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The end of ‘Hackintosh’ – how Apple is sounding the death knell for a once-thriving online community

March 18, 2024
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The beloved ‘Hackintosh’ may be on its last legs, as Apple’s macOS 14 Sonoma kills off a selection of older Wi-Fi drivers in its signature operating system allowing users to run it properly on purpose-built hardware.

For the uninitiated, a Hackintosh was the term given to a non-Apple computer or other device running macOS. The benefits of this are pretty obvious: for starters, Apple’s best MacBooks and Macs can cost a pretty penny, and are usually the only way to access macOS.

On top of that, Apple’s hardware can be limited for some users – if you want a super-powered scientific modeling PC with a ludicrous amount of RAM, for example, you’d normally be limited to purpose-built Windows and Linux machines. Then there's also the silly (but fun) edge cases, like running macOS on a Nintendo DS.

The latest version of macOS, Sonoma, has removed driver support for a selection of old Broadcom Wi-Fi cards found in some Mac models from 2012/13. That might not sound like a big problem in itself (after all, that hardware is more than a decade old now). But Hackintosh fan and app developer Aleksandar Vacić has pointed out that those cards were integral to fully-functioning Hackintosh builds, and a driver shift from .kext to .dext formats has similarly hamstrung other workarounds.

A sad day for macOS lovers… who don’t like Macs

Hackintosh fans formed a small but lively online community around their custom macOS rigs, and some users are already bemoaning the impending death of their favorite homebrew hardware.

As one commenter on OSNews put it Hackintoshes were “a great way to have a machine that Apple doesn’t offer anymore – unsightly big box full of hardware.” Many have noted that Apple dropping Intel and shifting to ARM-based chips for its Macs, starting the release of the very impressive M1 chip seen in the 2020 MacBook Air, was the first sign that the Hackintosh glory days might be coming to an end, and that prophecy seems to be ringing true.

Without proper Wi-Fi driver support, the only way to run Sonoma on non-Apple hardware now seems to be doing so without Wi-Fi at all, which has the knock-on effect of borking many apps in macOS, including FaceTime, AirDrop, and Continuity. With one of the aforementioned Wi-Fi cards and an older version of macOS, all of those tools worked just fine.

At the end of the day, the humble Hackintosh represented a path forward for users who loved the OS, but hated (or simply couldn’t afford) the hardware. It’s no surprise that some fans are upset by its slow death, but the writing was on the wall; the Hackintosh community has undeniably been shrinking ever since the tech giant abandoned Intel’s x86 processors.

Google’s time to shine?

Personally, as TechRadar’s resident macOS hater, I won’t really shed a tear about this. There was one comment on OSNews that resonated with me, though: user ‘cpcf’, who said “we discard so much hardware long, long before its natural use-by-date simply because some software somewhere says ‘No!’”

It’s an excellent point, although I’m not dragging Apple directly here; ending support for decade-plus-old kit isn’t ridiculous. But killing users’ ability to keep their old home-made Macs running is a shame, especially considering that Apple hasn’t historically hated the ‘Hackintosh’ trend too much. Another user speculates about macOS being given the open API license treatment, suggesting Apple takes a stance of “Here’s our driver API so 3rd parties can make drivers, here’s the OS. If you want to run it on an x86 PC, pay us $ 200.”

It’s not a bad idea, and could be a way for Apple to make a bit of side cash off its older macOS versions, but I doubt it’ll ever happen. Apple prides itself on its tightly insulated software ecosystem, and Google beat macOS to the punch anyway. ChromeOS Flex already offers a cheap and easy alternative OS for almost any machine, an admirable way to beat the current e-waste crisis. Good job, Google; sorry you missed the boat, Apple.

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TechRadar – All the latest technology news

January 25, 2022
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Twitter is testing a new feature called Flock, that will seemingly allow you to tweet to followers in a closed group.

Social networks are, by their very nature, largely shared social experiences. But there are also options available on different platforms that make it possible to limit who can see what you post. On the likes of Facebook, this is a simple matter of configuring your audience to anything from making content public – meaning anyone can see things – to limiting viewing to a number of named individuals.

On Twitter, there aren't many options when it comes to controlling who can see your tweets. Unless you block individual users or restrict your account so it is only visible to followers, it is broadly speaking an all-or-nothing approach – but this could be able to change.

Just as Instagram has a feature that makes it possible to share content with a small group of people, we have known for a little while that Twitter is working on something similar. Towards the middle of last year, we learned about Trusted Friends – Twitter's take on Instagram's Close Friends – and now more details have started to emerge.

The first thing to note is that there seems to have been a name change. No longer known as Trusted Friends, the feature now appears to be called Twitter Flock. In a screenshot shared on Twitter by mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi, we can see that work has progressed noticeably:

#Twitter continues to work on Twitter Flock by adding an explanation of how it works 👀ℹ️ You can choose up to 150 people to include in your Twitter Flock 👥ℹ️ People won’t be notified if you remove them from the list 🔕 pic.twitter.com/xtGcDiHgxSJanuary 21, 2022

Flocking to the tweets

As you can see from the screenshot taken from the iOS version of the Twitter app, your Flock is a group that can include up to 150 people. Anything you post to or share with your Flock can only be seen by those people, and only members of the Flock will be able to reply to tweets.

Privacy is a key feature of Twitter Flock. Not only does the feature mean that users will be able to limit who is able to see and interact with content, but Twitter also points out that “people won't be notified if you remove them from your Twitter Flock” – helping to avoid the need to awkward explanations!

For the time being, Twitter is keeping its cards close to its chest about the feature. The company is essential neither confirming nor denying what Flock is exactly, saying to the Verge that it is “always working on new ways to help people engage in healthy conversations, and we're currently exploring ways to let people share more privately.”

The company goes on to say: “We don't have any further news to share about the feature at this time, but we can confirm that the name 'Twitter Flock' is just a placeholder.”