AFL 2010 Footy Tipping Competition

Apple unveils the Ipad

The iPad is a tablet computer announced by Apple on January 27, 2010. It is 0.5-inches thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and features a 9.7-inch IPS capacitive multitouch display. It is powered by a proprietary 1GHz processor, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and is available in 16, 32, or 64GB flash storage capacities. Additional specs include an accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, 30-pin Apple dock connector, and 10-hour built-in battery.
Standard apps that come pre-loaded on the device include a mobile Safari web browser, two-pane calendar app, two-pane email app, contacts, notes, Google Maps, media player, photo viewer, iTunes store, and App Store to download third-party applications and games. Existing iPhone applications are centered on-screen at their original 480×320 resolution, or can be run in a magnified mode where the app is enlarged to fit the entire screen.

The thing I don’t get here is… So far, nothing new. This has all been done before elsewhere. I’m astonished this isn’t nicer looking or more interesting.

Jobs: "It’s so much more intimate than a laptop." Yes, Steve. PC users have known that since 2002. Geesh.

OK, this has to be a joke. He can’t really be this excited about this device. Maybe this will be a candid camera moment and all thus joyful faces in the audience will get an actual, happy, surprise. It’s a joke. It’s gotta be.

Right?

Did he just show an address book that … looks …. like a book? Ahahahaha. Oh come on. Someone pinch me. It can’t possibly be this lame.

But wait, there’s more: Widescreen movies take up approximately half the space on the surface of the iPod because the aspect ratio of the device is way off. That just seems odd. This thing should be 16:9.

OK, stats.

It’s half an inch thick. It weighs 1.5 pounds. It has a 9.7 inch display with full capacitive multitouch and accelerometer. All as expected.

A 1 GHz Apple A4 chip (What the???). 16 to 64 GB of flash memory. 802.11n. 10 hours of battery life.

The big question, of course, is the price. I’m guessing $999 to start.

But we have to wait. Because Scott "dark son" Forstall is out. To talk about apps.

It runs iPhone apps. Obviously. Stretches them out as you’d expect, if you want. (Apple calls this 2X. It’s actually about 4X from what I can tell.)

This stuff is just boring. If Apple wanted this to be a game machine, they should have built hardware controls into that huge bezel.

New York Times apps looks just like the New York Times Reader app for the PC. Which, by the way, looks great on a Tablet PC. I wonder if there’s a dedicated Kindle app at launch.

"This is just the beginning." By which he means, "of the apps demos." They’re going to go on all day long.

Aside from price, the other big question is availability. I’m guessing not immediate. Using Apple history as a guide, I’d guess they will announce it for the end of February and devices will start shipping from China on February 27 or 28.

I enjoy that the MLB app looks like ColecoVision Baseball. Anyone else notice that?

And am I missing something or does this not do handwriting recognition? You know, like the Windows Tablet PC software has since 2002?

The eBook reader stuff is another example of Apple mimicking real life objects unnecessarily. Creating a "library" page that looks like a real bookshelf and a book interface that visually resembles a book does not make this "easier to use" or "nicer." It makes it unprofessional looking, actually. Childish.

And don’t get me started on the superiority of eInk over any screen display. It’s no contest unless you’re trying to fast track to bad vision.

It’s called iBooks (of course). Uses ePub format, which makes sense.

And now iWork. A version of an app suite that no one uses designed for a device that no one should use for productivity. It’s the ultimate win-win!

Images of Lightning over Tatura

I found these images on Flickr, they were uploaded by MattMc on the 2nd of January 2010.

Out of Control Forklift Driver Destroys Vodka Warehouse [VIDEO]

How To Do A Clean Install of Windows 7 using an Upgrade Disc

Note: This article was originally published by Paul Thurrott and received a significant update on October 25, 2009. I now have three methods to try for performing a clean install with Windows 7 Upgrade media.

It was the final unanswered question about Windows 7. But now, thanks to numerous reader reports and my own hands-on experience, I’m can now report that Microsoft is still making it difficult to clean install Windows 7 with Upgrade media. But fear not, there is some good news. While you can’t simply use Upgrade media to do a clean install of Windows 7 on an unused PC with a blank hard drive, the workaround this time is easier than ever. Assuming you know the trick.

