If you are using the computer to do paid work and can't gamble like on every update, I think you'd be crazy to use a hackintosh. But if it works for you, sweet.
Two people can both buy "the right parts" according to the site's myriad recommendations but randomly choose slightly different combinations of motherboards or video cards or wifi cards or whatever and have wildly different experiences overall with updates.
Apple hardware also has problems, yet people use them as their primary computer all the time.
Of course, there is a slightly higher risk with Hackintosh than a proper apple computer. But if your computer uptime and data is very important, the solution is having a proper backup. Having apple hardware won't make things marginally better.
I will be willing to bet that the ratio of apple hardware problems to general hackintosh problems is heavily geared in favour of opting for Apple hardware.
When computer uptime is important, having backups is a non-issue in that conversation. It's the uptime that's important, and having non-genuine hardware will always raise a flag in this scenario.... The chance of your genuine mac not starting up after a scheduled update is far, far less likely than your hackintosh not starting up after the same update.
Granted, it's awesome that you've had good experiences. But I feel that you need to consider that your use-case is possibly not the same as the vast majority.
So like a linux dist-upgrade then? :)
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-cpu-compatibili... [2] http://www.macvidcards.com/i-want-the-best-graphics-card-for...
I don't use Arch as my daily driver anymore, I've switched to NixOS(has its issues as well, but at least no rolling release model)
However, picking the correct hardware and figuring out the necessary basics is a challenge in itself. You need patience and technical knowledge. So it is far from going into the store and purchasing an iMac. That is certain. But it is not as dark as you are putting it, IMHO.
The only reasonable thing to do was to dedicate the machine to gaming on Windows and buy a Mac. Not trying this again anytime soon.
Updates up until 10.13.6 worked seamlessly, only "hack" you had to do was change out the WiFi card.
And by the way, if you need to build Android source code more often than once a month, you need AWS anyway.
The Macbook hardware is pretty excellent, and prices are comparable to the (few) competitors of similar quality. In absolute terms, they are not outside the range that their market can afford.
It is only in desktops, or, more precisely, workstations that Apple's offerings fall short.
This encouraged me even further to run Linux as my daily driver. Without a hackintosh, I might be stuck in overpriced, un-upgradeable Apple land.
Instead, I completely made the switch: got a 300$ fully decked ThinkPad x230 with 16gb ram and an IPS screen, running Ubuntu + i3, and the former hackintosh is now on server duty. I'm finally apple free :)
So I highly recommend hackintoshes as a stepping stone to leaving Apple!
My 2013 Macbook Pro retina will be at this point in the fall with two major upgrades uninstallable. I'd say this argument no longer holds because even the official hardware often can't be upgraded. I would be shocked if the next OSX version doesn't fail to upgrade like the one from last fall. That new filesystem breaks everything. Thankfully I had backups, but even attempting again is not worth losing a day to Apple's shitty software. OSX Used to be the one piece of software that was solid. Now there is no Apple software I use that is solid except old versions of OSX <= 10.12.x
I have no moral objection to it and I totally understand the motivation. Apple is completely failing to provide hardware that runs at a fraction of the performance you'd get from building a commodity $2500 AMD/Nvidia desktop even if you give Apple $7000 for a Pro model. Apple's platform especially sucks if you do anything with deep learning since they refuse to sell anything with Nvidia GPUs anymore.
But the actual experience of running a Hackintosh is terrible. Even if you buy exactly the right components, it will still take you days to get everything patched and working perfectly. And then every minor security patch will completely break your system, so you end up never updating. Finally you hit a point where your system is so far behind that you give up and either buy a Mac or just install Linux/Windows.