“Hackintosh is (almost) dead,” proclaims a new blog post from Aleksandar Vacić – and the Apple Silicon transition is partially to blame. As Vacić writes, Apple has “completely removed all traces of driver support” for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards key to the Hackintosh world.
In the blog post, Vacić gives some technical details, and a potential explanation, of what this means:
In Sonoma, Apple has completely removed all traces of driver support for their oldest WiFi/Bt cards, namely various Broadcom cards that they last used in 2012/13 iMac / MacBook models. Those Mac models are not supported by macOS for few years now thus it’s not surprising the drivers are being removed. Most likely reason is that Apple is moving drivers away from
.kext(Kernel Extensions) to.dext(DriverKit) thus cleaning up obsolete and unused code from macOS. They did the same with Ethernet drivers in Ventura.
These cards were “the key ingredient to many fully functional Hackintosh builds,” Vacić continues. The reason for this? The cards worked “out of the box” with things like iMessage, FaceTime, AirDrop, Continuity, and more.
Ultimately, this means “Hackintosh is on its deathbed” for many people:
Hence — Hackintosh is on its death bed. Some things will work for few more months or maybe even years, depending on what you use it for and wether lack of WiFi bothers you or not. But not for me. I can live without AirDrop, Continuity and Handoff but Messages and FaceTime must work. There’re also some other things Sonoma brings that are important to me thus I want to update to it. Coupled with described lack of reliability and fretting if next minor or major update would leave me dry — nah, not worth it.
The full blog post from Vacić is well-worth a read. It’s a good look at the bigger picture of the Hackintosh community as it exists today.
9to5Mac’s Take
This is an end of an era. I took a stab at building my own Hackintosh way back in 2013. Even if the final product wasn’t perfect, it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience. I remember being enthralled by the Hackintosh community, which had created a robust set of tools and guides for helping novices like myself conquer the task.
While sad, there is a piece of good news. The Mac lineup is stronger, more powerful, and more versatile than it has ever been. You can get a really, really solid Apple Silicon-powered Mac mini starting at just $599. There’s also, of course, the M1 MacBook Air $699 from multiple retailers.
Did you ever venture into the world of building a Hackintosh? Share your stories with me down in the comments.
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