10.4.4 on T42p 14"

[asiafish]

Well my T42p is sold, and the 15" PowerBook G4 that replaced it is here. The sale of my T42p took a while, and while I was waiting I tried to configure my T42p as an OS X machine in the hope of having fast Intel power and a Trackpoint in my office OS X machine.

I found an ISO image of the hacked 10.4.4 installable DVD and just as advertised, it installed onto the T42p without any hassle, the entire process taking just over 20 minutes. The Trackpoint worked, though clearly the OS X mouse driver was optimized for the touchpad, which worked far better.

Sound, wireless (10.4.4 thought the Atheros was a standard Airport Extreme card) and ethernet all worked without any problems, as did CD burning. I didn't try to watch a DVD because there were video issues that I was unable to resolve.

Video was the only serious complaint, and had video worked well, I would likely have been happy with the T42p instead of the PowerBook as my OS X machine for office use. The problem was that to get 1440X1050 resolution meant hacking the ATI display driver, and once hacked, while I gained the high resolution, I lost support for CoreImage and Quartz Extreme. Also, regardless of whether I had high resolution without the features enabled, or low resolution (1024X768) with the features enabled, there were always artifacts on the screen that took what in my opinion is a very pretty GUI and made it annoying to use.

[dxben]

I am about to order a T60p with the hopes of using OSX as a primary OS at some point in the near future.

I was originally going to go with a 14" version, but it sounds like for OSX purposes that it just can't be cleanly done without the issues mentioned in this thread.

Are there any known issues with the 15" T60p? I am not sure, but aren't there two different screen types for the 15" that have different resolutions? Any issues with either of them?

[dxben]

I found an ISO image of the hacked 10.4.4 installable DVD and just as advertised, it installed onto the T42p without any hassle, the entire process taking just over 20 minutes. The Trackpoint worked, though clearly the OS X mouse driver was optimized for the touchpad, which worked far better.

Is there a way to do all this without a hacked ISO image? Isn't there an inherint security risk in using a hacked OS? Not to mention, what are the legal issues? How can I do this legally? Do I just buy a license for OSX from Apple and then apply various patches?

Are these hacks well publicized and scrutinized for security vulnerabilities?

[JEBB]

"I am about to order a T60p with the hopes of using OSX as a primary OS at some point in the near future. "

Is you motto: "Anything worth doing is worth doing the hard way." ?

Today you can buy any of several Macs that will run Windows as well as a T60p and MacOSX as well as can be done.

[dxben]

True. I'm just figuring out there seems to be no clean legal way of doing this on a PC anyway.

[asiafish]

There is no clean way to do it. I already own an OSX Tiger family pack, so I argue that I already own the license, and am just trying to put it on the machine of my choice.

Honestly, no ThinkPad will, at current, run OS X as well as a Mac does. The T60 series apparently have no sound, and I'm not sure if the video issues have been resolved. Be sure to get the Atheros wifi card as the Intel cards aren't recognized.

With Apple's Boot Camp software, it is much easier and cleaner to run Windows on a MacBook Pro than it is to run OS X on a ThinkPad.

[dxben]

How far off is sound from being figured out? Or is this just not going to happen? What about if adding a PCMCIA sound card option?

[asiafish]

Sound works great on the T4x, though unless Apple adopts the same sound hardware as the T60, don't ever expect native support.

[dxben]

that's why I am placing some hope in a expressport external audio card, like the pcmcia card made by creative labs. if an isv makes one with drivers for osx then it could solve the problem does anything like this exist right now for apple? with sound and vide working I think the picture is complete.

[asiafish]

Not that I know of. Macs have always had excellent sound on board, so really no market for a PCMCIA audio card. There are many desktop sound cards that are made for the Mac, but these are all high-end professional cards for music pros.

At this point, I think that the MacBook Pro is the idea solution for running Mac and Windows together, but when someone writes ThinkPad specific drivers for OS X it will be a different story.

