As I dive into the mobile app development field, I started feeling to have better grasp and familiarity with the MacOS ecosystem. Since I am not using any Mac computer right now, I felt hacintosh could be a stop gap solution until I get a Mac computer. I used a MacBook Air during my college years and continued to use it until it was stolen back in 2018. I got busy with my work and never felt the necessity of getting another Mac computer for my office work because I used Mac at the office anyway.
So, over the weekend I thought of trying out my luck with my Dell Latitude 7390 laptop which I don't use much as I work from home on my workstation now a days. I grabbed my laptop from eBay, price was so good that I couldn't turn down the offer. I am happy with my purchase and it serves it's purpose. I didn't think of about hacintosh back at that time when I made my purchase as I was working on Windows platform. The battery life was good, features were amazing and what else I could have asked for?
Before I share my experience with you, just know that hacintosh is not for everyone and it requires lots of studying. If you are not patient enough and don't want to spend lots of time time to learn, just skip it and simply get a Mac computer, otherwise you will come back with bitter experience and regret for wasting your time in vain. But you can really enjoy it with its fullest only if you are willing to learn.
Perhaps the most important part is not the learning process rather really get to know what kind of hardware hacintosh works with and what doesn't. It will save you lots of time and energy that you would need later on. I did some digging and figured out soon enough that a very similar laptop like mine worked with hacintosh and someone was kind enough to put together the EFI on github. I used his/her EFI and made some necessary changes based on my computer specifications and it worked right away.
What you really need to focus on is to get to know your computer's specification. Thing like the CPU model of your computer, audio and video chipset used on your computer, storage drive type, communication devices like Ethernet or wireless module's chipset etc. If you do not know how to get all those information, I would highly recommend to use HWiNFO. This is a powerful yet a small application that will show all the available hardware of your computer in detailed format and you can go from there.
Another important tip from my end is, try out with a bit older version of MacOS, specially if you have older laptops. Newer laptop models tend to have issues as it takes time for developers to build the drivers for various devices compatible with later version of the operating system. Since Apple released it's own chip things has become a bit more complicated and tougher to get them working with traditional Intel or AMD based CPUs.
Once again take your time to read and learn, watch YouTube video if you need to. It took almost a week for me to figure everything out and get all of them working. I attempted to install the OS well over dozens of time only to come back and re-configure my EFI files, must admit it was testing my patience. Now I have a fully functional laptop that has Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, touchscreen, track-pad, USB ports working. Quite happy with my build.
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