Remember how this used to work? In older versions of Windows, Microsoft would actually prompt you to insert an install floppy or CD from a previous Windows version, to prove that you qualified for the upgrade version. But beginning with Windows XP, PC makers were able to dramatically change the Windows install disc, so much so that, in some cases, those discs weren’t even identifiable as valid install media to Windows Setup. Clearly a different system was required.

In Windows Vista, Microsoft supported in-place upgrades from Windows XP, but if you wanted to use an Upgrade version of the Windows Vista Setup disc to do a clean install, you had to perform a weird double install trick. (I documented this process in How to Clean Install Windows Vista with Upgrade Media.)

When it comes to performing a clean install of Windows 7 using Upgrade media, there’s no simple answer. For some people, it just works. Why that is the case will vary from person to person, and while I suspect we’ll eventually understand why, for now all that really matters is that we have a way to make it work for you. So what I’d like to do is provide you with a number of things to try. I assume you just want it to work.

Let’s be clear about what we’re doing here

First up, let’s define what it is I’m describing. For purposes of this discussion, a clean install–or what Microsoft calls a custom install–is when you boot your PC with Windows 7 Setup media (typically a Setup DVD, but with this version it could also be a specially created, bootable USB memory device containing the Setup bits) with the intention of installing just Windows 7 on the PC. There could be a previous version of Windows (XP or Vista) installed on the PC already. You will either install Windows 7 to a separate partition or will wipe out the previous Windows version during Setup. (That is, you will not install Windows 7 on the same partition as your previous Windows version.) If it’s the latter, please–please–be sure to backup all your data first. Please.

A clean install with Upgrade media is just what it sounds like: You will perform a clean install of Windows 7 using an Upgrade version of Windows 7, instead of the so-called (and more expensive) “Full” version. Upgrade versions of Windows 7 are far more common than Full versions, both because they are less expensive and because Microsoft offered (and in some cases is still offering) exceptionally cheap pricing on Upgrade media.

Note: One such special offer, the Windows 7 Family Pack, consists of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade media Setup discs and a single product key which can be used to activate three copies of the OS on three different PCs. The Family Pack costs $150, or just $30 more than a single copy of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade. It’s kind of a no-brainer.

But here’s the paradox. While anyone with a valid, licensed copy of Windows 2000, XP, or Vista qualifies for any Upgrade version of Windows 7–and by the way, that’s pretty much every single PC user on earth–only Vista users can do an in-place upgrade, which is the install type for which Upgrade media is optimized. If you’re an XP user (or, less likely, a Windows 2000 user), there’s no way to do an in-place upgrade. So you have to perform a migration, which consists of three steps:

1. Backup your crucial data and settings using Windows Easy Transfer (it’s on the Windows 7 Setup DVD) and make note of the applications that are installed, because you’ll have to manually reinstall them again after the fact.

2. Perform a clean install of Windows 7 using the Upgrade media. I describe this process in this article.

3. Restore your crucial data and settings using Windows Easy Transfer (part of Windows 7) and then reinstall your applications.

Put simply, there are millions of people out there who will be performing (or, as is too often the case, trying to perform) clean installs with Upgrade media. And for many of these people, inexplicably, it just won’t work. The reasons for these failures, again, seem to vary from PC to PC. But even without understanding the why of these failures, I think we can at least explain how to make it work.

Is this process bulletproof? I’m not sure yet, but I think so. In any event, here’s a checklist of things to try, in order from least painful to most painful. In my limited experience so far, one of these should work for you.

Note: In all of these methods, you should observe one simple rule. Do not enter your product key during Setup. Instead, you will attempt to activate Windows 7 manually after it is installed. So you can just enter your product key later.

Method #1: Just perform a clean install

Many, many readers report that they have been able to simply treat the Windows 7 Upgrade media as if it were Full media, and that it just works. And you know what? It doesn’t hurt to simply try this method, because if it doesn’t work, you can then try methods 2 and then 3, in order, afterwards. There is no downside to trying this.

