Is the arrival of ARM chips on the Mac the end of the Hackintosh?

No nos liemos: estos son todos los procesadores diseñados por Apple hasta la fecha

Not only because of its possibilities, but also because of the consequences it can have on Apple computers. We’re no longer talking about something dedicated to a particular function like the T1 chip in MacBook Pro or the W1W2, but a full-featured A10. Which is no small feat.

One of these consequences is not immediately obvious, but it is worth talking about: Apple ARM chips cannot be bought or used elsewhere, as is the case with Intel. Cupertino is 100% in control. And if one of those chips happens to take over the boot of the Mac, the thing looks very black for the Hackintosh community .

Right now, Mac booting depends on the chips provided by Intel, which are part of many other computers and also start Windows. And that boot sequence can be modified, just as the Hackintosh does. You change it so that your own EFI using macOS is loaded, and you’re done.

The problem for the community of people who do that is that Apple may have found a solution to stop that from happening. If Cupertino goes on to modify macOS so that their boot can only be done on the ARM processors that they themselves design, then that boot would be completely shielded.

We wouldn’t be looking at an “iosified” macho. After the boot, the ARM chip could pass the tasks to the Intel processor

The consequence is that, and now yes, only a Mac could start macOS . At least for a long time, because something like a jailbreak would be very hard to get on another machine. And that machine would have to have the same CPU.

Anyway, let’s not get confused: this doesn’t mean that macOS is going to become as closed as iOS. After booting, the Mac could pass tasks to the Intel processor . The only barrier here is the integration between hardware and software, and Apple is a specialist in just that. Developers would not be forced to change instruction sets in the first place.

In the longer term, seeing that the ARM processors of the future are on their way to becoming much more powerful, I envision Macs with ARM processors that take care of basic macOS tasks while leaving the more demanding Intel Core. We could see that, and in less time than you might think, knowing that iPad Pro is faster than some computers.

At Apple