I wanted to peek around the Iphone SDK, but you cant unless your on an apple mac.  So I decided to see if I could get osx leopard running on my dell xps m1530.

Lo and behold after many hours of googling, and reading I am now sitting on my bed typing this in osx Leopard 10.5.5.  It was no easy task getting it to the usable state its in today, and it still has issues.

What currently is NOT working:

-Internet(cable)
-shutdown/Restart/Sleep (this is caused by the nvidia drivers and means I have to manually push the off button once the computer has finished its shutdown sequence, not a big issue)
-sound in via internal mic

What currently is working:

-Graphics Card
-internal wifi(via Dell Wireless DW 1390 mini pci-e)
-Sound out(headphones and internal speakers)
-Speed Stepping(This is a cpu function that optimizes power use on the cpu)
-updates from apple
-fingerprint scanner
-integrated webcam
-Keyboard and Touchpad

Edit: Dual screens is working now too [happyness]

The lack of a working mic is the most annoying thing, backed up closely by the failing ethernet port.  Perhaps with time I’ll get these problems sorted out too.  Though it doesn’t look likely for the ethernet as someone has to actually make a driver for it.

I’ve never really used macs before, not since around… 1999 ish.  And they where pretty old computers even for that year.  Boasting 32megs of ram this was pre pretty apple days and I quickly concluded that I hated these computers.

Since then I’ve never really had a reason to revisit the mac.  Until now, and I have to say, I’m liking what im finding a lot.  My next computer might actually be a real mac! *SHOCK*

osX Leopard is fast, stable, secure, smooth, and a lot more customizable than I’d thought.  I’d had the oppinion that macs take control of your computer for you, a notion that caused me much unease.  However I’m happy to find that this is not the case, and in fact, windows is worse in this respect.

Hang on, just for the record, while I’ve always mainly used windows, I’ve never liked it.  I might have expressed a little bit of enthusiasm or excitement apon a new windows release, but this is due to my conclusion that windows was the best of the worst, and the optimistic hope that maybe MS where going to make it fast, and stable, and secure, and pleasant to use. Windows seems to move forward in some of these areas some times, and moves back in others.  All in all it seems to just be staying just as bad as its always been but progressively making the UI more revolting to look at.

I’ve often dabbled in linux, and liked what I’ve found, its got great things going for it, but its lack of software, and ease of use really lets it down.  I dont mind getting out of my depth in technology and code and general geek stuff, but sometimes I like to come up for air, and while after a few months in linux you start learning how to swim, the only way seems to get you deeper…

osX is built on unix, which is what linux is built on, and it was a damn good idea, because the unix platform is clearly the best for stability, security, and speed.  Its just better, flat out.  So mac have taken that, greatly enhanced its software support, and ease of use and delivered pretty much exactly what I wanted.  In the last place I would look for it.

It’s still early days though, I’m sure I’ll find annoyances.  But so far osX is totally winning!

Filed under: geek by kiamo