Here’s what you do. Insert the Windows 7 Upgrade DVD in your PC’s optical disc, reboot the computer, boot off the DVD, and then follow the steps to install Windows 7. If you are installing onto a computer that already has another version of Windows, be sure to back everything up first. Do not attempt to install Windows 7 to the same partition as a previous Windows version. Do not provide your product key during Setup.

After Windows 7 is set up, run Windows Update, download any pending updates, reboot as needed, and repeat until there are no more updates. Then, type activate in Start Menu Search to bring up the Activate Windows utility. Type in your product key and attempt to activate Windows.

If it works, you’re all set. You’re done. Congratulations.

Note: I have now tested this method with the standard Windows 7 Upgrade media as well as with Windows 7 Family Pack media, the latter of which I assume is identical to standard Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade media.

Here’s what you do want to see.

If this does not work, move on to method 2.

Here’s what you don’t want to see. But don’t worry, we can overcome this.

Method #2: Registry hack

Open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/

Change MediaBootInstall from “1″ to “0″. (Double-click it and then enter 0 in the dialog that appears.)

Close RegEdit.

Open the Start Menu again and type cmd in Start Menu search to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose “Run as administrator.” Handle the UAC prompt.

In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm

Then tap ENTER and wait for the “Command completed successfully” dialog.

Then, close the command line window and reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and activate windows.

If it works, you’re all set. You’re done. Congratulations.

If this does not work, you can try two different things.

First, ensure there are no pending Windows Updates to install. In my experience, some of these can cause this method to fail. Install them and reboot PC. Re-run the command line (with administrative privileges) noted above, reboot again, and re-attempt the activation.

If that does not work, try method 3.

Method #3: The good old “double install” method

If the above two methods fail, you can always fall back on the old “double install” method that I previously documented for Windows Vista. There’s already a whole article dedicated to this topic, but here’s the short version since you’ve already done the initial install:

1. Insert the Windows 7 Setup DVD in the optical drive if it isn’t already there and choose Run Setup from the auto-run dialog that appears. Or, if it is already inserted, navigate to the optical drive in Computer and double-click is icon to trigger Setup.

2. At the appropriate stage of Setup, choose Upgrade (and not Custom). Windows 7 will install as before, though you might notice that it takes quite a bit longer this time. Because you’re upgrading this time, you won’t be prompted to enter your user name or most of the other information that you need to provide during a clean install. Using the user name (and password) you created during the first install, logon to Windows 7.

Now, activation should work. To activate Windows 7 immediately, type activate in Start Menu Search. This brings up the Activate Windows utility. Type in your product key and attempt to activate Windows.

Final thoughts … For now

There are a few other methods for clean installing Windows 7 with Upgrade media. I haven’t tried these yet, but I will, and as I do, I’ll update this article to describe these methods in more detail. But at least one of the methods described above should work for just about anyone.

Please let me know if you have any issues with this or if you discover another method that did work for you.

–Paul Thurrott
October 22-25, 2009

10 Most Useful Google Plugins for WordPress

WordPress is a great and most popular blogging platform for it possibility to extend functions with plugins. WordPress Plugins make blogging easier for all of us who have chosen WordPress as our content management system. Google is best known as a search engine and Internet giant, bul check what Google can offer for WordPress users. This post lists the most useful Wordpress plugins related to Google starting from XML Sitemaps and ending with FeedBurner subscribers counter.

1. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

2. Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator easily adds Google Analytics tracking support to a WordPress-powered blog. Google Analyticator also comes with an easily customizable widget that can be used to display specific information that is gathered by Google Analytics using the Google Analytics API.

3. Google Analytics for WordPress

This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. It also adds the possibility to track just the domain, instead of the complete link, so you get a better view of how much traffic you’re sending where.

4. Google Website Optimizer for WordPress

This simple plugin lets you optimize your landing pages (as posts or pages) using the Google Website Optimizer without needing to edit the HTML code of the theme.

5. Google Doc Embedder

Google Doc Embedder will allow you to embed a PDF, PowerPoint (PPT), or TIFF file directly into your page or post, not requiring the user to have Adobe Reader, PowerPoint, or other software installed to view the contents.

6. Easy AdSense

Easy AdSense provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. With its full set of features, Easy AdSense is perhaps the first plugin to give you a complete solution for everything AdSense-related.

