# Would like hear very honest reports on Hackintosh reliability and stability with Cubase.



## Headlands (May 11, 2020)

Hi all, I recently switched to Windows from Mac, and while W10 is good and is supremely stable with Cubase and VE Pro at the same time, after over three weeks on it I am considering making this same computer a Hackintosh (a dual boot if that's possible -- if not, then two separate system drives in case the Hackintosh doesn't work). PLEASE, no Mac vs. Windows on this thread. Life is too short.

I want to hear_ very honest, very truthful_ reports from people who are using Hackintosh systems themselves. I'm looking for total honesty here, no pasting over the bad parts. I do music for a living almost every day and need to know that if I do this build I can depend on it without having to screw around often to fix things/problem solve. I would purely like to hear about stability and the need for ongoing tweaking so I can decide if it's worth it to go back to the OS I prefer via the Hackintosh route

I've done a lot of research and have had some great help from here as well, just want to hear as many honest reports as I can in order to decide if it's worth spending the time to try it out.


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## colony nofi (May 12, 2020)

Quite a tricky question. So much depends on the hardware you have - and therefore the types of hackintosh installation you can do. There are a few very specific setups that work REALLY REALLY well. So well that there's even a post production house that I've seen using them in multiple rooms (thought they have a full time tech to keep them going!)
However. This is not the case with all hardware. Much hardware can't be used or theres a bunch of features that wont work. All sorts of frustrations over bluetooth, wifi, thunderbolt, ethernet, graphics cards...
Is the machine in your signature your actual machine? Is it X299 based? I haven't looked since christmas, but I'm not sure anyone's got them working as macs don't natively support that platform. I'd be checking in with tonymac for that info. 

My advice - if you are wanting this machine to work without stressing over it -is to follow one of morgonaut's machines.








World’s Fastest Hackintosh Ever – 2019 Apple Mac Pro Killer! - MORGONAUT


Real Apple 2019 Mac Pro Killer!!! What components I used to build world’s Fastest Hackintosh ever for year 2020? Here you have it! Ultimate macOS Catalina Hackintosh which would beat the 2019 Apple Mac Pro in CPU and GPU tasks! AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970x Hackintosh :) 🎬 1st VIDEO ABOUT THIS...




morgonaut.cloud


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## cmbsa (May 14, 2020)

Hey there,
I’ve seen your other threads, sorry to see that windows still isn’t working for you. But I understand completely.
I started on PC in the early 2000s, then it was OSX for a long time. in 2010 I built the first of 4 hackintosh machines. In 2017 I switched to Windows (for economic reasons. I was done with hackintosh, so it was either Mac or PC).

I’d say don’t do it. Don’t go down the hackintosh route.
Colony is right, you *NEED* to buy specific hardware to make a hackintosh work. Otherwise you’ll never be happy (in other words: it just won’t work)

And once you have a well running machine it will only stay that way til the next update. Also, there is no (official) support.
This is not to talk bad about hackintoshs, I think it’s great what the community is doing. But yu asked about the pros and cons for music production.

TBH if I would have known that I would spend so much time with the computer tech side of things, I would have stayed in the MAC world. I am fine now on PC, but, man, I wish I had been making more music in the past 10 years.

Do you want to tweak all the under-the-hood stuff on a hackintosh? Trust me, it can get cumbersome.
Check out tonymacx86.com, go to the forum, people will post their build with good step by step walkthroughs. It’s a LOT of work to build a hackintosh, and still you have no guarantee that everything will work.

I know you invested quite a bit in a new PC, but think ahead 5 years: maybe you bought some gear you didn’t use (as we all do), and realized that OSX on an expensive apple-computer is still your best option.
It’s a tough decision you’ll have to make, but think about how you really want to spend your time.

Best of luck to you!


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## Patryk Scelina (May 14, 2020)

I've been using a Hackintosh for last 5-6 years. However I bought all components compatible with OSx. While it is possible to install OSx on olmost anything now there is always a chance something won't work or will cause some issues. The thing which drives me crazy all the time was updates. Every single time there was a system update something went wrong and I had to check and replace some kexts to make my system boot again. 

That's why after this time I eventually bought a second hand Mac Pro and use it for 4 months now. I must say I can't see much difference in stability. Cubase crashed many times on my hackintosh but it also crashes on Mac Pro. So I can't see any hardware related difference in Cubase behavior. 

The only thing which I miss however is that my Hackintosh had 5 internal drives and internal DVD Rom. Now I have this aweful external junk which I hidden somehow of my sight. 

