Apple Won't Be Happy Turning a Microsoft Laptop into a Hackintosh!

[Music] Hackintosh for years it was the sole method to run Mac OS on robust Hardware without a hefty price tag if you're not aware when Apple shifted to Intel processors there was instant curiosity about the feasibility of running Mac OS on standard x86 PCS it turned out that Intel Max shared many similarities with those systems and it didn't take long for the community to bridge the gaps although Apple implemented some steps to stop Mac OS from functioning on generic Hardware these measures were not overly strict and generally they maintained a fairly relaxed stance on the issue to be fair it's easy to understand why hackintoshes rarely provided the seamless experience that most users expect when purchasing a Mac it's true I'm serious Mac OS can run flawlessly on The Limited Hardware Apple provides but once you venture beyond that it's like entering the wild west hackintoshes are notorious for becoming unstable over time this often happens due to software updates but sometimes issues arise seemingly out of nowhere making them a risky choice for anyone relying on a machine for serious work Apple understood that as long as no one was marketing and supporting ready-made systems something they actively prevent small groups of enthusiasts building their own setups posed little threat to their business in fact it could even benefit them as many former Hackintosh users enjoyed the experience so much that they eventually opted to buy a genuine Mac to avoid future complications however with the appropriate Hardware ideally something closely resembling a Mac and with patience attention and a bit of luck you can achieve an experience quite similar to a real Mac at a significantly lower price this often entails assembling the PC yourself using carefully selected components that are known to be compatible with Mac OS this this also means accepting that you've likely created a solid gaming PC that can't run games because it's using Mac OS aside from that it is definitely achievable however this may not last much longer with apple shifting from Intel C us to their own the future of hackintoshes is indeed limited even if arm processors become more common in the PC market since Apple creates their own chips inous and they include additional undocumented instructions it's almost certain that Macos won't work with just any arm CPU however this isn't necessarily negative as I mentioned many people turn to hacking toshes for better performance per dollar and apple silicon has excelled in that area so I believe this shift makes a lot of sense for Apple and I'm sure eliminating Hackintosh support is just a nice bonus I've been involved with hackintoshes for around 15 years starting with my first one in 2007 it looked like this and ran the classic Mac OS X tiger followed by leopard I still have fond memories of that time and yes I listen to plenty of emo songs on iTunes with it it was 2007 what can I say while we still have the chance I want to highlight some unique things we can do thanks to Max using Intel processor processors last year I installed what might be the best version of Windows ever on an iMac this year I'm reversing that now that Microsoft has their own Hardware with the surface I thought it was only fair to explore that angle um some people indeed refer to these as the MacBooks of the PC realm both positively and negatively um they tend to be difficult to repair with soldered Ram but they offer a fantastic display excellent touchpad and a Sleek stylish design if that's your preference uh while Apple may have been okay with facilitating windows on the Mac I doubt they'll be pleased with what I'm planning to do today that's right we're installing Mac OS on a Microsoft laptop just to make Steve Jobs roll in his grave once again here's our subject the surface laptop 3 right now it has Windows 11 installed but let's remove that no one wants it as always hackintoshing is very much a your mileage may vary experience even different versions of the same model can yield vastly different outcomes this particular surface laptop also has a ryzen configuration that definitely won't support Hackintosh therefore you shouldn't treat this as a tutorial as you'll likely need to tackle different challenges to understand what those might be I recommend checking out doria's open core install guide which I'll link in the description it's quite lengthy and detailed but that's necessary since it aims to address a virtually Limitless range of Hardware configurations it's by far the most valuable resource I've come across in my years of hackintoshing uh even with that guide this will still be a lengthy trial and error process be prepared to invest a lot of time setting it up only for it not to work then go back and make adjustments and face some obscure error that no one else has encountered I'm using Big Sur for this and you might be curious why considering it's already over 2 years old by the time this video is released at the time I started this video monay was seen as riskier due to many new issues it introduced meanwhile Ventura was still in beta so Big Sur seemed like the most stable option eventually I got the installer to boot everything looks fine on the DPI screen but we can adjust it to a retina resolution later overall it looks pretty good some typical trouble spots like full resolution and Wi-Fi worked on the first attempt which was especially impressive for the Wi-Fi this computer has an Intel Wi-Fi chip which has been a major issue for hackintoshes over the years despite their prevalence in PCS no Mac has ever included Intel Wi-Fi meaning Apple has never approved a