MacBook Air Wannabe

Ever since I started hackintoshing netbooks with the MSI Wind first then the HP Mini 1000, I've always wanted to think I was creating my own version of the MacBook Air.

But why ever the MacBook Air and not just the MacBook, for example?

Well, this unbelievably thin laptop by Apple and the Asus EeePC 701 can be considered as contemporaries as they were introduced around the same time - early 2008. That and the fact that both's targeted market (people who want to take portable computing to a new level of greater portability) is the same; well save of course for the difference in budget brackets (premium price vs low cost), have made the MacBook Air and netbooks fave subjects of comparison: I bet like me, you've also seen your share of MacBook Air parodies at youtube featuring a variety of netbooks from different manufacturers being pulled out of the signature Manila envelope!

Well, I've set up my MacBook Mini successfully and although doing the same Manila envelope drama is one idea I find alluring, I'm putting it off for some more substantial tweaking. And yes, it's still MacBook Air related.

So my MacBook Mini's moderate specs aren't that bad compared to the Air in relation to my portable computing requirements...what else do I want?



Remote Disc!

So I know that typing in the ff. command lines in Terminal should do the trick nicely:

$ sudo defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
$ sudo defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Which is what I did and have done...over and over again...but that Remote Disc entry that I so long to see on Finder's sidebar still won't appear. To remedy the problem, I thought I'd log in as root and redo the procedure and as I fired up Finder, what did I discover? Remote Disc is indeed enabled but for some mysterious reason, that only applied to the root user.

Previously, I'd run PrefSetter in my own user account, thinking that would help me solve the issue by doing the modifications through it. What I'd noticed then was that it didn't list com.apple.NetworkBrowser in the available domains. Now in root's account, I ran PrefSetter again; Bingo! There was com.apple.NetworkBrowser listed in the User Preferences domain and an idea stuck me; I went to the file's location (in root it's in /var/root/Library/Preferences) and copied it over to my user:

Then I logged back to my own user account and launched Finder to do a quick check:

Yeah baby, yeah!

Then to wrap up, I logged again as root to finally make my user account the owner of the .plist file - OS X was still giving me read-only permission even if the file was already in my user's Preference's folder as it still recognized root as the rightful owner.

I wonder if this works though - I haven't the chance to test it still. But if only for the superficial side of things, I can say I'm already happy seeing the Remote Disc icon sitting on Finder's sidebar :D

Now if only I could change how OS X sees my hardware - it thinks it's a MacPro (3,1 precisely) as indicated by the icon - without having to resort to the dark arts; that is, editing the HP Mini bios information via DMI edit (remember how I lost the HP logo?).

Edit: I tried running both commands (erased the plist from my Preferences folder) again in my own user account and this time, I took off the "sudo" part like so:

$ defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowsing EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true

$ defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowsing ODSSupported -bool true

And it did the job - this setting seems to be User wide only; enabling multiple users of the Mac to chose whether they want Remote Disc or not.