Shufflegazine » Hackintosh

Saturday’s Apple: First Experience With Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Netbook

Magnus Nystedt — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:41:33 +0000

You might have read that I finally got Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard running on my Samsung NC10 netbook yesterday. These regular PCs on which people like myself try to get Apple’s OS running are often referred to as “hackintosh” computers. This of course refers to the fact that to get Mac OS X running on them, the software has to be hacked in various ways to work. Taking a plain Mac OS X installation DVD and try to get it installed and running won’t get you anywhere really.

In my case I bought the NC10 with the specific purpose of putting Leopard on it and write about it for Shufflegazine. It had got pretty good reviews and I had read that others had successfully put Leopard on them. It turned out to be easier than I thought to install Leopard. See on the internet you can on various places find different hacked versions of Leopard. Some people have taken Apple’s Mac OS X and prepared it in different ways to be installed on PCs. Mac OS X boots in a different way from Windows and does all kinds of things in a different way, that’s why a plan Mac OS X won’t do much on a hackintosh. There are three or four major such hackintosh “distributions”, to borrow a word from the Linux world, including one especially made for the Samsung NC10. That’s the one I used to directly install Mac OS X 10.5.6. And no, I’m not going to tell you where to find these special versions of Mac OS X. Anyway, they’re easy to find if you just search a bit.

There were some things that didn’t work right away and some things still don’t work. Wi-Fi worked right away because I had purchased a Dell 1390 Wi-Fi card and swapped out the one that comes standard on the NC10. I also upgraded the RAM to 2GB and the hard drive to 500GB. So I had internet connection right away, which was cool. Sound didn’t work, same with sleep mode, but they both got fixed after installing “kext” files available online. A “kext” file is a “kernel extension” file and I guess it’s like a driver in Mac OS X.

But all in all I have a perfectly usable Mac netbook that doesn’t say “Apple” on the outside, it says “Samsung” and it even has “Intel Inside” and “Windows” stickers on it. I must say it feels strange and cool at the same time to be able to run my favorite OS on this non-official hardware.

There are ongoing discussions whether doing this is illegal or not. I’m not a lawyer but I wouldn’t be too surprised if it is. But I guess I don’t see the harm as I bought a copy of Mac OS X to do this, I bought the hardware (the NC10) and this will not be my main machine so Apple didn’t miss out on any hardware sales. This is an experiment more than anything and although I will probably be using the NC10 with Leopard for some duties in the near future, at least until Apple comes up with something I can replace it with, it is not taking sales away from anyone.

In the coming weeks I’ll use my hackintosh as much as I can and I’ll of course report back to you here about how it goes. As I said, I’ll be using the NC10 for some duties, at least until Apple decides to bring out something I can replace it with. And with speculations again intensifying over a potential 10-inch Apple netbook in late 2009 that might be a while.

Hackintosh Finally Running Leopard

Magnus Nystedt — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:31:42 +0000

After writing yesterday that my Samsung NC10 hackintosh still hadn’t successfully been running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard yet. This afternoon I tried installing one of the Leopard images again and it kept crashing and rebooting like before. Then I pulled out the plugs to the external DVD drive I was installing from and then, voila, Leopard booted up fine.

I’m writing this in Safari on the NC10 and I’ve only had it up and running for a few minutes yet but here are a few details:

It’s Mac OS X 10.5.6 meaning the latest Leopard.
Wi-Fi worked right away.
Mac OS X reports “unknown” processor.
Screen resolution is at 1024×600.
I don’t see any mouse or trackpad control in System Preferences. It works but Mac OS X doesn’t seem to see it.
The Alt key next to space is recognized as the Command key.
F12 brings up Dashboard.

I’ll report back of course as soon as I learn more.

Update: I got the NC10 to go to sleep when I close it. I had to download and install the ClamshellDisplay.kext.zip file (you can find it in different places). I installed it with the OSX86Tools.app. It doesn’t come back on when I open the lid like Macs do but a quick press on the power button and it’s back, that’s good enough for me.

