Or maybe it should be called an iHack? Hack Pro?
In any case, I’m not sure it’s worth what would turn out to be about 12 hours of work to save a few hundred bucks.
But it’s good for future reference:
http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php
Based on a recommendation from a friend, and based on my own searching, I found this.
http://www.infrant.com/wiki/index.php/Home
What I like: you can load it up with your own disks easily. It’s owned by netgear, and I’ve always had good luck with their networking products (routers, switches). It does apple file sharing as well as SMB.
I upgraded my MacBook OS to Leopard, and everything worked pretty well until I tried to use my Sprint EVDO card. In Leopard, the “Internet Connect” utility is gone and the functionality has been moved into the regular network preferences. There was a device in the network prefs window, but it said “not connected” and it would not connect.
I tried reading some EVDO forums and apple support forums, and they were all very vague and not helpful.
I ended up randomly trying a bunch of things, and here’s what worked for me:
1. remove the novatel USB device.
2. downloaded the latest driver package for Mac OS X from Sprint. It says it is for Tiger (10.4) but it seems to work.
3. I deleted (sudo rm -rf) all the Novatel files from /System/Library/Extentions. Reboot.
4. Run the mpkg installer for the sprint drivers.
5. Reboot.
6. Open network preferences; plug in the Novatel device; click “+” and add “Novatel CDMA” device.
7. Click “Advanced” button. Change vendor to Novatel and Model to CDMA.
8. Click “Connect” and it works.
Note that I had previously activated this device when my MacBook was running Tiger, so I didn’t have to do any activation.
I do not like Javascript alerts(). There are a number of big problems with them:
They are modal, and lock up the entire web browser in most implementations. Actually, all that I am aware of. Users can’t hit the “back button” or even quit or close their browser normally when they are active. It’s an obnoxious seizure of control by a program or website. It says: “Hey user, I am so important that I’m not going to let you do anything else until you deal with me.” This might have had some twisted justification when people didn’t use tabbed browsing. But now a browser is a container for multiple applications. Imagine if a modal dialog from one application on your computer locked out access to all the others. That would suck, no?
Furthermore, most alerts don’t even give users more choices than “OK.” They are just messages that the web site programmer has decided you REALLY MUST READ RIGHT NOW, and TELL ME WHEN YOU ARE DONE READING IT. Or no more fun for you. Javascript alerts are lazy alternatives to error pages. If you really want a user to read your error message, show them a page with nothing on it except your message, with a link back to continue. At least they can use the back button.
You don’t really have any idea what a web browser implementation of alerts is going to be like. Sure, you know what MSIE will do, and maybe you also know firefox. What about Safari? Opera on Linux? A mobile browser? What about somebody with dual monitors? It’s very likely, that in many cases, an alert box will not look like the rest of your site, and might even end up hidden behind another window. That’s a fun experience for a user.
Then there is the worst case, the one that costs your business its marginal revenue and profits. That’s what I ran into today, and it prompted this rant. Check out this screen:
Looks pretty harmless right? I should just fix my credit card number and move on. But no, this is an infinite loop of JS alerts. I click OK, and I get the same error again. I can’t go back, because the dialog is modal and has locked out all browser controls. I can’t go forward. I have to actually kill the browser and start over. But guess what? I’m feeling vindictive and angry so I go to amazon and pay $20 more for my hard drives. Petty, but satisfying.
