Finally after trying to get it running again to start playing around with a new SDK for an upcoming mobile platform, I gave up.

So…

today, I picked up one of the new aluminum Macbooks.  I have had a couple of Mac systems in the past, but they never seemed to have the performance to keep up with everything I was doing, including gaming.  I have not tried gaming yet, but I do have to say the new Macbooks are a joy to use.  The multi-touch trackpad is simply awesome and I think we will see PC makers try to rip it off soon.  It is so nice to be able to change applications and more without taking your hand off of the trackpad.  This is the first laptop that I will probably use without an external mouse unless I am gaming.

For development, I think it is safer to go with the original instead of the fake.  I can now load up VMWare Fusion or just dual-boot into Windows using Bootcamp if I need any of my Windows tools.  It comes at a higher price, but it is nice to be able to have a dependable OSX system that can still run Windows and Linux programs like a champ.

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1: Taking a perfectly good PC and attempting to install Mac OSX 10.5.6 using a questionably obtained ISO.

2: Placing your face in your palm while repeatedly installing an operating system not natively meant for your computer hard ware.

3. Winning the battle but losing the war.

Related Words for: Hackintoshing

frustration, annoyance, masochism, repetition

Above is the word I had to invent to keep my sanity while trying to get OSX running on my XPS M1730.  After my mild frustration in finding out that developing for the iPhone requires OSX, I found some information on getting things running without much hassle on the x86 (PC).  Hackint0sh.org has a lot of fantastic information, and a community of people dedicated on running Mac software without owning a Mac.  Realistically after looking at some of the hardware requirements, I would have been better off buying a netbook for a development PC.  The one recommended for the XPS M1530 (same hardware as the M1730 but with a 15’’ screen) is the iAtkos distribution.  There are a few other distros floating around out there, but this was my best chance at getting everything working.

My first roadblock was getting rid of my Raid0 array – how I hated to do it, but it’s all for the greater good right?  I killed the raid, and tried to use the DVD I burned to boot – everything appeared to come up fine at first, but the screen dimmed a darker shade of gray and it told me I had to reboot.  Around the 2nd time of rebooting I was reminded of what someone much smarter than me once said; Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (Albert Einstein). While true, at this stage of the process I had not yet lost my sanity.

I had a hunch that I needed some shiny new partitions started for the installer to load, so I fired up a gparted boot disk and set some up.  Success! The installer loaded with all the shiny menus one would expect from apple.  Excitement set in that this might just be crazy enough to work.  It’s asking me where I want to load the OS . . . but not giving me any options @#$@!?  After poking around for a few minutes I found the Disk Utilities from the dropdown menu at the top, and was able to create a partition for OSX, and upon closing the utility I now had a new home for the operating system.

Installation Successful . . . This is a term that we’re going to start using loosely from now on.  While the DVD declared “Mission Accomplished” we were far from such.  After attempting to load from the hard disk for about the 5th time, I went back to the google and did some more research.  An obscure forum post on insanelymac.com suggested using the advanced boot flags of –v –x –f.  It was by doing this I discovered that the ACPI driver had failed to load.  To the Bios Batman!  Switching from ACPI to ATA, the OS decided it would load – the only problem now is getting past the keyboard identification wizard.

After a few hours of installing / reinstalling  . . .  waiting, crying and cheering I had finally loaded into the OS.  With the aid of a USB Keyboard and Mouse attached to my behemoth laptop, I was beginning to wonder why I hadn’t just done this on my desktop computer.  One could only imagine my disappointment at realizing my Intel wireless NIC had no supported drivers either natively or hacked together.  I’ll have to find time to go through this process at least one more time, on hardware that I know is supported.

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