Update on Hackintosh Progress or Lack Thereof

Magnus Nystedt — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:21:22 +0000

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about what’s been going on with my hackintosh project. The simple truth is I’ve not had much time to work on it since we’ve been moving offices and that’s taken up a lot of time for administrative duties, meetings, and more.

I have done a few things in the past few weeks though but I’m sorry to say I’ve had no complete success with the hackintosh. The furthest I’ve got is to get Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard installed but when it boots up it doesn’t seem to recognize the NC10’s keyboard. That’s with the MSI Wind Leopard disk image that’s available on various places online.

I’ve also tried the “iATKOS” release of Leopard as well as the Leopard version made especially for the NC10. They both seem to install okay but when booting up they crash and they’re stuck in an endless startup-crash cycle that I don’t seem to be able to get out of.

So no luck so far but I’ll get back to it as soon as I can and rest assured I’ll report back to you here just as soon as possible.

Finally, Wi-Fi Received and Installed

Magnus Nystedt — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:40:47 +0000

One area where many hackintosh netbooks have problems is with support for Wi-Fi cards. It seems Leopard doesn’t support most Wi-Fi cards put into netbooks. There are drivers but they come with problems and aren’t very reliable. The typical solution to this problem is to get a Dell Wi-Fi card and swap it into the netbook. Something like the Dell 1390 or 1490 are common choices.

I went for a Dell 1390 found on eBay for about $23.

Installing it is actually very easy. It sits on the bottom of the motherboard of the NC10 so you have to open the netbook up, just like if you were putting in a new hard drive. With the bottom off it’s an easy process of getting the new Wi-Fi in.

So with the Wi-Fi installed we have everything we need to get going with putting Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on there. First I tried to start up Windows 7 and it recognized the card and it’s working fine. In the next few days I will start working on getting Mac OS X on the NC10 and will obviously come back to you here then.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

آخيراً وصلت قطعة “الواي فاي” وتم تنصيبها

دعم كروت “واي فاي” يعد من النقاط الشائكة في حاسبات “النتبوك”. يبدو أن نظام ليوبارد لا يدعم معظم أنواع كروت “واي فاي” عند وضعها في حاسبات “نتبوك”. هناك بالفعل مداخل ولكنها مليئة بالمشاكل ولا يمكن الإعتماد عليها. الحل المثالي لهذه المشكلة هي وضع كارت “واي فاي” دل “Dell” داخل النتبوك. أعتقد أن “دل ١٣٩٠” او “دل ١٤٩٠” خياران جيدان.

أنا أخترت “دل ١٣٩٠” حيث وجدته متوفر خلال “إي باي” مقابل ٢٣ دولار.

تنصيب الكارت عملية سهلة للغاية إذ يتم وضعه فى قاعدة اللوحة الأم “motherboard” الخاصة بحاسب “إن سي ١٠” لذا يجب عليك أن تفتح “النتبوك” كما لو أنك ستضع قرص صلب جديد، ازالة غطاء الجزء الأسفل من الحاسب يجعل عملية تركيب كارت “واي فاي” سهلة للغاية.

بعد تركيب “واي فاي” اكتمل كل مل نحتاجه لوضع نظام ماك “او اس اكس ١٠،٥ ليوبارد” على النتبوك. في البداية حاولت تشغيل ويندوز ٧ وتم التعرف على الكارت. في الأيام القلائل القادمة سوف أحاول وضع ماك “اواس اكس” على حاسب “ان سي ١٠” وسوف أخبركم بالنتائج لاحقاً.

إذا أردتم قراءة المزيد من سلسلة مقالات “هاكنتوش” يمكنكم الضغط علي الوصلة الموجودة فى النص الإنجليزي.

Some Parts Received And Windows 7 Installed on the Hackintosh

Magnus Nystedt — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:07:25 +0000

Finally, the hard drive and the RAM arrived. It seems the Wi-Fi card is still possibly a week away due to some delays on the seller’s side. That annoys me but nothing much I can do about it.