driver for it in typical Apple fashion they also never publicly documented the Wi-Fi driver apis making it very difficult for the community to Port one from Linux or FreeBSD however about two years ago someone finally succeeded in getting one to work yes it had its first stable release just after Apple announced they were discontinuing Hackintosh support but but it still made a significant impact in the realm of Hackintosh laptops now the more observant viewers might notice that the installer is in Russian that's the default language set in the config and the guide clearly explains how to change it but I overlooked it in my haste even though I've done this multiple times before however there were some much larger issues that needed to be addressed okay so the trackpad doesn't work kind of expected no keyboard functionality also anticipated I was so thrilled about the Wi-Fi working that I forgot to mention we can't even use this thing yet why did I expect this well with a desktop everything is generally standard your peripherals are likely regular USB and if you have Intel Wi-Fi swapping it out or adding a card is usually easy plus if there's a custom component on the motherboard that doesn't function properly it's often not a huge issue on laptops the situation is quite different many essential components are often managed by custom Hardware ranging from less critical features like lid detection or battery reporting to absolutely vital infrastructure such as the protocols used to connect the keyboard and trackpad this is where the lengthy trial and error process kicks in identifying the hardware in your computer determining what community drivers you might need or figuring out if they even exist is let's say an adventure sometimes Mac OS may actually support the hardware natively but you might need to spoof its ID or provide some other means to get it recognized for the most part you won't know exactly what you're up against until you've already begun if that sounds tedious it's because it is and if you're diving into hackintoshing it's something you'll need to adapt to I attempted to plug in a USB keyboard and mouse to continue the installer but they didn't work either um after some adjustments I surprisingly got Bluetooth to recognize devices but when I tried to pair it with a Microsoft ergonomic Bluetooth mouse yes we're using all Microsoft Hardware today it didn't connect I should note that it's common for laptops to connect their keyboards and trackpads via the old PS2 interface which is crucial because Apple has never supported PS2 there is a kex available and I did give it a try but this laptop uses something different something called i2c which I'm not very familiar with fortunately I didn't need to delve into it as I soon found something quite interesting a community-made CeX called Big surface it's an all-in-one CeX designed to enable various features when running Mac OS on a Microsoft Surface how convenient the pun is explained in the readme Big Sir the then most recent version of Mac OS and surface oh bro that's a stinker LOL indeed PS if you have a better name let me know honestly I don't see how you can improve on Perfection but putting naming confidence aside it actually made a significant difference just adding that this got the keyboard and mouse functioning allowing us to finally move forward with the installation as promised it also activated the battery indicator which is always a nice touch it likely fixed several other issues I hadn't even noticed were broken before and so we were off and running installing Mac OS on a Microsoft laptop dogs and cats living together Mass hysteria enough I get it in the end I was fortunate to find a kex specifically made for this computer that's rarely the case and the process could have been much more difficult when you think about it it makes sense why Apple never heavily cracked down on Hackintosh if you're in their Target demographic creative professionals or those who want something that simply works the last thing you want to deal with is any of this despite how technically similar their computers were to PCS Apple kept enough control over their ecosystem that even though anyone could build their own Mac most average users still opted to pay the premium one could argue that Mac OS has the worst Hardware compatibility of any desktop OS out there but but it could also be viewed as part of Apple's overall business strategy this laptop is already on the edge of Hackintosh compatibility featuring a 10th Generation Intel CPU which coincidentally is the last Intel generation Apple has shipped and likely ever will if you have an 11th gen Intel CPU it can work if you spoof the CPU IDs but if you're limited to the integrated graphics on that CPU there's nothing you can do no one has ever created a driver for Intel 11th gen graphics and without Apple's explicit approval no one ever will so if this laptop were even slightly newer this project wouldn't be feasible at all Hackintosh is already fading away even while apple is still selling intel-based products anyway the installer completed without issues but when I tried to boot into the OS it kernel panicked great turns out I just overlooked another part of the tutorial I needed to set some kernel parameters related to Intel Graphics these parameters are specific to this generation of Intel gpus so I must have accidentally overlooked them but hey now it's working sort of there's always a sort of when setting up a Hackintosh the mouse didn't seem to work at first but then I realized it was functioning I just couldn't see it clearly it was glitchy but as it turns out this is a fairly common issue with Intel gpus on