7. XML Google Maps

This plugin allows you to easily insert Google Map or Google Earth Plugin Maps into your blog.

8. Google AJAX Translation

The Google AJAX Translation WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple, and light way to add translation to your blog. A “Translate” button can be added to the bottom or top of posts, pages, and/or comments.

9. Google Custom Search Plugin

The default search engine that ships with WordPress is not the best search engine and bloggers every where should make the switch to WordPress Google Custom Search plugin. This plugin is a drop in replacement and works with minimum hassle.

10. FeedBurnerCount

A well-optimized and reliable plugin that connects to the FeedBurner Awareness API to retrieve your readers count, that you can print out in plain text.

What do you think about these plugins? Do you use anyone from this list?  Might we haven’t listed your favorite Google related plugin? Share your thoughts in comments

Updated – Install Snow Leopard On Your Hackintosh PC

Two weeks ago I detailed how to build a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, start to finish, with a little Terminal work. If you’re not comfortable with command-line hacking, now you can install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh with just a few point-and-clicks.

So what’s changed between my last guide and this one? In short, one of the incredibly helpful and generous people who helped walk me through the installation process last time was kind enough to wrap all the tedious Terminal work into one dead simple installer. Where two weeks ago I showed you how to prepare your thumb drive (and after that, hard drive) with a custom bootloader that allows you to boot into OS X on regular old PC hardware, now all you have to do is run a package, point it at the drive you want to prepare, and then let it take care of all the nitty gritty. It could not be more simple.

Now onto the revised process!

NOTE: Just like the last post, this guide is focused specifically on the hardware I suggested in the previous guide—specifically the motherboard. If you try following this guide on other hardware, there’s a very good chance it won’t work as advertised.

What You’ll Need

• Supported hardware. I laid out my list of supported hardware in my previous post here. It’s not the only hardware that will work with OS X, but it’s the only hardware that’s guaranteed to work with this guide.
• A USB thumb drive that’s at least 8GB in size.
• A copy of the Mac Box Set-though, honestly, Apple’s practically made it hard *not* to buy the fully functional install disc.
• Another Mac to prepare your thumb drive. (You’ll only need this other Mac for a few steps. I used my MacBook Pro, but you could also borrow a friends for an hour or so, too.)
• The EP45UD3P Snow Leopard install package. This package allows you to skip all the command line work in my last guide, and you can download it here.

Step One: Prepare Your Thumb Drive

In this step, you’re going to format your thumb drive and then restore the Snow Leopard DVD image to the thumb drive because later we’ll be installing Snow Leopard to your hard drive using this thumb drive rather than the DVD. Why? Because in order to boot the installer, we need to customise the disk image with some special helper files of our own.

I went into great detail on this process last time, so this time I’m just going to include the step-by-step video below (made by the same generous man who created the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard installer package). If you want to read the very detailed version for a detailed explanation of how to rip the Snow Leopard install DVD to a disk image and then restore that image to your thumb drive, go here. (Come back when you get to the “Semi-heavy Terminal work” warning. That’s when you’re ready for the new and improved easy part.)

Note: Watch the video in HD and fullscreen to get a closer look at everything that’s happening.

As you can see in the video, after you restore the Snow Leopard install DVD to your thumb drive, all you’ve got to do is fire up the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg file (if you haven’t already downloaded and unzipped it, you can grab it here), select your thumb drive, and, let the installer take care of all the dirty work that you previously had to do one line at a time in Terminal.

Once you’ve finished there, you’re ready to set your BIOS and install Snow Leopard.

Step 2: Set Your BIOS

Before you can boot into or install OS X on your Hackintosh, you’ve got to make some small adjustments to your system BIOS (press Delete at system startup to tweak your BIOS settings). Rather than taking you step by step through every change you need to make, I’ve simply snapped a picture of the relevant BIOS screens and added some notes. Just go to Step 2 here and make sure your BIOS settings match up.

Step 3: Install Snow Leopard

If you’ve made it this far, the hard part is over. Now it’s time to install Snow Leopard, which—unlike what we’ve done so far—is extremely easy.

