Dual boot OS X and win7

What is the best laptop that will allow dual booting of OS X and win 7 that's not made by Apple to expensive and not upgradable at all.bought a Mac mini years ago went to Apple Store to have them add a hard drive which was easily done was told if it didn't come with it it would void warranty and they wouldn't do it. I prefer the OS X over windows but I hate their hardware.

Mac OS X is coded such that it can only run on Apple-made computers. If you try to install OS X on a non-Apple computer, it will fail. But there are hacks out there that will allow Mac OS X to be installed and run on certain PCs. Those hacked computers are called Hackintoshes (play on words "hack" and "Macintosh"). If you are not familiar with the Hackintosh, you can read all about it here: http://www.hackintosh.​com

If you like to tinker with computers, this may be your only option if you don't want to buy a Mac. But if you are not a tinkerer, then this may be too much of a hassle to get into.

I'm familiar but was looking for specific tried and true hardware that had been hachintoshed. And how it works for other photos

Best to look up in the Hackintosh repository of hardware that works and see if there are any laptops that work. Im not aware of any that work.

I know several people who have done Hackintoshes over the years, and not one has been happy with the experience in the long run. Every one of them eventually had some update come along and trash everything, requiring excessive amounts of tinkering and work to get running again, and several cases involved swapping out hardware.

Trying to do this on a laptop sounds even worse as your hands are then tied on what hardware is in the box.

If you're really serious about trying it, then good luck, but the bulk of OSX's "It just works" factor comes from their closed limited hardware, which you then toss out the moment you try to get it running on non-Apple hardware.

Luckless wrote in post #18102939
I know several people who have done Hackintoshes over the years, and not one has been happy with the experience in the long run. Every one of them eventually had some update come along and trash everything, requiring excessive amounts of tinkering and work to get running again, and several cases involved swapping out hardware.

Trying to do this on a laptop sounds even worse as your hands are then tied on what hardware is in the box.

If you're really serious about trying it, then good luck, but the bulk of OSX's "It just works" factor comes from their closed limited hardware, which you then toss out the moment you try to get it running on non-Apple hardware.

I'm a tinkerer but I gave up on the Hackintosh even before I started because of just that.

I tried to get OSX running in a virtual machine. Couldn't do it and lost interest. If you want OS-X and want it to be reliable buy an Apple.

tim wrote in post #18103975
I tried to get OSX running in a virtual machine. Couldn't do it and lost interest. If you want OS-X and want it to be reliable buy an Apple.

OS X will run under VMware Fusion but the host hardware still has to be an Apple running OS X. But, yes, if one wants OS X, one has to bite the bullet and get the computer from Apple.

Luckless wrote in post #18102939
I know several people who have done Hackintoshes over the years, and not one has been happy with the experience in the long run. Every one of them eventually had some update come along and trash everything, requiring excessive amounts of tinkering and work to get running again, and several cases involved swapping out hardware.

This used to be true, but not so much anymore. I still have a 6 year old hackintosh running my home theater. My most recent is a dual core i5 NUC Broadwell with a 250 gb m2 SSD and 2 TB hard drive, genuine Apple 802.11AC/Bluetooth 4 card and 16 gb RAM. Smaller than a Mac mini, and a lot less.

Tony-S wrote in post #18107626
This used to be true, but not so much anymore. I still have a 6 year old hackintosh running my home theater. My most recent is a dual core i5 NUC Broadwell with a 250 gb m2 SSD and 2 TB hard drive, genuine Apple 802.11AC/Bluetooth 4 card and 16 gb RAM. Smaller than a Mac mini, and a lot less.

Given that one of my coworker's hackintosh systems is now throwing a kernal panic shortly after booting since the most recent OS update patch, and he has been unable to resolve this issue without rolling back to a stock disk version without any updates, then I would say you should count yourself very lucky that you've had one running fine for six years.

If you want to play with the system and have no real worries about whether or not it might go down, then sure, Hackintoshes can be fun to play with. But if you want a computer that you plan to use and expect reliability, then a hackintosh is probably not remotely your best option.

Luckless wrote in post #18107628
Given that one of my coworker's hackintosh systems is now throwing a kernal panic shortly after booting since the most recent OS update patch, and he has been unable to resolve this issue without rolling back to a stock disk version without any updates, then I would say you should count yourself very lucky that you've had one running fine for six years.

I got it up to Mavericks and left it there. I even cannibalized an IR receiver from my 2010 MacBook Pro that suffered a logic board failure and mounted it the computer. Runs Plex for video, iTunes for most music, and VLC for 5.1 music.

The trick is to choose the hardware carefully. Is it likely to be as reliable as a genuine Mac? Maybe not. But considering the dual core i5 Mac Mini is $1100 (with its soldered RAM) and I have a total of $650 in i5 NUC, I'll take my chances. It doesn't have TB nor a built-in SD card reader, but it does have twice the storage space at almost half the cost.

