MacOS on Framework laptop?

Hi there!
I am courently running my MacBook Air, and my new laptop will be the frame.work. In a matter of interest and nerdness I wanted to ask you, the community if you think we could do an Hacintosh out of the framework.
I now the advantage of Linux but I am so used to the Mac!

(Its Probably just 10.15 with Catalina but woud be nice to).

Greetings and have nice day!
Johannes T.

Edit: spelling (I no there are more mistakes XD)

This question has been asked a few times. Basically the easiest way for you to run Mac OS on it is to install Ubuntu and then install a snap called sosumi. You’ll get Catalina I think. That works and works well.

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Tanks for the answer!
I thought there are some difficulties with some Wifi-cards an so on!
If I ever get a frame.work, I will try it out :smiley:

Greetings and thx!

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From the looks of it Sosumi installs it inside of a VM, not bare metal, which is why things like the WiFi would likely work.

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@speckledsea
But that woud mean that you lose a far bit of performance. I would think like 5-15% if you VM it…
But Thanks buddy!

You’ve already lost 20% or more of your battery life running macOS on non certified hardware, not sure why the minimal VM overhead concerns you?

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@Ethan_Spoelstra
Thanks for the reply, didn’t now, that it would lower the battery life that much!

Have a nice day!

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To run native you need to swap the wireless card at the very least.

Another thing that would be challenging is I don’t know if Apple has released any Thunderbolt 4 devices so there probably isn’t a kext available for those, I’m around it you might get charging via USB-C I’m not sure what else would work.

That’s why running in a KVM/VMware virtual machine is pretty much required at this point.

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I was able to get it running in qemu successfully. The install of Catalina was actually faster than I expected and it worked acceptably for browsing, etc.

Unfortunately, the two graphics apps I really wanted to use do not because they require Metal graphics which was not supported by the virtual graphics card. I’m by no means a qemu expert so if anyone has some magic up their sleeve for getting the graphics aspect to work, I’m all ears.

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Whilst ostensibly about MacOS, the OP apparently is open to recommendations as to different OS they can try. Whilst MacOS may not be an option at present, others to consider might be:

  • Haiku. Successor to BeOS. Unlike GNU/Linux, it is being built as an integrated whole (like commercial OS) so provides a more consistent user experience. Many are already using it as their quotidian OS, although the browser offering is still weak. I also doubt it works yet with the thunderbolt expansion ports on Framework. Interestingly, their RISC-V port is going very well (as is ARM), so may be one of the first out the blocks when Framework offer motherboards based on these instruction sets.
  • BSD (various sorts). Another type of Unix, so not too different to Linux, although many people now prefer it.
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I’d also look at https://elementary.io/. It bills itself as a “Windows and MacOS replacement”, based on Ubuntu. If you’re looking for the feel of MacOS, this would be a good place to start. It may not be new enough to come with drivers for the wireless card, though, so it may require a bit of additional work. YMMV.

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I’ve been working with MacBook Pro for A long time and I really don’t wanna go back to windows :sweat: when I switch to framework. I don’t want to buy the new macbooks ore Mac mini’s because they make them less and less upgradable and unable to do any maintenance on them at all.
If a working mackintosh install would be possible on framework I will stick to framework forever.

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Well a hackentosh installation can work really well. So, guess it is possible. It all depends on what hardware you use.

I understand your views. The only reason I am really hoping for a hackintosh solution is that I’ve worked with and support windows for about 20 years professionally. I switched to Mac when Steve was still alive. Loved the MacBook and never want to go back to windows. Now I only buy the old mid 2012 MacBook Pro’s because that was the last model that allowed me to replace the battery, hdd and mem. I only have a windows machine for VR and I hate it now. I’ve tried to figure out Linux and got stuck every single time. (My experience, you need to have an expert level knowledge in order to troubleshoot problems you run into at the beginning) so there is a lot of hesitancy with windows and Linux.

Absolutely, my high school required iPads, and for the most part, that locked me into iMesaage. I don’t enjoy Apple products, yet I need to keep my iPad around for iMessage, and I even bought a Mac to run

on my Android phone. Apple certainly knows how to get money out of their users.

Would love to hear about someone who did this! I know some people who want to switch, but are held back by the ecosystem (goddamnit apple), so if this works well it would be very exciting!

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Why would an unsupported macOS hackintosh on a laptop with an unspoppurted cpu that is more expensive than theirs be exciting? For real question. Also, thinking that further forward compatibility of macOS will ever happen on Intel is very unrealistic. If some day Risc V or something materializes on Framework and Apple happens to support it, that $1000 you spent on either laptop will be ancient (as in a decade ago) news. Sorry, but just the truth.

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Why? Because Macbooks are soldered together and very expensive to repair. No, this will never happen, but that’s why people would want to.

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AppleCare+ is super cheap. They are actually some of the cheapest computers to own and repair when properly purchased. What my Framework does and what my MacBook Air does are two completely different things. Comparing them is ridiculous. Like using a wrench to hammer a nail. Also, they are not “soldered together” – ther are currently a SOC. Not quite solder. :wink:

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The short asnwer is: try if you’re really curious, and at the very least you will learn a lot about your hardware, how the EFI boot works, and why there is no other reason other than curiosity to try to run this OS.
The long version:
I’ve tried to run MacOS on non-Apple devices multiple (and I mean too many) times, with little success; and I’ve had the advantage of experiencing the real thing at work, since I had a 2015 27’’ iMac as my work computer (now replaced by a PC), so I could also compare performances between the native and the non-native installation. I’ve always been intrigued by all the “success stories” that I’ve read (and seen on Youtube) about people installing MacOS on Virtual Machines (on QEMU), or even on bare metal, and then I’ve always thought to myself “Wow, what prevents me to do the same?”.
Yes, I’ve succeeded in getting MacOS up and running (only on VM, never on bare metal), but always with some kind of issue or another, and almost always related to hardware issues. Yes, there are many guides out there that suggest how to apply fixes or to troubleshoot things, but for some reason nothing ever worked and I had to spend an unreasonable amount of time figuring out by myself what was wrong, ending up patching packages an breaking QEMU just to keep MacOS “barely” running. And, finally, even when I managed to make it work almost decently, I’ve had too many issues when installing software: XCode would install, but it crashed too often; and Garage Band wouldn’t even install.
And I forgot to mention the performances: not unreasonable, but at the same time you can definitely feel that it’s not “the real thing”. And at that point you can’t justify all the efforts you put into something that “barely works”.
Ultimately, when I realised that I do not really need MacOS, I concluded that it’s not worth the effort; or, as mentioned, at the very least it’s an huge exercise in troubleshooting VM-related issues, and certainly is a learning journey.
If, for some unconceivable reason, I will need that OS and that technology in the future, I’ll swallow my pride and buy a product from a company that I don’t like very much - i.e. I hate what Apple does, what it represents, and how has influenced the rest of the consumer tech industry, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m buying a Framework.

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