But that little set back wasn’t going to hold me back from doing some work on my hackintosh. With great gusto I set about upgrading the Samsung NC10 to new storage and more RAM.

What I had decided since ordering the 500GB hard drive was that it would serve me better in my MacBook. I wouldn’t have to worry about my iTunes or iPhoto libraries fitting on the disk or whether how large my Windows Vista installation grew. But then I thought, I spent all that money on getting the SSD for the MacBook so it will stay in the MacBook.

So I set off on upgrading the RAM. On the NC10 there is only one slot for RAM so I couldn’t just add a stick, I had to replace the 1GB that was there with my new 2GB stick. I did that following instructions, which was a piece of cake. I booted it up in Windows XP to make sure it all worked fine. So far so good.

Then came the task of swapping hard drives. That’s a bit trickier as it involves taking off the bottom of the case of the NC10 but anyone can do it, you just have to be a bit careful. Since I don’t have the Wi-Fi card yet I decided to put Windows 7 on the NC1o and see how it runs.

One thing you might know about netbooks is they don’t have any optical drive, they are like the MacBook Air in that respect. There are however ways to put Windows 7 on a USB stick and install from it so that’s what I did. In fact it’s as easy as formatting your USB stick as FAT32 and copy everything off the Windows 7 installation DVD to the USB drive. I used a 4GB USB stick and had no problems getting the Windows 7 installation files to fit. The Windows 7 beta ISO image is actually only about 2.4GB.

Then it was time to boot. Hold down F2 on the NC10 when you boot and select that you want to boot from the USB and away you go.

In my case split the 500GB into three partitions with similar size and installed Windows 7 to the C-drive.

After using Windows 7 for a bit on the Samsung I must say it runs very well. It’s quick, responsive and overall nice to use. It pretty much looks and works like Windows Vista apart from the Taskbar (equivalent of the Dock in Mac OS X), which is different from Vista. I’ve been surprised how well it runs on a low-powered netbook.

I want to keep Windows 7 on my NC10 but now I’m really itching to try out Leopard on it. I hope the Wi-Fi card arrives soon so I can get working on that.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

وصلت بعض الأجزاء و تم تنصيب ويندوز ٧ على “هاكنتوش”

اخيراً وصل القرص الصلب ويبدو أن وحدة “واي فاي” سوف تصل بعد اسبوع بسبب بعض التأخير من جانب البائع، بطبيعة الحال شعرت بالضيق بسبب هذا التأخير ولكن لا يمكنني أن افعل شيء.

ولكن هذا التأخير لن يعوقني عن القيام ببعض العمل لمشروع الهاكنتوش الذي اقوم به. بكل فرح قررت ترقية حاسب سامسونج “ان سي ١٠” بإضافة وحدة تخزينية جديدة و اضافة المزيد لذاكرة الوصول العشوائي.

عندما قررت شراء القرص الصلب ذو ٥٠٠ جيجابايت كنت اعلم ان سيؤدى لي خدمات كبيرة حيث أنني لن اقلق على مكتبة آي تيونز او مكتبة آي فوتو ومدي ملائمتهما للقرص، كما انني لن اقلق حيال زيادة الجزء الخاص بويندوز المنصب على حاسبي ولكنني عندما فكرت وجدت انني انفقت كل هذه الأموال على احدى وسائط التخزين “SSD” لحاسب ماكبوك مما يعنى أن كل الترقية سوف تكون حبيسة الحاسب. لذا قررت أن اقوم بترقية وحدة ذاكرة الوصول العشوائي “الرامات” إلا ان حاسب NC10 به فتحة واحدة فقط لذلك لم استطع ان اضع وحدة الذاكرة واضطررت إلى استبدال الوحدة ذات واحد جيجابايت بأخرى ذات سعة ٢ جيجابايت متبعاً التعليمات التي تستطيعون الوصول اليها عبر الضغط على كلمة “instructions” الموجودة في النص الإنجليزي، بعد ذلك قمت بالإقلاع من ويندوز “اكس بي” للتأكد أن كل شيء يعمل بالشكل الصحيح.

