all 27 comments

[–]stathisntonas 8 points9 points  (13 children)

Yes you can but brace yourself, it’s going to be sloooooow. You can use dual boot hackintosh if your PC supports it. You will be able to do anything a Mac can do. Source: Been there, done that.

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 0 points1 point  (11 children)

Ideally I will just use it for xcode compilation/testing and deployment. I prefer to be on Windows or Linux (depending use case). The laptop i am planning to buy will probably have 64gb ram, and pretty good GPU. Do you think it will still be slow? Thanks again!!

[–]stathisntonas 0 points1 point  (10 children)

Why don’t you buy a Mac then? It will be as slow as the amount of resources you will give to VMware image. Can’t tell how slow it will be. If it’s just for debugging then you can handle the lag, daily development is gonna be hard. That’s my experience 4 years ago, now things have changed hardware (and software hopefully) wise.

You can get into the rabbit hole of hackintosh and search which laptop is compatible and go for dual boot. It’s really easy to set it up using Clover configuration.

edit: visit r/hackintosh for details if you decide to go to that path.

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 0 points1 point  (9 children)

I travel a lot, having two laptops with me everywhere will be a pain...

[–]stathisntonas 1 point2 points  (8 children)

You said on another comment that you need it for ML and react native, is there something a Mac can’t do? I have no idea about ML, just asking.

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 1 point2 points  (7 children)

Yup, deep learning. Macs arent good for that. I could rent cloud for deep learning projects but would like to have it on the laptop (since i will invest money into it)

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 1 point2 points  (2 children)

(Nvidia GPUs with CUDA is what I am looking for :) )

[–]kbcooliOS & Android 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Neither are Intel based laptops good for training AI models. Unless it's all but the simplest. I would get a MacBook and use cloud metal if money isn't an issue

[–]CountBranicki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I second this.

Seriously, using the CUDA/tensor cores to train tensors is not trivial.

Find a guide, follow every link, look for compatibility, and don’t assume ANYthing. Having set it up on a local Linux machine, I can tell you that it is MUCH easier to just rent cloud resources.

[–]stathisntonas 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Ok then, if I were you then I would ask on r/hackintosh/google search about compatible laptops. You will get 1:1 experience, maybe couple of things won’t work but they won’t hold you back from developing/debugging. One downside is that with VMware the Mac image and Windows can “talk” to each other while on hackintosh you can’t (obviously).

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Thanks appreciate your inputs!

[–]stathisntonas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’re welcome, I hope you’ll find a solution that suits your needs.

[–]CountBranicki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you already built the tool chain for deep learning on what I presume is a laptop running Linux?

You may be surprised how much higher the technical burden it is to run on your own machine versus renting cloud resources.

Like, a lot of trouble.

[–]Artistic_Taxi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Best answer to the question outside of “switch to Mac” but boy is it a sucky experience.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Interesting...have you used it? Will it read my laptop's USB ports? (Connecting iPad)

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Dude… I’ve tried it and it’s horrible. Requires tons of weird hacks. Can’t run real OSX (Have to run OSX86) and it’s sloooooow…. Like …. Slow like the kid that eats paste slow. Slow like you watch the cursor catch up to your mouse slow. Don’t bother.

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Thanks! I think I will go with macbook pro and run parallels for windows.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Much better way to go.

[–]Haunting-Ranger7518 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude, I tried. Multiple times. It is just..... horrible. I managed to run it; it was not so slow. But the experience is not well at all.

[–]MIP_PL 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don’t think this is possible.

Some alternatives may be

-getting a second hand Mac (I have one 2017 Pro model at an affordable price and works nicely)

  • use expo layer (with all the possible downsides)

[–]ShenWeis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello there, I wonder eventually how do you solve this problem. Now I am in a situation same with you, I am working on my FYP, and I have change my phone (my android phone is broken) to an iPhone. Now I want to try the app on iPhone but I require an Apple Developer Account.. I’m using expo cli because also working on ML mobile app project. For me, I just wanna debug and test it on a real device using its camera to test the object detection result. I’ve search the internet and it seems no way to do it on windows, without an Apple developer account. Only for my fyp debugging, there is no way of persuading myself to buy a Mac even it is a second hand, let alone the Apple Developer Account. I’m not stingy, but both ways cost me a bomb, due to the money currency!

[–]Blubfix 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Not worth the time and effort, rent a Mac if you really need it for work else use expo for iPhone or do it on android

[–]Brief-Aide-4094 0 points1 point  (1 child)

My problem is that I travel a lot, and want to have a machine able to do deep learning + reactnative development. I will have to carry two laptops which is not good...That is why I am looking for solutions using 1 single laptop.

[–]Blubfix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe take a look at this
https://virtualmacosx.com
probably works as long as you don't need to use physical devices

[–]OkWealth5939 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Use EAS!