In February 2013, Google released the Chromebook Pixel. This was the first non-Apple branded laptop that got my attention. From my time in the hackintosh scene, I've primarily focused on laptop devices, although i'm not sure why - I've never found a non-Apple laptop that caught my attention, until Google released the Chromebook Pixel.
So, shortly after the google announcement, I purchased the Pixel with the intent to convert it to a true mac clone. I must say, after receiving the machine, it's the only machine that has a touchpad that I've ever preferred over a mac. The build quality on the machine is excellent, and the form-factor and screen size a re perfect for me.
From a hackintosh standpoint, there are a few benefits and drawback: For the drawbacks:
- Soldered on SSD (32GB or 64GB)
- Soldered on (unsupported) WIFI card
- I2C attached touchpad
- I2C attached touchscreen
And the benifits:
- Supported GPU
- Supported CPU
- mini-PCIe slot (USB only though)
- Supported card reader
- Open-source bios (coreboot)
- I2C attached touch-devices (because, you know, I like writing kernel extensions...)
Stay tuned for Part 1 where I'll go over my initial attempt at hackintoshing the machine (it's been a while, so it might be lacking at details), and the issues I ran into with it. Part 2 will go over bios modifications that were made to improve the experience.