[dxben]

Well maybe I'll write those drivers. I don't know anything about the OSX driver model but I have worked on drivers for Windows. Depending on how much is known about the hardware, if there are linux drivers for the TP60p soundcard that are open sourced, maybe we can get something done about this.

[asiafish]

Best of luck, would be very nice to make it work. I would have loved a decent video driver for the 14" T42p at SXGA+, but gave up on it.

[briatx]

I'm running 10.4.6 on my T43. After swapping in an atheros wifi card, most things work. Ethernet port does not. Power management and speedstep do not.

Still. I'd rather have a thinkpad and a trackpoint and be limited to 1280 and have some very minor graphical glitches, than have a mac. As far as I know, you can't buy an Apple laptop that does over 1024 until you get into the 2000$ range. Compare to a T43 that has SXGA+ for $1500. You can also get a T60 with SXGA+ for $1500.

The end game of all this is really the commoditization of hardware. Its been going on for a while, and the CPU was the last piece of the puzzle for Apple. Now that Apple has ditched their inferior CPU, theres really no difference in hardware. At least no more difference than any other PC laptop. In a few years Apple will be selling their OS for install on any machine, going head to head with Microsoft. This process has already started. Apple will finally realize that if people are going to install their OS on non-apple machines, then they might as well sell it to them.

This is something they should have done long ago.

[dxben]

briatx, you have a 1400x1050 screen on your T43? Because you should be able to run that native I believe. At least there has been positive confirmation that its possible on the 14" T60p without any glitches. Dunno for sure about the T43 though.

I have a T41p in the meantime, until my T60p gets here.

[briatx]

I've been a little scared to go to 1440 on my T43. I've heard there was bad shearing and stuff, but at 1280 I just get some very minor mouse overlay issues, where you'll click on a window and move the mouse and theres a little pointer sized square that doesn't update.

Not a big deal in my opinion.

The power management stuff is much more important if you need to take it on the go.

[asiafish]

What a lot of people seem to ignore is that on a real Mac there are no glitches. Don't get me wrong, making Mac OS work on a non-Mac was a lot of fun, but if you want power management, excellent video and all of the stability and useability benefits of OS X, an Apple machine is the best bet.

Yes, the MacBook Pro is expensive, but you can also get a terrific OS X experience on a $400 used iBook and have terrific battery life and excellent performance on basic productivity applications.

I replaced my T42p with a G4 PowerBook and while slower for processor-intensive tasks like compiling MP4 videos, its not that much slower (7 hours compared to 5.5 last time I compared a 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook to a 1.8GHz T42p).

The ThinkPad has some terrific hardware features that I miss, such as its battery flexibility and the trackpoint, but the Apples have some delights of their own. The illuminated keyboard, in my opinion, works a bit better than the ThinkLight, which tends to put more glare on the screen than light on the keys.

In short, it was fun getting OS X running on my ThinkPad, but for daily use, a Mac makes a much better Mac than any PC will.

[christopher_wolf]

What a lot of people seem to ignore is that on a real Mac there are no glitches. Don't get me wrong, making Mac OS work on a non-Mac was a lot of fun, but if you want power management, excellent video and all of the stability and useability benefits of OS X, an Apple machine is the best bet.

Yes, the MacBook Pro is expensive, but you can also get a terrific OS X experience on a $400 used iBook and have terrific battery life and excellent performance on basic productivity applications.

I replaced my T42p with a G4 PowerBook and while slower for processor-intensive tasks like compiling MP4 videos, its not that much slower (7 hours compared to 5.5 last time I compared a 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook to a 1.8GHz T42p).

The ThinkPad has some terrific hardware features that I miss, such as its battery flexibility and the trackpoint, but the Apples have some delights of their own. The illuminated keyboard, in my opinion, works a bit better than the ThinkLight, which tends to put more glare on the screen than light on the keys.

In short, it was fun getting OS X running on my ThinkPad, but for daily use, a Mac makes a much better Mac than any PC will.

Why stop at an iBook? Heck, the way Apple is going with churning out hardware, you might as well get a PowerBook...Their prices are coming down, as expected.

