Big news for WWDC
Well, Hackintosh news, that is…lots of good things coming tomorrow here on the blog - stay tuned! 
I’m all a-Twitter
Tweet-tweet! Yup, I’m on Twitter. I never, ever thought I’d do it, but I did! You can follow me here: (and yes, I will return the favor 
)
http://twitter.com/weaksauce12
Oh man, I think I’m in love
I spotted this beast on Engadget today:
The specs are incredible:
- NZXT Rogue case featuring four 3.5″ bays, dual 5.25″ bays, and a 1000w PSU, three 120mm fans (and room for 2 more fans!)
- Asus Rampage II GENE MicroATX motherboard
- Core i7 Processor (options include the 920, 940, and 965 Extreme)
- Up to 24GB RAM
- Up to 2 dual-slot Video Cards
- Starts at $999
This would make a BEAST of a Hackintosh! The good news is, they’re using off-the-shelf parts, so you can roll your own!
- Motherboard ($250)
- Black Case with Red LEDs ($150)
- Black Case with Blue LEDs ($100)
- Silver Case with Blue LEDs ($90)
Go ahead and do some window shopping here:
Free Software: DropBurn
Here’s a quick little utility for quickly burning ISO & DMG files: DropBurn! Just add it to your Dock, insert a blank CD or DVD disc, and drop the ISO or DMG file on the icon to burn. A text box appears to show progress and will stay up after burning until you click Quit. As they say, laziness is the mother of invention…;)
Image courtesy of Interfacelift (Seeing Red set by Haysoj). Code for geeks: (set to “Is droppable” with ISO & DMG image types)
echo Burning “$1″ to disc now…
hdiutil burn “$1″ -noverifyburn
Free Software: P Diddle
I know, I know, I’m stretching for names now 
This is a simple little app that launches the Boot Plist as well as the SystemConfiguration folder for quick access. When I’m doing dev work on the Hackintosh side of things, I like to be able to pop open my Boot Plist file quickly to make changes. Remember, you can’t save in the directory, so you’ll need to save the file to the Desktop or something, then copy it into the SystemConfiguration folder to authenticate. Just a handy little app, hope you enjoy it!
Icon courtesy of InterfaceLift (Creatures icon set by FastIcon.com). Code for geeks:
open /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
open -a “TextEdit” /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
Free Software: DNS Nuke
I read a nice article about clearing your DNS cache if you’re having web-related issues, so I decided to whip it into a little quick-run app! You may also want to reset your router to flush its DNS cache as well.
Icon courtesy of troyboydesign. Code for geeks:
dscacheutil -flushcache
Free Software: KextSpy
Ever wonder what kexts are running on your system? Wonder no more! Introducing KextSpy, a simple app that display the status of all dynamically-loaded kernel extensions in TextEdit, where you can then view it or save it. It loads not only the name of the kext, but also the version number as well as various other tidbits (index, refs, address, size, and wired). This is especially useful if you’re doing a lot of dev work and need to quickly peek at the loaded kexts
Icon courtesy of InterfaceLift (Creatures set from FastIcon.com). Here’s the code for the geek crowd: (note the neat | -tf trick for opening directly in TextEdit!)
kextstat | open -tf
Whip your Fonts into Shape
E-book freebie from Extensis - Font Management in Mac OS X: Best Practices Guide (5th edition). Covers Leopard, CS4, and a bit of Office.
Download here (PDF)
Some more useful font-related stuff by The Apple Blog’s Font School series:
- Fonts 101: A Font Primer
- Fonts 201: Font Management Apps for the Mac
- Fonts 301: Managing Font and Font Problems
- Fonts 401: Additional Font Resources
I’m Too Sexy for my iMac
Shuttle has gotten official with the X50, due out at the end of March ‘09 (this month, people!).
Features:
- Dual-core 1.6ghz Atom 330 CPU
- 1GB RAM
- 15.6″ 1366×768 Touchscreen LCD
- Intel GMA950 GPU with VGA output
- 160GB Hard Drive
- 1.3mp Webcam with Mic and built-in Speakers
- 5 USB 2.0 ports
- 802.11n
- $499
What we don’t know:
- Bluetooth?
- Is the 802.11n card compatible with OS X?
- How easy is it to crack the case and install more RAM and a better hard drive? (you know it’s getting 2 gigs + 7200rpm!)
- Is the webcam compatible with OS X? How ’bout the mic?
- Onboard speakers compatible with OS X?
- Are there Touchscreen drivers for OS X for this model?
Worst comes to worst, we’ll have to get a USB sound card, USB webcam, USB Bluetooth adapter, and get a Dell Wifi Mini-PCIe card. No big deal. The clincher will be whether or not the Touchscreen works. If not, it’s still a mighty nice computer for $499!
Killer RAID Card 1/2 Off
Newegg has the HightPoint RocketRAID 4320 8x PCI-e SATA/SAS RAID card for only $330 shipped (saw this on BareFeats.com). This is similar to the official $700 Mac Pro RAID card, but has the advantage of being both cheaper AND bootable (via cloning). BareFeats did a RAID 0 test as well as a RAID 5/6 test on it, with excellent results. More details at the 4320’s product page and the latest driver on their Mac site. This card supports up to 8 SATA/SAS ports and has an onboard battery backup system to preserve array integrity. The Web GUI manual is available online (PDF).
