Preview: New Hackintosh Laptops of 2013

As we've mentioned before, it's extremely difficult to find laptops that can easily be turned into Hackintoshes. Last year, we attempted to address this problem by releasing The Best Hackintosh Laptops of 2012, a list of commercially-available laptops that could run Mac OS X without the need to replace any hardware. The list was eventually divided into two iterations, one for Lion and one for Mountain Lion.

However, the year 2012 has long since drawn to a close; most of the laptops on our 2012 list have been discontinued and are no longer widely available on the retail market. Macbreaker's goal has always been to make Hackintoshing easier for everyone, so with that in mind, a new compatibility list is in order.

How to install OS X Mountain Lion on your PC with Niresh

If you're interested in running Mac OS X, but you don't want to pay ridiculous prices for a normal Mac, then a Hackintosh just might be for you. Right now, the newest iteration of OS X is 10.8, known as Mountain Lion. In this guide, we'll show you how to install Mountain Lion on your PC with the newly released "Niresh" distro.

We've previously covered how to install Mountain Lion on a PC using tonymacx86's Unibeast tool, which requires you to have an existing Mac OS X installation. This usually means that you have to install Snow Leopard on your PC first, or find a real Mac. We've also covered how to install Mountain Lion on a PC using a "distro" like iAtkos, which allows you to jump straight to Mountain Lion. However, you can't set up iAtkos on a regular DVD, and iAtkos doesn't work with AMD or Atom processors. If you find either of these limitations to be inconvenient, then using the Niresh distro instead may be your best option.

UPDATE: Rosewill N900PCE added to our list of Hackintosh compatible wifi adapters

We recently updated our list of Hackintosh-compatible WiFi adapters to include the Rosewill N900PCE. Thanks to the fact that it uses the same Atheros AR9380 wireless chipset as the extremely well-known TP-LINK TL-WDN4800, the Rosewill N900PCE works "out of box" with both Lion and Mountain Lion. This addition increases the count of our list of WiFi adapters to five. If you have any more suggestions for WiFi adapters that work out of the box in Hackintoshes, please email us at info@macbreaker.com, or leave a comment on any relevant article on our website.

How to enable the AMD Radeon HD 7970, 7950, 7870, 7850, 7770, or 7750 on your Hackintosh

Apple added support for the 7000 series of AMD Radeon HD graphics cards last week, in version 10.8.3 of OS X Mountain Lion. Prior to this, 7000-series graphics cards did not work properly in Mac OS X; while you could still boot a Hackintosh with these cards, you couldn't view your computer screen in full resolution or run any applications that required graphics acceleration. With this new support in Mac OS X, however, 7000-series graphics cards have finally become a practical option for your Hackintosh.

projectQ: Hackintosh in the mainstream?

Since their inception, Hackintoshes have been hobbyists' projects-- while the rewards were great, the work has always been hard, long, and quite frankly, tedious. Even today, hardware compatibility is often simply the result of random good fortune (i.e. power management on Gigabyte's newest motherboards). However, the new Z77MX-QUO-AOS motherboard by QUO Computers may be able to change all of this-- if it actually manages to take off.

How to install OS X Mountain Lion in Virtualbox with iAtkos

We've already shown you how to install OS X Mountain Lion on a virtual machine by using Olarila's Hackboot software, which is great practice for installing Mac OS X on your actual computer. However, the Hackboot method was rather long and complicated, and there is now an easier alternative available-- iAtkos ML2. While we've already shown you how to install Mountain Lion on your actual computer with iAtkos, it also works great with virtual machines.

How to fix the iMessage login problem on your Hackintosh (with Chimera)

For the past few weeks, Hackintoshes have been unable to log into the Messages app (better known as "iMessage") on OS X Mountain Lion. Last week, we showed you how to fix these problems with Clover bootloader, an alternative to the more popular Chameleon and Chimera bootloaders for Hackintoshes. However, if you want a slightly simpler fix, you're in luck: we can now fix the problem using Chimera bootloader instead. Read past the break for details.

How to fix the iMessage login problem on your Hackintosh (with Clover)

Starting from a few weeks ago, Hackintoshes have been unable to log into the Messages app (better known as "iMessage") on OS X Mountain Lion. This is likely because Apple has changed the authentication process for iMessage. Fortunately, there is now a solution! Read past the break for details.

How to install OS X Mountain Lion on your PC with iAtkos

If you're interested in running Mac OS X, but you don't want to pay ridiculous prices for a normal Mac, then a Hackintosh just might be for you. Right now, the newest iteration of OS X is 10.8, known as Mountain Lion. In this guide, we'll show you how to install Mountain Lion on your PC with the iAtkos distro.

We've previously covered how to install Mountain Lion on a PC using tonymacx86's Unibeast tool, which requires you to have an existing Mac OS X installation. This usually means that you have to install Snow Leopard on your PC first, or find a real Mac. However, with a "distro" like iAtkos, you can jump straight to Mountain Lion. Distros are pirated copies of Mac OS X that have been modified to work with a PC. If you don't have any qualms with the legal issues regarding distros, they're actually the most convenient way to set up a Hackintosh.

How to set up a Fusion drive on a Hackintosh

Recently, Apple released the Fusion Drive, a new technology that increases hard disk performance by setting up a 128GB solid state disk and a 1TB normal hard disk to work together as a single virtual drive. By allocating most of the heavy lifting to its solid state portion, the Fusion Drive allows for much faster overall performance while still providing a lot of storage space.

Since the Fusion Drive is a proprietary technology, it's usually unavailable to PCs. However, you can still set up your own Fusion Drive on a Hackintosh. Fusion Drives are set up in an extremely similar way to RAID 0 arrays, an alternative different method for increasing hard disk performance. We've previously covered how to set up a RAID 0 array on your Hackintosh; setting up a Fusion Drive isn't really isn't much harder. Interested? Read on.