المهمة التالية هي تبديل القرص الصلب مما يعد اصعب نوعياً حيث يتطلب الأمر خلع الجزء الأسفل من حافظة حاسب ” ان سي ١٠” وهو أمر يتسطيع اي شخص القيام به عليك فقط أن تلتزم الحذر. بما أن وحدة “الواي فاي” غير موجودة حتى الآن قررت أن انصب ويندوز ٧ على الحاسب واري كيف تجري الأمور.

يجب أن تعرف أمراً هام بخصوص الحايبات الصغيرة وهي انها لا تحتوي على قرص ليزري تماماً مثل حاسب ماكبوك اير إلا أن هناك عدة طرق لوضع ويندوز ٧ على وحدة “يو اس بي” ثم تنصيبه من خلال هذه الوحدة وهذا هو ما فعلته. كان الامر بسيط للغاية حيث عليك اعادة ترتيب وحدة “يو اس بي” على شكل “FT3″. عليك أن تنسخ كل شيء موجود على قرص تنصيب ويندوز ٧ وتضعه على “يواس بي”.

بعد ذلك حان وقت الاقلاع واثناء القيام بذلك اضغط بشكل متواصل على زر F2 على حاسب “ان سي ١٠” بعد ذلك اختر الاقلاع من “يو اس بي”.
فى حالتي قمت بتقسيم القرص ذو ٥٠٠ جيجابايت إلى ثلاثة أقسام متساوية بعدها نصبت ويندوز ٧ على جزء “C”.
بعد استخدام ويندوز ٧ على حاسب سامسونج لابد من الاعتراف أنه عمل بشكل جيد وكانت استجابته سريعة و اجمالاً كان استخدامه ممتع والأمر يشبه العمل على نظام ويندوز فيستا من خلال شريط الأدوات وادهشني كيف عمل النظام على حاسب “النتبوك”.

اردت الأحتفاظ بويندوز ٧ على “ان سي ١٠” ولكنني لا أطيق الانتظار حتى انصب ليوبارد عليه. آمل ان تصل وحدة “واي فاي” سريعاً لكى اتمكن من العمل على ذلك.

إذا كنت مهتماً

Reflections on Windows XP Netbook After One Week

Magnus Nystedt — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:06:57 +0000

I’ve used my hackintosh Samsung NC10 for about a week now so I can share a few thoughts on it with some experience under my belt, so to speak. It’s still running Windows XP because I’m still waiting for the parts that I’ll install before trying the leap to Leopard; the 500GB hard drive, the 2GB RAM, and the Dell Wi-Fi card.

The good:

Obviously size and weight. It’s easy to just pick it up, put it in a bag and go. And combined with the next point (battery life) you don’t have to worry too much about recharging. It’s gives you a great feeling of mobility. Add in a 3G modem and you’re set for anything!
Battery life is great. I get somewhere around 5-6 hours of actual use with Wi-Fi on. I can use it all day, on and off of course, and not have to recharge until the evening.
Lots of storage space, the 160GB drive is far from full so I imagine it’ll be a struggle filling 500GB even with several operating systems on it.
Wi-Fi performance is good. Better than many Macs in similar situations. Perhaps that’s because it has a plastic shell and the Macs are now pretty much all aluminum.
It’s fast enough. It’s not meant to run Photoshop and let you edit large movies and it won’t let you do that easily. But browsing, emailining, Twittering, and writing is perfectly ok. I do some simple graphics editing, like cropping and resizing, but that’s it.
It’s quiet and cool. You can hardly hear it at all even with fan running and it never gets hot. It gets warm but nothing like current Mac notebooks.