Hackintosh systems you need to patch the frame buffer using the whatever green patching guide honestly I went through a good portion of it and still didn't fully grasp what it was doing however it did make the cursor appear so I consider that a win that said I soon noticed some other graphical issues occasionally the entire screen would fail flickering or parts of the screen glitching out it's minor and it doesn't stop me from using it but I I definitely want to address that first though let's tackle more pressing issues like the tiny DPI actually I suppose the problem is that there's too much DPI but you know what I mean fortunately there are plenty of tools available specifically for this purpose these tools create a fake profile for your display allowing you to specify whatever resolutions you want and override the os's built-in settings now when I open system preferences I have a new set of resolutions available including this monitor's native resolution at 2x DPI just like a retina display look at that it's absolutely beautiful I really appreciate the surfaces 3x2 aspect ratio it offers much more room for productivity compared to the standard 16x9 while MacBooks are slightly larger at 16 by10 3x two just feels right to me plus the 10bit color depth is nice too anyway that's one issue resolved but there are still several more to tackle um firstly there's no sound which isn't uncommon in Hackintosh setups fortunately Apple wasn't nearly as restrictive with their audio driver documentation so there are plenty of community drivers available it's just about finding the right one this laptop features a very common realtech ALC sound card which has had a cext for several years now all we need to do is determine the correct layout ID to use there are many options but you can narrow them down if you know the exact model for this I booted into Linux which identified it as an ALC 274 this provides a brief list of potential IDs so I set off trying them all interestingly with the first two layout IDs I tried the microphone worked but while it detected an output there was no sound however the third one I tested with reference ID number 35 worked perfectly as soon as I heard the sound of an Apple device charging on boot I knew the audio was set hup next up was the trackpad issue for the most part it worked really well Mac OS recognized it with full gesture and multi-touch support likely thanks to Big surface again in many ways it felt like a genuine MacBook trackpad at least before they switched to haptic clicking however there was something strange about the hard click tapping worked fine but hard clicking seemed to trigger a right click no matter where or how I did it but guess what it turns out this isn't a right click at all it's a forced click I barely remembered that was even a feature for those who aren't aware Apple briefly introduced a feature where pressing harder on a touch-sensitive Surface would trigger a different action this started on the Apple watch and later spread to iPhones and MacBooks but few people really utilized it and it was eventually quietly discontinued it turns out this trackpad was so convincing that Mac OS assumed it supported Force touch when it received a binary onoff click signal it interpreted on as a hard press resulting in a force click while there's likely a more elegant way to inform Mac OS that this trackpad doesn't support Force touch I opted for the simpler route of just turning it off in the settings after all I wouldn't be using Force touch even if this trackpad supported it that leaves us with two issues I've already mentioned the USB I tried to get working in the installer still doesn't function and the screen continues to glitch and flicker occasionally USB issues are another common problem in Hackintosh setups since Mac OS doesn't have to handle a wide variety of USB controllers or many USB ports for that matter it turns out it isn't very Adept at managing them therefore in hackintoshing it's generally advised to test each USB port on your computer by plugging a device into each one and noting the number it registers as in fact you often need to do twice because Mac OS views USB 2 and usb3 ports as completely separate even if they're the same physical Port so you'll need to test both USB 2 and 3 devices in each one ironically the surface laptop 3 much like a Macbook only has a couple of USB ports so it doesn't seem like there's much that could go wrong regardless I proceeded to detect and declare each Port only to find that neither would recognize any devices at all the only things that appeared were the webcam and Bluetooth which were obviously connected internally this was quite strange I felt like I was following the instructions precisely so why wasn't it actually working well it turns out there were other instructions I hadn't followed closely enough there's a section in the initial open core setup guide that mentions setting a flag to True which I did but it also warns against doing that if you're installing Mac OS 11.3 or higher uh apparently that version caused significant USB issues and I completely overlooked that note after disabling that flag the USB finally worked as expected yeah that's another challenge you face with Hackintosh setups due to the various complexities involved there's plenty of room for human error as we've seen throughout this video finally we come to those graphical glitches my goodness solving those was a real headache I couldn't find any information about these glitches no one seemed to know what might be causing them I spent hours trying various frame buffer IDs and adjusting values for the stolen memory but nothing worked sometimes things would