Make sure you’ve set the boot priority in your BIOS to boot from your thumb drive (you can see how in Step 2: Set Your Hard Disk Boot Priority), then simply plug your prepared thumb drive into your Hackintosh and power it up. Since screenshots aren’t really an option—and since it’s a fairly easy process—my install instructions come in video format:

The quick version goes like this: Boot into the Snow Leopard installer, format the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to (go to Utilities -> Disk Utility, then click on the drive, select 1 Partition, Mac OS X Journaled (Case-Sensitive Update: Several readers have suggested that case-sensitive formatting can cause problems with some applications, like Adobe’s Creative Suite, so you may be better off sticking with plain old Mac OS X Journaled.), give it a name, and make sure GUID Partition Table is set in the Options. After you Apply the new partition, go back to the installer and install like normal to that drive. When you reboot after the install completes, press the arrow keys at the graphical boot menu and select the drive you just installed Snow Leopard to.

Two Last Tweaks

You could just stop there and be pretty happy at your new Hackintosh, but there are two little, easily performed tweaks you’ll want to tackle to get everything in tip top shape: The first will get your sound fully working, and the second will allow you to boot into Snow Leopard without your thumb drive.

Tweak One: Snow Leopard should be up and running on your Hackintosh like a dream—with one exception: Sound isn’t entirely working yet. You may notice that sound actually does work in some instances, but not all. In the old guide, you needed to install a custom audio kext (your Mac’s equivalent to a driver); the setup has been slightly tweaked in this new method, so all you should actually need to do is open up the Sound preference pane in System Preferences (/Applications/System Preferences), click the Output tab, and change the output device to Built-in Line output (I haven’t tested with digital out, but it should in theory work fine).

Tweak Two: At this point, in order to boot to your newly installed Snow Leopard installation, you need to have your thumb drive plugged in so it loads the custom bootloader, from which you can select your new Snow Leopard hard drive. To install the custom bootloader to your hard drive (so you no longer need the thumb drive to boot), again download the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg zip file and run it, but this time, instead of choosing to install the package to your thumb drive, select the hard drive you’ve installed Snow Leopard to. Once the installer completes, you’ll no longer need your thumb drive plugged in to boot into Snow Leopard.

Congratulations! You’ve Got a Fully Functional Hackintosh—the Easy Way

Where the method I covered previously required a good amount of time and care in Terminal, this new and improved method is a breeze, and it works even better. (Sound works out of the box without any custom kexts, for example.)

It’s also worth noting that you can go ahead an upgrade to OS X 10.6.1 without any problems.

If you’ve given the Hackintosh route a try since my first post, let’s hear how it’s been working out for you in the comments. If this extra ease-of-installation was just what the doctor ordered, go grab the parts listed in the last post and get ready for a fun weekend.

How To Build A Hackintosh With Snow Leopard, Start To Finish for US$900

IMPORTANT – THIS POST HAS BEEN HEAVILY UPDATED,

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE UPDATED VERSION OF THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO CREATE YOUR HACKINTOSH

For folks eager to try a Mac but never wanted to plunk down the high price tag to get it, the Hackintosh—that is, a regular PC tweaked to run OS X—has always been an attractive option. That said, it’s not something you should take on lightly unless you’re willing—even enthusiastic—to build and maintain a PC entirely from scratch. I can’t guarantee it’ll be easy, but if you follow this guide step-for-step (it’s exhaustive) and stick with the same (or at least roughly the same) hardware as I am, I can vouch for a rock solid system that also happens to cost a good deal less than you’d pay for a comparable Mac.

Price Comparisons

Most Hackintosh enthusiasts will say you shouldn’t build a Hackintosh primarily to save money, as it’s more than just an insert-disc-and-click install. Still, I always enjoy looking at the price differences between my Hackintosh and Apple’s current offerings. At the moment, the cheapest Mac in the Apple store is a Mac mini sporting a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB hard drive. For $US300 more, I’m running a 3.0GHz Quad-Core processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and a damn saucy video card. I could have made this build much cheaper by skimping on hardware and still ended up with a great little machine, but I liked aiming for around the $US800 price point from my last build—plus I really wanted to make it fly.