I'd say. If I'd like to work on a the same system, the same software without updates for let's say3-4 years than sure, Hackintosh would be just fine. But I was just tired of losing many hours or even days at the begining, to figure out what's wrong with my system after update and how to fix it.


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## dnegovan (May 16, 2020)

I'll chime in! I built a hackintosh i7-4930k in 2014, originally running 10.9 Mavericks. I bought the parts with hackintoshing in mind, made sure they would be compatible. It was definitely some work to get running. Lots of googling and tinkering. Not a lot of people had built ones with that CPU at the time so there weren't a ton of guides. I thought it was fun for the most part though. I had my old 2009 mac pro rig still running and just kind of worked on it on the side when I had time.

Two annoying things were that I had to buy a couple network cards and test each one out until I got stable VEPro performance - the one that came on the motherboard was acting weird. I never got USB3 working. But everything I needed it for worked great after I fixed the network card. It was VERY VERY stable and I only had to do the update dance ONCE, to 10.11, which I am still running. Updating went very smoothly so I would do it again, but I don't like to mess with something that isn't broken so I've tried to avoid it as long as I can. Lately if there's a new version of some software I need that won't run on 10.11 I've just been installing on my PC slave and using it there.

Maybe if you need to be on the latest OS version all the time I wouldn't recommend a hackintosh since the problems you hit updating could be bad. But if you wait long enough to update, enough other people will have done it and posted guides/threads about it that you shouldn't have too much of a problem IMO.

I keep a spare SSD just to be a clone of the OS drive in case I accidentally break something (or as a backup if I need to update/make some change on the main one) - I could just boot from that instead and get back to work if I needed to. I actually had the motherboard die in the middle of a project once, found another one on eBay in town, ran and got it, installed it, fixed some authorizations, and kept working. Only lost half a day or so. To avoid that predicament again I actually bought an extra mobo and have kept it in the closet just in case!

I still feel like I really beat the system with this thing - despite the hiccups above, I saved a bunch of money (and honestly disgust) investing in some kind of wonky gross external thunderbolt enclosure mess with the mac pro trashcan. And the performance its given me has held up really well.

Starting to really need an upgrade, so I've thought about the new mac pro but I really am leaning heavily toward just building a 3950x hackintosh. Enough people have made them and the process is more popular that I think the whole process will be easier this time.

Can't comment on Cubase though because I use DP.

Oh one other thing I don't like is I've invested a lot of time and energy into building it to be as quiet as possible and I still feel like it's slightly louder than I'd like. If I were going to buy the mac pro, one main reason would be I know that it'll be dead silent without me having to put energy toward that issue. Still thinking about it.


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## jcrosby (May 17, 2020)

dnegovan said:


> I'll chime in! I built a hackintosh i7-4930k in 2014, originally running 10.9 Mavericks. I bought the parts with hackintoshing in mind, made sure they would be compatible. It was definitely some work to get running. Lots of googling and tinkering. Not a lot of people had built ones with that CPU at the time so there weren't a ton of guides. I thought it was fun for the most part though. I had my old 2009 mac pro rig still running and just kind of worked on it on the side when I had time.
> 
> Two annoying things were that I had to buy a couple network cards and test each one out until I got stable VEPro performance - the one that came on the motherboard was acting weird. I never got USB3 working. But everything I needed it for worked great after I fixed the network card. It was VERY VERY stable and I only had to do the update dance ONCE, to 10.11, which I am still running. Updating went very smoothly so I would do it again, but I don't like to mess with something that isn't broken so I've tried to avoid it as long as I can. Lately if there's a new version of some software I need that won't run on 10.11 I've just been installing on my PC slave and using it there.
> 
> ...


You should watch both of this guys videos about Ryzen. It's true a lot of people are building them for video, but the one video I've found that's specifically for an audio build tells a completely different story.

Apparently there are thunderbolt and audio issues unique to AMD hackintoshes. The guy who did this video has been building hacks for 4 years and is a great resource, if he's having issues you can be sure the issue isn't unique to him...

According to him Logic wouldn't play more than 20 some odd tracks before Logic became totally unusable. Pretty sure there are common UAD/Thrunderbolt audio interface issues on Ryzen as well...

(You'll see a part 1 to this video on his YT channel if interested.)


