- Apple’s MacOS Tahoe is the final version that supports Intel Chips
- This means that the death of Hackintosh is nearly
- It’s sad news for the community of tinkers and custom PC barley lords
Apple lifted the lid on MacOS Tahoe at its WWDC 2025 event earlier in June, and one thing it advertised under platform State of the Union address was that this software update would be the last to support Intel Macs. It had the effect of putting the last nails in the coffin of the humble hackintosh, and this has left me more than a little sad.
In case you don’t know, a hackintosh is a computer running macos on custom PC hardware. Apple does not support or condolences these computers, so building requires a lot of complex leg work and specific files that convince macos that it runs on Apple-approved components.
Part of the equation is that a hackintosh usually requires an Intel chip. You can’t buy Apple Silicon chips from the shelf, but with recent macOS versions supporting Intel processors, this was a go-to alternative.
When Apple drops this support, it’s the end of the way of Hackintoshes.
We knew that this day was coming
For many years I was fascinated by the idea of building a hackintosh. I have long been frustrated with the daily quirks of Windows, but love to build PCs too much to go all-in on macos. A hackintosh felt like the perfect way to get your hands, build a powerful computer capable of both work and games, and still gets all the smoothness and rich features of macOS.
But with the constantly increasing difficulties in building a hackintosh and the increasingly complex solutions needed to get one to work, I never took the plunge.
Many years ago, a hackintosh was the best of both worlds: the hardware performance that Apple simply couldn’t deliver, and the software features and stability that Windows hard lacked. But now that Apple Silicon offers huge achievement – even in demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077Something that was once considered inconceivable to a Mac – the need for a hackintosh has diminished.
Despite the news, not everyone in the Hackintosh community has taken the news badly. Even before Apple’s message, I would occasionally browse Hackintosh forums, and the council was often the same: Modern Macs does much of what Hackintoshes set out to achieve.
They offer far more bang for your bucks than they used to do (M4 MAC Mini is a good example) and unless you fill the specific niche of loving both macos and DIY computer building and refusing to get a Mac and a PC, Apple’s own products do the job. Many of the newer reactions are the same.
Maybe someone will find a way to get hackintoshes to work on Apple Silicon. But with the harsh security measures, Apple has built into its chips, it’s far from guaranteed. While many in the community take the news well, I can’t help but feel disappointed with what we want to lose.