6 years is pretty amazing for a Hackintosh. I had one of mine running for nearly 3 years with a few KP's but for me it's tough to not want to do updates as I'm a tinkerer. I don't miss being terrified at every restart though!! I may just put another one together for fun with some older components.

Your setup for a non-critical setup seems ideal. I have a late 2012 mini that I upgraded and haven't bothered looking at anything else because with the addition of the Samsung SSD it seems as fast to me as newer machines.

Tony can you tell me what specific parts you used to build your Hackintosh? I'd like to look into building one again for fun.

flowrider wrote in post #18107720
Your setup for a non-critical setup seems ideal. I have a late 2012 mini that I upgraded and haven't bothered looking at anything else because with the addition of the Samsung SSD it seems as fast to me as newer machines.

The switch to soldered ram in 2014 is when I decided I'd never buy another mini. The 2012 minis were the apex of the line. The new ones are terrible.

Intel Broadwell NUC (NUC5i5MYHE)
Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB M.2 SSD (MZ-N5E250BW)
Samsung Spinpoint 2TB 9.5mm hard drive (M9T ST2000LM003)
Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) Memory (CT2KIT102464BF160B)
BCM94352Z NGFF M.2 WiFi 802.11AC/Bluetooth 4.0 (Search Amazon or eBay for this. It will likely ship from Asia)

I am using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Mouse with mine. But you'll need to use wired for the Clover installation. There's a nice thread on this NUC at the main place.

If I was going to build a computer to run OS X is there hardware that mimics the apple hardware so it will not be hackintoshing but building a non apple machine? I'd like to build the best I can as far as reliability and speed. Most of the Apple hardware is not very upgradable or expandable and I want something that is. Most of the new Apple hardware is either packaged in the monitor or in a box big enough for the existing items and not very expandable or upgradable and if you do you void the warranty. Like adding a second hdd to a mini I think upgrading the memory was allowed. Plus the cost of the Apple machines are so much more than the equivalent PC hardware.

I'm figuring any thing I build will boot win 7 and run it ok with lirttle trouble getting drivers for everything when I need the PC which is less and less right now the only thing that I don't have both OS versions is Microsoft flight sim. I have both versions of X plane so if I learn it I may go OS X all the way.

One more thing Will OS X run multiple monitors? I have a very good video card that will run four monitors IIRC. I might get it to work with OS X if so will the OS support multi monitor setups and how about multi video cards?

Blackey Cole wrote in post #18108889
If I was going to build a computer to run OS X is there hardware that mimics the apple hardware so it will not be hackintoshing but building a non apple machine? I'd like to build the best I can as far as reliability and speed. Most of the Apple hardware is not very upgradable or expandable and I want something that is. Most of the new Apple hardware is either packaged in the monitor or in a box big enough for the existing items and not very expandable or upgradable and if you do you void the warranty. Like adding a second hdd to a mini I think upgrading the memory was allowed. Plus the cost of the Apple machines are so much more than the equivalent PC hardware.

I'm figuring any thing I build will boot win 7 and run it ok with lirttle trouble getting drivers for everything when I need the PC which is less and less right now the only thing that I don't have both OS versions is Microsoft flight sim. I have both versions of X plane so if I learn it I may go OS X all the way.

One more thing Will OS X run multiple monitors? I have a very good video card that will run four monitors IIRC. I might get it to work with OS X if so will the OS support multi monitor setups and how about multi video cards?

If you want to run OS X without it being a hackintosh, the you have to get an Apple Mac. It's really unfortunate that Macs are no longer as expandable or owner customizable as they used to be. I have an old 2008 Mac Pro which I bought at a discount when a newer model came out. Over the years, I have replaced the HDD to SSD, added more internal drives (4 total), added another DVD writer (2 total), added 16GB of memory and added another video card as well as a few other cards, like a USB 3 card, to it. And it's still going as strong as ever thanks to its dual quad-core processor.

I have 4 monitors hooked up to it, including a Wacom Cintiq, so, yes, Mac OS X does support multiple monitors. I also have Windows 10 installed because the Mac is dual bootable. I boot up Windows 10 so that I can run DCS World on it. If I need to run any other Windows app which is not hardware dependent, then I run Windows 10, 7 and/or XP as a virtual machine in VMware Fusion running on OS X. I can also run Mac OS X as a virtual machine so that is how I test new versions of OS X before physically installing on my Mac.

MyMac Pro is still running so well that I don't foresee replacing it for a while unless it dies on me (knock on wood!). I dread the day I'll have to replace it with a newer Mac Pro, though, since I know I'll have a harder time expanding it or customizing it.