Because Apple has stopped supporting Intel-based models for running later versions of macOS, the global Hackintosh community has begun using various methods to “save themselves”; currently, some are already simulating on Intel platforms,LINUX operationand various other bizarre tricks—but something even wilder showed up today. A 25-second video recently circulated on X, with the frame paused on Apple’s system installation screen. The post says the RK3588 development board has successfully gotten macOS 27.2 Beta running, with dual 2.5G network ports, an NVMe SSD controller, a 32GB memory bus, and Mali-G610 integrated GPU drivers all in place. It also emphasizes that this is native macOS loaded from a real EFI boot, not a virtual machine running under KVM on Linux, and that the system partition was even copied from a MacBook Pro 14 M5.
Apple released macOS 27 Golden Gate in September, and its official compatibility list now includes only Apple silicon models, with Intel Macs capped at macOS 26 Tahoe. The official door has closed on Hackintosh along the x86 path, but in October the ARM camp saw a string of new developments.
Restore the environment from macOS 14 to macOS 27.2.
The main subject of this thread is Chinese developer QiuChenly. His works on GitHub are mainly macOS system tools. Projects such as InjectLib and MusicDownload each have over two thousand stars. This time, he posted his daily porting progress on his own Telegram channel, and the date and content are clearly verifiable.
已经成功在RK3588上跑通macOS27.2Beta，并实现了以下硬件驱动： 1. 双2.5G网口 2. Nvme固态硬盘控制器 3. 32GB内存总线控制器 4. MaliG610核显初步驱动成功，并支持输出1080PHDMI，并实现Metal后端计算 这不是Linux底下的KVM之类的虚拟机，是从真实EFI引导到原生macOS的加载。系统来自MacBookPro14 m5机器安装好的系统分区拷贝。 To-do: 1. 完整实现加速 2. BE200无线网卡驱动 3. RkNN NPU芯片驱动 src: https://t.co/8CmAKA0qdJ
— 奶昔🥤 (@realNyarime) October 28, 2026
- October 23: RK3588 got all eight cores running in the RecoveryOS environment of macOS 14. The Mali-G610 graphics driver was ported by referencing Linux and can output a 3D cube test image over HDMI.
- October 24: After a week of porting, he got an arm64e-architecture macOS 14 recovery environment running on an Orange Pi 5 Plus 32GB, capable of outputting to a 4K120Hz display; the display driver still has performance issues.
- Another post on October 24: He publicly solicited Claude or GPT tokens to help analyze system errors and rewrite drivers, and mentioned that after using up his quota, he registered several DeepSeek accounts to create an account pool, and three were subsequently banned by the platform.
- October 27: Got macOS 27.2 Beta booting normally, and wrote a driver for the 2.5G dual network ports; the system can now be accessed via SSH.
- October 28: Posted the video and the complete list of results, with the to-do items listed as full graphics acceleration, the BE200 wireless network card driver, and the RKNN NPU driver.
The hardware specs match up.
The board he uses is an Orange Pi 5 Plus 32GB. The official specifications list an RK3588 octa-core processor (4 Cortex-A76 plus 4 Cortex-A55), Mali-G610 MP4 integrated graphics, 32GB LPDDR4X memory, two PCIe 2.5G network ports (RTL8125BG), an M.2 2280 NVMe slot, and an eMMC module socket. Compared with the results he listed, the dual 2.5G network ports, NVMe controller, and 32GB memory bus are exactly the three most notable specifications of this board. In the development board photo, an Intel BE200 wireless network card is installed in the M.2 slot, which is precisely the item he listed as a to-do and has not yet completed.
True EFI boot on the RK3588 is not without precedent. Open-source project edk2-rk3588 It is the EDK2 UEFI firmware built for this chip platform, with 1,057 stars accumulated and still being updated on October 27, which shows that community experts have already been researching this boot path.
What the video proves and what it does not prove.
That video is 25.7 seconds long with a resolution of 1080p. After checking it frame by frame, the content shows the language selection page of the Apple Setup Assistant, with the license agreement text apple.com/legal/sla at the bottom; there are almost no scene changes throughout the video.
In other words, the video can prove that a machine reached Apple’s initial boot screen, but the drivers, Metal compute, SSH login, and EFI boot itself are not shown in this video. To verify the result at the driver level, one would need the bootloader, kernel extension, or driver source code; none of these three is currently public, and there is no record of third-party reproduction yet.
Under the tweet, some people directly asked for the EFI and bootloader to be released so they could take a look, while others asked how it could run without PAC hardware. The A76 and A55 cores in the RK3588 use the ARMv8.2-A architecture and lack pointer authentication (PAC) hardware; arm64e pointer authentication instructions typically degrade to no-ops on such cores, so the security mechanism does not take effect. Some commenters also said bluntly that this chip’s performance can’t handle it, and others asked roughly where it falls among Apple’s M series.
The October ARM Hackintosh news isn’t just this one item.
In the same month, cases of running Apple’s systems on ARM architecture have emerged together. The NullMoth project adds macOS Metal drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards; Snapintosh boots the macOS 27 desktop on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite laptop, and in an interview with Windows Central, the developer said running a Hackintosh on ARM is entirely feasible;UniXNU Making the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro natively run iPadOS 17 was reported by this site on October 23; HackiOS, meanwhile, flashes native iOS onto Android phones. These approaches differ in technical difficulty, but they share a common point: running the Darwin kernel on hardware not officially supported by Apple.
Conclusion
At present, this project still seems a long way from being usable for everyday use. Full graphics acceleration, wireless networking, and the NPU are all still on the to-do list. The 1080P HDMI output and eight-core execution of the recovery environment show that the system has so far only reached the stage where it can boot, connect to the network, and enter a terminal. His own progress also indeed depends on AI to help analyze system errors. However, these ARM routes in October share one thing: the focus of discussion has shifted from whether it can be installed to what features are still missing. What is worth watching next is whether the bootloader will be open-sourced, and whether a second person will reproduce the same boot process. Perhaps in the future we really will see more machines running MacOS on all kinds of unexpected devices.
Source: KOCPC Chinese