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## Salorom (May 17, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> According to him Logic wouldn't play more than 20 some odd tracks before Logic became totally unusable. Pretty sure there are common UAD/Thrunderbolt audio interface issues on Ryzen as well...
> 
> (You'll see a part 1 to this video on his YT channel if interested.)



Logic choking over 20 tracks is definitely not Ryzen related. Watch a 3970X based hackintosh playing 500+ tracks with a fair amount of processing on each of them (6’05).

youtube.com/watch?v=KtAcUhl8hKo

I’m pretty sure in that case the issue lied with some kext (or maybe other hardware) compatibility, it was not the CPU. With that said I don’t know from personal experience that AMD fares the same as Intel as far as general stability goes.

I have been using a hackintosh as my main setup for about 7 years now, from 10.9 to 10.14. The problems you’ll face are almost always going to be kext related when updating your hardware, or migrating from one version of macOS to the other.

There’s a learning curve, sure, but things are getting much easier these days. If you’re ready to tinker a bit, it’s really worth it. You get to build a machine that’s tailored to your needs, which is a huge plus.


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## MGdepp (May 17, 2020)

My total honest experience with a Designare z390 and an i9 9900k processor, I built last year:

This was my first Hackintosh. During your first run, you don't know all of those tools like Clover. That is a little overwhelming, but if you take the time and follow one of those "golden build" plans (that is how that is called at tonymac), you will get there! My advices for the first build:

1) Don't pick an exotic build, pick a well-established one. The Designare z390 is still a valid choice and the processors are about to get cheaper.
2) Stick to the parts list as much as possible! Wherever you want to choose something different, you better check back in the forum thread with your guru ...
3) Be patient! You will need some time for the first build. Possibly, it will just be a matter of a few hours, when you chose the parts wisely!

My problems during the first build were all related to the list above. I wanted 128gb ram, which was pretty new to that platform in general. In the end it worked, but it took some help from a forum and a few weeks to solve. Had I gone with any of the recommended Ram, there wouldn't have been a problem at all. By now, it is not a problem anymore.
I also picked a different CPU cooler than the recommended one. Later, I found that my cooler was controlled by software that is only available on Windows. So, if I had just researched better, I would have picked the one, I picked later.

As important as the build, is the care you take after it. Every good Hackintosh tutorial will stress, that you must always make a back up of your system. And that is not the same as your typical Time Machine backup! You should buy an external (USB3 or Thunderbolt) SSD with the same size as your macOS internal SSD on the hackintosh. I use Carbon Copy Cloner and I do a backup of the system before every single update I do.

Now, when you are the kind of guy who wants to hit the update-button at any time without having to worry, I would not recommend you a hackintosh. In my case, I would never do an update during a project. No matter, if it was a real mac or a hack! So, apart from that backup routine, I did not need to change my behavior. I am still using Mojave, although Catalina was possible for hackintosh at day one! I just don't want to upgrade, hearing about all the issues with Catalina still ...  

But that is just for the emergency situation! Within the one year I have used that hackintosh, I had no real problems with it. Since Mojave was already in its final phase during my build, I rarely have to check for update instructions. The few problems I encountered are all not hackintosh-related, as it turned out. There only remains one problem, where I am not 100% sure: I have to manually select my audio interface, as macOS does not automatically recall it. This could be due to my RME Madi card or in fact a drive conflict from hackintosh. It does not bother me a lot, but I guess it could be solved. I just didn't find the time yet ...


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## Kwamena (May 18, 2020)

Thank you everyone for insightful comments and insights here. I'm also at a point where I'm considering hackintosh OR ditching Logic for Cubase. Headache from technical trouble shooting seem less so than switching DAWs after so many years (9 or so now) though. I've build my own PCs before so that side is doable. I just can't justify the extra spent on Apple computers anymore when there are better alternatives. Also AMD's new CPUs seem very tempting.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 18, 2020)

MGdepp said:


> My total honest experience with a Designare z390 and an i9 9900k processor, I built last year:
> 
> This was my first Hackintosh. During your first run, you don't know all of those tools like Clover. That is a little overwhelming, but if you take the time and follow one of those "golden build" plans (that is how that is called at tonymac), you will get there! My advices for the first build:
> 
> ...


You will also find rivalry and disdain in the developer community.
One such being Tonymacx86 who has been stated many times as stealing code and ideas from the likes of OSx86 and others then putting them into his tools providing no credit to the writers or developers.

I used to be over on Tonymacx86, but moved away as I came to disagree with the approach to it.
OpenCore looks awesome and of course now with Discord, you can join the OpenCore discord for support and updates. Provided by insanelymac.