The most expensive iMac, by comparison, has only a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory for $US2200 ($US1300 more than my build, but it is built into a monitor), while the cheapest Mac Pro has a single 2.66GHz Quad-Core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 640GB hard drive—and it costs $US2500 ($US1600 more than mine, though it’s a different and better processor and DDR3 rather than DDR2 RAM). In short, my $US900 “Hack Pro” sports nearly as good or better hardware than any Mac that Apple sells short of the $US3300 8-Core Mac Pro (which can, incidentally, get more expensive, but it won’t get much better).

The Hardware

You can find plenty of hardware capable of supporting OS X on a Hackintosh—there’s no definitive build—but we’re not going to go into that here. I’ve put together a list of hardware that I’m using and that I can guarantee will (or at least has) run Snow Leopard like a dream.

The Build

Rather than detail every step necessary to put the actual pieces of your new computer together (this guide already reads like the Bible as is), I’m just going to point you to our first-timer’s guide to building a PC from scratch. Do your building, make sure everything’s booting up as it should be (i.e. you can boot the computer to the point where it does nothing, because you have nothing installed on it), then let’s move on.

What Else You’ll Need

Assuming you’ve purchased all the necessary parts for your build (linked above), you’ll still need a few other things before you get started:

• A USB thumb drive that’s at least 8GB in size (I’m using this 16GB Corsair drive, but obviously any sufficiently sized thumb drive should do just fine.)
• A copy of the Mac Box Set—though, honestly, Apple’s practically made it hard *not* to buy the fully functional install disc.
• Another Mac to do some Terminal work on. (You’ll only need this other Mac for a few steps. I used my MacBook Pro, but you could also borrow a friends for an hour or so, too.)

Step One: Prepare Your Thumb Drive

We’re going to be installing Snow Leopard to your Hackintosh from your thumb drive rather than from the Snow Leopard install DVD, since in order to run the installer on your PC to begin with, you’ll need to slightly customise the way the installer is loaded. (More specifically, we’ll be loading a custom bootloader onto the thumb drive that will make booting into the install work like a charm.*)

So first things first: You need to format your thumb drive and then turn your Snow Leopard install disc into a disk image on your desktop. Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch the Disk Utility application on your borrowed Mac (located at /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility)
2. Format and partition your thumb drive: Insert your thumb drive; after a second, it should show up in the Disk Utility Sidebar. When it does, (1) click on it, then (2) click on Partition. (3) Choose 1 Partition from the Volume Scheme, (4) give it a name (I called my HackintoshInstall) and select Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) from the Format drop-down. Now—and this is important—(5) hit the Options button and make sure GUID Partition Table is selected as the partition scheme. Once you’ve made sure to set all the appropriate settings, just (6) click Apply and Disk Utility will get to partitioning your thumb drive.
3. Copy the Snow Leopard Install DVD image to your hard drive: In the following step we’ll be turning your thumb drive into a Snow Leopard Install drive, but before we do that, we need to get the installer off your DVD and onto your hard drive. To achieve this, insert the Snow Leopard DVD. When it shows up in the Disk Utility sidebar, (1) click on it, then (2) click New Image in the Disk Utility toolbar. Choose where you want to save it (for the sake of convenience, I put it on my Desktop), then click the Save button. Now go grab yourself a cold drink. This will take some time. When it finishes, move on to the next step.
4. Restore the Snow Leopard Install disk image to your thumb drive: Now, in Disk Utility, (1) click on HackintoshInstall (or whatever you called your partitioned thumb drive) and (2) click on Restore. (3) Drag and drop Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg from the sidebar to the Source field, then (4) drag and drop your thumb drive from the sidebar to the Destination field. Now simply (5) click on Restore and enter your password when prompted. Disk Utility will take everything on the Snow Leopard Install DVD and restore that image to your thumb drive—since, like I said above, we’ll be installing Snow Leopard from our thumb drive instead of the DVD. Again, go grab yourself another drink; this will take a few minutes. When it finishes, your thumb drive has basically been turned into a Snow Leopard installation drive.

As I said earlier, the thumb drive needs a little finesse before you can boot the Snow Leopard installer on your PC hardware; let’s apply that finesse now.

