Macbook MINI! (Hackintosh Stylee)

[SetterP]

Jason's thread on jailbreaking the iPhone made me decide to start a thread about my latest "project".

Recently I snagged a Lenovo S10 netbook when a great deal popped up on slickdeals.net. I have been traveling alot over the past month or two, and the size and form factor are perfect for my purposes.

Well after an all night hacking session with a good buddy of mine last Saturday (and a copious amount of beer to sooth our frazzled nerves), we managed to install a fully working copy of OSX 10.5.6 on this tiny wonder. :thumbsup:

I've always been somewhat of an apple hater, preferring the pain and misery of windows and/or linux partly because it was what I was comfortable with, and partly because I never wanted to shell out the money to subsidize Apple's marketing machine.

I must say that the past few days have really been an eye opening experience for me, I feel like a part of my computing life has been reborn entirely, OSX is brilliant! Perhaps the most gratifying part is that for $300 I have a ultra-portable, snappy performing "Macbook Mini" (as I call it). :neener:

So far the performance is impressive. No probs with listening to tunes in iTunes, cruising the web in Firefox, downloading torrents in Transmission, chatting in Adium, while editing photos in Aperture simultaneously! :assshake:

[dweekie]

Nice post! I was seriously considering this route as well. The only thing that held me back was the pending release of the Nvidia platform, but with it, you lose the hackintosh ability (but I'm sure apple will support it at some point). I'm still on the fence though...... :toilet:

[SetterP]

Yeah... would be nice to have support for the nVidia chipset.

Looks like Apple's recently foray into inhouse chip manufacturing might kill all hackintoshing some day. :crap:

[Jason]

Strange I haven't read much on the progress with the Psystar suit. Supposedly Psystar is working on a hackintosh notebook.

I'm pretty new to Mac (since Nov) and so far I like it. It is no where near the resource hog that Windows is which was always my main complaint.

Congrats on your minimac. I love it.

An app to check out is Airmouse. It lets you use your iphone as a trackpad. It does support 2 finger scrolling, but doesn't have the 3 and 4 finger gestures that the apple laptops have. Excellent program...highly recommended

[madpoet]

I hacked my MSI Wind U100 to run OSX... honestly it's the greatest Netbook of all time. Also added extra RAM, changed out the wireless card to an 11N, added internal Blutooth, swapped the hard drive for an SSD, and best of all did the touchscreen mod. Yes, it's an expensive little toy ;)

[dvenardos]

Depending on how you hacked it be careful about the software updates because they can hose your system.

[jvgillow]

The S10 is a nice little machine isn't it?

I've still got mine even though I bought a Macbook pro a few weeks ago. Hardly worth selling the Lenovo with the price they are going for :)

[blackzarg]

Pretty sweet! I thought about getting one of those (netbook) so I don't have to carry around my MBP, but spent my money on audio instead...

Everything still works so far?

[Mep]

I really wish Apple would stop selling hard ware and just be a software vendor. I would pick up a Mac but I just can't bring myself to spend $2-3k on a $1k machine. Could go the hackintosh roote but I am just not that bored to mess with it, unless it involved a lot of beer of course.

[graphicguy]

Very cool. I have to live in both the windows and OSX world. Much prefer OSX. No worries about viruses. No real overhead needed for anti-virus software. Really easy to use. Safari isn't exactly the "cat's meow". And Firefox does strange things on OSX. But, overall no complaints about OSX.

I know some don't like Apple hardware. But, I've had my MacBook Pro for 3 years. Built very well. And, I beat the hell out of it.

Psystar made a big splash. Apple responded. But, I haven't heard anything about them in about a year.

[Jason]

I really wish Apple would stop selling hard ware and just be a software vendor. I would pick up a Mac but I just can't bring myself to spend $2-3k on a $1k machine. Could go the hackintosh roote but I am just not that bored to mess with it, unless it involved a lot of beer of course.

lol...it IS Friday:grinning:

Very cool. I have to live in both the windows and OSX world. Much prefer OSX. No worries about viruses. No real overhead needed for anti-virus software. Really easy to use. Safari isn't exactly the "cat's meow". And Firefox does strange things on OSX. But, overall no complaints about OSX.

I know some don't like Apple hardware. But, I've had my MacBook Pro for 3 years. Built very well. And, I beat the hell out of it.

Psystar made a big splash. Apple responded. But, I haven't heard anything about them in about a year.

That lawsuit is still ongoing, I think. Psystar is planning on releasing a notebook hackintosh in the mean time.

I've read that that Windows 7 is pretty slick, and a few folks over at forum memebers over at macrumors are saying that Apple has cause for concern. They definitely won't be enjoying the extra business they're getting from Vista's epic failure. It starts up as fast or faster, uses less resources and is very very stable.

[graphicguy]

lol...it IS Friday:grinning:


That lawsuit is still ongoing, I think. Psystar is planning on releasing a notebook hackintosh in the mean time.

I've read that that Windows 7 is pretty slick, and a few folks over at forum memebers over at macrumors are saying that Apple has cause for concern. They definitely won't be enjoying the extra business they're getting from Vista's epic failure. It starts up as fast or faster, uses less resources and is very very stable.

Well......that means that the hardware needs to get better. I've got both an HP laptop and my MacBook Pro. Build and reliability on the Mac is far and away better than the HP.

Interesting note on the lawsuit. I would have thought this would have been a "David" (Psystar) vs "Goliath" (Apple) and would have been over pretty quickly.

[Jason]

Well......that means that the hardware needs to get better. I've got both an HP laptop and my MacBook Pro. Build and reliability on the Mac is far and away better than the HP.

Totally. I LOVE my base model MB. The aluminum 'unibody' is by far the best case design out there, imo. The multi-touch trackpad is my favorite part. I'm so ingrained in it's functions there's no way I can or want to go back to anything else. It took only a couple hours for it to become second nature. It's very distracting and frustrating when I have to help Dad with something on his laptop...

[dvenardos]

I really wish Apple would stop selling hard ware and just be a software vendor. I would pick up a Mac but I just can't bring myself to spend $2-3k on a $1k machine. Could go the hackintosh roote but I am just not that bored to mess with it, unless it involved a lot of beer of course.

I love Apple software and their hardware is reasonable priced now, but I am boycotting until they let me legally install on my own hardware or give me the mini tower that I want. I got tired of dealing with the chronic storage issues of iMacs and don't like external drives.

[graphicguy]

I love Apple software and their hardware is reasonable priced now, but I am boycotting until they let me legally install on my own hardware or give me the mini tower that I want. I got tired of dealing with the chronic storage issues of iMacs and don't like external drives.

I understand where you're coming from. But, I've got a Western Digital "My Book" for backup (and other things). It's 1TB. Runs in the background via "Time Machine".

I don't even know it's there....until I NEED something from it. I think it cost a shade over $100.....FOR A TB WORTH OF STORAGE. Pretty nifty.