I really enjoyed using OpenCore, really seems to have come further than Clover. But then I guess Clover would be more stable at this point as well.


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## MGdepp (May 18, 2020)

Shad0wLandsUK said:


> You will also find rivalry and disdain in the developer community.
> One such being Tonymacx86 who has been stated many times as stealing code and ideas from the likes of OSx86 and others then putting them into his tools providing no credit to the writers or developers.
> 
> I used to be over on Tonymacx86, but moved away as I came to disagree with the approach to it.
> ...


I just started with Tonymacx86. I was just using it as an example and in fact it helped me to get started so I would still recommend it for that purpose. To me, this is not about a religion. It is just a way to make the computer working with macOS. I currently run a Vanilla build with Clover and have the option of switching over to Open Core. I will try it out soon.


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## EgM (May 18, 2020)

_I didn't read the whole thread_

I've built many of those, presently using an HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF with 64gb ram as a VEP7 slave, works perfectly fine with minor USB slots selection issues on High Sierra. As to reliability and stability I guess it entirely depends on how knowledgeable you are on computers.

The key to making a stable hack is having a spare SSD, unplug all the drives that you care about and just read tonymac!


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## typewriter (May 18, 2020)

I use Hackintoshs for years - from the dark times where getting everything to run was a real challenge up to today where it is pretty easy to do. I use it as a daily driver and with all kinds of audio programs. The decision came with Apple's strange desktop offerings. I buy their laptops but I build hackintoshes for the desktop. The quirks reported here are often Apple related - the new file system is garbage for example. Thunderbolt is not working with hotplug - but who removes his audio interface in the studio anyway... AND USB interfaces are just fine. Tonymac is a starting point but they use still Clover as bootloader which will be replaced by the new OpenCore bootloader. As an easy starting point for installing use the YouTube vidos of "technolli" and the OpenCore vanilla install guide you can find on the web (use google). To get rid of all the different installation hassels you can virtualize osx on a hypervisor like Proxmox. This is what I do nowadays. The performance loss caused by the hypervisor is minimal and you can use literally any hardware. Via the hypervisor you can create snaphshots of your osx machine with ease and us ZFS-Raid as barebone of your virtual osx machine. Search for the YouTube video of Morgonaut. She did this with a 32 core Treadripper system and demos it with Logic Pro on her channel. You can "passthrough" graphic cards or other PCIe devices. The great thing is that you can simply transfer your virtual mac to any other machine without the need of a reinstall. Pretty amazing.


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## EgM (May 18, 2020)

typewriter said:


> I use Hackintoshs for years - from the dark times where getting everything to run was a real challenge up to today where it is pretty easy to do. I use it as a daily driver and with all kinds of audio programs. The decision came with Apple's strange desktop offerings. I buy their laptops but I build hackintoshes for the desktop. The quirks reported here are often Apple related - the new file system is garbage for example. Thunderbolt is not working with hotplug - but who removes his audio interface in the studio anyway... AND USB interfaces are just fine. Tonymac is a starting point but they use still Clover as bootloader which will be replaced by the new OpenCore bootloader. As an easy starting point for installing use the YouTube vidos of "technolli" and the OpenCore vanilla install guide you can find on the web (use google). To get rid of all the different installation hassels you can virtualize osx on a hypervisor like Proxmox. This is what I do nowadays. The performance loss caused by the hypervisor is minimal and you can use literally any hardware. Via the hypervisor you can create snaphshots of your osx machine with ease and us ZFS-Raid as barebone of your virtual osx machine. Search for the YouTube video of Morgonaut. She did this with a 32 core Treadripper system and demos it with Logic Pro on her channel. You can "passthrough" graphic cards or other PCIe devices. The great thing is that you can simply transfer your virtual mac to any other machine without the need of a reinstall. Pretty amazing.



Thanks for that information!

As for my reason to go hack, two iMac 2011 that died 'cause of the 6970 gpus... I'll never buy an apple machine again, I still love their iPads though, I have an iPad Pro 12.9 2017 and just bought my wife an iPad 7


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 18, 2020)

typewriter said:


> the new file system is garbage for example



How so?


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 18, 2020)

EgM said:


> I'll never buy an apple machine again



I have a Mac Plus in my garage that still worked last time I tried it, and a PowerMac 9600/300 from 1997 sitting in my room running a synth librarian.

