14. Troubleshooting
In ten easy steps, and for about $300, you can have a fully-functioning, lightweight, sleek little Mac in the form of an Asus EEE PC 100HE.
Remember how I suggested to make a friend on the forums? This is where that person would come in handy. If something goes wrong, be sure to ask them, as no standard Mac help site will be able to help you.
When I first undertook this project, I thought it would be about as difficult as jailbreaking my iPhone (very easy). In reality it can be easy, but it just takes more time and more precision in following particular steps. I learned the hard way, for example, about how you have to be careful exactly how and when you choose to upgrade the OS. I tried installing a 10.6.3 disc at first, which didn't work. And it took me many hours of late-night work to figure this out.
"The installation itself is rather nitpicky," Zayna Schaffer, the Bryn Mawr student, wrote to me in an email once I was done. "Small variations in approaches can render the whole installation faulty or completely useless, which is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the whole thing. But there is nothing like pressing the power button and seeing the Apple logo -- it makes the whole thing worth it."
She also told me that some people have reported the success of a 10.6.4 installation, but haven't shared their results in an easy-to-follow guide. However, other than that, any standard Mac application should run fine. I've run browers (Google Chrome, Firefox), Microsoft Office and other standard programs and have had no trouble at all.
But now that I've been through the process, I'm sure it would be easier the second time around.
And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
"The process is fairly straightforward if if you know your way around computers," Schaffer added, "Though I wouldn't have felt safe doing it the first time without my brother's background knowledge and a cell phone to reach him. After four installations, I've mastered the process with my own equipment. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who's up to the task of getting a little dirty with kexts and potential kernel panics."
Bottom line: My experience of creating and using my hackintosh netbook has been, overall, positive. Now, I have a cheap, light, long-lasting Mac that is noticeably lighter and easier to carry than my MacBook. I take it to work with me and having to carry two pounds less in my backpack is definitely appealing.
That said, it's still a little rough around the edges, and may not be suitable for a more basic user like my wife. First, the netbook's mouse is very sensitive -- even though I've turned it nearly all the way down – much more so than a MacBook. My mouse jumps really fast all over the screen, sometimes making it very difficult to use. I've definitely noticed that the sound is not nearly as good (read: loud) as on a regular Mac -- watching The Daily Show in a browser is basically too quiet to watch unless I'm using headphones. Also, when typing (documents, email), my cursor tends to jump randomly to other lines in the text.
For now, the netbook tends to fulfill the role that I imagine an iPad would – it's a living room computer, one that's easily shared by whoever wants to use it.
My next project? Trying to see if and how I can dual-boot my netbook to run Ubuntu Linux.
But why does it have to be 10.6.0? What's wrong with 10.6.3?
10.6.3 cannot be hacked directly, I think :-p
Typo on the first page it says software where it should hardware.
Good article to bad no 12" netbooks are fully supported
Typo on the first page it says software where it should hardware.
Good article to bad no 12" netbooks are fully supported
I tried for ages to get OSx onto my desktop PC and eventually found EmpireEFI which made the process a LOT easier.
http://prasys.info/tag/empire-efi/
Not sure whether it would work for a netbook but might be worth a look.
forget about linux.. you will never use that if you have mac os
Yeah right forget linux, why care about actual productivity when it's the ride there you care about, pay money for an inferior kernel and then more money for products by getting using OSX, then play in Apple's sandpit forever while they suck you dry
No mention as to wether or not sleep works.. a function lost on most netbook/notebooks.
As to why not 10.6.3, the actual version max is 10.6.1, as they deliberately screwed the atom processor as of 10.6.2. There are however modded kernels that can be used to circumnavigate this if you're very determined. Also a much speedier way to do this would be to pull the HD and connect it to the functioning mac (Hackintosh or not, as long as USB works) and remount the HD without the noowners option. you can then do everything before booting the netbook, eliminating a few steps. While I understand its fun to play with, I dont see the point of OS X on a netbook. The OS was never designed to run on something with such low horse power, and it gets quite ragged after running very few apps, not to mention the general inefficiency of the OS at dealing with flash and what not.. you'd get a much better "Experience" for doing the various tasks on Windows since it will make good use of what little hardware these devices have, plus all the hardware will function "Properly".
As to a desktop hackintosh, pretty much ANY intel board with an ALC88x sound chip, Realtek 8xxx NIC, and modern nvidia / ATI graphics card can be made to function perfectly.
My Current build is:
Gigabyte X58-UD3R, i7 @ 4.2ghz, 12GB ram, nvidia GTX 260.
Get a 100% functional mac out of that using stock kexts..Updatable straight from apple with little fuss (Gotta update or remove sleepenabler.kext before a OS version change is all)
Absolute easiest way to dual boot with a desktop is multiple hard drives and just use chameleons selection.To dual boot on this netbook you'll need to resize the partition then install whatever OS, THEN reload chameleon to get the boot loader back. In linux you can have it install the boot loader on the partition only, meaning it should be good to go with just the chameleon loader..
The only reason to do this sounds like the same reason people make case mods out of things that were never meant to house computer systems.
If you're looking for ease of use and don't want Windows then I'd say go with the Ubuntu Netbook version and call it a day. Otherwise if you're doing it just to show you can, nice job.
wait..it had xp on it and you weren't happy????
THanks for you post thekurrgan! So I take it that if you use a system with an AMD CPU and an ATI GPU, then you are screwed if you want to run OSX on it, or doesn't run very well or ...?
I think it would be better just to buy a macbook than going through these steps but if your a total geek. Go ahead and proceed. If you done this before you can probably make a few extra bucks providing your services.
I was actually thinking about trying OSX in a virtual machine. The best part of using a VM is that not much damage would happen should something go wrong...
Apple is probably going to sue Toms!
THanks for you post thekurrgan! So I take it that if you use a system with an AMD CPU and an ATI GPU, then you are screwed if you want to run OSX on it, or doesn't run very well or ...?
If the ATI GPU is of a certain generation you're screwed, AMD you'd need a modded kernel.. search voodoo kernel or hit up google for insanelymac -- They have great guides there. However in most modern AMD systems its the chipset thats the show stopper or at least severe bug maker.. Snow Leopard is design for the recent line of intel chipsets (Generally speaking, any they made on the LGA775 platform) and a specific line of Nvidia ones (9000 series) -- AMD now uses their own chipset, so this makes it challenging. As for the VM, I've had limited success myself, but have not really given it a good effort. VMWare workstation would probably be the best bet, as it supports OSX Server natively, but I'm not well versed on that product outside Vsphere / Fusion.
The Asus 1201n is a fully supported 12" Netbook, as well as its newer brother, the 1215n.
...or can just forget the hassle and use linux...that was hard.
Is this guide encouraging users to break Apple's licensing of it's Operating System? And why would anyone go to these lengths when you could just stick a USB key with Windows 7 on it into the netbook, have everything work first time and have little on going support issues? Nice experiment but for my girlfriends laptop I'd rather use a supported HW & OS combination, keeps the headaches to a minimum!
You can't use the 10.6.3 because it's kernel dropped support for intel atom's arch or something like that. I think it just didn't run on atom's anymore, because apple got fed up of people using it on something other than their hardware.
Look at the survey at mymacnetbook.com. A lot of users are using their iPads more and more and their hackintoshed netbooks less and less.
I have to agree.