What OS X On An MSI Wind Actually Looks Like
6:40 am, January 23rd, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Mac Wind – The Apple Netbook from Sascha Pallenberg on Vimeo.
Here’s an informative video by Sascha Pallenberg, conducting a brief interview with a chap who’s got OS X Leopard running on his MSI Wind netbook.
I’ve heard a lot about OS X on the Wind, but this is the first chance I’ve had to actually see it in action. And I confess, I’m impressed. OK, it’s taken this guy a little bit of hacking around to get the machine working smoothly like this (with all the extras like wifi, webcam, and volume controls working properly) – but the end result looks worth the hassle.
As m’learned friend Ed Sutherland pointed out in an earlier post, Apple is determined not to jump headlong into the netbook market; not without taking a long, hard look at what it’s jumping into.
Apple wants to make computers that don’t suck, and I think one of Apple’s defining attributes of suckiness is a tiny keyboard and a tiny screen. That’s why the Air is the size it is. It’ll take a considerable change of heart at Apple to produce something as small as a Wind.
But that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t working on something to compete with all the netbooks.
I believe the MacBook Air is the model for what’s coming. It started out as an incredibly expensive notebook computer, but in time I think future versions of it will be incredibly cheap. They, too, will forego things like an optical drive and a user-replaceable battery and a whole bunch of ports and connectors.
These Airs-to-come won’t be as cheap as most netbooks. But they’ll be good value nonetheless.
They will be what Steve Jobs alluded to last year: a low-cost computer that doesn’t suck.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Hardware, Opinions | Comment on this article
I bought the MSI Wind before I even knew you could do the OSX hack. After using XP for a while and not being impressed with it, I took the plunge and spent all day doing the hack, and surprise, I now have a dual boot OSX/XP Mac Nano! The screen is great (a tad small for everyday use) very good performance, looks cool, I have everything working except audio out. My ONLY real complaint is that the mouse pad buttons suck and the track pad could be better. Other than that I like it very much and I have a cool little Mac Nano for $349.
Fred, on January 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 am
My better half set one up and I just adore it!
Having said that, the trackpad & buttons suck B-I-G time, so much so that I enjoy giving him a hard time for depending on a mouse to use it well
The internal mic still does not work yet, but might sometime soon, courtesy of the VoodooHDA project (I use a headset for iChat on the go).
It’s a lot of fun with a mouse, though. So light & fast! Makes you lust for the real thing…
macmoni, on January 23rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I’ve an MSI Wind and yep, it’s running on OS X Leopard, and updated to 10.5.6 . So far, I’m a happy camper….I think hardware support has come to that comfortable zone that even I am able to obliterate Windows forever. OS X is the sole OS in my MacBook Wind
rauy, on February 9th, 2009 at 2:57 am
I’m using an MSI Wind running 10.5.6 as my bedroom desktop/media computer, overcoming its primary limitation by driving a 23″ LCD through the VGA port at 1920×1200. Some of the Aqua effects become a little less smooth when you demand this resolution of the Intel GMA graphics, but I can still play DVDs full screen at what appears to be full frame rate using VLC (Apple’s DVD player won’t run because it can’t find an internal DVD drive). Overclocking to over 2GHz helps nicely, but you have to select this as it boots up, and you have to keep it plugged into the power adapter. External mouse is a must, and I have a NuForce Icon integrated amp with USB DAC to get something resembling hifi sound off the Wind and into some real bookshelf speakers. No powered computer speakers for me (though I also have a powered sub hooked up to the Icon’s line-out). All in all it’s adapted itself surprisingly well to the task of video and 2-channel audio.
Ed, on February 21st, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Now, now. Let me guess: either standby or sleep mode or both are not working. Come on, admit it already.
surely, on March 1st, 2009 at 2:38 pm