Hackintosh gone Awry

[User Not Found]

Ok it's a little long of a story but if you are interested I'd love any kind of input. It's a rather touchy subject so think before you post please. Also I'm not looking to solve the tech issues, just how to deal with the overall situation.

So a couple weeks ago my friend came up to me and discussed Apple products with me. He has an iPod, iPhone 5s, iPad mini and an Airport Extreme. He's an Apple guy. I was telling him that his best bet would be to get a Mac Mini and we could upgrade some parts on it like the SSD and Ram depending if it was soldered on it or not. But he's an indecisive guy. He can't decide whether he wants a MacBook Pro or Mac Mini or Windows machine. 

Ok So He tells me to make him a build guide and I do; I make him three at various prices.  He ends up picking the $1,500 build. I try to make him rethink the Apple computers since he's so invested into them by now but he finally puts his foot down. So we go on Newegg and Amazon and we find the parts and he buys them. Everything is fine at first but that doesn't last long.

We build the rig, a very nice FT03 M-AXT case and stuff it full of pretty sweet components. He ended up going off of some things he had heard on Reddit for parts even though I really wanted to steer him in another direction. He had heard Gigabyte boards were the best but I kind of wanted an Asus board since I am more familiar with them and understand their UEFI settings more now. Motherboard doesn't work on OS X though since it was that Killer NIC and Power PC based sound processor. Then we start installing things but he doesn't want Ethernet since wants to use his Airport Extreme's wireless AC. I try getting him to use Ethernet or Powerline since I have a couple adapters I didn't need and offered him for free. But he insist, he wants his AC. Now the rig won't pick up the 5ghz, actually nothing I have will pick it up either. I was trying to diagnose the problem but both my nexus 4 and my shield couldn't detect the 5ghz frequency at his house. His iPhone 5s and Mac Mini could though so I was thinking that was some problem with them being Non Apple products even though that didn't make much sense to me.

But none of that matters anymore since he told me he doesn't want OS X anymore and made me format the drive for storage on the Windows side.

And right now he is very upset about his wifi being very sluggish and I told him it might be because he just installed google drive and iCloud and they are syncing all of his data and using up all his bandwidth. But he seems annoyed at the computer and at me. I offered to help him install some ram and clone a SSD. This is too much. I made a Hackintosh once and it took me a week to set it up until I was satisfied with everything. But I formatted it after a couple days since I found I too different. And I think that's the key, knowing that sometimes it's going to take some serious troubleshooting and research to solve an issue. He doesn't like to read forums and discussions and search for answers. Making custom computers is not a thing everyone should do just like how not everyone should try to rebuild their engine. 

Right now we are on Windows 7 and nothing else. I was telling him to wait a bit until summer deals come out and then we can play a ton of games for cheap but he said his computer is just a big paper weight. That he turns it on and can't think of anything he wants to use it for. 

In my honest opinion I think that this would have been the case no matter which way he had gone. Apple or Microsoft. When he bought the iPad he said it was a mistake and didn't use it for a while until he found a niche for it in his routine. Same with every other thing he bought minus his iPhone, he just felt bad about waiting in line for it since we live in a small town and there wasn't a line the whole night he waited outside the store for it. But that's neither here nor there. 

Basically my main question would be should I just suck it up, fix everything he has an issue with until he finds a niche for it and stops passive aggressively making me feel bad for this purchase? i don't think he knows he's doing it either, it is just coming off like that. 

Or should I sit him down for the proverbial, "We need to talk" speech?

I understand that in reaching out to you guys I am very open to criticism and that's fine I have messed up a lot here too like not double checking Reddit's advice and making sure the parts he wanted were the best for what he wanted to do. Mostly the motherboard. That made me feel like a complete ass.

But I'm trying to set up a virtual machine for him since I don't think he actually wants to dual boot, he has never had a Mac computer and isn't in any classes where he will ever use it so I think he will be better off with a virtual machine for when he wants to try it out since he mostly wants to game and is very used to windows.

I spent 10 hours with him today getting bootflags and kernel panics and bootloader themes all set up just to format the whole thing. I also just started a job so I can't really do this too much as I need to have a life outside his build.

I don't know guys what do you think? He likes to spend money on dumb things that he'll eventually appreciate but this was a massive purchase. I want him to enjoy it as soon as possible. Once he feels confident about this I can get all these thoughts out of my head and concentrate on my own issues in tech and in life.

