The main problem with doing this is that there are a lot of different distributions (or ‘distros’) of OSX86, and knowing whch of them will work fine on the AAO is a bit of guesswork. There are, however a few that have been used by quite a few people. The XxX, iPC and iAtkos distros have all been installed successfully, and I believe that all of these are available up to OSX 10.5.6.

Each distro has a very similar set of optional components, though if you use a guide for one for another, then you may have to go hunting through the options to find the things you need, and they’re not always named the same.

A great guide is available at :-

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=153352  

This is for the iAtkos distro, but works fine for the others if you can search out the relevant bits in the install. Its a good step by step guide with a lot of feedback from other forum users afterwards also.

One tip – make sure you install the ‘Shutdown Fix’, as if you don’t then your AAO will crash about 50% of the time when shutting down running on batteries. It’s not a big issue (just hold down the power button to switch off), but always feels better and neater when it doesn’t crash!

Insanelymac in general is a great source of info for anything OSX86-related.

Also, the OSX86 Wiki at http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page is also a godsend.

Cheers!

Aspire One - OSX Flavour

I’m always the same.  I get a device or gadget, and, when I’m getting used to it in the first few weeks, I always go into ‘What can I do with this?’ mode.  I’ll see what it can do, even if its things that I’d never use again.  I was happily playing around with Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire one, and actually getting very used to it and being very happy with it.  However, after using my desktop iMac for so long, I pined for something a little more mac-like.  I went hunting, initially for themes for Gnome.  However, I soon started to come across loads of stuff on the web about how people have installed Mac OS X onto theirs.

I’d read quite a bit in the past about so-called ‘Hackintoshes’.  Ever since Apple made the move to Intel x86 Hardware, those in the know (1337 Haxxorrs and the like) had been fiddling with OSX’s innards to get it to run on vanilla PC hardware.  Previously, I hadn’t really followed this up, as early reports were of nightmarish installs, and unstable environments, making it more of a hobby / experimental thing than anything.

Thing is, stuff never stands still for very long.

The stories I was now reading were much more tales of success, and how OS X on x86 PC platforms had become a reality that was no longer out of reach of the common (non-1337) user.  A project called OSX86 (http://www.osx86project.org/) has been brewing to a fine vintage quite nicely for a few years now.  This has now got to the point where several ‘Distros’ of OSX are now available (from various… ahem… locations), which can be installed on a wide range (though not exhaustively so) of PC hardware.

Although the quality (generally) of Apple hardware is very high, and the consistency good, not everyone can afford the admittedly high prices that Apple charge for you to take one of their machines home, but they still want to experiment with OSX.  In my opinion, OSX is an OS that I haven found equalled, both for speed, stability (apart from Linux and *nix-based OSs), and lovelyness in the usage stakes.

With netbooks being de rigeur at the moment, many have longed for a Mac-based version.  MacOS is the perfect Netbook OS.  However, Apple have never got closer to the Netbook form factor than the (extortionate) Macbook Air, and (oversized for this purpose) Macbooks.  This is what has prompted getting OSX86 up and running on Netbooks, particularly ones like the Acer Aspire One and the Dell Mini 9.

Now… the main issue with this is one of legality.  Apple have a EULA that, strictly-speaking, prohibits the use of OSX on anything other than Apple hardware.   Now, you can form your own opinion on this, but many believe that as long as you purchase a license, you should be ale to install the OS on whatever compatible hardware you want to.  One thing I would NOT condone is running OS X without a license.  It is a fantastic OS that has taken many years of development, and is a joy to use.  It’s WORTH THE CASH.  I am lucky enough to have a license for Leopard that I once used on my original iMac G5, but when i sold that, I restored it back to Tiger and sold it as-is.  I’ve had a spare Leopard license hanging around since then.  I repeat – if you want to use it, BUY IT. Due to the restrictions, I suggest that this is for experimental and educational use only.

