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  • sHARD>>
    Good news for those on the virtualization front, Parallels has released a final version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, after months of eager testing by users. Offering high performance taking advantage of the virtualization features built into the Core processors, it allows users to run various operating systems, inlcuding Windows and Linux, at the same time as native OS X, similar to VMWare software. It's currently availible for an introductory price of $49.99 for 30 days. Registration gets you a free 15-day trial. After an exciting beta test, hopefully this will offer a nice Windows in OS X experience.
  • sHARD>>

    One Year of OSx86

    By sHARD>>, in OSx86,

    It was one year ago today that Steve Jobs announced the transition to Intel-based Macintosh computers during his WWDC 2005 keynote, ending years of Marklar rumors and speculation. It closed the era of the PowerPC, and ushered in a new period for Apple, one with Windows on Macs, standard PC hardware, and increasing sales. Even with all the fanfare, we could never have dreamt exactly what these changes meant: the death of the PowerMac, OS X on normal PCs, and the fastest Macs on the planet. Whether it's "Macintel", "Mactel", or "Intel Mac", it stirred a world of discussion - and publicity - for Apple. Jobs picked a fitting day for such an announcement, drawing comparisons to D-Day, a battle which turned the tide against the Nazis during WWII. Will the Intel Mac turn the tide on the commodity PC maker? We'll have to wait and see.
     
    Here's to a year of Intel Macs.
  • Swad
    Almost a year ago, the idea for this site began: first with a wiki, then with a forum, and finally a news blog. The computing world has changed drastically in that year - OS X started running on PCs, Apple introduced its new Intel Macs - and our site has changed with it. Since it was started as a place to discuss everything relating to x86 Macs, it has (famously) been home to many hacking OS X for their x86 hardware, as well as a large number of Intel Mac owners.
     
    In order to stay at the cutting edge of this development, we’ve been talking with many of you over the past few months regarding how we can make the site better. We’ve listened to your suggestions and come up with a plan that will help the site be more relevant not only today, but in the future... to whatever exciting places that takes us.
     
    On July 4th, we’re going to transition this site into a more compartmentalized design, each area giving very focused attention to specific areas. It will be made up of 3 parts: The OSx86 Project, TwinMac, and the forum with its awesome new name, Insanely Mac (more on that in a second).
     
    The OSx86 Project
    Everything you’ve loved in the past... just a lot clearer, more reliable, and easier to access.
     
    98% of the folks who visit the wiki are looking for ways to install OS X on their PC. So we’re going to make it much easier to find what you’re looking for. The entire osx86project.org domain will be dedicated to OS X on PCs, which means more information at your fingertips. We’re going to totally redesign the wiki and create teams of users to patrol the pages to make sure the information posted is legitimate.
     
    The news blog and the forum will be shifted to Insanely Mac (see below) for clarity and simplicity's sake (doesn't it make sense to make sure the OSx86 domain is actually about OSx86?)
     
    TwinMac
    Home of everything Intel Mac.
     
    Just before Steve Jobs introduced the Intel Macs in January, several of us began a not-so-covert effort to come up with a dual booting guide for just about every situation. Except EFI. Since we thought the Macintels would look a lot like their pre-release brethren, we tailored the guides to things like GRUB, Acronis loader, etc.
     
    While all our work was for naught, Apple soon came out with their own solution in Boot Camp. Parallels was introduced to run XP in OS X. Now we had something new to write about.
     
    So expect some simple, easy to follow guides at TwinMac to get the most out of your Macintel. We hope to have this site fully up and running by the end of the summer.
     
    Insanely Mac
    Not afraid to think differently. Or crazily.
     
    Over the past few months we’ve looked at every aspect of the forum and see what we liked and what needed improvement. The rapid changes in the Mac world had left the forum structure a little less that intuitive, but the content itself - and the helpful/respectful attitude - was great. We’ve integrated some innovative features in response to feedback from members, like The X Labs, and we wanted to continue that legacy.
     
    So we decided to organize the forum based on the way our community uses it... and throw in a lot of cool features at the same time. Oh, and did we mention a new skin? Besides a new structure (which you can view and discuss here), we’re working on including blogs available for all users and a customizable wed-based RSS reader (to get your news fix on the go).
     
    The most important change is a great system of news posting that means a lot more deep Mac and Intel tech news… with much of it submitted by you. The best way to describe it is more OSx86 Project news + deep Mac Tech news (none of the fluffy Apple news - we’re talking kernels, kexts, and hacks here) + news that we as a community choose. I’m really excited about this part - it may just become your main Mac news source.
     