The not soo good:

The track pad although better than some other netbooks, in particular the Acer Aspire One, is still too small and the mouse button is too awkward to be really comfortable. My recommendation? Always carry a Bluetooth mouse. I know that somewhat defeats the purpose of a mobile netbook but I’m not saying you’ll always use the mouse. It is however a good compliment.
Balance when using on your lap. Okay, so it’s not a laptop, it’s a netbook, but there are times when you want to use it placed on something other than a table. In such situations it tends to be a bit back-heavy and it rolls over easily. This is a common ailment with netbooks however and on a flat surface it’s not an issue.
It looks like a PC. Okay, might not be a fair comment but you just want to get back to a Mac after looking at it for a while.

All in all I am very happy with the NC10 and I look forward putting Leopard on it. I hope the parts make it here soon!

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

انطباعات عن حاسب ويندوز “اكس بي” الدفتري الصغير بعد اسبوع من استعمال
استخدمت حاسب “هاكنتوش” سامسونج “ان سي ١٠” لمدة اسبوع و استطيع الآن ان اشارككم بعض الافكار عن تلك التجربة. الحاسب مازال يعمل على نظام تشغيل ويندوز “اكس بي” لأن القطع التى اريد وضعها فى الحاسب لمحاولة وضع نظام “ليوبارد” لم تصل بعد، هذه القطع هى قرص صلب بسعة ٥٠٠ جيجابايت و رامات بسعة ٢ جيجابايت و كارت “واي فاي” من نوع “دل”.
المزايا:
- الحجم و الوزن بالطبع، من السهل جداً حمل الحاسب و وضعه فى الحقيبة و الذهاب و الامو هنا مرتبط بالعامل الثانى و هو البطارية، اذ انك لا يجب ان تقلق على الشحن، لذا فأن الحاسب يعطي حرية كبيرة فى التنقل و الحمل، اضف موديم “ثرى جي” و تكون جاهز لأي شيء!
- عمر البطارية جيد جداً، لقد عملت على الجهاز من خمسة الى ست ساعات بلا توقف و كانت خاصية “واي فاي” تعمل. استطيع ان استخدم الحاسب طوال اليوم بلا اي شحن حتي المساء.
- السعة التخزينيه العالية ، القرص الصلب يبلغ ١٦٠ جيجابايت، اي يمتليء بصعوبة و اعتقد ان مليء ٥٠٠ جيجابايت سيكون اكثر صعوبة حتى فى وجود انظمة تشغيل مختلفة.
- اداء خاصية “واي فاي” يعمل بشكل جيد بل و افضل من الكثير من حاسبات فى المواقف المتشابة، ربما لأن غطاء الحاسب بلاستيكي اما حاسبات ماك فمن الالومنيوم.
- سرعة الحاسب كافية، الحاسب لا يفترض به ان يشغل برنامج “فوتوشوب” و اخراج الافلام الكبيرة و لكن تصفح الانترنت و استخدام البريد الاليكترونى و برنامج “تويتر” و الكتابة كلها تعمل بشكل جيد، بل و اقوم باخراج بعض رسومات الجرافيك البسيطة مثل تغيير الحجم، ولكن ليس اكثر.
- احاسب هادىء و جميل، لا تسمع صوته حتى لو كانت المروحة تعمل كما انه لا يصبح ساخناً مطلقاً. و اذا حدث ذلك فلا يمون مثلما يحدث فى حاسبات ماك.

