March 9, 2010

Holy Crap. This is huge!

Filed under: Blog — Tags: , , , , , — Jimmay @ 12:33 am

Oh my god. I think the single most important event in Mac’s recent history has just unfolded. In case you missed it, Valve has announced that Steam will officially be released for OS X in April. This is massive. This is ginormous. This is other-worldly huge.

Why? From the best of my knowledge, the only things that Windows has in favor of it over OS X is the fact that people mainly have used older versions of its software on Windows, and are used to the mechanics of it, and rely on the ability to use those same programs on newer versions of Windows. The second thing that Windows has over Mac is the games.

Windows has had Direct X on its side for a long time, but OpenGL is a VERY capable competitor to Direct3D, and has the advantage of being Operating System-neutral. In fact, most games have a very capable OpenGL mode. What this move for Steam does, though, is give all the Windows gamers a capable alternative to Windows with the same experience on Mac. Essentially, the slew of games that could only be run on Windows can now be run on OS X with little to no hassle. This is a MAJOR barrier that will be hurdled. Imagine all those gamers having to re-buy their games in order to play on the Mac as well as the PC. The way it was announced, no additional costs will be required for consumers to install their games on the Mac.

I can just envision it now:

Hi, I’m a Mac

And I’m a PC. Hey, Mac, whatcha doing over there?

Oh, hi PC. Actually I’m just playing the new Portal 2 game. It’s really great. The cake is a lie, I guess. I haven’t quite understood it yet, but this game rocks! Have you played it?

Yes, Mac, I just got it today. I was about to tell you the same thing. It’s really great, isn’t it? I actually have thousands of games I can play at a moment’s notice, most of which have received numerous Game of the Year awards. I bet you wish you could do that!

Actually, PC, I can. Most of the highest rated games you can play are here with me as well. It’s great. And if you already bought the game, you don’t need to pay another cent. It’s really quite great. In fact, I can even play this game with you, right now. Want to give it a shot?

No, Mac… I’m just going to go over another spreadsheet…

And, scene. Wow. I am still geeking out over this.

Of course not everyone will be a convert to OS X and Mac, it is still a pain to have to buy a special Apple package, but with the way things are going nowadays, Apple has just increased their potential customer base by millions. Macs could always run Windows side-by-side since Intel chips came along, but that required an additional purchase of Windows on top of the Mac.

With Office available on OS X, now Steam, and all the big programs like Adobe Creative Suite and iLife, and Final Edit Pro (not to mention Xcode), there is no better reason to make your next computer purchase a Mac. Games? Check. Productivity? Check. Video/Picture Editing? Check.

Add this on top of the most solid platform available, next to no viruses, and one of the simplest interfaces to ever come into existence, you would be insane not to buy a Mac.

So do it!!

January 27, 2010

iPad: That’s it?!?!

Filed under: Blog — Tags: , — Jimmay @ 6:46 pm

So, iPad! YAY! I haven’t watched the press conference Apple threw today, so I have only been able to read what others have writen about the new iPad introduced to the world today. Here are a few of my thoughts on this “revolutionary” device:

Simply put: it’s a lot of overblown hype. I guess more specifically I mean that the hype it is getting too much hype. I’m not saying everyone who loves all the features and demos shown today are wrong, but the overall “buzz” for this is overblown. Essentially, in my mind, this is what the Kindle should be, and once again Apple has shown the way to the world about how exactly to lead the world in every electronics category you enter.

Operating Systems? Leads. Hardware? Leads (but I understand both of these go hand-in-hand). Smartphones? Leads. Portable music devices? Leads. And now? They will lead in the “medium sized application delivery system” category, that they just created. The only they don’t lead in is servers, and that’s just an opinion, I don’t have any numbers to back that up.

The Kindle now belongs to this category, as does Barnes and Noble’s new device. These devices are now painfully behind what Apple has introduced here today: a gorgeous color, multi-touch screen, with full iPhone/iPod touch application support, and the same, rock-solid portable OS that is found in the iPhone and iPod touch.

This all combines to be one awesome package, and is proof, yet again, that Apple is on top of their game.

