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Snow Leopard Might Be The Best Hackintosh OS X

// June 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // technology

So today was the WWDC keynote, where Apple usually unloads a bunch of new stuff. I’ve watched the past 3 WWDCs, via various liveblogs, and have to declare that today’s was by far the most boring. However, there was a small nugget of fun that most people seem to have overlooked. During the Snow Leopard show-and-tell, it was revealed that upon upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard, you should expect to see a whopping 6GB of internal storage freed up! That’s right, there’s currently 6GB of bloat hidden inside Leopard that will be trimmed off when you upgrade. Why is that good news?

It’s awesome news for the hackintosh community, specifically those hackintoshing netbooks. If you don’t know, ‘hackintosh’ is a term used for when people put Apple’s OS X operating system on non-Mac hardware, such as any of the currently available netbooks, or an old PC that you have lying around. It was made much easier when Apple began using Intel processors, and today, hackintoshing a netbook only takes a few extra steps, as opposed to installing the operating system on a bonafide Mac.

The only thing about netbooks is that often they have smaller hard drives – much smaller, down to 16GB in the case of the Dell Mini series. When I had OS X installed on my Dell Mini 9 with its 16GB SSD (solid-state drive), I only had 8GB free. Admittedly, it was a somewhat hacked up version of Leopard, and I certainly don’t expect Snow Leopard to only be a 2GB OS, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Despite Apple’s insistence that they’re not working on a netbook, I have to think that maybe, just maybe, they’re slimming things down in preparation for one, perhaps next year? Of course, most people who want an Apple netbook would be perfectly happy with the iPhone OS running on a Dell Mini 9, for instance, but who knows what it’ll look like for real.

I’m Back To Windows

// February 9th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // technology, toys

Yes, that’s right. After the pains I went through to get OS X running smoothly on my Dell Mini 9, I’ve erased it all and put Windows 7 back on there. To be honest, I like it *much* better. I will, though, confess that I can be as stubborn as a mule once I get things how I want them. OS X was cool and all, but it just had too many annoyances that have confirmed I’ll likely never be a Mac guy.

First, when you close the lid, it wants to sleep. This is the DUMBEST thing ever. It can’t simply turn off the display, like Windows can, no no. If you’re closing the lid, obviously you want your computer to go to sleep, which means that any data connections (such as the internet) are disconnected. So…..if you want to leave your computer on every Wednesday night so that it can download and apply updates when you’re NOT using it, tough luck. I could go on, but I won’t. Yes, there’s an application that disables this, but I found it to be kinda unreliable. Plus, it’s my freakin computer, and I don’t want to use it that way.

Next up is the touchpad. Apple thinks having specific areas of your touchpad for scrolling is silly. Instead, they want you to get all touchy-feely with this multitouch nonsense. Now, I can admit that I was running OS X on unsupported hardware, which is attributed to most of the touchpad issues I had (it was overly sensitive, basically), but this multitouch stuff got *real* annoying. I like knowing that I can touch this one portion of my touchpad and it always performs the same action – scrolling.

There were other annoying things, but alot of them were due to the fact that I was using OS X on unsupported, and underpowered hardware. For instance, iMovie took for freakin ever to export a 10 minute video that I edited, and it didn’t even turn out. Yes, that was likely mostly due to the 1.6GHz Atom processor, but still.

The other thing that I already know is that I likely won’t ever have a ‘legit’ OS X experience, because I don’t like Apple’s hardware designs. I think they’re far too minimalistic, and ugly. After discovering how ‘cool’ iMovie and iPhoto are, I went up to Best Buy to play with the Macs, and I noticed that on the newer Macbooks, there’s no touchpad button. The whole stupid thing is a button. Ugh. No thanks. When I looked at the Air, and the various new Macbooks and Macbook Pros, I came home and looked at my Dell XPS M1330 again and realized, it’s a pretty sweet looking machine. Sharp lines, brushed metal wristrest, great styling. The Macs just looked so……boring. Almost sterile.