مزايا ليست جيدة بدرجة كافية
- على الرغم من كون لوحة التحكم افضل من “netbooks” اخري مثل حاسب “اسر اسباير” تحديداً و لكنها مازالت صغيرة و زر الفارة مازال من الصعب استخدامه بسهولة لذا اوصى باستخدام فارة تعمل وفق نظام بلوتوث. انا اعلم ذلك ينافى فكرة الحاسبات الصغيرة المحمولة و لكنني لا اقول بأنك سوف تستخدمها طوال الوقت.
- الاتزان عند وضع الحاسب على القدمين، اعلم انه ليس حاسب محمول بالمعني الحرفي، انه حاسب صغير و لكن هناك اوقات معينه تضع حين يجب عليك ان تضع الحاسب على شيء اخر سوى المنضدة، فى هذه الاوقات لا يتزن الحاسب بسهولة. هذا عيب مشترك فى كل الحاسبات الصغيرة و لكنة لا يظهر عند وضعها على الاسطح المستوية.
- الحاسب يشبه “بي سي” لذا ليس من العدل ان اقول هذا الاحساس و لكنك تشعر بعد فترة بانك تريد العودة الى ماك.
اجمالاً انا سعيد بهذا الحاسب و اتطلع بوضع نظام تشغيل ليوبارد عليه، امل ان تصل هذه الاجزاء قريباً.
اذا كنت مهتمين هذه هي الوصلة التى بها كل مقالاتى عن “هاكنتوش”

The Original Apple Netbook – eMate

Magnus Nystedt — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:25:05 +0000

Let’s see a show of hands – how many of you know what an eMate is? No, I’m not talking about i-Mate, you know the Dubai-based maker of mobile phones and PDAs, I mean the Apple eMate.

I don’t blame you for not knowing what eMate is. It was an Apple product that was only produced and sold (original price $800) for a very brief period a long time ago now in IT years. It was sold for about a year in 1997-1998 and it was Apple’s attempt to create a low-cost computer targeting the educational market. It’s basically a Newton Messagepad put into the form factor of a more traditional notebook computer. It pretty small and light, green and cute with curvy shape and a built-in handle for carrying it around.

Although the display was only showing 16 shades of gray over 480×320 pixels, for the time it was a pretty good display for a portable. It had a greenish backlight and two slider controls for brightness and contrast.

For communication it was pretty well set too. Actually it’s capable of Wi-Fi, as you can see in the photos. I’m using a Dell Wi-Fi PC-card and it actually works. To me that’s pretty amazing. It also has an infrared port, which was almost standard on computers back in the day. There was also the Macintosh serial port (LocalTalk) that was standard on Macs before USB arrived.

One area where the eMate beats today’s netbooks is battery life. It came with a rechargeable, removable battery pack, which according to some accounts let it run up to 30 hours on one charge. You could also run it on regular AA meaning you wouldn’t have to worry much about battery power. It also had a great keyboard, and stylus with which you controlled much of the interface.

Unfortunately the eMate was pretty underpowered with a 25MHz processor(3MB RAM, 8MB ROM) even though it had all the functionality of the much more powerful Newton 2000 and 2100 models.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

Hackintosh: What’s With All The Stickers?

Magnus Nystedt — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:16:55 +0000

You know how clean and smooth a Mac is? No stickers, no unnecessary labels, not many ports, etc. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed finding screws sometimes on Macs. Apple really goes to great lengths to design clean and nice looking computers, from the inside out.

Then take a look at most Windows PCs, like our hackintosh Samsung NC10. It’s actualy not as bad as some PCs but it has the stickers for sure. I guess they are part of some deal the PC manufacturer has with Intel or Microsoft. They get a break on the price if they put the blue Intel inside sticker on the computer, I would assume.

So that’s not a deal that Apple is willing to make I suppose and thank goodness for that. If all goes well with the hackintosh and it turns out to be a reliable computer for Leopard I’m sure I’ll remove the stickers and put a big Apple sticker on the outside of the display.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

Hackintosh: Bigger Hard Drive Available

Magnus Nystedt — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:20:09 +0000

What the heck, why not take this experiment all the way? The Samsung NC10, my hackintosh candidate, comes with a 160GB drive, which seems more than enough, right? Well, it turns out some people have been putting 500GB drives in there and that’s just too tempting to be overlooked.

Apparently the drive they put in there is the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB, available on NewEgg for $110.

Wow, 500GB in this small package, with Windows and Mac OS X installed, that’s tempting. I’ve not ordered it… yet, but might do in the next few days.

There’s even a video of how to swap the hard drive, doesn’t look very difficult.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

Update: We ordered a 500GB Western Digital drive for the NC10.

