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This journal discusses photography in all its guises with an emphasis on the art of making photographs.
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “The netbook Apple will not make”.
Posted in Hackintosh
Hi Thomas, my dad Peter pointed me at this post. I have a Dell Vostro A90 (same as the Mini 9) happily running OS X 10.5.7, and I thought I would suggest it as a much easier build than the Wind. I bought the cheapest A90 running Ubuntu, and then replaced the 1GB SODIMM with a 2GB from Crucial, and the 16GB Half-Mini-PCIe SSD with a 32GB Runcore unit from mydigitaldiscount.com. Total for all parts was well under $400. The Runcore has a USB port that allows you to connect it to a Mac and install the OS from a Leopard DVD very simply. This recipe can be followed in about an hour and involves no hardware changes – all the built-in parts work – wireless, ethernet, bluetooth, webcam, etc.
I agree with you about how Jobs’ and Apple’s insistence on form factors that present significant thermal challenges has rendered their hardware problematic. I would be careful about recommending non-Apple hardware with Mac OS X for mission-critical installations, or even businesses completely dependent on their computers. You’re one Software Update away from a potential no-boot at all times – it seems a bit risky to me.
The point I make to my clients about Apple is that Apple is not a computer company, they are a consumer electronics company that sells a computing-like experience. Apple hardware with its short-lived wow factor and design for fanboys and sales floors, not maintenance, Apple’s limited ability to integrate with networks and hardware not from Apple, and Apple’s reliance on proprietary “walled gardens” like iTunes and the App Store all point to a company fundamentally at odds with an open, unbounded computer environment. This is a more than just a design issue, it’s a design philosophy, one that I find in the end quite stunted.