Why I’m buying an iPad
No webcam! No Flash! Boo! Hiss! Yeah, there are a lot of glaring deficiencies in the iPad, but HOLY COW IT’S A REAL LIVE TABLET! Not some wanna-be laptop with a touchscreen or an OS-crippled mini pad - a real, honest-to-goodness, usable tablet. 10 hours of battery life. Thin. Light. Gorgeous screen. So why am I buying one?
Well, the main reason is “PDF’s”. Yup, PDF files. I read a lot of PDF files - manuals, articles, all kinds of stuff! For some background, I’ve been looking for a good, portable PDF reader for years. I tried computers, but they kind of bothered my eyes after a bit - too much light! Too big! Not portable! Then I tried laptops - too cumbersome! Not comfortable! Ah, then Amazon released the Kindle! I ordered one immediately, only to discover that their implementation of PDF reading was junk. Same with the Nook. I want zooming, searching, color, touch-navigation, portability! With the release of the iPad, I get ALL of those things!
I was really, really, really excited about the concept of an Apple Tablet. For years, ideas have percolated my brain, filling me with dreams of a wonderful device capable of enhancing my happiness levels with the flick of a switch. The iPad keynote proved to be a disappointment, however. Or rather, as I’ve mentioned, underwhelming. Actually, I don’t really know what I was expecting. Even if it had all the features I wanted, would I still be impressed? I’d probably have felt the same way, namely: meh, so what?
The truth is that it’s a device without a real home. It doesn’t fit in my pocket and it doesn’t measure up as a laptop or desktop replacement. It doesn’t have a compelling, “killer-app” feature (yet). In fact, I think they should have named it the “iPad Reader” - at least positioned it as an E-book reader “plus apps”, kind of like the iPhone is a phone “plus apps”. Instead, it’s just a giant iPhone with a funny name. Since the real target market(s) are still unknown due to lack of hands-on time and app development, I thought about how the iPad could be used in the real world as-is. I currently see two strong potential markets for the iPad:
- Students
- Business
Students are going to be a huge, huge, huge market for this thing. Cheaper textbooks plus only one device to carry, plus notes, video lectures, class schedules, you name it! Not to mention the Internet, Email, Twitter, Facebook, and all that other we normally use the web for. I can see schools adopting this like crazy. And if Apple ever decides to add a pen, schools could even ditch paper for classes like math, which require writing odd symbols and diagrams. Easier organization and huge paper savings await the school system!
Business is another GIANT market that no one has talked about! Businesses eat paper for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and not only that, they’re all hugely disorganized! I’ve worked for a variety of companies and 100% of them would benefit from the iPad in BIG ways, especially on the financial end of things. Minimal paper use and increased organization, just like the compelling features for schools, that businesses could enjoy. If you’ve ever worked in manufacturing, you know how hard it is to keep track of paperwork - the iPad is just the ticket to get rid of those problems and save time, money, and operating costs. So, so many possibilities here.
Anyway, back to my point: aside from PDF files, I also have two other uses for this - video training and programming. I watch a lot of video training on Lynda.com; in addition to the traditional Flash format, they also offer Quicktime versions of their online tutorials, which means I can play it on the iPad no problemo. Coupled with a 10″ screen, a headphone jack, and Wifi or 3G, I’m in business for mobile training! Now I can kill time anywhere by learning something new!
Programming is the third reason I’m buying it. I have 4 or 5 hot programming projects that have been waiting for a device of exactly this nature to arrive. Things that just wouldn’t work as well on the smaller iPhone and iPod Touch screens. So I’m pretty excited for that. But really, PDF’s are the main reason for me buying the iPad - it’s only a few bucks more than a large-format Kindle reader and loads better in terms of functionality. The price is extremely reasonable - $499 for a device with a 10″ IPS screen and a 10-hour battery life is nothing short of amazing, imo.
So that’s why I’m buying an iPad. It’s not perfect; in fact it’s missing a whole boatload of stuff, but boy oh boy has it met my wishlist for reading PDF files. Woot! 
Would you like a little cheese with your whine?
