19 June 2011

Crux


It's the rainy days once again here in this archipelago. That means a much awaited break from the excruciating heat of the tropical sun has come. I hope though that the sun comes back for a few days when July kicks in so my (1st) Boracay experience can be what a beach vacation should be - with lots of reasons to get outdoors to sink in the blue blue waters and white white sand, and to slap on SPF rated stuff - lots of them.

Aha! And so Boracay (and my dreams of donning proper swim wear - finally!) would be the culprit of my ditching the OSx86 world for some time now! - you'd probably say. Truth be told, sorta. It's not unknown that I'm in graduate school right now and which I get in two flavors: physical school ("en présentielle") and virtual/cyber ("à distance") and this DU ECDF thing along with my M.A. French Translation from UP Diliman share the bigger blame for my inactivity within this hacking community that I consider myself to be part of.

I'm taking up pen and paper - or in this case, keyboard and blogger editor - to write about hackintoshing again. Why now? Well, for one, June spells the end of the academic year in French universities and my virtual one is no exception. I just took eight - yes, that's "8" - final exams from May 26 - June 6. The French call them "épreuves sur table" but they're really more like "torture sur table" with my being tortured right there and then on the table where I filled up a blank sheet of paper with my answers to just a couple or so of questions that should sum up to a score of 20/20 if I get a perfect score.

This is the time when I evaluate my goals in life: should I pursue the M.A. levels (M1 & M2) from the Sorbonne Nouvelle for FLE?

And perhaps as has gotten so entwined my life with OSx86, coincidentally, OS X Lion comes looming in the horizon as well. Should I and the HP Mini 311 pursue the unsure and quite unattainable iCloud heights where Lion is?

Both in my love for the French language (which I myself have a hard time to understand the reason why) and for hackintoshes, I have come to the crux.

At least for hackintoshing, I am more or less clear about my next action. With OS X Lion, Apple has moved further away from Atom netbooks - from the HP Mini 311. It's crucial apps - especially the Finder - being written in 64-bit has never made anything so clear and bright as sunshine as this: yes, there may be possible hocus-pocus to fool Lion in thinking the Atom is a Core 2 Duo which is its least requirement in CPU, BUT the community will have to re-write Lion system apps because it's dropped 32-bit support (at least in the current "DP" - Developer Preview release).

Indeed, the world's most advanced desktop operating system has advanced further and it has left my 32-bit Atom 280 behind without as much as regret on its poker faced mien as it closed the door to leave.

Honestly, I've come to a point where my hopes of seeing Lion in action was on Apple retailer stores here in the metro or on a Core 2 Duo machine that I hope I can get my hands on to hackintosh. No longer on my HP Mini 311. Yes, I've accepted that it's just gonna be me and Snowy HP Mini 311 from now on.

Moving forward, the biggest pre-occupation I should have from now is a good 10.6.8 update;  to be on the look out for ways to improve the experience of Snow Leopard on the 311. And perhaps really get serious with saving for a Mac.

Which brings to mind another important crux in my life - Singapore and S$ 3,000?

5 comments:

mosslack said...

To be honest, I don't believe Lion brings so much in the way of improvement anyway so I say no big deal. Even though there is an active movement afoot to get Lion working on lesser platforms, I say let it go and be happy with the speed and stability of SL on the netbooks. I know I have, but that's just me.

LeMaurien19 said...

too true mosslack.
the mini 311 has gone miles already in being the best (at least in my personal opinion) netbook for Snow Leo in terms of compatibility and stability.

Unknown said...

Pardon my French, but Lion has screwed the old Macbook owners too. (Y' know, those with 32-bit-only Core Duos inside.) So we are not alone. We are now like the PowerPC owners who are left with Leopard, and are happy with it, because those machines were built to last for decades.

(And then comes a second thought that Lion looks more like a toy for your average facebook-blogging-tweeting-youtubing youth than a pro tool. The world sucks more as the future comes.)

Anonymous said...

10.6.8 works but sleep is broke. Somewhat typical update.

-MH

LeMaurien19 said...

^might be related to the PCI Bridge issue that has been reported in the past beta releases of 10.6.8