Hackintosh: Better Battery Life

Magnus Nystedt — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:39:33 +0000

If you’re an owner of a MacBook Air, tell me how much usage do you get out of one battery charge? Two hours? Three hours? Somewhere in there would be my guess.

With the Samsung NC10 I get 5-7 hours it seems depending on what I do and what settings I have for performance and other variables. That’s on the standard 6-cell battery.

There is a 9-cell battery available for about $100 on eBay, which some users say gives them 10 hours of use or more. Now this battery will of course add considerable size and weight to the computer so it’s not an ideal solution from many perspectives. However, for many users having this as an option is a necessity.

This is using Windows XP however and many Samsung NC10 users report that when running Leopard the battery life goes down. Anywhere from 25-50% less than with Windows. I cannot say whether that’s necessarily true yet as I’ve not put Leopard on my hackintosh NC10, but I will for sure let you know as soon as I can.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

Hackintosh: Will Apple Make a Netbook?

Magnus Nystedt — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:15:22 +0000

There are of course different answers to that question: from Apple’s official comments on the matter the answer is “No” or at least “Not Now”; from my own experience the answer would be “No”, and; from my personal desires the answer would be “Heck yes!”

I’ve wanted Apple to make a really small Mac for a long time, even from before the discontinued the 12-inch PowerBook, which couldn’t really be called a netbook. Even though for Mac notebook standards it was relatively small with netbook standards it’s heavy and big.

But let’s be real and look at Apple’s closest attempt to a netbook to date, the MacBook Air. It’s a beautiful machine, for sure, but it’s also hampered with problems and limitations. Compared to many netbooks the Air’s battery life is pathetic. It may keep up in performance if you just look at the processor speed but in true performance there seems to be something holding the Air back. Then of course in ports and expandability, the Air is a nightmare. Let’s be fair, the screen is gorgeous, the keyboard is very good as it is pretty much full size, and the thinness and weight are amazing. But does the Air show anything giving us reason to think that Apple can put the same performance in an even smaller package? I’m not so sure. Do we really think that Apple would be happy with inevitable compromises of a netbook (smaller screen, smaller keyboard, etc.)? I don’t think so.

See, ever since shortly after the Air came out I’ve had this feeling it was a stop-gap product, something that Apple brought out in a hurry to keep the buying public interested for a few years until Apple could come up with the product they really wanted to bring out. Doesn’t the Air seem a bit rushed to you in terms of specifications and design? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Apple would discontiue it in another year or so, then announce something even more amazing, something they’ve had a few more years to work on. Be it a tablet, a netbook, or something completely different, who knows?

I’ve seen many of the current crop of netbooks and I can say for sure they are not pretty to look at, most of them. Sure there are details that are not too bad, as far as PCs go, but they are full of the typical ports and vents, stickers, and all; in brief, the scourge of PC computers in general. Why it’s so hard for any of them to crank out a really good looking netbook, I don’t understand. Even products, like the Psion Netbook (above), out in the market around 2000, which was actually really called “netbook” were not the most pretty things to look at. Although very interesting in some design details they never really reached the overall polish of Apple’s designs.

Then we come to the main reason for the great surge in netbook sales- that they are cheap. I got my Samsung NC10 for about a quarter of the price of the Air. Sure the NC10 has slower processor and less RAM than Air, but it has larger HDD (160GB), more ports, and at least double the battery life of the Apple notebook. And that’s important to many consumers. Walk around a mall in Dubai and you’re bound to see lots of netbooks, but few Macs. But Apple has never really gone for making cheap products, especially not cheap computers. If you recall, they’ve tried before to make so called “consumer lines” of computers, notably the LC and Centris series in the 1990s, but they were never as cheap as their PC rivals. And as much as we Apple fans try to convince people that they shouldn’t look at sticker price only, the sticker price is incredibly important. And for that fact alone, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Apple is never going to make a netbook that competes on a sticker price-level with the other netbooks. If they would bring out a netbook, and I don’t think they will, at least not in the format of netbooks as we now know them, it will cost at least double of the other netbooks. But, of course, if they do so, I will still buy one, and so will thousands of other Apple fans.