I have a few other gripes and things to note, which perhaps aren’t quite as important as the six key missing features detailed in my previous post:
1. Screen: In my opinion, the should have gone with a Pixel Qi screen. If you’re not familiar with it, check out the article with video here on Gizmodo. It’ll blow your mind! It’s basically a full-color LCD screen with a reflective e-ink display built-in, too. The whole thing is transflective. I can only imagine how crappy reading on the iPad outside will be (don’t have those problems with my paper books!). OLED was another cool and rumored option; it has amazing indoor qualities but terrible outdoor qualities, and there’s just no way Apple could get the iPad to $499 with the current prices of OLED screens, even if they bought in bulk.
E-ink would have been a neat option, but color E-ink just isn’t there, and neither is the lag issue when flipping pages. I had a Kindle in the past and I absolutely loved E-ink - so easy on the eyes, nice to look at, great battery life - but it wouldn’t have worked for this product. Again, that’s why I think the Pixel Qi screen would have been fabulous - you get both an LCD screen and a color E-ink screen. Anyway…I’m sure the Apple display will look fabulous, especially with the IPS screen. IPS screens are top-notch, some of the best (and most expensive) you can buy. I am a little worried about reading for a long time on the screen, but then I realized I sometimes spend like 14 hours a day staring at my computer screen and it doesn’t really bother me, so it should be okay.
One thing I DO like about the iPad’s screen is that it has a backlight. While I really enjoyed my Kindle, for the brief time I had it (had the first-gen, but it had a bad ergonomic design so I ditched it), it had no backlight. So we have to pay hundreds of dollars for a replacement book, and I can’t even read it in the dark? What? If you’re going to replace something, then why not add better features, like an integrated backlight, or at the very least a small LED light on the inner frame? Kinda lame. So, the iPad wins in that category - I can read in the dark until I fall asleep, yay!
2. Giant Bezel: People who complain about this either haven’t owned a Macbook Pro or haven’t owned a Kindle. Thin bezels are stupid. Sure they look gorgeous…in the pictures. Then you open the screen and see your fingerprints all over the display, instead of just on the bezel. Basically, I think the giant bezel is genius and I commend Apple for it. I’ll probably be the only one to say that. But thanks, Apple, for doing the Right Thing and making it human-usuable.
3. The Name: iPad? Every single woman I’ve talked to has immediately said, “like the feminine products?” Every. Single. One. Apple really dropped the ball on this one - plus, they didn’t even get iPad.com! HP came out with the “Slate” tablet a couple weeks ago at CES, so I can understand them not wanting to use “iSlate”, but how iTablet? iTab? Apple Canvas? iGlide? I feel childish even saying the word “iPad” - it sounds like a kid-proof plastic toy. Plus, it sounds too much like “iPod”. I was trying to explain the concept of the iPad to a non-techie friend of mine and they kept saying, “wait, do you mean iPod?”. Poor name choice all around, Apple.
4. Keyboard: I really, really think they should have done something novel with the keyboard. It’s neat that it’s a nearly life-sized straight keyboard, but for some reason I don’t think it’s going to be very fun to type on (i.e. no tactile feedback). A thumb keyboard like the one illustrated below would have been a MUCH cooler way to do it - that way we could type while holding it, instead of having to put it down! Also, why didn’t they make the Apple keyboard on the iPad dock wireless? I sure hope the Bluetooth chip in the iPad supports the Apple wireless keyboard!
5. Pen Input: I almost put this in the top 6 “must-have” missing features list above, but I didn’t. But it’s close! Apple should have teamed up with Wacom and done both a drawing pad and touchpad. My guess is that one of the big problems right now is resolution - Wacom has a line of tablet LCD monitors out called the Cintiqs (very expensive!). The latest Cintiq handles 1,024 pressure levels, which is actually pretty dang good (it was 512 for a long time), but I suspect that when Apple wants to add writing capabilities, it will need to be much higher and on-part with actually taking notes like on paper. This would be SUCH a cool feature to have - I doodle all the time when I take notes. I’m an extremely visual person when it comes to that - I draw mindmaps and diagrams and pointer arrows and all kinds of stuff that I just can’t do quickly with Word or Pages.
Plus, can you imagine drawing on the iPad? It’d be SO COOL!! I’ve had Wacom drawing tablets for years and years and I’m totally addicted to them. The iPad would pretty be the ultimate sketchpad when combined with Corel Painter (which emulates all kinds of natural media from oil paint to airbrushes). I’d never, ever, ever put it down, lol. Plus you could sign e-documents, take note in your e-books, highlight stuff real easily, all kinds of neat things. Who knows, maybe Apple will throw us a bone and surprise us with a pressure-sensitive pen when the iPad ships. One can dream…
6. Crappy Homepage Design: Is it just me, or do those icons look a bit small? That homepage is in serious need of some feng shui! The icons should be larger, there should be folders, and there should be Stacks. Or something like Stacks where you can just tap on a folder and it does a blow-out overlay of all of the icons and files inside. There’s gotta be a better way to navigate your apps than having to scroll through pages and pages of them, I mean, come on!