[asiafish]

Not really. Refurbished recent-model PowerBooks are still over $1000, though they are very reasonable.

I paid $1200 for a 3-month-old 15" 1.5GHz PowerBook (not the higher resolution model) with 9 months warranty remaining. The 12" PowerBook still sells new at full price, and is $1100 refurbished from Apple. New iBooks are still $1000, which is a terrific deal even though its older technology.

A lot of people bad-mouth the G4 PowerBooks as underpowered, but I honestly disagree. For anything other than games and high-end media production, a G4 PowerBook is a very fast and responsive computer. Doom III runs fine on my 12" PowerBook 1.5GHz, and will likely run even better on my 15" which has the same speed and VRAM, but a better video chipset.

Photoshop 7 on my PowerBook is almost as fast as on the T42p, and more than fast enough to play with the 5MP photos my Canon G5 produces.

The real question is what the computer is for. I use mine for writing, legal research, accounting, legal forms (FileMaker-based database) and entertainment. Except for the variety of games (which an Intel-based MacBook Pro would solve by running Windows), none of the tasks I use it for would significantly faster on Intel OS X, Windows or any other computer or operating system.

[revolutionary_one]

I'm actually beginning to see myself REALLY getting used to to some of the features on OSX.

Howerver, personally, i STILL think OSX is one of the ugliest interfaces ive seen. Of coursek tons of eye candy, but it doesnt compare to the style i can get away with on a linux desktop with much better performance.

HOWEVER, OSX does perform pretty well on most of the intel based platforms. The only hurdle i currently see is hardware detection on a pc platform. otherwise, native apple hw detection is unparalleled.

Sure, I'll replace Linux on my laptop with OSX if it gets released for a pc platform, primarily because I just generally like thinkpads more than powerbooks/macbooks and because in the end hopefully mac will make it work more smoothly than winxp. But ill still use Linux and windows XP on my desktops, sometimes you just need to run specific software and get things done.

right tools for the right job. cant wait till mac releases OSX for pc. Plus, 5 total mouse buttons on a thinkpad vs 1 on a mac will always win

[asiafish]

My absolutely essential application is MS Word, run natively. That means that the only choices are Mac OS X or Windows, and I just refuse to deal with the viruses, spyware and other malware on Windows anymore.

Until there is an MS Word for Linux, which is never, Linux just won't be a viable option.

[briatx]

Well, you can't compare used powerbooks unless you compare them with used thinkpads. I suspect the thinkpad will still have the price / performance edge, but I have no hard numbers to back this up.

I have been told that "Apples hold their resale value..." blah blah.

Anyway, I didn't say that the g4 was underpowered, just that its inferior to intel chips. Even the most hardened Apple zealot has to admit that the powerpc series is inferior now that they have switched to intel cpus. Still, for most things, you're right. People underclock their cpu's to preserve battery while web surfing, emailing, etc. That's what speedstep is for. But it sure is nice to have the power when you need it.

I think you're probably missing the point with glitches on macos on pc's. It is a commoditization of hardware. Right now the differentiation between macs and pc's is a false, manufactured differentiation. At least with PowerPC's you couldn't run Mac code on x86 hardware. Now the differences are merely at the level of other PC laptops. Backlight keyboards (battery drain?), auto adjusting brightness (which at least one reviewer really hated and promptly disabled), magnetic power connectors (which pop off too easily or burn out), lack of 2 mouse buttons, lack of trackpoint (well, can't really single out Apple here, but MacBooks are no Thinkpads) and other warm fuzzies do not justify the price, imo. If I can buy a Thinkpad that runs MacOS at a higher resolution for the same price or less, AND I get a trackpoint-- well thats an easy decision.

I believe that Apple is well down the road of going head to head with MS. They've got to be asking themselves that yeah, selling overpriced hardware is nice, but what if we sold overpriced software to lots of people with regular hardware. I'm pretty confident that Apple will release OSX for PC's. There's just no difference in the hardware anymore (besides drivers) and no reason not to do it.

As far as Macs are invulnerable to spyware, viruses and malware... well, they are not.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31394
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31377

The inq isn't definative by any means, but they're referencing SANS.