To be fair, I'm lazy and don't turn on the 9600 - although I have to to test something - but still, it works after 24 years.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 18, 2020)

typewriter said:


> She did this with a 32 core Treadripper system and demos it with Logic Pro on her channel



Serious question: would you recommend spending $4K for a Hackintosh? That seems risky, in other words.


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## gsilbers (May 18, 2020)

yeah, its always something with hakintosh. minor things. maybe its all good but facetime will not work. or usb 3 will be bad. or need something. like its something small but you might be able to live with it. 

and apple might enforce some stronger updates to break compatitablity. or one of the updates youll not have thunderbolt or something like that. 

its just a risk. if someone who knows does it and gets everything running smooth and can deal with updates then maybe its a good deal.


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## typewriter (May 18, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> How so?


Slower on non SSD disks compared to the old file system. No real repair tools like disk warrior if the file system is broken. Disk utility looses more and more functionality. It is still a kind of a black box. It's great on SSD as long as everything is fine and if it breaks you are lost.


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## Shad0wLandsUK (May 18, 2020)

MGdepp said:


> I just started with Tonymacx86. I was just using it as an example and in fact it helped me to get started so I would still recommend it for that purpose. To me, this is not about a religion. It is just a way to make the computer working with macOS. I currently run a Vanilla build with Clover and have the option of switching over to Open Core. I will try it out soon.


I get you, not a religion here for me either. Just wanted to point it out, for people who go down the rabbit hole.
I do enjoy the Hackintosh world, very much!!
Maybe my new Ryzen 9 build manifesting in the coming months, will find OpenCore on it


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 18, 2020)

typewriter said:


> Slower on non SSD disks compared to the old file system. No real repair tools like disk warrior if the file system is broken. Disk utility looses more and more functionality. It is still a kind of a black box. It's great on SSD as long as everything is fine and if it breaks you are lost.



Okay, so it's mainly because it's new. 

Thanks.


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## jmauz (May 18, 2020)

ANOTHER thread on this?

<broken record>
If you're tech savvy then Hackintoshes are great. Once you get it working (which isn't very difficult these days) it's stable. Cheap. HOWEVER, if you aren't comfortable with editing system files, troubleshooting, and not having tech support to call, then they're not for you.
</broken record>


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## typewriter (May 18, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Serious question: would you recommend spending $4K for a Hackintosh? That seems risky, in other words.


No, I would not. Complete overkill. The video I mentioned is somehow a click bait video or proof of the concept of virtualisation. My main machine is a i7 7700k and I am fine. If I need more power I have VePro slaves. For virtualization of OSX I would go with a mid range Ryzen system. Best value for money. If you have spare parts like a case and disks you have to spend way beyond 1000 Dollar for a very decent system. You can use all cores with Proxmox as hypervisor.


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## emilio_n (May 18, 2020)

I was tempted several times to build a Hackintosh just for fun and maybe I will do in the future but if the machine is your way to live and make money I think is better to have a computer with official support that works out of the box. 
Windows or OSX, each one has different preferences, budgets and needs. Of course, this is just my opinion.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 18, 2020)

typewriter said:


> You can use all cores with Proxmox as hypervisor.



So you're running macOS under virtualization - emulation? That doesn't slow it down?


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## typewriter (May 19, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So you're running macOS under virtualization - emulation? That doesn't slow it down?


Slowdown is minimal. I am talking about type 1 virtualization - i.e. running a hypervisor and on top of that the MacOS. Works great. This is not the vmware workstation / fusion type of virtualization where you run a virtualization software within your OS and on top of that your other OS - this is slow.


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## jcrosby (May 19, 2020)

`


gsilbers said:


> yeah, its always something with hakintosh. minor things. maybe its all good but facetime will not work. or usb 3 will be bad. or need something. like its something small but you might be able to live with it.
> 
> and apple might enforce some stronger updates to break compatitablity. or one of the updates youll not have thunderbolt or something like that.
> 
> its just a risk. if someone who knows does it and gets everything running smooth and can deal with updates then maybe its a good deal.



That's actually not true. Everything runs on my machine as if bought form Apple, and facetime is an easy fix, no usb (or thunderbolt) issues. The one thing that's fairly common, (but not an issue on my build) is sleep/shut down. Even then this is less of an issue these days. On my machine everything including sleep and shut down works. It's actually more stable and reliable than any MacBook Pro I've bought since 2012, and just as stable as my old Mac Pro was. Frankly my old Mac Pro was more of a headache toward the end. Apple really went the extra mile to put those old cheesegraters out to pasture. 