7. Camcorder: The iPhone 3GS has a combo camera/camcorder and it’s pretty dang neat! I know this is a weird request; trying to film or shoot with a giant iPad would be kind of awkward, but also pretty convenient and cool. Plus, it could double as a rear-facing webcam, which would be uber cool if you hooked up the iPad to a projector or TV - just pop it on the Dock on your desk and video chat! Then pick it up, flip it around to the front, and use that camera instead! I’m just sayin’, there’s a need here…
8. Not Widescreen: Well this threw me off a bit. 4:3 1024 x 768? Hrmph. Not 16:9, and also not HD. The non-HD part I can understand, since Apple wanted App Store compatibility (I’m sure most apps would look even more terrible blown up to even 720p at 1280 x 800, versus 1024 x 768). I suppose the 4:3 aspect ratio comes from ergonomics - I’d imagine it’s a bit easier to hold if it’s 4:3. Maybe. I dunno. Personally I’d just like the screen real estate more if it was widescreen - then I’d get a nice, tall picture of a book, or two real-sized side-by-side pages on the horizontal. Although, the Kindle is 4:3 800 x 600, and that seems to work pretty well for books, so whatever. Movies will kinda suffer tho…black bars ftl.
So those are pretty much my thoughts on the negative aspects of the iPad, along with those other six items I posted previously. These ones are more “features that would be nice to have”, instead of “what were you thinking leaving them out??” kind of features, but I still felt they should be noted. We can never have everything, but I think the iPad is a pretty good step in the right direction, and we’re going to see a lot of change in the hardware world over the next few years thanks to what Apple has done.
Ground Control to Major Jobs
Finally, the unicorn has arrived: the mythical and long-prophsied iTablet. Err, iPad. Anyway, the Apple Tablet has finally made it’s debut into the world! Yay! Sort of…
I’ve wanted a tablet for as long as I can remember. A portable, Star Trek-style computer to let you find information and be entertained. Every sci-fi movie from Avatar to Minority Report had one, and it’s finally here: but the reaction is mixed. Understandly so! Initially I was VERY excited about the iPad; when the rumors started flying around a few years ago, wild ideas started to fill my head of the wonderous possibilities that the iTablet could bring.
When it was announced, however…I was somewhat disappointed. Maybe disappointed isn’t the right word; maybe it’s “underwhelmed”. A giant iPhone minus the camera and cell phone antenna? Eh? But as I’ve studied it and thought about it more, I’ve become excited about it once again (more on that in a future post). Today I’d like to highlight some of the glaring improbabilities of the iPad: things that make you go “huh? they left THAT out?” You know, the typical application of the Apple 99% Rule. I’ll examine the issues I feel are most heinous and try to justify them from a business point of view. Let’s begin:
1. SD Card Slot: SD is ubiquitous to the point that Apple, a company that lives in fear of electronics with a variable nature, such as memory cards, adopted them and put them in their laptops. A pretty huge step for a company that’s NEVER integrated any sort of memory card slot at all previously. Does the iPad offer SD? Yes…with an external adapter. But why the heck would I want to carry that around? Why would I blemish my slim, trim iPad and kickstand case with a chunky card reader? WHY, Apple?
- Justification: SD cards = memory cards = more onboard memory = why the heck would you buy anything but the base model and then just toss in a 32-gig SD card to get more capacity on the cheap? Apple is protecting their product line by not integrating the card slot into the device. I suppose you could also argue that the SD card slot would allow dust to get in, but it does have a Dock connector, so that’s not really too valid.
2. USB port: Now this one I just don’t get. They offer a USB adapter…but it’s only for connecting cameras. So I can buy a USB adapter, I just can’t use it? Whaaa? Really though, the iPad needs a USB connection. It’s be super-cool to be able to plug in a memory stick and transfer files quickly or to dump pictures onto. But noooooo. Boo. Hiss.