My belief that Apple will not bring out a netbook anytime soon is partly behind my wish to try to put Leopard on my hackintosh NC10. But then again I’m also enough of a geek that I want to try this sort of thing anyway.

And we can throw into the mix Tim Cook’s, COO of Apple, recent comments about netbooks, that they are too much of a compromise and offer an inferior user experience. Apple knows better than you or I what the netbook market looks like; who is buying and how much they are buying. I’d imagine that Apple is hard at work trying to figure out what they are going to bring to the market that brings a better user experience and some “ooh and awh”, in true Apple style. Personally I think they’re more likely to scale up the iPhone form factor rather than scale down the MacBook Air.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

Hackintosh: Wi-Fi Card and RAM Ordered

Magnus Nystedt — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:42:01 +0000

My hackintosh project continues. I’ve now used the Samsung NC10 for a bit and I can tell you it’s a really nice machine. Runs fast, very quiet and with Windows XP I get some 5-6 hours of work out of it before needing to recharge. Other users report 1-2 hours more than that, perhaps it’s an issue of tweaking settings and breaking in the battery, I don’t know.

I’ve not attempted to put Leopard on it yet, so it’s still running Windows XP, and will so for quite a while yet.

Why, you ask?

One thing that is not compatible out of the box with Leopard is the Wi-Fi apparently. What might be surprising is that Dell Wi-Fi cards are compatible with standard Leopard, so I snatched one on eBay for $23. Once it arrives I’ll install it and report back then.

The same interesting thing is true for Newton MessagePads. If you want to get Wi-Fi on a compatible MessagePad, your best bet is to find an old Dell PC-card. It’s not that it’s Dell that is the key, it’s that the chip set (the electronics inside) they use is MessagePad and Mac OS X compatible apparently.

I also wanted to up the RAM a bit. The NC10 I bought comes with 1GB so I got a 2GB pack on Crucial.com for about $25. Same thing there, when it arrives and I install it I’ll let you know. That’s maxing out the RAM in the NC10 and 2GB should be enough for what I’ll do with the hackintosh.

So now what I have left to do is do some more research on putting Leopard on this baby, download some Mac OS X versions for hackintoshes, buy a copy of Leopard, and then perhaps we’re in business.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.

Hackintosh: Samsung NC10 Project Started

Magnus Nystedt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:54:12 +0000

Yesterday I bought the Samsung NC10 with the explicit purpose of putting Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on it. It’s 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD. Some months ago I got an Acer Aspire One with the same idea. To be honest I never really got around to it and read too many complaints online from people who tried but had problems. Especially it seemed that sleep mode doesn’t work. So I looked around for another netbook as I’m still set on turning it into a hackintosh. After a bit of research I settled on the Samsung NC10. It seems people have generally a good experience with putting Leopard on it, pretty much everything work. The two things that seem to be problems are USB ports and Ethernet. But there are fixes for the USB problem at least, it seems.

So I’m downloading the various Mac OS X ISO images especially for hackintosh projects to see which one will work the best. There are also many web pages with guides for how to install and get things going. I will

So why even bother doing this?

The geek in me would answer, because it’s possible. A better answer is probably for me to get some experience with doing it since so many others are doing it. It’s also very appealing to me the idea that without too much hacking Mac OS X can be installed on regular PC hardware. And it is of course also appealing that it can be installed on cheap hardware. The Samsung NC10 is about a third of the price of a MacBook and a quarter of the price of a MacBook Air.

I don’t think this will be my main computer for everyday work, that will remain my MacBook and MacBook Pro. But if Leopard works well enough it may take over in certain situations, like when I don’t want to risk damaging my Macs, or when I want something really light and portable.

If you are interested, here is a link to all my articles in the Hackintosh series.