The "it's always something with hackintoshes" happens when people get it running and don't do any post install tweaks to clean up issues they didn't know they can fix, or more often just rush through a build and assume it's correct just because it runs. As I said on the previous page, just because it runs, and runs stable, doesn't mean it's setup correctly.


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## gsilbers (May 19, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> `
> 
> 
> That's actually not true. Everything runs on my machine as if bought form Apple, and facetime is an easy fix, no usb (or thunderbolt) issues. The one thing that's fairly common, (but not an issue on my build) is sleep/shut down. Even then this is less of an issue these days. On my machine everything including sleep and shut down works. It's actually more stable and reliable than any MacBook Pro I've bought since 2012, and just as stable as my old Mac Pro was. Frankly my old Mac Pro was more of a headache toward the end. Apple really went the extra mile to put those old cheesegraters out to pasture.
> ...



yeah... something here, maybe there, maybe it has the wrong component, or wrong post or pre installation, wrong Macos versión and so on. It’s the users fault somehow.... since some have it working flawless. Or some have it fine and an update messes up something
It’s easy to start seeing this pattern after reading an enciclopedia worth of forum posts and articles and configuration variations, tweaks and troubleshooting.
by that point you loose the whole point of having a mac where everything just works and the hardware/software integration Is seamless. Not to mention the huge waste of time troubleshooting and research.
It’s just an extra layer of issues I rather not deal with.
I’m sure Anyone with more it experience and time can do some cool builds.
And just the thought of running into issues during a project is a nightmare.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 19, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Apple really went the extra mile to put those old cheesegraters out to pasture.



I work on mine all day long.


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## jcrosby (May 19, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I work on mine all day long.


Right, but it is stuck on Mojave forever. Apple also made it a pretty big headache to get to mojave if you didn't have your old GPU. The reality is it's a great machine, and _would_ run Catalina perfectly fine but Apple timed the release of the new Mac Pro a little too perfectly. So at least AFAIC they were very deliberate in retiring support for it when they did, and kind of shitty for raising the price to the point where you're looking at 10k+ for the kind of power most people want from one.

I actually still have mine. Haven't decided if I can let it go because it really is a kick ass machine


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## jcrosby (May 19, 2020)

gsilbers said:


> yeah... something here, maybe there, maybe it has the wrong component, or wrong post or pre installation, wrong Macos versión and so on. It’s the users fault somehow.... since some have it working flawless. Or some have it fine and an update messes up something
> It’s easy to start seeing this pattern after reading an enciclopedia worth of forum posts and articles and configuration variations, tweaks and troubleshooting.
> by that point you loose the whole point of having a mac where everything just works and the hardware/software integration Is seamless. Not to mention the huge waste of time troubleshooting and research.
> It’s just an extra layer of issues I rather not deal with.
> ...


It does take time to learn, and there is certainly a lot of reading involved initially. But As an example of how it's not necessarily the case that something breaks if you update - I just updated my machine to Mojave from High Sierra. This did indeed involve some research and tweaks to the EFI folder, but since I spent a couple afternoons checking the guides and asking a few questions I updated _in place _as if it were an actual mac...

I compose full time and I'm not the slightest bit worried about running into issues during a project. (In fact I did this update in the middle of delivering a new track to a fancy pants trailer library.)

I'm just saying it's a learning curve for sure... But when people take the time to check if there are issues to be aware of they can mitigate them with a little research. That said I realize it isn't for everyone and not suggesting any mac user do it, especially if they don't like to roll up their sleeves and problem solve.

Ironically this is what I love about it. I'm not at the mercy of Apple support. As someone who's dealt with T2 chip issues, good luck getting anyone on the phone that can solve them! I have total control over this machine working and can force compatibility; something that's actually impossible on an actual mac after a certain point..


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 19, 2020)

jcrosby said:


> Right, but it is stuck on Mojave forever. Apple also made it a pretty big headache to get to mojave if you didn't have your old GPU. The reality is it's a great machine, and _would_ run Catalina perfectly fine but Apple timed the release of the new Mac Pro a little too perfectly. So at least AFAIC they were very deliberate in retiring support for it when they did, and kind of shitty for raising the price to the point where you're looking at 10k+ for the kind of power most people want from one.
> 
> I actually still have mine. Haven't decided if I can let it go because it really is a kick ass machine



It can run Catalina, I just don't want to (because of 32-bit programs).


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