[dxben]

There's just no difference in the hardware anymore (besides drivers) and no reason not to do it.

Take it from someone who worked at Microsoft for almost 5 years. The drivers are the most cumbersom part of supporting Windows. I think the drivers are exactly what is keeping Apple from releasing OSX for any PC. The cost required to support such a vast array of shoddy hardware is bigger than you can possibly imagine, and that cost is not only in dollars, but in people. Building up the employee base that knows all that hardware is really not something you do overnight.

I'm not saying Apple won't do it, I'm saying that you are making it sound a lot easier than it really is. The closed platform of the Apple doesn't just benefit its users, it benefits its makers as well.

[asiafish]

The issue isn't whether a used ThinkPad offers comparable performance to a used PowerBook, precisely because those video glitches, lack of support for some functions (sleep anyone) and difficulty in configuration DO matter.

Believe me, if my T42p ran Mac OS X without video glitches, I would have kept it even without the sleep function working. Can it be made to work? Quite probably, but Apple isn't in any rush to make ThinkPad video work, and as a working lawyer, I really don't have the time or inclination to learn driver-level programming just so that I can use an unsupported ThinkPad instead of a genuine, made-by-Apple PowerBook or MacBook Pro.

The ThinkPad does have real advantages over Apple's laptop, just as Apple's laptops have real advantages over the ThinkPad. They are both premium products occupying roughly the same price level (Apple being overpriced is a myth from back in the System 7 days that Windows pundits just won't let die). The current MacBook Pro costs about the same as a comparable T60, will be worse in some specs and better in other. Ditto the old technology, the iBook costs more than the cheapest R-series, but is a much better laptop with lighter weight, smaller size and all of Apple's features except for the Intel processor.

Even the Intel processor just isn't that big of a deal unless you want to run Windows. The G4 was outdated, much as the Pentium-m was outdated. Just like the Intel chips, the G4 reduces its processor speed when not under load, and just like the low-voltage Pentium-m chips, runs on far less power than regular processors and thus returns decent battery life. I get 4:45 on my 12" PowerBook and 3:45 on my 15". In contrast, with a 6 cell battery (PowerBook batteries are 6 cell) my T42p averaged hours, or about the same as the larger PowerBook, and that was configured as I do all of my laptops for longer battery life.

OS X just isn't there yet on high-resolution ThinkPads. Only when it just works, will it be ready. Just working means at a minimum clear, artifact-free video suitable for watching DVD movies, sound and wifi. I had sound and wifi working great on the T42p, but video wasn't acceptable. I've heard that video can be made workable on the T60, but that there is no sound. I've yet to hear of any ThinkPad supporting sleep in OSX, which is so far above any standbye or hibernate function on Windows that it is a major selling point of Apple laptops.

[asiafish]

Anyway, I didn't say that the g4 was underpowered, just that its inferior to intel chips. Even the most hardened Apple zealot has to admit that the powerpc series is inferior now that they have switched to intel cpus.

I think you're probably missing the point with glitches on macos on pc's. It is a commoditization of hardware.

Inferior for what? It is slower, just as the Pentium-m is slower than the CoreDue. Time marches on and technology improves. The 1.5GHz G4 in my two PowerBooks is slower than the 2.1GHz G5 in my iMac. On processor-intensive tasks like encoding video from a DVD to MP4, the 1.8GHz T42p was somewhere in between the PowerBook and the iMac.

As far as missing the point on commoditization of hardware, none of that means anything if the software doesn't run the way its supposed to. That means a crisp display without artifacts left behind by moving the mouse or other movement on screen. If I can't watch a movie on my laptop, I consider there to be something wrong.

Finally, some functions, like the very important sleep, just don't work at all on PC hardware. I honestly don't care if the components are the same if I'm not able to fully use them. The ThinkPad was designed to be the best Windows laptop on the market. The iBook, PowerBook and MacBook Pro were designed to be the best (and only) OS X laptops on the market. Same guts or not, they are still not interchangeable.