Now that I’ve said that, here’s the problems I find with this:

This is essentially what the iPod touch SHOULD have been from the very beginning. All the other iPods are better portable music player values then the iPod touch. Sure, a case could be made that the iPod touch can and will kill the Nintendo DS, and the Sony PSP, but the issue with that for me is that now there will be little to no market for an iPod touch.

No one is going to want to make games for the iPod touch that is designed for the small screen, when the same effort could be made to expand the experience on a larger screen. Most games require an internet connection, anyway since they are anticipating being run on an iPhone anyway.

Now, though, the devlopers of apps have 2 clear targets: iPhones (and by association the iPads with 3G) and iPads. Games will be designed to run at the max resolution, and some productivity apps will be designed to run exclusively on iPads.

But logistics aside, who is going to use these? Travellers, for one, as they can now watch movies, listen to music and play games from their seat either on the train, or plane, or taxi cab. This experience will be AMAZING too. A gorgeous screen to watch movies and music videos and TV shows.

But how many people regularly fly anymore? Take the train? Not many. As I blogged about earlier, when I lived in the Bay Area, I rode the train often, and loved spending my time playing the PSP. But that’s a PSP, not this large, bright $500 “STEAL ME!” sign. Not that I expect the worst in people, but all it takes is one bad Apple (pardon the pun) to ruin the bunch, and this device seems a little too flamboyant to take out in public.

So that leaves long-distance travel. And again, who does that regularly? At MOST I fly a couple times a year. I don’t go on Amtrak, and I don’t take Greyhound. So for me (and millions of people like me) this iPad is a catchy and kind of cool device, that will never satisfy my needs at $500.

Perhaps if this were the price of a PS3, then I maybe could justify the cost of purchasing it, but as it currently stands, I would rather spend a couple hundred more dollars, and get a full-fledged laptop, and I know I’m not in the minority on this.

Yes, it has some cool features, and yes it looks sharp, great, and Apple continues to demonstrate itself to be a trand-setter, but I don’t see how this is “revolutionary” at all. It’s just a bigger iPod touch, and as such has a few new bells and whistles to go with it. That’s it.

There will be the obvious migration to your local Apple store to pick one up, and your obvious fanboys will pick one up, but I don’t see how this will benefit the average consumer in any meaningful way.

We’ll see!

April 11, 2009

Hackintosh

Filed under: Blog — Tags: , , , , , — Jimmay @ 10:55 pm

mac osx leopard

See below for edits. Last edit: 4/15/2009

(Boot 132 Disk)

+

(Apple OS X Leopard [10.5.0] Retail Disk)

+

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2qjjst – (10.5.2 Combo Update)

+

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=91755 – (Graphics)

+

http://rapidshare.com/files/153774218/Archive.zip – (Sound, install with Kext Helper)

=

woot!!
Ok, so I know you are going to want to know what I did exactly, and while I am not 100% certain what worked and/or why, here is what you need to know.

First things first, here are my specs:

Intel QX6850 Quad-Core Extreme 3.00 GHz processor
nVidia GeForce 8800GT
Gigabyte P43-ES3G motherboard
- ALC888 Audio Codec
- LAN is, um idk
- go Google my motherboard for specs

Ok, now to start, I am using Robin’s Boot-132 boot disk, which allows me to load into the retail OS X (10.5.0) disk. This is important because for obvious reasons the retail disk won’t load all on its own, it’s meant for Mac hardware. I had to set my hard drives to be in ACHI mode in order for the OS X disk to see them. If I didn’t do this the disk simply wouldn’t see the hard drives. Hopefully I can change this, because to get back into Windows I need this setting off. I’m sure you can see why this is annoying!

So now that I have the retail disk loaded, I install OS X like normal, as if it were a Mac. Just partition a hard drive with the partition utility found on the disk, and partition it as Journaled. There are lots of guides about how to do this. Just know that my motherboard and processor combination had no issues installing OS X. I didn’t have any hangs or anything. The whole process was in very low resolution but whatever, can’t expect miracles.