Warning: Semi-heavy Terminal work ahead. It’s not that difficult, and I’ve gone into a lot of detail to make it as easy to follow along as possible, but if you’re not at least a little comfortable with the command line, it may make you pretty uncomfortable. Beg or borrow a command line geek for an afternoon, if needed.

1. Make sure your thumb drive is still plugged in, open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in: diskutil list We’re interested in two pieces of information here. The first is the root identifier for your thumb drive (mine looks like disk2, as you can see in the screenshot). The second is the specific identifier for the portion of the thumb drive that contains the Snow Leopard installer. (Again, see the screenshot.) In my case, the first is disk2 and the second is disk2s2. Yours may vary depending on how many disks are on your system. Copy your identifiers down somewhere. We’ll need them later.
2. Head to the Chameleon homepage, find the Latest Releases section of the site’s sidebar, and download the latest version of Chameleon. (As of this writing, it’s Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640.) Uncompress the download and move the Chameleon folder to someplace that’s easy to access. I’m putting it on my Desktop.
3. Now, in Terminal, cd to the i386 folder of the Chameleon folder. On my Mac, the command looks like this: (1)cd /Users/adam/Desktop/Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640-bin/i386/Yours should look similar if the Chameleon folder is on your Desktop, except your username should replace mine. (Quick shortcut: In Terminal, type cd , then drag and drop i386 folder inside Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640 to Terminal.) Hit Enter.
4. You’re going to be running a couple of Terminal commands that will use Chameleon to make your thumb drive friendly to booting up the OS X installer. They are, as follows:(2)sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk2IMPORTANT: On your computer, replace rdisk2 with whatever you copied down above. In my case, the thumb drive’s root identifier was disk2, so /dev/rdisk2 is as it should be.

   After you type in that command and hit Enter, you’ll need to enter your user password to execute it. Do so, then execute the following command, again paying special attention to the disk identifier we took note of above:

   (3)

   sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk2s2

   IMPORTANT: As I noted, my Snow Leopard partition was disk2s2, so that command is right for me. You should replace the disk2s2 portion of the command with whatever you noted as the portion of your thumb drive that contains the Snow Leopard installer.

5. Now we’re going to place an awesome, custom EFI bootloader on your thumb drive that lets us load into the installer (and into Snow Leopard in general). So first, head over to netkas.org and download the bootloader from the bootloader link. Make sure you download it somewhere convenient. (Again, I’ve just downloaded it to my Desktop.) Now head back into Terminal, where we’re going to copy the boot file to your thumb drive. (One might think that you could just do this using Finder via drag-and-drop, but in this case, doing it via Terminal is necessary.) So, in Terminal, your command should look similar to this:sudo cp /Users/adam/Desktop/boot /Volumes/HackintoshInstall
   The easiest way to do this is simply type in sudo cp , (1) drag and drop the boot file into Terminal, then (2) drag and drop your mounted thumb drive from the desktop into Terminal. (The drag-and-drop method is a quick Terminal trick that pastes the full path to each file or directory.) After that, simply hit Enter. (Enter your password if necessary.)
6. I know it seems like we’ve already run a marathon, but you’ve got one last step and then it’s relatively smooth sailing from here on. Download Extra.zip, unzip the file, and then drag and drop the Extra folder into your thumb drive. Nothing fancy, a simple drag and drop with your trusty old mouse will do. Once you’ve done that, open up your thumb drive and verify that it looks something like the screenshot below. (Notice the Extra folder, the boot file, and the OS X installer.)

Take a deep breath. By this time, you’ve completed all the hard work. Now it’s time to boot up your machine, tweak your BIOS settings so they’re ready for your OS X install, and then it’s smooth sailing.

Step 2: Set Your BIOS

Before you can boot into or install OS X on your Hackintosh, you’ve got to make some small adjustments to your BIOS. Rather than taking you step by step through every change you need to make, I’ve simply snapped a picture of the relevant BIOS screens and added some notes. Just click through these images and make sure your BIOS settings match up.

MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T) Page One

MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T) Page 2

MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T) Page 3

Standard CMOS Settings
Don’t think there’s anything all that special here.

Advanced BIOS Features
The first entry—Hard Disk Boot Priority—is where you set your thumb drive as the first drive to boot when you’re running the installer.

