HP Spectre Folio

Can a Hackintosh somehow use touch and pen input in MacOS? I don't see the point for a tablet otherwise.

 

Don't know - it awaits your delicate attention...

 

I'd tried it back in the day(x61 tablet), but it wasn't really optimal as the OS isn't built/optimized for touch and ink and there aren't any apps for ink or touch either.

 

How does the company behind the Modbook do it?

 

meaning buttons./menu's are small etc.

I guess the use case of users matters,and users that buy Modbooks are using applications like Photoshop or other professional drawing or artistic software that can be used with an external drawing pad.

But there are no native apps like Onenote or other ink enabled apps.

 

I've gone the hackintosh route in the past. Unless you are the type that enjoys endless tinkering and experimentation, I think it's more trouble than it's worth.

As to touch/pen support, the best you can hope for is pseudo mouse type functionality that in my experience was worse than useless in things you'd want pen support such as photoshop.
Just my opinion though

 

Another user was able to get the Elite X2 1012 G1 / G2 working with gestures via the capacitive touch screen. It's probably the best HP option other than the Zbook Studio X360, because both of those have modular wifi cards so you don't have to use a USB dongle.



It would be fun to try MacOS on the Zbook X2. I am not sure if the Wacom drivers can be loaded like they can on the Windows 10 side, but it may be possible. On that model it would need a wifi USB dongle because the wifi is soldered to the system board. Thunderbolt 3 likely wouldn't work so you would want to just switch it to USB 3.1 mode only in the bios. Optimus isn't support under MacOS so setup using hybrid graphics mode may be complicated if you still want to use the external HDMI / TB3 ports for display output. The OEM SSD may have to be replaced with a Retail model as certain ones (Samsung PM981, for instance) are known to be unstable when used with MacOS NVMe drivers.

 

Back to our Folio discussions...

There is some sort of problem in the Y Series processors, particularly involving Thunderbolt 3, video, and Bluetooth. There is no confirmed TB3 dock that will work with the Folio, except for the possibility of the Black Magic eGPU/Dock from Apple (a whopping $1499) and also surprisingly the Y-Series processors in the MacBook Air seems to have no problems with the TB3 ports or video.

If you need the dock, it will be a constant problem of overheating, video lag (so bad that you'll have trouble moving app windows between monitors in less than 2-3 tries), slow opening apps and files, and general system performance issues. To top this all off, you'll likely experience random system freezes if you have more than one Bluetooth device attached (I have the Surface Keyboard, Surface Mouse, Surface Pen, and HK Onyx speaker attached - something will quit every hour or so).

Worse still, HP tech support just throws up its hands and tells you to go talk to sales for further assistance, where sales tries to offer a replacement, but when pushed on whether the replacements have been exhibiting the same behavior, then reluctantly offers a return, subject to "upper management" approval, who never calls you back.

Note a certain sense of frustration building up here...perhaps if you use the Folio in a vacuum - no need for the TB3 ports and limited peripheral attachments (or just on your lap or at the coffee shop table) you'll be good to go...otherwise...

 

Sorry to hear this. It must be very frustrating for you. Are all the problems, including the BT drops only with the dock attached? As a practical matter, can you get by fine daisy-chaining your two monitors off one TB3 port? If yes to both, is this more a flexibility issue than one which affects your daily usage? I know that doesn't make it alright, but if you can do all you need to do now, I would expect time will bring a firmware change that will alleviate the dock problems. Letter (probably has to be snail mail!) to the office of the CEO/Chairman of HP is your best bet at getting some attention - the officer won't respond, but they have staffs to field these and usually you'll hear back from someone pretty high level.

 

The BT drops occur regularly with or without the dock or even a USB Hub. Daisy-chain does work off of a single TB3 port, but then I need a hub for Ethernet/printer/HDD, and a third connection for power. With all this plugged in, general performance drops maybe 20% or more. It's like the Y series processor is not fully compatible with the Windows universe - my bet is this will take firmware, driver, and OS tweaks across the board to get it running right. Remember how long it took to fix "hot-bagging" with the Surface Pro 4 and original Surface Book?

As it is, the performance is not as good or reliable as my two year old GB12 with it's 7th gen i5 and only 4gb RAM and 128gb SSD. It is a bit better than the Surface Go, but not as reliable either. That, my friend, is not encouraging.