break even more or the cursor would disappear again but I wasn't making any progress toward a real fix um I noticed that the glitches only appeared when the GPU was under heavier usage if it was sitting idle on the desktop there were no issues however when I was scrolling quickly through a web page minimizing something with the genie effect or worst case scrolling through Apple Maps the glitches would occur almost consistently unfortunately this information didn't lead me to a solution but I inclan hooded it in a Reddit thread I posted on rhosh which received no replies interestingly just 2 hours after posting I found the solution the whatever green patching guide has a troubleshooting section that outlines several common issues and their fixes I was reading through the troubleshooting tips in vain trying to find something useful when I came across one that initially didn't seem relevant it mentioned the display staying garbled for 7 to 15 seconds after Boot and suggested adding some delay to resolve it while I wasn't experiencing that issue I continued reading and saw a note that a delay of zero caused flickering in some laptops and that the default was later changed to one to fix this so I thought let's give that a try if a delay of zero might lead to flickering then having it completely disabled could cause the same issue right well holy crap that actually fixed it I later recalled that the OS would pause on a black screen for a few seconds before showing the login screen but I never really thought much of it that might actually be the 7 to 15c garbled display the guide mentioned indeed it's gone now so that must have been it after using the laptop for a while I can confidently say it finally works perfectly sort of while it's mostly functioning well now there are still a few things that don't work and I'm probably not going to fix them while the touchcreen is a Hallmark of the surface I've never been particularly keen on using a touchscreen on a laptop apparently big surface does does address this issue with an ssdt patch but I'm just not going to bother I'm also not very interested in the ambient light sensors that automatically adjust the backlight big surface claims to address that but it still seems broken on my end and honestly I prefer adjusting it manually anyway so it doesn't bother me much the worst lingering issue is that the laptop laptop doesn't seem to wake from sleep big surface notes it's a known issue where neither the keyboard nor Mouse can wake the system but I found that even external peripherals or the power button didn't work either this can be another frustrating aspect of Hackintosh setups in fact it's a general issue with this laptop some people trying to get Linux running on the Microsoft Surface have noted that Microsoft actually messed something up in the hardware of the surface laptop 3 and had to implement a manual patch in Windows I can't say for sure if that's the issue here but whatever it is I probably lack the time or expertise to dig deeper so I just disabled sleep altogether it's not ideal but it beats having to hard reset every time the lid is closed or it's left idle for a few minutes so there you have it Mac OS on a Microsoft laptop surprisingly functional I wouldn't go so far as to say it's just like a Macbook you've seen the extensive effort needed just to set one up not to mention the potential maintenance required down the line as I've mentioned there are many ways things can go wrong so relying on it as a daily driver for critical tasks might not be the best idea it's like owning a hobby project car fun to solve problems and thrilling when things finally work but not the most reliable option for daily commutes while some people do use hackintoshes for everyday productivity it's often due to a mix of compatible hardware and good maintenance practices for instance while I was working on this video a a Microsoft Surface firmware update from a separate window windows partition broke the keyboard and mouse again necessitating a new version of big surface to fix the issue so despite your best efforts unexpected issues can always arise plus many people value MacBooks for their status symbol uh running Macos on non-apple Hardware won't necessarily earn you a spot in the club most folks just want to see that Apple logo on the lid regardless of what's actually running under the hood absolutely there's a perception that running a Hackintosh might make someone seem seem less affluent as if they're trying to imitate a Macbook on a budget plus with apple officially moving away from Intel and arm becoming the new standard the days of Hackintosh are indeed numbered just like with the power PC transition it's a matter of time before support completely vanishes you're right despite the challenges the surface laptop 3 really does come close to to capturing the MacBook experience its design screen quality and overall Aesthetics are impressive and it often outperforms in certain areas while there may be easier Hackintosh setups this one offers a unique blend of Form and Function that many would appreciate just remember with the looming end of support it's more of a temporary solution for those who enjoy the tinkering aspect of hackintoshing [Music]

Channel: Mahdy

Views: 2,381

Keywords: Hackintosh 2024, macOS on Surface, DIY MacBook, Hackintosh Tutorial, Installing macOS on PC, Surface Laptop Hackintosh, macOS Big Sur Installation, Tech Projects, Apple vs Microsoft, macOS on Non-Apple Hardware, macos, apple, ios, run macos on laptop, run mac os on desktop, install macos on computer, macbook pro, mac mini, net vn

Id: FSr0vXtBBTA

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2024