- Justification: Apple allows third-party vendors to build externally-connected accessories…but only via the Dock connection. Plus, we wouldn’t want to be sneaking in any extra memory on the side, right? :p
3. HDMI port: If I didn’t get the lack of a real USB connection, then I just can’t fathom not adding an HDMI port. So let me get this straight: you have an HD-capable player, you have Keynote HD, it’s built for doing mobile presentations, it’s 2010, and you can only output - max - 1024 x 768 over VGA?? Are you KIDDING me? Who even has an XGA-rez projector? Even my lowly business projector is 720p, and it was built ages ago!
- Justification: Two reasons here: the AppleTV and Rev 2. First of all, the home theater is the realm of the AppleTV. It’s not a particular well-performing product, either - Apple tries to own an ecosystem and people aren’t signing up to it quite like iPod users were to iTunes. Having the ability to hookup your iPad to your flatscreen and play all kinds of crazy stuff would require Apple to setup some sort of video streaming system like the AppleTV has, and that would eat up the market pretty quick, I think. I can see Apple releasing a remote control app, but that’s probably about it. But who knows, maybe they’ll surpise us and throw in Wireless HDMI, but I doubt it. I think that HDMI was left out both because of a time crunch to get the product out, and to give users a reason to upgrade to revision 2 of the iPad. The day will come when all of the early adopters will go “oh snap! iPad 2 has HDMI? Gotta get me one of those!!”
4. Webcam: This is something that I was truly expecting to see. Come on, you give us an iTablet, but no webcam? You serious? It’s like the most advanced, neatest gadget on the planet, and it doesn’t have the one feature that every real tablet should have: VIDEO CHAT!!
- Justification: 3G and Rev 2. AT&T is already suffering under the load of 20 million iPhones (and of course, instead of investing all that profit back into their network, they didn’t); so much so that I actually ditched my beloved iPhone late last year because my service had gotten so bad (I was a user since the iPhone 2G, went to 3G, then 3GS, and it got progressively worse - sad). Having an iPad with a webcam would absolutely slaughter their network. iChat would be choppy, slow, and low-res. It wouldn’t be an optimal viewing experience. And Apple can’t exactly come out and say, wellllll you can only use iChat Video Chat over Wifi, because then what’s the point of having a webcam if you can only use it near a Wifi spot? Plus, it’s another feature to get Rev 2 purchases to buy it, at which time AT&T will probably have upgraded to 4G and be able to handle the increased data load effectively.
5. Multi-tasking: A 1GHz CPU and no multi-tasking. For reals. So I hook this into my car, I pop on Pandora to listen to some tunes while I’m cruising, then I switch over to my TomTom app for directions…oops, wait, there goes my Pandora. Sorry, no multi-tasking
- Justification: Wow, I don’t have much of a justification for this one. Better battery life? More system stability? Increased app speed and perceived user experience? Those are all weaksauce.
6. Flash: “The world’s best web experience”. Um, sorry, no. No Flash, no optimum experience. Steve Jobs was dumb enough to demo a website (New York Times) as one of his first websites to visit on the iPad, only to have a nice, big, giant, glaring blank spot with the “No Flash” symbol on it. Oops. I use Vimeo daily. I use a TON of sites with Flash content in them. You cannot have the best of the web, without having Flash.
- Justification: Apps/videos and bugs. From a business perspective, disabling Flash is a smart move. Who would buy Doodlejump if you could just sign onto games.com and play for free, streaming? Or get a monthly subscription to a Flash-based multi-game site and play to your heart’s content? Plus, Apple wants to control the video ecosystem, which apps like Hulu and Netflix Streaming would infringe on. Flash is not a good business move from that perspective, although I bet they could win over millions of hardcore nerds who otherwise wouldn’t buy the iPad for that very reason. On the technical side, Flash IS a buggy piece of crap, so I don’t really blame them for not wanting it to crash Mobile Safari. It crashes on my Mac computers weekly. But still, it’s an essential part of the web, and people aren’t going to change that just because an iPad exists - they didn’t for the iPhone, they won’t for the iPad. HTML 5 is NOT Flash.
So those six items are really my biggest gripes…if they added all of those in Rev 2, I’d be one happy camper, as I’m sure a lot of my fellow techie-friends would be. That’s not to say I won’t buy one; it’s just that to really realize it’s full potential, it kinda needs those features. You just know the Android is gonna be all over those, and a lot of people are going to snag Android tablets because of it (although I’m sure they’ll have a hard time competing at $499, haha). I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more positive reviews of the iPad once people actually get their hands on it, and developers start making cool apps for it, but for now, it’s hard to ignore all of those missing features.
