Mac OS X86 Test Drive

I recently ‘got’ the mac OS (intel’s build) and thought to give it a try (Mac OS X 10.4.1). The installation worked like a charm! It took me like 30 minutes to install on an old 10GB HDD that i had. The setup and familiarization with the system was easy enough. You can notice though that mac OS is build to help you get your work done easy and fast!

Update 30/10/05: Fullscreen Video playback officially sucks! I installed VLC since Quicktime wasn’t able to play any of my DivX/XviD movies. Windowed playback works just fine though! Those VESA drivers really downgrade the whole mac experience

The default installation loaded everything on its kernel except my graphic card and audio chipset. Thanks to the osx86project though i managed to load the sound’s kernel extensions. iTunes plays my mp3s perfectly after i changed some properties. As for my nVidia FX-5200 the MacVidia project did a pretty good job on some generic driver support. Still in Alpha though..
I then downloaded Firefox for Mac but it was too slow. Andreas then told me that i had to use the intel’s compiled version. I wiki’d it up and voila. The mighty fox runs smoothly!
I also tried the cyberduck ftp client to upload some screenshots. Again worked without a problem!
For a complete list of mac OS x86 apps check the wiki here. Here’s some screenshots of my system

Conclusion:
It looks/run pretty good on my P4@2.5GHz (512MB RAM) pc! The official release will definetely change the whole Microsoft Monopoly! Let’s just hope people will want to try to ‘think different‘ !

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 29th, 2005 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Mac OS X86 Test Drive”

  1. 1 bit said:

    nice review, although to get the most out of this operating system you will need to get your hands on one of the propriatory machines that apple sells.

    Apple offers a student discount for ibooks if anyone is interested, its around 10% but still.

    George

    October 29th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
  2. 2 Marios Tziortzis said:

    I’ve worked on the real thing and its behaviour is definetely noticable! No both file management processing and ofcourse graphic rendering..But its an i386 CPU and a VESA display adapter! As i said, just give it some time(:

    October 30th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
  3. 3 Andreas Louca said:

    Actually I don’t think it needs time, it needs propiertary Apple machines (or hacked video drivers, like Intel 915 VGA drivers). Since Intel MacOSX has been around since the first time it was released, although kept secret.

    Let’s not forget that OpenStep (which MacOSX is based on to) was available for x86 since its birth.

    November 1st, 2005 at 7:28 pm

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