Set Your Hard Disk Boot Priority
This is a particularly important setting—when you’re booting into the Snow Leopard installer on your thumb drive, make sure that your thumb drive (which should be inserted) is set as the top boot disk. If you decide to add the EFI bootloader to your hard drive after you complete the install, you’ll want to set that hard drive as first in the boot priority.

Integrated Peripherals
The AHCI setting is particularly important, but make sure the rest match up. The last two not pictured are also set to Enabled.

Power Management Setup
S3 is especially important if you want Sleep to work on your Hack.

Step 3: Install Snow Leopard

If you’ve made it this far, the hard part is over. Now it’s time to install Snow Leopard, which—unlike what we’ve done so far—is extremely easy.

Make sure you’ve set the boot priority in your BIOS to boot from your thumb drive (you can see how in this pic), then simply plug your prepared thumb drive into your Hackintosh and power it up. Since screenshots aren’t really an option—and since it’s a fairly easy process—my install instructions come in video format:

The quick version goes like this: Boot into the Snow Leopard installer, format the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to (go to Utilities -> Disk Utility, then click on the drive, select 1 Partition, Mac OS X Journaled (Case-Sensitive), give it a name, and make sure GUID Partition Table is set in the Options. After you Apply the new partition, go back to the installer and install like normal to that drive. When you reboot after the install completes, press the arrow keys at the graphical boot menu and select the drive you just installed Snow Leopard to.

A Few Final Tweaks

You’ll notice that, the first time Snow Leopard boots up, you’re not enjoying any sound along with that snazzy intro video. We’ve got one small, but very simple tweak to make to get sound up and running. Here’s how it works:

1. Download the Kext Utility, then download this audio kext (a kext is kind of the Mac equivalent of a driver) and unzip it to your Desktop. Once you’ve got both in front of you, drag and drop the ALC889.Fix.kext file onto the Kext Utility. You’ll be prompted to enter your password, so go ahead and do that when you’re prompted.
2. Once the Kext Utility finishes running, open up Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app). Once it loads up, (1) click on your Snow Leopard drive (mine’s called Hack Leopard), then (2) click Repair Disk Permissions.
3. Once Disk Utility finishes repairing your disk permissions, just restart. After your computer reboots, your audio should be working like a charm. (If not, open up Sound in your System Preferences and try changing the Output device.)

As things stand on your system right now, you need to have your thumb drive plugged in every time you reboot in order to load the bootloader that allows your Hackintosh to load OS X. There are certain benefits to this (for example, right now you could quite likely unplug this hard drive from your Hackintosh, plug it into a Mac Pro, and it would work just fine), but it can also be a bit of a hassle. At this point, though, you can load the bootloader and other necessary components onto the Snow Leopard hard drive and change that drive to your primary boot drive in your BIOS. All you’ve got to do is head back to the step-by-step bootloader guide above and repeat every step, except this time you’re applying each step to your hard drive rather than your thumb drive.

Congratulations! You’ve Got a Fully Functional Hackintosh

“But for realz,” you ask, “does it actually work well?”

I’ve been using one or another Hackintosh as my main computer for two years now, and while I’ve run into the occasional bump in the road, they’ve generally run extremely well. In fact, things just seem to keep on getting better and better and the current build I’m running (the one I walked you through above) feels like the fastest, most stable build to date.

That’s not to say that you won’t experience an occasional kernel panic—you may very well. But I get crashes on my MacBook Pro, too, and I’ve never felt that my current Hack Pro has any more problems than any other proper Mac I’ve used on a regular basis. That may seem a bit crazy, but it’s true.

As for upgrading—often, you’ll be able to upgrade your Hack Pro without any problems. That said, it’s something you normally need to check on beforehand and you should take all of the upgrade precautions before giving it a go.

* OS X boots in a different way than, say, Windows, using a boot tool called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). On store-bought Macs, EFI is loaded on the hardware by default (in fact, in place of the standard BIOS most of us are used to). In order to boot OS X on our non-factory Macs, we need to create our own custom path to EFI.

Huge thanks to stellarola, Lorne, and wiredbynature for all their help in getting me up to speed on installing Snow Leopard on a Hackintosh PC. The Hackintosh community is large and active, and they are awesome.

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