Hasta La Gadget!

Installing OS X on a commodity PC box is, to paraphrase a simian, sweating Microsoft executive, all about “drivers, drivers, drivers!” The underlying architecture of any current Intel chip is more or less the same as that of a Mac. The trick lies in getting the OS to talk to the non-standard displays, sound hardware, Wi-Fi cards and the like.

Ryuu123 of the InsanelyMac forums has managed to work this driver and kernel extension magic with the Sony Vaio P, which is extra impressive for a couple of reasons. First, this is a rather more expensive piece of hardware than the typical hackintosh-box, the MSI Wind — almost as much as a real Mac, in fact. Second is that the Vaio P has some very odd hardware. The screen resolution is rather long and thing (1600 x 768) and the graphics “card” decidedly underpowered.

That said, quite a lot is working. There is no Quartz-anything hardware acceleration for graphics, so the fancy OS X 3D effects are out, and you’ll not be getting online via either the Ethernet nor the Wi-Fi (ryuu123 is planning on adding in a Dell 1510 wireless card) but USB networking works, as does the internal 3G modem. Ironically enough, the MemoryStick slot also works.

Not a bad first effort. We look forward to seeing it fixed up properly: If there is any netbook that should be running OS X, its the Vaio P.

Leopard on VAIO P(VGN-P90HS) working! [InsanelyMac via BBG]

See Also:

• Six Months With a Hackintosh Netbook: It Ain’t Pretty
• Eight Months with a Hackintosh Netbook. Conclusion: Fantastic …
• Hackintosh With Genuine Glowing Apple Logo
• It Lives! Gadget Lab’s Netbook Running OS X Leopard

Our friends over at CyberMedia have written up a great post on Nintendo’s new Wii-no-Ma service, which looks like it has a pretty good chance of revolutionizing content delivery in Japan.

As it is right now, most Japanese are basically watching the same handful of terrestrial stations, but the proliferation of Wii consoles in Japanese homes combined with its intuitive family-friendliness make them ripe as platform for selling traditional media content other than games.

Each family member (up to 8, which is a lot) can create their own avatar in the system, which also allows the service to better target individual users for ads and development issues. Wii-no-Ma was created along with advertising giant Dentsu which is surely looking for a new way to reach folks who are in front of their screens but not watching television.

‘Wii no ma’ is free-of-charge but has an implemented advertisement system. In order not to bother watchers with colorful, blinking pop-up ads like on PC or mobile sites Nintendo created a new form of advertisement. No advertisement is shown on the screen unless the user actively chooses so. After watching video programs on ‘Wii-no-Ma’, users are guided to ‘会社の間’ (’Kaisha no Ma’ – ‘The Companies’ Room’) an advertising platform from sponsor companies. There are twelve screens in ‘Kaisha no ma’, Each of them can be utilized by companies to communicate with the customers in ways like casting videos, asking questionnaires, giving out vouchers or delivering free samples to the household.

For the whole skinny on Wii-no-Ma and what Nintendo’s up to, check out the full post at Cybermedia.

This video of iPhone OS 2.x running on a 24-inch multitouch monitor from Swedish design firm Dreamfield is almost certainly fake, but hey — it’s Sunday night, nothing’s going on, and we were thinking about how well touch-specific systems would work on a larger screen after seeing those CrunchPad videos anyway, so we thought we’d get some conversation going. We’d be willing to bet that a future Apple tablet has more in common with the experience shown in this video than with what we currently think of as OS X, but we’re not so certain we’re seeing anything here that makes us want to throw our mouse or keyboard away — or spend the entire day with gorilla arm. So — artfully mocked-up glimpse of the future, or just a pipe dream?

Keeping with the likely-fake theme, there’s also a probably-fake video of SNES and PS1 emulators running on the Pre, controlled by a Bluetooth gamepad. Yes, it’s incredibly awesome — and undoubtedly possible — but until we see some evidence of how things are loaded up and connected with the gamepad we’re sticking it in the fake category as well.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Probably-fake video roundup: 24-inch iPhone OS, PS1 emulation on the Pre

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Probably-fake video roundup: 24-inch iPhone OS, PS1 emulation on the Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seeing how these announcements are going down live in Singapore as we speak, we’ve got a few sources of live pictures of Nokia’s latest announcements coming in off the interwebs already; it’s all raw, unfiltered footage, but that’s exactly the way we like it around here. We won’t know for certain until we touch it, but at a glance, the E72 certainly looks like a worthy successor to one of the greatest phones Nokia has ever made, and the 5530 looks like the 5800 should’ve looked. What’s everyone thinking on these?

[Via The Nokia Blog]

Read – davidlian’s twitpic stream
Read – budip’s twitpic stream

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia’s E72 and 5530 XpressMusic in the S60-powered flesh originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos hit us with a couple new laptops earlier this week in Paris, and just as you’d expect, the crew from ArchosFans was there to grab some video of the new machines. The new Archos 10s pretty much just the Archos 10 repackaged in a slightly smaller package, while the Archos 13 is the company’s foray onto the CULV scene — it’s pretty nice-looking for $800, but we’re still wondering how Archos is planning on distinguishing either of these from the million other me-too netbooks and thin-and-lights on the market with the exact same specs. We’ll find out soon — they’re due in August. Videos after the break.

Read – Archos 10s
Read – Archos 13

Continue reading Archos 10s and 13 laptops get the video treatment

Filed under: Laptops

Archos 10s and 13 laptops get the video treatment originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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