I'm an Apple guy, and I need an upgrade as my workstation became more and more stationary in the last few years.

- Should I buy the Mac Pro or build a Hackintosh?

Anyone had this dilemma recently? What route did you take, and do you regret it?

[I know Apple is evil at times (aren't we all?), and no I'm not moving to this or that OS/distro, all my licensed (and paid for) software and workflows are OSX-based at this point]

@sqlkid according to what I read it works just like any OSX - of course, with less stability (and with the added fact that you would obviously be committing copyright infringement by installing OSX on a non-Apple computer).
Can they detect it and act? Sure, sound technically possible and relatively easy.
Have they done it in the past? Nop except for some added security that the community bypassed quickly.

Please note: Never owned a Hackintosh, I did get a very expert consultor on the matter, but I would like to get opinions of people that faced my situation before making a purchase.

Built a desktop with hackintosh compatible parts, took a wireless card from my job doing Apple repair out of a machine for recycling, ultimately didn’t do it. Stability. They do work but the rate of updates vs testing for a hackintosh means you’re basically stuck 1-2 OS versions behind and even a minor update threatens to brick your system. I own a MacBook Pro instead.

If you need a desktop Mac for video/image processing Mac Pro is a nice machine but way overpriced. Never made that decision because my work is centered on command line use and a laptop has enough kick for building containers.

@Diactoros Thanks for the excellent feedback, it's validating my decision. I'm definitively leaning towards the pro.

If you have the money and lack hardware skill, buy the Mac pro.

If you can afford downtime, or are on a budget, build a hackintosh.

@SortOfTested thanks! Ye, it's the possible downtime that scares me. I pitty the money at times but my biggest fear is that the architecture gets outdated rather quickly and such a big investment stops being upgradable. I'm leaving fear behind and diving in!

@whiteagle
That's a risk. To me, the bigger risk is needing the exact same parts. There's a very real risk with building a hackintosh that an OS update may make a previously quasi-supported component totally unsupported.

Not really a huge issue, just one that needs a $$$ solution.

@SortOfTested the upgrade scenario seems to cost a lot of time and patience, and possibly bring downtime - I'm super grateful for all the feedback, definitively made my decision clear as water :)

do you even need the 2019 mac pro?
Most stuff can be done with a macbook pro which is much more reasonable priced and a external usb-c monitor. And then there is the 5k imac pro which also costs less.

You need to upgrade from being an apple guy. Try to become a 🥒 guy.

Don’t fuck about. I am self employed and work from home I have a desktop iMac and upgrade roughly every 3 years. Apple gear holds its value, you can get up to half what you paid for it back after 3 years, so its like paying half price. Honestly Mac gear is well built and just runs for years. Don’t waste your time trying to save a few quid its false economy, and it will no doubt be a fucking nightmare anyway.

Grew up with windows, grandpa used linux.

Get a hackintosh if you want a ready to go environment and you’re not a millionaire.

Trust me, at work we’re running a hackingtosh, because our design software is only for mac and any sufficent apple device is not worth the money

And we’re a apple-only (except our sysadmin) company

I tried building a hackintosh at some point and failed hard haha.

While I'd be open for trying a Mac(book) again (but then with a Linux district), I'm just not willing to pay more than 1K for the hardware or in my case probably 2K+ for the specs I'd need 😅

@heyheni my current setup is a 2017 MBP, an Elgato thunderbolt dock, an external Vega 64 WC, on a Sonnet Breakaway running on a big display I like.

This setup is starting to break my workflow as I'm finding myself very often opening the lid, turning off the dock, waiting, turning it on, and having to restart the computer cause the GPU connection went A-wire...

This MBP has been pushing through the most so far, MacBooks usually last me ~2y and then there's always some software or workload getting heavy enough to start to affect my work - also my current machine was 1.5k€ less than the base Mac Pro so I'm already near the price tag.
This time around at least it's not a performance thing, it's my fault for using a laptop as a desktop.
I intend to keep my current machine for mobility and get another workstation for stationary (which at this time is most of my) work.

@helloworld, thanks for the feedback! I usually reuse my laptops within the company after I upgrade them, so I don't end up reselling them! But it's a fair point; I was more worried about the longevity of the machine, but all in all, it's true; if I ever need to upgrade and can't do it directly on the computer, it will still have a lot of value.

@010001111 and you guys have no stability issues? No occasional problems more than you would have on an Apple machine?
I'm a bit afraid mainly because downtime is expensive, and I'm a one-person army - so future problems would be tricky if they bring a few days of downtime, work, and attention to figure out the situation.

@whiteagle If you choose the right hardware and once gotten clean through the setup, no.

Of course, you can’t just upgrade to a new osx when it comes out, you gotta do the research again if your kexts are still compatible (unless you carefully swap drives and try yourself). But that’s an okay compromise.

I’d still suggest an authentic apple device (for downloading official images, DONT torrent, it’s not worth the time), simply because that will make troubleshooting - which will happen on the first tries, a lot easier. Also USB sticks and tons of backups make sure you don’t have the downtime, even if an update fails.

If you do it right, you can just swap drives if something bad happens.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but easier than ArchLinux and hella lot better than a few years back.
(...)

@whiteagle We don’t rely on the hackingtosh, it’s mostly running windows and VR, the design software is just a cheap process optimization. But so far so good. I’m also running a i7-3770 on an Gygabyte Z77-D3H for more than 4 years, stable 2 upgrade done. iMessage and all working. That board still had problems with audio and wrong network interface id’s, but apart an better kext implementation for audio, all the kexts still work without changes.

Just make sure you buy stuff that apple would sell for $$$ and you shouldn’t have those problems. Like, instead of buying apple’s graphic card expansion, just buy the real one underneath

@whiteagle
You're charging on the right side of the laptop yes?

@SortOfTested I've tried all ports to no avail, unfortunately, it's very hard to debug what's happening and it happens very few times (around ~1x a day) so it's even harder.

The thing is apple is continuously burning money In there R & D so that ppl cant make hackintosh. One update from them and who knows your hackintosh becomes useless.