So on to what I’ve learned from getting hacked. I’ve learned that Windows is not to be trusted with anything. I’m still not sure whether I got the virus by transferring a file from another computer or if it was from a Vista security hole.
My experience with my Hackintosh has been very positive, except it (a Dell Mini 10v) doesn’t get anywhere near the battery life of my Samsung NC310. It doesn’t auto-dim the screen when on battery power.
It also has problems with hibernation/safe sleep. I’m getting the message “hibernation image too old” and this is after I had to use the pmset command in Terminal. Is there really no menu setting for this in OS X? I have no problem going into the command line, but I’d expect Apple to have some shiny, lickable interface for this.
Firefox 3.6 is almost unbearably slow on this. Chrome feels more or less like a desktop browser if you reasonably limit your tabs. Safari is fine, but not quite as peppy as Chrome.
Two-finger vertical scrolling works, which is nice, but the Dell Mini 10V’s trackpad is a bit uncomfortably small. I can’t get horizontal gestures, three-finger gestures, or pinch and zoom to work, but maybe this is possible and I’m just not doing it right.
I’m sure that a lot of these problems could be solved with fairly simple tweaks. I haven’t had time to research it as I’m working hard on the new version of Yodelscope. I didn’t even hack this Hackintosh myself, which is shameful to my nerd status. An Apple mega-nerd friend of mine gave it to me to play with Apple’s various dev kits (He also makes an iPhone app called How Did I Get Home? which you should definitely check out). I will get around to turning this thing into a triple-booting little beast one of these days.
I also ran across this really interesting Cult of Mac interview with former Apple CEO John Sculley. I’m too attached to the idea(l)s of open source to join the Mac (or more appropriately Apple) cult, but this article certainly does help cement Jobs’ mythical status. As a young nerd, I read a lot about Apple, but many things focused on Steve Wozniak’s technical genius rather than the organizational/design genius of Jobs. Call me culturally clueless, but this interview is what first drew this to my attention.