So after I have OS X installed on the hard drive, I still have the issue of getting to it. I just used the Boot 132 cd again, only this time I didn’t use (9f) as my device to boot to, I used in my case I think 80 for the default hard drive. The boot loader can see the name of the drive so if the name matches what you named the drive when you partitioned it then you know you selected the right hard drive number here.

I have 3 internal hard drives that total 4 partitions, and an external hard drive. In my various attempts to do this it has ranged from 80 to 84 for the number that corresponded with the right hard drive.

But now that the drive is selected, just boot into it. If everything is ok you should still be good. Now for me a lot worked out of the box. Although the resolution was low, it still displayed a default resolution, so that was good enough. Audio didn’t work, but lan did, so I could go on the internet instantly to download the files I needed.

The first thing I did was download the update to get from OS 10.5.0 to 10.5.2. This is a combo update, and you can Google it, or you can click the link I have up top.

This did basically nothing from my perspective. Even though this update is supposed to have drivers for my 8800GT, it didn’t work. Still low res. Also audio still doesn’t work. But at this point it is 10.5.2 and that’s good. More up-to-date so that’s a win.

At this point I wanted to get my resolution working so I followed the instructions to the letter found on the link I posted up top. I had to hand-write the instructions on paper to know what to type when I logged in as single user mode.

At this point after I restart, booting from the CD didn’t work for me anymore, so I tried booting straight from the hard drive, and somewhere along the lines it put in a boot-loader. I tried booting with the -f flag (so I could implement the changes I just made), and viola! Graphics work!

(In case you were wondering how the CD failed me, if I tried to boot off the CD at this point, I would get the gray Apple logo just great, but when it was time to log in my monitor turned off. It sounded like my computer was churning, so maybe something was on that CD that conflicted with the drivers I just installed, but whatever it was, the CD was out)

Now I have internet, and graphics, next I need sound. This was horribly pesky to fix.

Basically, I tried everything. If you Google ALC888 you can see like 8 different solutions. What I did in the end is use the kext’s located at the link listed up top and installed them with Kext Helper. It worked!

To be fair I tried so many things first, so I don’t know specifically what put it over the top. I tried every other way I could find to get the audio working that didn’t involve me going into terminal (the only solutions I tried were packages or txt files I used with another program).

And now, I am at the point where I can type my results and display them here for you.

Whoo!

I know I haven’t gone into so much detail as I could have, but I am honestly tired of thinking about what works and what doesn’t. I am really only able to tell you what I did, I can’t tell you why certain things work and others don’t. At least you now know my motherboard and other important things about my system.

I couldn’t find any other posts anywhere regarding my motherboard, so I am posting this: GA-P43-ES3G works!!

FINALLY. WIN. :)

EDIT (4/15/2009)

Ok, so now I have gotten my computer all the way up to 10.5.6, so yeah, win.

Here’s what I did:

I went to apple.com and downloaded each update from 10.5.3 to 10.5.6. I did NOT download the combo updates, just the updates that took me from the previous version to the next version. I think combo updates (since they are for bringing something as low as 10.5.0 to whatever version I downloaded) I both didn’t need that, or want it. Plus it saved bandwidth and download size.

After I had gotten it to 10.5.2, I used this guide to update my computer to 10.5.3.

After using that guide, I got to 10.5.3 with relative ease. After the requisite restart I searched and found out I didn’t need to do anything to update to 10.5.4 or 10.5.5. I did it in steps still though, and once I updated to 10.5.4 and restarted with no problems, I did the same with 10.5.5.

At this point I had gotten through almost all of them with very little effort all things considered (which is great). After looking some more I found out 10.5.6 should be the same thing. After I installed it and restarted, I had an issue. (Gasp!)

After I restarted I thought it had failed (I was restarting in verbose mode just to see what was going on with each restart), and I noticed it had the same “MACH_REBOOT” message that I was presented with following the 10.5.3 update. This felt reassuring to me, so I simply hard rebooted in verbose mode, and viola! OS X Leopard all up-to-date.

So that one guide listed was basically all I needed. And now you know. I should post my specs on the OSx86 wiki page now…
End EDIT (4/15/2009)


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