Anyway!  After much faffing, scouring the net for hacks and tweaks, I got OS X up and running on my Acer Aspire One A150L.  All-in-all, it wasn’t too difficult (though took a bit of trial and error).  One of the finest resources for info on this is the InsanelyMac forums at http://www.insanelymac.com/forum.  Make sure you check it out. Tutorials a-plenty on this are available therein.

The verdict?  Well tickle me with a feather and call me Jeffrey if I wasn’t surprised…!  I must admit, I was expecting to install it, have a mess around, get frustrated and wish I hadn’t bothered with this in the first place…  I couldn’t have been more wrong!

After a few patches, everything now works!  That includes…

• The built in webcam
• Wifi (after the change outlined below)
• Mobile Broadband Dongle (and management App)
• Sound and Mic
• All graphical effects
• Keyboard layout
• Fan speed (no noisy MicroMac for me!)
• Battery indicator
• Card Reader (as long as you have it inserted on boot, and make sure you eject it before inserting another)

And if I’ve missed anything out… then its because basically, you can take more-or-less everything else as read…

Okay – let’s dampen the fires a little.  There is one thing that would be useful that Doesn’t work, and that’s sleep mode.  However, this, to me, is not actually that vital, as I don’t really use it that much.  In the end, I can easily live without it.  You CAN get hibernation working, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered, as the OS boots so damn fast anyway (about 30 secs or so…!).  Secondly, the in-built wireless (an Atheros PCI Express card) doesn’t easily or reliably work with OS X.  I changed it for an Dell 1490 Wifi card for a few quid off ebay, and OSX picked it up as an airport card with no issues at all.  There we go, that wasn’t so painful on the negatives front was it?

OS X runs like a dream on the Acer Aspire One, with it’s Intel Atom 1.6Ghz CPu and it’s 1Gb or RAM.  I don’t know how well it would run on the 8Gb SSD version – I reckon a HDD is pretty much a must, just for space’s sake.  Nothing stopping you giving it a go though, as a browse of the forums shows it has been done.

I thought, as I did a quick vid for the last post, I’d do the same for this one.  So… just to prove it, here’s a vid of the OS starting…

How good is that eh????

(Note to the noise-sensitive : for some reason you can REALLY hear the fan on this vid, especially after the OS starts. In all honesty, it’s not loud at all, and the power management seems to deal with the fan speed absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about! The condenser mic on my camcorder is waaaaaay too sensitive!)

Anyway.  I’ll sign off now, and leave you with the thought that for £250ish, you can get yourself an A150L plus a copy of Leopard, and experiment with a MicroMac of your own!

Cheers.

However! Go here – http://www.geocities.jp/chy065/ – to download a set of great little icons that will always sit at the front of their reletive stacks, making it look like they’re in a little ‘pot’. It looks like this :-

A lot prettier than before, and not confusing as hell! Just drag and drop the icon into the relevant stack (not directly from the downloaded file, but via the desktop firt – dunno why!), and it changes to have that icon at the front.

lovely!

Just one thing to note – make sure you sort the stack my ‘Date Modified’. The dates on the stack icons have been changed to some time in 2010, meaning that they will always appear on top.

I did an upgrade rather than a new install, as all OS X upgrades I’ve ever done before have gone fine. Luckily, it was still the case with this one, and within about 90 mins, everything was done, and Apple’s latest OS was finally mine to play with. All my apps seem to be happy (thusfar), including (most importantly) Logic Studio and Photoshop CS3. I’m overall quite impressed by the features, but most of them could have ben missed off and it wouldn’t have been a major issue. However one of the features of the new OS is definitely worth a look. That feature?

Time Machine!