Mission Statement
First of all, I’d like to apologize for the delay on the Halloween release. I got a little over-excited and ran into an R&D bug that prevented me from releasing fully-stable kits, so again I apologize for raising everyone’s hopes and not getting it out on time. The kits are coming, I’m just crunched on time at the moment.
Second, I’d like to clarify my “mission statement” of sorts, so you can have a better understanding of my views & position on this project (warning: kinda long, you can skip to the bottom for Cliff’s notes). This is kind of overdue anyway, so here it goes:
I started doing Hackintosh for fun a couple years ago, as I enjoy tinkering with computers. I’m not a hardcore programmer at the moment, but I’m pretty decent at writing and throwing together usuable kits based on the work of other programmers like netkas and zef (thanks for the hard work, guys!). Since my dream Mac Pro was about $12,000, I decided that Hackintosh was a much better option, as I’m sure many of you have. I initially began posting guides over at InsanelyMac, both to share what I had learned and to get feedback from the community about bugs and ideas to make our rigs better. I got a lot of positive feedback and ended up with some really nice kits & guides, thanks to everybody’s help.
Things kind of ballooned out from there and I turned into a guide-writer of sorts, which I also enjoyed. Writing is one of my passions, especially about technology. Nailing down processes and creating usuable kits is one of my favorite things to do. However, I’m terrible with deadlines, but they work as great motivators for me to actually get something out (again, I want to apologize for mis-managing your expectations and not delivering when I said I would). Anyway, to combat that, I’m not going to publicly post any timelines or specific dates unless things are 100% ready to rock & roll, with no room for R&D snags to happen. I know that doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but since this is a hobby and isn’t terribly high on my priority list (yay school & work, haha), I’m finding it nearly impossible to keep my self-imposed deadlines, so I think this way is far better for everyone!
I’m also not guaranteeing any kind of future support or updates. I am not paid to do this, nor will I be doing it forever. There are people who constantly email me about every little update, piece of hardware, oddball configuration, etc. - I’m happy to help if I have time, but consider what I put out there as “that’s it!” - if you want to go further than that, or do funny things with your system, you’ll need to figure it out on your own. I hate to be harsh, but I’ve discovered that this is one of the dangers of producing a turnkey system: you get people who aren’t willing to do any research, but who expect you to keep on producing stuff (for free) 24/7. I try to make complete kits & detailed guides to give back to community, since so many people help me put these together, debug them, and get them working smoothly, but I can’t pander to everybody, so please take what I have to offer as you need it, and expect no more.
My goal with these kits isn’t to turn the Hackintosh scene into a place for braindead noobs; these kits are the culmination of a LOT of hard work from many, many people; I’m just the delivery boy, more or less. They’re just a way of giving back; that’s all. The first target audience is for people who, like me, enjoy tinkering with computers & the OS X operating system and want to throw together a Hackintosh for fun. The other target audience for these is for people who just want something to run. More specifically, for people who (1) want a Hackintosh to save money/fix a Mac themselves/customize it, (2) are willing to purchase specific parts, and (3) don’t need an odd setup, or if they do, are willing to research it on their own. If you just want to run a Hack and are happy using an ES2L, DS3L, or UD3P, great - that’s what I have to offer.
I don’t really post public betas too often because I get waaaaay too much feedback from that noob group who don’t read and don’t pay attention to the beta bug listing, and who email/twitter/pm/pester me constantly about why X or Y doesn’t work. I get hundreds of emails a week from these people. Literally. By the time my guides are finished & released, they’ve got through dozens of beta testers and we’ve tried to work out as many bugs as possible, so if you have a bug, it’s almost always because the instructions weren’t followed. Again, I have no problem with people who just want to run a Hackintosh and not think about it, as long as they follow the guide and get the right parts, but for those who don’t read, but expect the world to be handed to them…well, that’s just frustrating 
So anyway, I don’t mean to be harsh, I just wanted to clarify my position on this. It’s kind of grown a bit out of control and because I haven’t handled it as well as I should have, I wanted to get things in order again; I’m just a guy who writes some instructions and posts a kit for the few boards that I have. I don’t accept donations and I currently have no plans for other boards, as I already have more computers than I really need (lol). I really enjoy doing it, but because of my current work/college schedule (away from home from 6am - 8pm, six days a week), I don’t really have the time to post regular updates or to meet my deadlines when things go south, so that’s the scoop on where I’m at, what I’m doing, and what the situation is.
