visit them, unpack the box, install the OS on the computer, and then forget about it.

Ah, by 'build' I thought you meant the parts list.

Pre-built systems has been tried before, but Apple shut it down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation

I’m late to the party I see!

I don’t know how that’s ever going to be viable though.. for that scenario you would already have a Mac mini there because there is no need for hardware to run like Crysis. And then it can have service, comes with keyboard and mouse, as well as manuals. Then I am not sure how cheap you want to have that hypothetical alternative to make it worthwhile.