So I’m back to Windows 7, both on my Dell Mini 9 and my old Gateway MX6956. Neither computer does anything when I close the lid, cause I don’t want them to. Both have clearly defined areas of the touchpad that scroll, and I can touch anywhere else on the touchpad without having to worry about it scrolling. I’m happy.

I Am Operating System Agnostic

// January 29th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // technology

In the past year, I’ve used Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu (8.04 and 8.10), and now OS X, on various computers laying around. It’s easy enough to burn an iso and load it up, and if it’s a spare computer, there’s not much to lose/backup/etc. Since I work online, it’s important for me to have each machine setup so that, if needed, I could work from it. Thus, as I’ve been tinkering and experimenting with these various operating systems, I’ve discovered that I’m basically OS-agnostic.

How so? Well, as long as I can load up Firefox and install the Foxmarks plugin, I have access to all of my bookmarks, usernames, and passwords, and they’re synced between the various computers. I can, for instance, wake up and grab my old Gateway MX6956, which is dual-booting Windows 7 and Kubuntu currently, and go through my RSS feeds in Greader, check my Gmail, and bookmark the stories I need to cover today. I can then get out of bed, walk to my office, and fire up my Dell XPS M1330, open Firefox, and open those stories in tabs with just a few clicks. Since Firefox is available for Windows, Linux, and OS X, it works fantastically.

The only ‘gotcha’ is in media. Of course, I can play back my MP3s, movies, etc in any computer, but what about content creation/editing? Currently, Windows is king for that, since I have Photoshop and Ulead Video Studio. Ubuntu’s video editing tools are basically non-existant, so that rules that out pretty quickly. I’ve only just started exploring OS X, and I’m working on getting iLife ’09 to check out. That might be the deciding factor, we’ll see.

In any case, when you think about it, most consumers are the same as me – OS-agnostic, as long as it has a decent web browser. That fact brings up some interesting possibilities. I’ll be reporting back on iLife ’09 later.

I’m Now A Mac User

// January 27th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // technology

One of the things that really made the Dell Mini 9 appealing to me (especially since I already have a Fujitsu P1610) is the fact that it’s supposedly one of the easiest netbooks to ‘hackintosh.’ A hackintosh is a non-Apple computer that is outfitted with an unofficial copy of Apple’s OS X operating system. As you can see, I am now running OS X on my Dell Mini 9.

The install is actually pretty simple, if you have a bit of computer knowledge. I followed the steps here, one by one, and now I’m currently downloading the OS X 10.5.6 updates over WiFi. I didn’t have to do any hardware tinkering with the Dell, and thus far, I believe everything is working fine. Obviously it boots, the touchpad works, WiFi works, and the display seems to be at a proper resolution. The system update should be done in about half an hour (seriously?), after which I’ll simply need to reapply a few patches to get everything rocking and rolling once again.

So, why OS X, if I’m so pleased with Windows 7? Partially, because I’m a big geek, and I like to check out these other operating system options. Partially, because 90% of my daily workload is done inside Firefox, which means that I could really get by on any operating system. I have friends (most of who read this blog) that use Macs, and I’ll admit that I’ve always been rather curious. Also, every time a new version of iLife comes out, I get really lustful for a Mac.

Unfortunately, I’m far from impressed with the Apple hardware (yes, I said it). I don’t really care for the looks, and they’re usually far under-spec’d. Apple products are also not ‘budget’ priced. Given that I’ve not previously used OS X before, I can’t say that I’m willing to dive head first into a new environment, particularly with hardware that I’m not impressed with. Thus, I was able to cheaply get ahold of a Dell Mini 9, toss OS X on it, and play to my heart’s content. It’s an extremely low-risk environment, as I can easily toss Windows 7 back on the Dell in less than an hour. Brilliant.

More to come soon on how I’m liking OS X. However, given that this will be on my netbook, and not my main computer, there are a few things that I can promise I won’t be covering: Mail, Contacts, and Calendar are givens. I’m *definitely* not prepared to ‘tinker’ with anything around my contacts/calendar/other PIM information, period. I likely also won’t have much local media on this machine, though I certainly will be testing how it fares with network-shared media, both music and video.