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The Dumbing Down of osx86


Hagar
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Too many people are signing up to the forum and have downloaded random distribution X and create a new topic basically begging somebody to do all the work for them.

 

I joined this forum in 2005 when all this was new and scary. I downloaded deadmoo. I trashed my system several times and learned as I went along. I'm no expert now. I still do things wrong and I'm still unsure about things. But I read threads and learn. I don't expect people to bend over backwards to give me a perfect 100% solution for my system. If something doesn't work then I either look for a solution that somebody else has found, or I work it out myself.

 

These days every tech website has written guides to installing OSX on a standard PC or laptop. This has unfortunately given the impression to many people that OSX is easy peasy and works on any PC just like Windows does. When it doesn't work, these people scream and moan on the forums here demanding to know why it doesn't work and why member X won't help them 3 seconds after they post a thread. People need to understand that they should look at OSX86 in the same way they look at Linux. That is, it may work perfectly but you may have to tinker with it to get it fully working. Unfortunately people don't.

 

I sound like a moaning git, lol

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  • 2 years later...
  • 2 months later...

looking back at my older posts i am ashamed, i have made more progress in 3 days from sitting down and reading basics then i have in months asking other people when all the answers are in front of me.

 

however thanks to the mass of n00b questions, when i have a simple problem, i never get a response. stuff like, i followed the correct procedure, but now i need to develop a work around because im foolish and choose to work with a laptop rather then save up for custom build.

 

Its very disheartening to answer other peoples questions over and over thats why we have the new users lounge, the problem is luck, some are lucky and can get quite far without a kp and feel like they are gods, only to crash and have no idea what to do to recover.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have read most of the above posts and want to give another view from the perspective of someone who has no hackintosh experience and has only recently installed a mac VM to play with.

 

I can understand the feelings that those you have helped, have it easy and sometimes are ungrateful: On some of the other forums I read I am gobsmacked by some peps attitude to others helping them and sometimes astounded that despite questions being asked rudely, thanks not being given or carefully crafted replies being ignored that those who answer the questions continue to do so: So a general Thank you to all those who do help.

I would like to point out those who run the forum and answer the questions are in a very different place to many who join later. Those who lead the way are often much more involved in the subject, have different interests and uses for the forum and generally not the same as those of us who come later. It is a question for the forum moderators whether and how much the Forum changes to meet the needs of it's newer members but that they have different needs seems clear and whilst it is rare that those needs are incompatible it does seem to cause some friction.

 

I like the questionnaires on this site - they fulfil an important need in that they prevent the posting of questions where the answer is unlikely to be understood. I also like FAQ's not only do they give answers, they are there to be pointed to when a question is asked which has been answered and would like to see many more replies which simply say - 'read the faq' but to simply say 'google it' seems to miss the issue which is not that the information is not available - experience tells us that google has pretty much all the answers, no the issue is being able to sift and sort that information so that it becomes meaningful and this is sometimes not easy to do especially when you are ignorant of the subject. (I once found someone who couldn't get his machine to sleep, reading up on the processors microcode, despite the fact that he had no idea what microprogramming was.)

 

I would like to remind those of you who do know your subjects that you are standing on the shoulders of giants; those who coded in binary laid the foundation for assembly language programmers and they in turn made it possible to work in higher level languages, who in turn... Now if we were to ask all those who write in a current language to go back and learn to code in binary there would be little progress: Instead they need to know something about how computers work and can ignore much of what went before. Now if those who wish to help others on this site simply put new users through the same training as they went thru then a great deal of time will be lost simply repeating the lessons, now some of these lessons may be valuable, others less so - eg. do I really need to learn how to edit DSDT's to build my hackintosh or will an understanding of DSDT's suffice? I cannot answer that question but those of you who have been thru the process and know something of my needs might be better able to judge and likewise for a million other questions most of which I might not even know how to ask. The point being that whilst you know and I dont, it really has to be you that tells me what is important but to say I should do the same as you did is probably not right; for once a solution is found there is a question whether those who come later have to discover it again or can be told about it and why it works.

