Category: Hackintosh

MacWorld Benchmarks a Hackintosh

September 5th, 2013 · · Hackintosh No comments

MacWorld confirms what a lot of Mac folks have known for a long time now:

Our custom-built OS X computer was faster than the $2499 Mac Pro in all 15 of the individual tests that make up Speedmark 8: Overall, it was 23 percent faster than the Mac Pro. A few of the tests were close; exporting an iMovie project was only 4 percent faster on the Bride of Frankenmac than on the Mac Pro. Unzipping a large file archive was 9 percent faster, and running our Photoshop action script was 10 percent faster.

They do offer some caveats regarding compatibility of parts and the lack of an “umbrella warranty”. Regarding the video card: A quick Google search before the build would have negated that issue. Regarding the warranty: The fact that I can easily, quickly, and inexpensively replace just about any part in my computer (which I’ve not yet had to do, knock on wood) is a powerful counterargument to a machine made exclusively with proprietary, pricey, and hard-to-get parts.

More Reason to Go Hackintosh?

August 10th, 2013 · · Hackintosh No comments

Marco Arment takes a close look at Intel chip prices and concludes:

I’d be very surprised to see the new Mac Pro’s entry price below $3,500, and for a CPU that makes the Mac Pro barrier worth crossing, I think we’re talking $5,000 and up.

Unless the major DAWs commit to harnessing the processing power of the new Mac Pro’s dual GPUs (which is likely highly dependent on how easy Apple makes it for developers to do so), it’s going to be very hard to convince many musicians and studio owners to shell out $5K for modest performance gains. Curious to see how this all shakes out.