Ask HN: What is the best Hackintosh laptop for ios app developers?

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Hackintosh really not worth it unless you're doing serious video editing.

For laptops, absolutely agreed. Configuring a Hack is always going to be painful.

That being said, building a hackintosh rig and getting it to work is really fun to play around with!

In other words, doing this will eat up countless hours so you should only by doing this if you want (i.e., have time for) a new hobby, not because you think the new MBPs lack of an Esc key is going to ruin your productivity.

To my great sadness there is no such way to do hackintosh development in a properly licensed manner. :(

1. Opportunity cost - The time you spend on hackintosh could be spent exploring the iOS SDK. It is an extensive and amazing SDK to work with.

2. Need to embrace the platform - I once hated the fact that you had to get a Mac to develop for iOS. But then a light clicked in my head: If you aren't willing to get a Mac, you'd never appreciate the iOS platform and always hate it for not being more open, or not supporting many languages, etc.

For my purposes, I only need to build apps with XCode, not do anything graphically intensive.

But if you bought one of the PC laptops linked in my document, you might end up with a system with unsupported graphics.

MIGHT.

I had huge problems with hackintosh in the past because my GPU was newer than the Kexts OSX had available at the time.

EDIT: You edited your comment. The difference was the cheaper model shipped with Ubuntu. Didn't notice because I was watching Star Trek. Haha.

I had problems in the past because I was using a Hackintosh with an AMD card that didn't work with OSX at the time.

Both are 802.11ac capable however. I think the DW1560 is a bit slower.

Multiple acquittances have been working on custom built Hackintoshes for years without _any_ issues from Apple.

Can you also provide a source? Would your acquaintances mind if you provided links to the apps they have developed with their Hackintoshes for years?

The risk is $400 of hardware and a $99 dev account for the possibility of making way more than that releasing your own apps and making that much on a daily basis developing apps for other people.

Risk meet Reward

Go check it out before you take on the headache that is working on a hackintosh.

It's still somehow better built than dell's XPS and the space gray color is nice to boot. Since it's the "entry level", it doesn't have a touch strip and instead has a full function row, including the esc key. It felt fast from my first impressions and the aspect ratio is 3:2, which you still can't get on windows pc other than the surface book.