Time Machine is Apple’s new backup and archiving app. It needs a complete HDD (or partition) to do its business. You plug a new HDD in (a nice Seagate 500Gb in my case – got from PC World this morning!), and it asks you if you want to use it for Time Machine. You just click yes, and it goes away and backs up your entire system. It uses a system of ‘exclusion’ rather than ‘inclusion’ to deine what is backed up. this is good, as it means that you dont need to add new folders to a list in order for them to be backed up. By default, it excludes all external drives, but as I keep all my photos and music on an external drive, I changed this so just the folders that weren’t important on that drive got excluded instead.

Once its completed its first major backup (a few hours at least for most people’s systems), it backs up any changed files once an hour. All very clever. You can force this at any time too. You can restore from these backups in one of several ways. Firstly, you can go back as far as time machine has backed up, and restoer single files, seeing how folders appeared on certain dates etc. You can also use the Leopard boot CD to install the OS again, and use a time machine backup to restore the entire system to a particular date. This means that if your internal HDD dies, you should have a backup (automatically) within the last hour which you can restore from.

Wow! This is a fundamentally great product. I know there are other apps that do similar things, but none is so tightly intertwined with the OS. This means that if any of my external drives or my internal drive, decide to die, then I know I have a backup within the last hour from which I can restore. Blimey!

It means layout on an external drive (or potentially another internal drive if you use a Mac Pro), but to me, that’s small price to pay for peace of mind, especially with prices of storage tumbling like they are at the moment. Even if you currently backup manually, I’d still challenge (most) people to declare that they back up religeously, like they should. I’m guessing most people don’t. the problem is, its always when you havent made a recent backup that everything decides to go belly-up. I’ve been a bit worried about my LaCie firewire drive for a while now, as it;s 3 years old, and could give up the ghost at any time. Seeing as its the place I store all my photos, I’m kind of concerned that I’ve got some kind of backup!

I’m yet to see how it affects recording performance. That is the only hangup I have about this product. However, my guess is that it’ll only have a minimal impact, as the hourly backups are only to changed files, so the hit should be minimal (hopefully!).

We shall see!

Not amazingly interesting, but a bit of a landmark nonetheless!

Unfortunately, the N73 isnt compatible with Three’s new ‘Turbo’ (or 3.5G) connection, which gives mobile broadband speeds of up to 2.8Mb/s in enabled areas (mostly currently Major Cities and around, but apparently gradually spreading out – much like the original 3G signal). To be honest, at the moment, it really doesnt bother me, as the speed I’m getting is by far enough. Also, with only 1Gb a month to play with, it’s probably better that the speed isn’t too high, as I’d be tempted to download a lot more, and quickly use up my data allowance! I can report that Skype works well over this connection too, which is a bonus.

I’d heartily recommend it for PC users, though I’m not too sure about Mac users. I gave it a go on the iMac yesterday, and it connected ok, though the speed was low. this is more likely to be becasue i dont live ina 3G enabled area though, ratehr than any problem with the connection itself.

All-in-all, very good, and I’ll definitely be using it more when I’m away.

Got my hands on somebody’s Ipod touch for the first time today. Very nice! You’ve probably already read about the iPhone and the touch everywhere, so I wont go through the features again here. Suffice to say, it’s very nice in use, and I’ll be investing in one at some point (though not yet – the iMac cleared me out!).

Here I go again. Praising the abilities of this technological wonder I now own…

See that image above? Click on it for bigness. It’s an image of Windows XP running inside OS X, and acting as a TVersity transcoding media server to my Xbox 360 sitting downstairs. I set this up on the offchance that it would work, fully expecting it to fail. I suppose I should know better by now – there’s nothing this Mac has failed on yet! Basically, TVersity is a uPnP media server that transcodes content to the format required by the 360 on the fly. I’m yet to look for a suitable mac alternative, and until then, I’m sticking with this. After all, I can just fire it up and away it goes. The only caveat in the whole shebang is the fact i have to dedicate both CPU cores on the Mac to this, slowing the OS X side down a fair bit. Thing is, I dont really mind this, as I’m very unlikely to be watching something downstairs whilst still trying to use my Mac upstairs (unless I go about some twisted VNC shenanegans).