As far as future plans go, I still plan on releasing Leopard & Snow guides for the ES2L, DS3L, and UD3P boards, as well as a (highly) informational Wiki to go along with them. No ETA though, so RSS this blog or tag me on Twitter to keep up-to-date as things progress!
So, in Cliff’s Notes format:
1. No more specific deadlines or timetables given
2. No guarantee of future support - consider what is posted “it”
3. This is just a hobby for me
If you want to stay up-to-date on a personal level, get into the Hackintosh hobby and LEARN! Since it’s just a hobby for me, things kind of come out when they come out. I apologize once again for getting everybody’s hopes up and then not releasing anything for a couple months for the last few releases, so again, no more deadlines, everybody’s happy! Haha. I’ve had a lot of fun over the past couple years, met a lot of great people, and look forward to doing this until who knews when. Thanks for all the support & kind words, it’s truly appreciated. You guys rock!
ps - sorry for the long post, hope that clears things up 
Finally! 64-bit R1000 kext for Snow released!
Bit Shoveler over on InsanelyMac posted a 64-bit R1000 kext for Snow Leopard, which adds AFP/Bonjour support via SLE, whoohoo! Been waiting on a kext like this for a long time! You can download it here, or download an installer app I made to auto-install it to SLE:
Download installer here (re-upped with fixed script, thanks frozenice)
Bonjour64: AFP/Bonjour Fix for 64-bit Snow
Update: A 64-bit R1000 kext has been released! Click here to get it! Bonjour64 no longer required!!
One of the things that has annoyed me greatly this summer has been the lack of AFP/Bonjour support on the onboard NIC on my UD3P under 64-bit Snow Leopard. The reason behind that is that there is no nice, shiny R1000 kext to fix it like we have for Leopard 10.5.
On a more positive note, the built-in driver actually auto-starts on its own after wake-from-sleep, so at least that’s not a problem anymore. But I’d still like to access iTunes Sharing and my home AFP server, so here’s an early Halloween treat for you: (instructions are in the readme file)
The rest of this post is just a nerdy discussion of the solution, feel free to ignore it!
The Problem:
AFP & Bonjour do not work under 64-bit Snow Leopard using the onboard Realtek Gigabit Ethernet port. The workaround is to enable promiscuous mode using the ifconfig command. However, this mode is not supported by Apple’s default ifconfig. Fortunately, a patch has been released which adds support for promiscuous mode (thanks Daniel U. Becker!).
The Solution:
The fix is pretty simple: run the ifconfig command with the promiscuous mode option at every boot (FYI, it survives wake-from-sleep just fine). scorcho on InsanelyMac posted a great little AppleScript to make this happen. I took this script and turned it into an Application bundle. The advantage of turning the script & patch into a bundle is (1) everything is in one nice, neat package, (2) you can add it to your Applications folder via drag-and-drop, and (3) it’s simple to add it to the startup menu.
Additional Notes:
The solution is not as clean as I’d like (i.e. a kext) and requires a one-time initial configuration (see readme in the zip), but it works beautifully. Special thanks to Mr. Becker for the patch, scorcho for the script, and blackosx for the discussion thread. Any feedback is appreciated, so please post here in the comments or on the thread as to whether or not it works for you!
Also, if any of you have real coding skills, it’d be nice to make an auto-installer that let you select the active enX adapter & save your password into the script file (it should be pretty easy using a find & replace in Terminal or something, but coding is not my forte at the moment!). Once the script file is modified, it can be copied from the installer to the Applications folder & auto-added to Login apps. That would make this a lot more user-friendly!
