The Best Lenovo Hackintosh Laptop of 2012

Today we've added the newest member to MacBreaker's 2012 list of Hackintosh laptops: the Lenovo IdeaPad B570. Touting a 2nd-generation Intel processor, and almost full compatibility with Mac OS X Lion, the IdeaPad B570 is an ideal choice for any veteran Hackintosher searching for a reliable, mid-size laptop.

Lenovo IdeaPad B570 ($500-700)

What You Get: The Lenovo B570 is an average 15.6-inch laptop with a great keyboard (like all Lenovo laptops). The specifications of the B570 are comparable to that of other recommended laptops, like the HP ProBook 4530s: you'll find a 2nd-generation Intel processor and Intel HD graphics inside this laptop. The cheapest model of the B570 uses a Intel Celeron processor, but to enable graphics on Mac OS X, you have to purchase a model that uses a Intel Core processor (preferably with the Core i3-2330m).

Hackintosh Ability: With a good amount of tweaking, you can get everything on the Lenovo B570 to work except for the card reader. WiFi, ethernet, graphics, audio, CPU power management, battery, sleep, and the trackpad all work. However, the post-installation process for the B570 isn't a one-click process; installing Mac OS X on this laptop is much more complicated than running Multibeast. The guide for the B570 (provided in the "Resources" section below) is very hard to read if you're not already very familiar with Hackintoshing, so be warned.

To install Mac OS X Lion on the B570, instead of following tonymacx86's Unibeast method, you have to set up your own specialized iAtkos USB drive (with some extra kexts and a new smbios.plist file installed). After the initial installation of Lion, you'll have to work with nearly two-dozen separate kexts and other system files in the post-installation, since the guide for the B570 doesn't use Multibeast. Luckily, there's a DSDT file available for the B570, which enables audio and WiFi without the need for any more kexts. However, this DSDT only works with models of the B570 that use an Intel Core i3-2330m processor. If you have a different model of the B570, you can edit your own DSDT based off the DSDT for the Core i3-2330m model, but this is very complicated (we won't be covering DSDT editing on this website).

Resources: Lion installation guide
There are three downloads in the Lion installation guide (linked above). The first download is an "Extra" folder for your B570, which includes a DSDT file, system files, and general kexts. The second download is a set of extra power management kexts, which allow you to run Mac OS X without using the NullCPUPowerManagement and SleepEnabler kexts (from the first download). The third download is an improved DSDT file that enables WiFi and sound, so that you don't have to install the AppleHDA or IO80211Family kexts (from the first download).