After Apple’s announcement, I ordered an M1 Mini only to cancel it when I noticed the 16G non-upgradable RAM. I just reordered it, and I plan to retire my seven years old Hackintosh. It served me well, but after spending the whole weekend trying to upgrade it, having issues with Clover, OpenCore, and find later than Big Sur might not run on it, I decided it was time to move on. The last nail in the coffin was when I remember I had to fix iCloud after moving to OpenCore. When using a Hackintosh, you have to find a matching working serial that Apple servers will accept. After giving a try with ten random ones without luck, I also remembered you might be locked out of Apple services for security reasons, with the only solution to call them to unlock your account. I can only imagine the explanation I’d have to give to the Apple support.
I am way more dependant on my Apple account than before, mobile apps and the AppStore, iCloud storage through many Mac apps, sync between devices, iCloud files, Keychain sync, etc. Being locked out of it would suck.
When reading this seven-year-old post, I remember I used to have a mini before because the current MacPro had not been upgraded for years. The then-new MacPro didn’t fit my need (lots of internal storage), so I moved to Hackintosh as it was way cheaper, and I thought upgradable. Since then, the only upgrade I did was upgrading the GPU (the new OS didn’t support my old GTX 760 graphic card) and adding more SSD disks.
All those steps I thought were transitional, not meaning to last long. They all lasted way longer than expected, and I feel the new M1 mini might last longer than expected as well. Looking at my geekbenchs you’ll see my Hackintosh (listed as iMac14,2) was doing 3719 Multi-core. My new 2020 MBP16” is already twice faster, but the M1 mini beats them all.
However the 2008 MacPro I bought was a great machine, still used to its maximum by a friend I sold it to a decade later. So I’m very much looking forward to the next iMac and MacPro with the new Apple chip.
So long, my dear Hackintosh.