DIY Mac Mini Server Clone
Apple just released the awesome Mac Mini Server for $999. Pretty cool! Unless you want to - you know - add more drives. Aside from that, it’s actually a pretty reasonable deal: Snow Leopard Server retails for $499 by itself (with unlimited client licenses), so you’re really getting a Mac Mini with a pair of 500gb hard drives for only $499. 500gb laptop drives go for $85 to $100 a pop, so you’re getting a reasonably nice little machine for around $300 or so. Not bad, not bad…unless you decide to do better:
Come to the dark side, my friends! Muhahaha Okay, okay, having a little bit TOO much fun with the spirit of Halloween here. So just for fun, I spec’d out a similar Mac Mini on Newegg:
- Oddly-familiar Linkworld ATX case w/ 500w PSU: $37 link
- Gigabyte ES2L mATX motherboard: $54
- 2.6ghz Dual-Core CPU: $70
- 4 gigs of RAM: $72
- A pair of 500gb hard drives: $100
- Basic 7200GS video card: $24
- DVD burner, for fun: $35
- Grand Total: $399
Price differences? Not too much. $100 is nice, but it isn’t huge. The real benefit is in the expandability. With the Mini, you’d have to start daisy-chaining your Firewire externals and eventually end up with something resembling The Matrix, lol. With a Hackintosh, you can tuck as many drives as you want into it! If you want to get really crazy, you could pick up one of these spiffy 20-bay Hot-Swap Rackmount Server cases for only $299 and really go to town!
Another huge benefit is the ability to use RAID cards - you can get a RAID card with as many as 24 ports internally (or even more externally!) and do all sorts of RAID levels: RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, etc. A basic 4-port RAID card with Mirroring, Striping, and RAID 5 capabilities goes for less than $100 from HighPoint. Plus you get all the usual Hackintosh benefits - your choice of hardware, a cost savings, whatever case you like, easy maintenance & upgrade, all stuff that makes Hackintosh fun.
Halloween. Be there.
Trick or treat…or perhaps both? Mark your calendars. October 31st, 2009. ES2L. DS3L. UD3P. Lots of new goodies, just in time for All Hallow’s Eve!
PS - For those of you keeping tabs on the blog here, be sure to follow me on Twitter - that’s where I do most of my Hackintosh-related communication these days. I’ll be posting more here on the blog starting on Halloween, however. Also, I’m aware of the oddball bugs you’re encountering on the blog posts & comments; we’re hard at work upgrading the server!
Snow Leopard & Other News
Snow Leopard came early, yippie! Just FYI, the “upgrade” disc will work on both Tiger AND Leopard, and actually contains a full retail copy of Snow
I will NOT be releasing a Snow Leopard kit for awhile, for 5 main reasons:
- There isn’t a good BootCD for Snow yet (requires another Mac to install)
- The bootloader is buggy (Chameleon 2.0 is currently in beta and has some quirks)
- There isn’t a complete driverset yet (Snow requires 64-bit drivers for use with the 64-bit kernel; Audio & Network are the main culprits)
- Snow Leopard is buggy (mostly Finder); ideally I’d like to wait for 10.6.1 to have a solid base, but if the above problems are solved beforehand I’ll cave
- Not all apps work - some programs aren’t Snow-compatible yet
As far as the Wiki goes, it’s currently down for upgrades. I’ve revamped the layout a bit (it was getting a wee bit messy) and I’m updating the articles, in particular writing the 10.5.8 Vanilla guides for the ES2L, DS3L, and UD3P boards. As a quick reminder, I’m still not planning on picking up a Core i7 rig until 24-gig kits are available; my current quad-core UD3P-based system with 8 gigs of RAM is serving me quite nicely
UD3P Guide for 10.5.7 Posted, and Blog Update
I just posted my latest guide over on InsanelyMac: Retail 10.5.7 on the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard, entitled “Leopard Soup for the Soul”. Rock-solid and dirt-simple, what more can you ask for?
I’m wrapping up the ES2L and DS3L guides this week as well and will be posting them on Insanely; I’ll be sure to put up a blog post about each as I finish them! I’m a little behind on posts here on the blog; I meant to update after the last WWDC (re: previous blog post), but I got called out of town on business and have been traveling. I’m home again for the time being, so I’m wrapping up as many of these little projects as I can! So just for a quick refresher and status update:
- UD3P Guide for 10.5.7 is finished and posted!
- ES2L Guide for 10.5.7 Retail is in the works for release this week
- DS3L Guide for 10.5.7 Retail is in the works for release this week as well
- Snow Leopard works great, just waiting on a few more 64-bit drivers (namely Audio & Networking, and BlockStorage for the orange-to-silver drive icons)
- Wiki is progressing nicely, lots of articles in the works
- ES2L, DS3L, and UD3P are all rock-solid on 10.5.7
- My schedule is still crazy due to work, so ignore any self-imposed deadlines I proclaim
- No plans for a Core i7 rig at the moment, waiting for 24GB RAM kits to arrive
Cheers!