Ok so I'm very tired from the troubleshooting and stuff so I'll post as soon as i wake up, I just couldn't sleep and thought writing this down would help. You don't even have to give advise. I think I already feel a bit relieved from making this ugly block post. Sorry too tired to make it look better. Need sleep.

[Anthony10]

tl;dr, not even gonna try....

[Geekazoid]

That is a crap load of text and would be a wall of text on any phone. Have you heard of summarising?

[Toxic Tom]

Ok I read it. Sounds like a bit of a nightmare customer to me! I would just set up an OS X virtual machine and leave it at that. Get him to buy a few games so he has something to do with it. And what's all this about changing boot flags and that? It's not that hard hard to reformat a drive!

[ERSCreeper]

Long story short?

[xox]

He seems like an asshole to be honest, can't deal with his own problems, so he pins it on someone else.

 

Hitler did it too...

[Wiflare]

tl;dr: mac user friend switches to windows, builds $1500 computer, doesn't like it, friend guilt trips OP because friend feels bad, and there is the problem.

Just wait until he gets passive-aggresive again and tell him that you don't like his attitude or something.

being a pushover only helps the problem, you have to stand up to him.

[Scia]

Well the ASUS board over the Gigabyte board was a mistake for sure, as Gigabyte boards are usually the way to go for hackintoshes.

 

The problem here is that I can somehow understand your buddy.

 

You promised him a Hackintosh, and it doesn't work. I'd be mad too tbh.

 

When I built the PCs for most of my friends, I made sure they are foolproof, meaning they won't have to do anything but vacuum it now and then. I did not overclock, watercool or do anything else they might eventually run into problems with.

 

Honestly, you told your buddy to spend 1.5k$ on a hackintosh, which you'd set up for him. And it doesn't work. Therefore he has all right to be mad at you. If your buddy is an Apple guy, just have him buy a iMac or Mac Mini or MBP for 1500$ and have it work.

 

It doesn't sound like your buddy is very techsavvy, therefore you should have built / bought something foolproof.

 

It's like I'd never watercool any rig but my own, even if I am asked, as you have to be sure they can fix it themselves if something breaks, and if they can, they can build it on their own in the first place.

[Snapy1]

This is what I do when I dont want to read, copy and paste everything into google translate and let it read it for me. 

[User Not Found]

This is what I do when I dont want to read, copy and paste everything into google translate and let it read it for me. 

I'm going to use that for classes now, I have a ton of ebooks I read from a week and reading on screens tires my eyes after an hour. THanks for the tip.

 

Well the ASUS board over the Gigabyte board was a mistake for sure, as Gigabyte boards are usually the way to go for hackintoshes.

 

The problem here is that I can somehow understand your buddy.

 

You promised him a Hackintosh, and it doesn't work. I'd be mad too tbh.

 

When I built the PCs for most of my friends, I made sure they are foolproof, meaning they won't have to do anything but vacuum it now and then. I did not overclock, watercool or do anything else they might eventually run into problems with.

 

Honestly, you told your buddy to spend 1.5k$ on a hackintosh, which you'd set up for him. And it doesn't work. Therefore he has all right to be mad at you. If your buddy is an Apple guy, just have him buy a iMac or Mac Mini or MBP for 1500$ and have it work.

 

It doesn't sound like your buddy is very techsavvy, therefore you should have built / bought something foolproof.

 

It's like I'd never watercool any rig but my own, even if I am asked, as you have to be sure they can fix it themselves if something breaks, and if they can, they can build it on their own in the first place.

We went with the Gigabyte board in the end. I like the Asus boards because you can set everything up  after a bios flash but the Gigabyte boards don't need that. Yeah you're right and I've been trying to make it fool proof. I almost had Mavericks done though when he

 

said to format the drive. I mean the whole thing looked really slick but he didn't want to do it anymore. I know all the steps now though so I could set it up again within an hour now so I might ask him soon. And you are right he loves tech but very much dislikes

 

troubleshooting. I promised to help him customize a mac though. I have gone to all my friends and told them I don't do computers or fix stuff for people since it is too stressful when things don't work out or take too long or cost a ton. He knew going in that I was

 

uninterested in the project. But at this point that doesn't matter I woke up today with more energy and less stress so I'm going to go over to his house and set this up quickly. Probably going to tell him to just play video games while I do it so I can work in peace.

 

He seems like an asshole to be honest, can't deal with his own problems, so he pins it on someone else.

 

Hitler did it too...

Normally he's a great guy, I think it's just the stress. He and I are both getting antsy. Especially after being in a room together for 10 hours yesterday.