 

There is generally nothing wrong with wanting the easy path thru a particular problem and if you (as those who know) think us (those who dont know) ought to learn something for ourselves then we must accept your opinion all I ask is that you consider what it is we ought to know and how best for us to learn that lesson rather than simply thinking that we should do what you did to know all you know.

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How did we learn? Experience. Experimenting. Studying...

I believe this recipe can still work nowadays.

There is also an "easier" route which works just fine: study very carefully what hardware works best and then build your own hack.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...

I have never even tried to get OS X running on a PC... not yet.

 

I am nearly complete with my G5 mod. I am going to install some flavor of OS X on it in a Virtual Machine. The tools that I have available are:

10.5 full install CD

my brain

the forums here and elsewhere

 

I have been a 'techie' for many, many years. I enjoy the challenge as much as I do the end result. The first thing I'm gonna do is try it out. Play around, Tinker. When I run into problems - I'll try to work them out for myself first. The guts of my hackintosh may or may not be unique, so I'll see what I can do on my own first. Because of personal requirements, I have to use a VM. Which one will be best? Dunno - but I'll figure it out as I go. If I get to a place where I am banging my head against a wall :wallbash: then I'll start my search. I think I'll find what I need by using that second tool I have. If, by some small chance, I have a truly unique problem - then its time to start posting. Because the chances of my problem being unique are so slim, but rather someone has also ran into that problem and just didn't post it. That will spur some people to reply with a "Whoops! I ran into problem X and here is the solution!" And if I cant find the solution that way, then I get creative! Hopefully I can adapt some other fixes that others have posted, or come up with my own - may even have to *gasp* do some simple coding. And if I do come up with a truly unique problem, and I find a fix all by myself - then I'll be sure to post that fix right here on the forums.

 

This is a community after all. I would hope that all here are willing to share their experiences, and I would also hope that all here are willing to do a little leg work themselves and find where others have shared their experiences.

 

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the {InsanelyMac forums}

Ronald Regan... sorta

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Well, I think some of the points are valid. There are a lot of people who don't have a brain.

However, sometimes you have people who just don't have time to read and hours worth of material or more. I'm one. It isn't that I don't want to read it (actually I'd love to) but I can't, don't have the time. I need a simple solution that doesn't take a lot of time.

 

Sure, I could just buy a mac, but at the same time... there is nothing wrong with making the OSx86 tools concise and foolproof.

There are some people that are doing that very well, and then there are some people who want you to understand every little detail of what went on in creating the tool to the point where you could practically write it yourself.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My hack is for example a mindless yet brilliant auto tool that will help you do a lot of things without thinking, but when it doesn't work, you could just try another tool. but you shouldn't, I studied the documentation then ditched the tool and now compile os X installers by hand, I previously couldn't imagine compiling an OS X installer myself, but what we must remember is that if they can make a tool that does it why can't i do it by hand.

 

Another great example would be tools that cost money yet they do what a command line does, go figure, if your like me and always make syntax errors then i goes you might want to consider it, but where do you learn from that?

 

Lets summarise with the greatest example of something that is dumbed down, OS X is the ultimate example, its so distant from its unix roots that i doubt many people know that it is related to linux or even what linux is in mainstream culture, This is simply because apple do the i will do this for you thing so well, its a blessing and a curse. i think I'm trying to say that if you want to know OS X you must learn Linux then expect to add weird commercial restrictions and a splash of mindlessness and beauty and there you have it.

 

Yes i am a fan of auto tools, OS X and other things that stop me thinking to hard. who knows maybe one day i will farther some vegetable children.

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How did we learn? Experience. Experimenting. Studying...

I believe this recipe can still work nowadays.

There is also an "easier" route which works just fine: study very carefully what hardware works best and then build your own hack.

 

+1

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