    We’ve got so many improvements lined up for the forum that we decided it should have its own name – Insanely Mac. All the great OSx86 help and discussion will be there along with the large number of Macintel owners, but the new name better fits the things we love about the forum: new and innovative (and occasionally crazy) ways of approaching Macs and OS X. The idea that unites our community is our desire to be the ones who look at the world differently and don’t settle for existing solutions. Crazy? Maybe. But man, is it fun.
     
    Timeline
     
    We hope you’ll enjoy these improvements as we roll them out this summer. The massive reorganization of the forum, along with rolling out of the Insanely Mac domain (don’t worry - all your old links will still work), will happen on our birthday, July 4th. An “independance day” of our own if you like. Other features will be introduced after that.
     
    We’ll also be asking for some help, whether it be for teams of wiki moderators or “gurus” to give aid to users in the forum. After all, it’s community involvement that makes us just that - a community.
     
    Thanks for making this site what it has become in the past year. Here’s hoping for many more.
  • Swad

    New Forum Structure

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    This is the second or third draft of the new structure of our forum, launched in a few weeks. Check out this thread for more information about all the features and the new name, Insanely Mac. This thread is for you to comment, ask questions, and make suggestions!
     
    Notes:
    1. This may look like a lot of forums, but it'll feel much smaller in real life.
    2. Subforums are denoted with a "-"
    3. Front Page News will be a new forum where users will post news stories they'd like to see on the Front Page. Other users will rate the stories and if it gets enough votes, it'll hop up to the front page. Much like if neowin and digg had a lovechild...
    4. The major non-english languages will have their own subforum.
     
    Enjoy!
     
    --------------------------------------------
     
    Discuss and Learn
    Front Page News (User submitted news)
    Apple Opinions and Discussion
    The Great Debates (See post below)
    Buying Questions, Reviews, and Recommendations (and coupons)
    Tutorials (The Genius Bar)
    Windows Discussion
    *nix
    -Darwin
    Internet(s), Servers, and Networks
     
    OSx86
    OSx86 Installation
    -Multibooting
    Patches and Fixes
    PC Hardware and Drivers
     
    Macintosh
    Apple Computers
    Mac Accessories
    Dual Booting
    -Virtualization
     
    OS X
    Applications
    iLife + iPod
    Gaming
    Betas and Old OSs
    Programming and Development
    The X Labs
     
    Customization
    Mods and Overclocking
    -Benchmarks
    Wallpapers, Icons, Themes, and Skins
    Tweaks and Hacks
    -AppleScript and Automator
     
    Multimedia
    Pro Video
    Pro Audio and Music
    Pro Photography
    Web and Graphical Design
     
    The X Labs
     
    Random
    Forum Info
    Real Life
    Pop Culture Poparazzi (Movies, Music, TV, etc.)
    Laughs
    Thunderdome
    Marketplace
    Website Invitiation Exchange
     
    IRC Chat
     
    Non English
    -Spanish
    -French
    -German
    -Italian
    -Japanese
    -Russian
  • Metrogirl

    Pirate Bay Sunk

    By Metrogirl, in OSx86,

    Today "The Pirate Bay", the torrent site for which there has been a whole timber-shivering treasure-chest-full of euphemisms in these pages, was raided by Swedish police and the entire server farm carted away in trucks, along with the arrest of two of the operators.
     
    The Pirate Bay had long enjoyed a relative immunity from prosecution under Swedish law due to the inability of legislation to prove that hosting links and not illegal software per se was actually a contravention of statute. However it appears that management of the torrent swarm was finally considered enough to cause the action on the grounds that the servers were 'Assisting Breach of Copyright Law'. It will be a tough fight for prosecutors; the legality of indirect linking has never been tested in Swedish law and there is no concept of torrent mechanism, swarm management or the relevant protocol in existing legislation.
     
    The entertainment industry is already crowing about this 'victory for the paying public'. A spokesman is alleged to have said that the police investigation will take considerable time, and the servers will not be released until the case is closed. Without their servers, piratebay.org will effectively be unable to continue, but their ISP has allowed them to retain a news page with scant details and links to more information on Slyck, Slashdot and other news sites. In related action, police also took servers hosting Piratbyran, a public information site which has been supporting the argument for legality of torrent hosting in Sweden.
     
