Ladies and gentlemen, I’m getting a Mac!

Well, not exactly, but hey, the title sparked your interest, didn’t it? Thought so. Anywho’s:

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself hating Apple products as I usually do. Hating on Macs, hating on iPods, and hating on two of my friends who have iPhone 3Gs. Every now and then I find myself thinking, wow, I’m probably just jealous that Apple users got money . However, these thoughts vanquish the moment I hear some pompous Apple fanboy saying “You’re just hatin’ because you can’t afford a Mac! Just go away to your sad little PC, ya’ looser!” It’s people like that that get under my skin, almost causing me to slap ‘em in the face. Luckily, I’m a civil person, and I just state the fact that you can get a computer just as decent as a Mac for half the price. But who am I to say this? And what does this say about the operating system itself? In all reality, the only Mac I’ve ever owned was a screwy PowerPC-based refurb.

So I thought, hey, if I install OS X onto my PC somehow, I’d be able to see how it is to own a Mac, without the fancy $600 aluminum case. If performance is good, I’d prove that PCs are much more cost-efficient, and after using it for a month or so, I’d also be able to determine how good OS X really is. I’ll be killing two birds with one stone… sorta.

After a few days [when Apple announced their new MacBooks], I got the initiative to sought for a way to get Leopard on my fairly low-end AMD machine. I found hacked-up operating systems aplenty, and I had no idea what to do. So then I thought there’s only one easy solution; just search where you’re going to download it from anyway!, so I ventured to everybody’s favorite downloading site, the infamous Pie-rating Bay and searched “OS X Leopard” and found iATKOS, and I was happy. Then I did some research, and found that there’s an infinite number of OSx86 systems to download. Here’s a short list of what I’ve found:

iATKOS
iDeneb
iPC
Kalyway
Leo4Allv5
JaS
pc_EFI

…the list will go on and on. So I settled on iDeneb. Not sure of the reason, but I did. So far, I’m two days into the download and I’ve only been able to get through 40% of the full ISO. Slowly but surely, the 4.4 gig file will finish after going through a constant of 15kb/s download.

In the meantime, I’ve been able to split my hard drive into two partitions, with the Leopard partition [drive X:/] having 20GB of playing room.

Updates on my future Hackintosh coming soon!

Ciao!

Clarification of opinions: Mac vs PC (follow-up of MacBook Air post)

I’m very pleased at the comments given from my last blog post, from both the ones that agree with me and the ones that don’t agree. To tell you the truth, it was fun reading them. Today, I’m going to clarify my position on Macs and PCs, because I never had the opportunity or reason to do so in the past. So here we go, into the mind of uH:

Though I show a lot of hate for Apple, there is in fact lots of good behind it. They have a nice GUI, they’re generally reliable, and have great tech support people to rely on when the going gets rough. Windows computers’ UI isn’t quite as easy to navigate through, but it’s more hackable and open to customization (good for power users like myself). In reality, the majority of the problems with PCs are from all the useless crapware installed by the companies and malfunctioning hardware installed by the companies (hard drives in particular >_<). There isn’t a Microsoft Store where you can get the computer fixed, but there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of tech support forums and companies dedicated to it (techsupportforum.com for the win!).

Here’s a little insight from a past Mac user (erm, me). Having a Mac was always something to boast about. You walk into a Panera Bread, sit in the table by one of the big windows, in the open and take your MacBook out:

“Yeah, that’s my Mac. Like the wallpaper? Yeah, so do I. It represents how cool I am. Hey, check this cool minimizing effect. Yeah, I know you want it, but it’s all mine!”

Believe me, it feels cool to use a Mac. That is, until you’ve used it for a few hours, and it starts lagging, gasping for RAM. At that point you’re yelling like you were in a Linkin Park concert. But if it were lagging in public, you’d keep your cool. “I’m just restarting it because I forgot what the boot screen looks like… what?,” and you continue eating that delicious bagel. Yes, OS X played nice for the most part, but the hardware kept it down. 70% of the time, when I put a CD into the drive, it wouldn’t come out. I had to restart it, do a funky keyboard shortcut as soon as I saw the boot screen, and type something into the command prompt that appears to force eject it. Oh, and one of my USB ports went ca-put and my mouse liked to turn left more than right. And because all the hardware was from Apple (I bought it before the Intels came in) all the blame was put on them.

Now, here’s Windows. It isn’t as bad as everyone says it is. I’ve had 3 XP computers over the years, and all but one have died. Not because of the software, though. On one, the hard drive stopped working. The other, the motherboard fried during a power surge. Nevertheless, I put both of the computers together, and is now running Ubuntu, but that’s besides the point. What I’m getting at is that companies like MSI, AMD, and ATI are to blame for this stuff, yet people still blame Microsoft. I gotta love XP because you can change almost everything in it! And with the right tools, you can create skins for it yourself! You can use a program like the XN Resource Editor to replace icons and replace codes. Get LiteStep, and you have an entirely new shell to work with (that’s right, a replacement for Explorer). I’ve never seen anything like this on OS X, and I probably never will. Oh, and people also complain about Vista and how you need so much RAM to run it. 2GB is not that much! You can get a Kingston 1GB DDR2 chip for $20 at Best Buy for cryin’ out loud! And as it is said, if you have 4GB of RAM, Vista is amazingly faster, prefetching everything (thanks to a new process management system that XP doesn’t have). And PCs are getting cheaper by the day. I found one with 3GB RAM, an Intel Quad Core, some high-end nVIDIA graphics card, 320GB hard drive, Vista Premium, TV tuner, All-In-One printer, CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray reader, a 7-in-one media reader, and a 20-inch widescreen monitor for only $1200 (HP I believe). If that doesn’t show progress, I don’t know what does. Oh, and if you search in the right places [*cough*google products*cough*], you can get Vista Ultimate OEM 32-bit for about $160 (64-bit, $175).

As for one company stealing from another, sheesh! Just shut up! That’s how companies roll! IBM invented the mouse, but Apple copied and patented the idea before IBM got a chance. Apple uses transparency in their newest version of OS X. Microsoft based their Zune off Apple’s iPod. Who cares?!? As long as the things I buy are getting better, I’m okay with it. Dat’s how we roll in da hood.

But all this comes down to is politics. I bet I can convince everybody here that OS X is better than Vista if I wanted to, but I don’t because I don’t believe it’s true. Just like how some politicians can prove that either side is better (like Shawn Hannity convincing someone to vote for Obama). It all comes down to knowing stuff, and supporting that knowhow with examples (i.e. personal experiences with Macs and PCs). And with that, I shall publish this blog post.