This thing continuously amazes me!

Stay tuned for my rundown (now its more or less finished) of how I got all my home studio stuff talking happily.

Anyways. I got it home finally, and set about unpacking. But before that, I took a nice, unsullied picture of the box. The last time it would look like that. There’s nothing like a new Mac, in its box, waiting to be unpacked, except perhaps an unpacked Mac, waiting to be played with …

Oooooooh. This is only my second Mac, but I’m feeling like a veteran of many years as I sit there admiring the prettyness of it all. I opened up the box, and took out the nice little box (with the usual ‘Designed by Apple in California’ blazened across it). Along with a black, apple branded, cloth for screen cleaning, I got my first look at my very own pretty new Aluminium iMac keyboard…

I’ve already covered how I was impressed with this keyboard when I saw it at the Apple store. Truth is, I actually forgot how bloody thin it is! It’s really nice to type on, and is the quietest keyboard I’ve ever used – like a quiet laptop keyboard. I suffer from RSI, so hopefully this will help me to keep it at bay by meaning I dont have to bend my wrists as much when I type. I hate wrist rests, and hope I never need to use one again!

I lifted it out, and set it down. Again, the machine itself was well packed, and the likelyhood of damage was minimal. Having unpacked it, I quickly took it through to my office/studio room, and set it up. The usual easy iMac setup applied, with just the keyboard, power cable and network cable to plug in, along with my wireless mouse dongle (I didnt bother using the bundled Mighty Mouse, as having had one previously, I’m now staying well away – Apple DO make design botch-ups sometimes, and that is definitely one of them).

First impressions, visually, are great. I love the design of this thing. I loved the design of my older iMac g5 (to be seen behind on the middle pic above), but this blows it out of the water with a big aluminium (not aluminum) torpedo. Unfortunately, what Apple never tell you is that not many people have a Mac and only plug it into power and keyboard. I have more USB devices than I care to mention, of which only three can be plugged directly into the back of the Mac at one time anyway.

After having finally got it on the desk, all plugged in, I got it powered up as quickly as possible. I got my first proper look at the screen – and what a screen it is! I dont know what people are whinging about with the new glossy screen – I love it! And the 20″ over the older 17″ gives a damn sight more real-estate to play with. The colours pop out at you, and its one of the clearest screens I’ve ever set eyes on – and to my relief – no dead pixels From here on in, the process was the same as every other iMac I’ve ever set up. Just one major difference – this thing is FAST! When I say fast, i mean it. It seemed to do everything asked of it way quicker than I ever could of imagined on my formerly cutting-edge G5. Having made the jump from PPC to Intel a while after many others, I really noticed the difference. This thing packs a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, and it shows.

The 1GB of RAM really makes it fly straight out of the box, but I’ve already ordered another gig stick (SO-DIMMS too! That was a suprise!). As anyoine who does home studio stuff will already know – it’s one of the most demanding things you can put your machine through, and all the extra memory really helps things along! After fiddling with the normal iLife apps for a bit (of which the ’08 incarnations are generally, but not all, an improvement – more on that later), I installed parallels desktop to try out Windows in a virtual machine.

Now, if you’ve read my previous entries, you’ll know that the main purpose for me buying this piece of kit is to be able to ditch my Big-Box PC in favour of it’s more sleek (and quiet!) lines. However, after a good search of the web, I didnt come up with any concrete proof that what I was going to do would actually work. Suffice to say, I hit my first major stumbling block with the home studio stuff, but that’s for another day. When I just ran Windows XP inside Parallels, it ran very well, though I will admit that installing Xp on a machine as nice as this felt ‘dirty’

Anyway – overall first impressions are bloody fantastic. It seems to be running like a dream. However, that’s only the beginning of the story – what is to follow is not for the faint hearted. The job I had getting stuff to work as I needed it was not quite so straight forward!

More to follow…

Going to play with it…!

more to come