    The most worrying aspect of this appears to be that the Swedish police themselves could not say whether a crime had been committed or not; they appear to have the power to seize computers to establish whether a crime exists. In many jurisdictions, such action would be unthinkable. If a warrant can be issued without clear evidence of an identified transgression, the future looks bleak indeed.
     
    More detail is on Slyck.
  • sHARD>>
    A joke, a mistake, or a sign of things to come? Engadget is reporting that Dell has now added an 'Apple OS X' OS option to many of their machines' driver download pages. While Dell has previously expressed interest in OS X on their machines, the actions of Steve Jobs indicate such a move is unlikely. Shifting us futher into hoax territory, we find that all of the downloads present for 'OS X' aren't actually compatable with the operating system. Dell currently offers OS X drivers for their printers, and in all likelyhood they have simply made a mistake while making site adjustments. But we can dream, can't we?
  • Swad

    Free .mac-style storage

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    You remember back in the day when everything on the Internet was free (circa 1994-1998)? My local library offered free internet and email access through telnet – it was glorious. Ah, Web 0.9.23.6 Beta.
     
    These days we’ve got the so-called Web 2.0 which is supposed to relive those days with tons of more free stuff, along with gradients sprinkled everywhere and HUGE buttons thrown in.
     
    So, in my eternal quest for free stuff, I ran across this "hack" for OS X and immediately fell in love. You can now use box.net (very Web 2.0) just like you use .mac… except box.net gives you a gig of space for free and more space if you invite friends to sign up (with a link like the one I just used... although this post isn't about me getting invitations). All you have to do is sign up, set up a DAV on your Mac, give it your login name (for the secure connection) and you're ready to go. UneasySilence has some screenshots.
     
    You can access all your files online, share them with friends, and there’s even a Windows based client for cross-OS sharing. I signed up yesterday and have been very impressed so far... and the price is certainly right.
     
    Gotta love free stuff. Especially when it’s storage space!
     
    Edit: If you're going to sign up, use one of the invitation links further down in the thread so that others (that need it) can get upgraded to 5 GB. Feel free to post your own code once signed up.
  • sHARD>>
    We've recently recieved word that CrossOver Office for Intel Macs has hit alpha 1, and has been made availible for limited public testing. It comes as a standard OS X package, and, while it requires X11, it appears that CodeWeavers is working to eliminate this dependency. After installation, users simply click on a Windows .exe file to launch it. CrossOver Office has a sort of start menu which resembles it's Windows counter-part, allowing users to easily launch installed Windows software. Reportedly, CrossOver Office will also support the creation of a Macintosh application wrapper of sorts. This allows for Windows programs to appear in your standard Applications window. While games aren't working well yet, it seems that Office applications are fairly functional. Half-Life 2 also appears to be a development support priority. Rounding it out, cut and paste sharing, as well as Windows applications on the dock, appear to work. While this software is still alpha and obviously experiences it's share of crashes and kernel panics, this strong feature list is very promising. More details as we have them...
  • Swad

    Final Cut Pro on a MacBook

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    Steve: Man, those new MacBooks are bitchin' just like their older bros.

    You: Yeah, I'm down with the magnetic latch and the pimp new keyboard. But what about that ghetto integrated graphics, Steve?

    Steve: I'm right there wit-cha, man. Did you know that the MacBook (screw dat "power" namin' {censored}) can run Final Cut Pro?

    You: Fo shizzle?

    Steve: True. Now you can do pro video editing without forking over a lot of bling.

    You: 'ait.

    Steve: Peace.

    As it turns out, the MacBook can run Final Cut Pro. One site put it to the test to see how it would fare:

    When I first got ahold of a MacBook Pro last month, I was shocked by its capability to beat out desktop G5 systems consistently. But I was doubly shocked to see such dramatic results from the newer and lower-end 2.0 GHz MacBook as well. After all, this is not just a notebook competing with a fairly current desktop system, but a consumer-level notebook at that.

    Normally you don't even think about running benchmarks of professional-level creative software on a laptop against desktops, and certainly not a laptop targeted toward consumers. But in the vast majority of tests, the MacBook beat out the desktop system and certainly proved itself competition for all but the highest-end (G5 Quad) Mac systems on the market today.

    Again, like the MacBook Pro, the 2.0 GHz 13-inch MacBook proves a thoroughly viable machine for users of Final Cut Studio.
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