This article is currently an experimental machine translation and may contain errors. If anything is unclear, please refer to the original Chinese version. I am continuously working to improve the translation.
Recently it’s winter break, and I suddenly got the urge to play around with a Hackintosh. (And of course, a garbage-pc-builder-style Hackintosh…)
Let me briefly digress to introduce my hardware setup.
| Hardware | Model | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU (with thermal paste) | E8500 | 6 RMB, free shipping |
| Cooler | Generic brand from Taobao | 10 RMB, free shipping |
| Motherboard | Maxsun G41 | 50 RMB, free shipping |
| RAM | Generic 2GB DDR3 × 2 | 20 RMB each, total 40 RMB |
| Graphics Card | AMD HD 6450 | 20 RMB on Taobao Random model, just a basic display card |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 250GB Mechanical | 20 RMB, free shipping |
| Power Supply | Generic 200W | 20 RMB, free shipping |
| Case | Nike / Adidas / Skechers | NaN |
This was probably from two years ago when I first got curious about hardware—just wondering how cheap a PC could possibly get. (It could’ve been even cheaper—like removing one RAM stick or skipping the GPU altogether—but I added them in for fun.)
Total cost: around 170 RMB… (The peripherals cost way more than the actual PC…) It could’ve been cheaper if I’d scrounged parts elsewhere, but I got lazy and just bought everything on Taobao.
Further digression: Never thought I’d actually receive a defective CPU the first time—kept getting blue screens on boot. I swapped out nearly every other component before realizing it might be the CPU. Later during use, another CPU died on me… Sure, the cooler wasn’t great—temperatures could hit 90°C under sustained load—but who knew a CPU could just die like that? What did this thing go through before I got it…
This machine ran Windows 7 for a while, then Linux as a compile server for some time… After that, it just sat around collecting dust.
So I decided: why not try Hackintoshing it to experience macOS?
Let me quote something from Zhihu that I think perfectly sums up the macOS experience: “macOS is flashy, elegant, and dazzling; Windows is old-fashioned, steady, and loyal.”
Since the G41 motherboard only supports Legacy boot and doesn’t support UEFI, and the hardware is pretty outdated, diving into Hackintosh would’ve been a huge pain—probably take a lot of time. (Although there are people online who’ve made it work.) It might even require buying specialized Hackintosh hardware, which goes against my original goal of saving money and using junk parts. Plus, buying new stuff during Chinese New Year wasn’t convenient.
(P.S. Only after researching Hackintosh did I realize just how incredibly compatible Windows really is. You can throw Windows on almost any x86 machine, drivers exist for nearly everything, and 20-year-old programs still run fine on the latest version.)
So in the end, I took a shortcut: installed a stripped-down Windows 7 first, then set up VMware to run Hackintosh inside it.
Compared to installing Hackintosh directly on bare metal, the downsides are obvious: Windows eats up some RAM, and I lose GPU 3D acceleration. But since this is just for experiencing macOS, it’ll do for now.
After booting into macOS for the first time, I have to say—it looked pretty clean and nice.
I installed some common apps: most of the usual suspects are available on macOS too, like QQ, WeChat, Office 365, Microsoft Todo, Sublime Text, Typora, v2xxx, etc. I also installed Java, Python3, aria2, curl, and other CLI tools.
The system feels much more open than iOS—you can freely modify the system and install software.
Tencent apps like QQ and WeChat are still missing some features on macOS, but they’re usable.
Even notorious offenders like Baidu Netdisk behave themselves much better on macOS.
As for Office, IDEs, and other well-behaved software, the experience is nearly identical to Windows.
The UI across apps feels more consistent and polished—nothing like those hideous-looking apps you sometimes get on Windows.
screenshot
The shell experience is way better than Windows—fully inherits Linux’s advantages. The desktop environment also beats most Linux distros. Now I understand why so many developers love Macs.
Just to wrap up, here are my personal thoughts after using macOS for a bit.
I’d say macOS’s main strengths are its clean, elegant design, consistent and pleasant UI, well-behaved apps, and a far superior shell compared to PowerShell/cmd.
But I probably won’t switch my main machine to macOS, for several reasons:
- High learning curve: Many habits and shortcuts differ slightly between Windows and macOS. After years of using Windows, adapting would take time and effort. Plus, I’m already deeply embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem—migration would be tough.
- Some apps are incomplete or problematic: QQ and WeChat still lack features on macOS and might cause headaches. Gaming? Microcontroller development? Don’t even think about it. (Of course, for video/audio production, macOS is excellent.)
- Limited and restrictive hardware options: Apple’s official hardware is always expensive (and Hackintosh isn’t stable enough for daily driver use). Choices are also limited. If I fully switched to the Apple ecosystem (like buying the full “Apple tax” suite), and then Apple decided to hike prices or release underwhelming hardware, I’d be stuck… So for now, I’ll stick with Windows most of the time. That said, owning a MacBook for light tasks—like writing, browsing, or note-taking—while traveling sounds pretty nice. But for heavy-duty coding or “productivity” work, the change in workflow would likely reduce efficiency at first.
This article is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Author: lyc8503, Article link: https://blog.lyc8503.net/en/post/hackintosh-trial-1/
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