First a quick note, we absolutely adore Apple and all it’s software and hardware offerings, but… Hackintosh machines offer an impressive alternative to the official Apple hardware that we all know and love, and in some cases even fill a niche where Apple has yet to dabble (eg: Netbooks). If you’re in the market for a new Mac and you don’t mind sacrificing Apple hardware’s good looks, and you either want to save some serious cash or just want to geek around a bit, building a Hackintosh is a great solution. The Hackintosh movement is growing strong and steady, so grab a Netbook or build a Desktop PC, follow these hackintosh guides, and join us!

Hackintosh Netbook

Here’s a whole slew of guides for creating a Hackintosh Netbook, and some other very helpful links. I’d personally recommend the Dell Mini 10v for ease of use and functionality, but my own hackintosh is actually an Acer Aspire One (which works great with 10.5.6 but wasn’t easy to get there, required a wifi card upgrade, etc).

Hackintosh Mini 10v – this is our guide on how to get a Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v that runs Mac OS X for just over $200. In my opinion, the Dell Mini 10v is the best option for a really awesome Hackintosh Netbook, it’s got good looks, a 10″ screen, and you can get one extraordinarily cheap by following these steps. Only downside is the RAM upgrade hassle.

Dell Mini 9 / Vostro 90 – if you can get over the awful keyboard on the Dell Mini 9/Vostro 90, it makes a great little hackintosh netbook

MyDellMini Forums – Snow Leopard – the most helpful forum group for the Hackintosh Netbook community is catered to Dell Mini owners, check out the Snow Leopard guides and if you have any questions or problems the MyDellMini forums should be your first line of defense

Asus EEE 1000h – a Hackintosh walkthrough for the Asus EEE PC 1000h

HP Mini 1000 – guide for hackintoshing the HP Mini 1000, just about everything works

Lenovo S10 – onboard ethernet does not work but otherwise following this guide you’ll get a fully functional Hackintosh S10

BoingBoing Netbook Compatibility Chart – a pretty solid chart to see which Netbooks can be turned into a Hackintosh and what works and what doesn’t, last updated in July 2009

Virtually Scale Window Size – very helpful hint for Hackintosh Netbook users with limited screen resolutions and real estate to virtually scale down window sizes

Desktop Hackintosh

Here’s the best information I know of for building a desktop Hackintosh machine, it’s all based around the infamous Lifehacker guide that shows you how to build a really sweet desktop Hackintosh PC for around $900. The process has gotten even easier thanks to a PKG from Stella and it requires no hacking, just a simple pkg install.

Lifehacker: How to build a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard from Start to Finish – a breakdown of all the hardware and procedures required to build a smoking desktop hackintosh machine, use their newer guide for installing Snow Leopard though

Lifehacker: Install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh PC with no hacking required – after reading the “how to build” guide from Lifehacker, read this for a much easier method of installing Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh

InsanelyMac Discussion on the Lifehacker Guide – a helpful forum with other Hackintosh users that have followed the Lifehacker guide, and any issues they’ve encountered along the way

Stellarola: Snow Leopard Hardware Compatibility List – repeated below for convenience, Stella is the genius behind the Lifehacker “no hacking” guide

Snow Leopard Hackintosh Compatible Hardware List for a Desktop

Webcams:
* Dynex DX-WEB1C 1.3MP (Fixed Focus Cam and mic built-in)
* Xbox 360 Live Camera (Manually adjustable Cam only)
* Logitech Quickcam Vision Pro for Mac (Autofocus cam and mic built-in)
* HP KQ246AA (Autofocus cam and mic built-in)

Wired Ethernet Cards
* Netgear GA-311 (PCI)
* Trendnet Gigabit TEG-PCITXR (PCI)
* Rosewill RC-400 (PCI)
* Encore ENLGA-1320 (PCI)
* SMC9452TX-1 (PCI)
* Sonnet Presto Gigabit GE1000-E (PCI-e)

Wireless “Airport” Cards
* Asus WL-138G V2 (PCI)
* Dynex DX-BGDTC (PCI)
* Dell Wireless 1505 (PCI-e)

USB Audio
* SYBA SD-CM-UAUD
* SYBA SD-CM-UAUD71
* M-Audio Jamlab
* Griffin iMic

(above desktop hardware compatibility list courtesy of Stellarola):

Got anymore Hackintosh information or links? Share them with us!

Looking for a free iPhone Twitter app that is awesome? Allow me to rave for a moment about Echofon (previously Twitterfon), it’s without a doubt the best free iPhone Twitter app I have found and it has become an integral part of my day. I know there are various paid solutions out there which are pretty cool too, but since Twitter is free, I’m looking for a free solution for the iPhone, and Echofon does exactly the job I need it to do and quite well. You can easily tweet out, follow your friends, and track @messages going back and forth, and so much more. If there is a better free iPhone Twitter app out there, I want to know about it!

Download now [iTunes link]
Developer home

I apologize to everyone that has seen this, but if you haven’t it’s pretty funny. It’s the entire Apple 9-9-09 keynote address condensed into just under two minutes of superlative adjectives. It’s incredible, awesome, easy, better and better, wonderful, remarkable, easy, amazing, awesome, amazing, amazing, easy, great, great, easy, great, amazing, awesome. It’s awesome. Check it out.

[ via TechCrunch ]

I’ve run into some unusual quirks and bugs in Snow Leopard and based on conversation with other Mac users I know I’m not the only one. Instead of just complaining about it (or writing a post about it, like this!), it’s much more helpful to Apple and the Mac community to file a bug report directly with Apple. You can do this easily online here: BugReport.Apple.com. You’ll need an ADC login to use the bug reporting tool, I imagine this is a requirement to insure that bug reports are filed by relatively qualified technical people. So if you stumble upon something which is definitely a bug, do everyone a favor and file a bug report with Apple!

Apple: Bug Reporter

An interesting opinion piece on kottke.org can be summarized as: the iPhone is taking over the world. Arguing that between the iPhone’s built-in functionality and the myriad of apps developed for it, the iPhone is going to win the fight for consumers limited pocket and purse space, and many devices (and thus, companies) are doomed as a result. The readers digest version for those of you who don’t want to read the entire article says the following devices are either now or going to be in direct competition with Apple:

* Mobile phones (duh)
* PDA’s
* iPod (duh)
* Power and shoot cameras
* Personal computer
* Nintendo DS
* PSP
* GPS (duh)
* Flip video camera
* Compass (disagree based on personal experience)
* Watch (yup)
* Portable DVD Player
* Kindle
* Pedometer
* Tape recorder
* Heart monitor
* Calculator
* Remote control
* USB key
* etc

Read more here: Kottke: Your Company? There’s an App for that

The iPhone Dev Team sure works quickly, and they have just released Jailbreak for iPhone 3.1 / iPod Touch firmware 3.1. Before you attempt to jailbreak your 3.1 iPhone be sure to read the full post on the iPhone Dev Team blog so you can see potential pitfalls. Note that this version of the Pwnage tool does NOT work for the iPhone 3GS running 3.1, that’s apparently still under development.

iPhone-Dev.org: 3 o fun

I love my iPhone but every once in a while you run into an app that misbehaves itself and seems to be stuck in some infinite loop of iPhone-frozen madness (WhitePages app I’m looking at you). Thankfully, you can force quit an application on your iPhone / iPod Touch by holding down the Home button for 10 seconds. I have noticed that after force quitting some applications the whole iPhone seems to have slowed down a bit, whether it’s from a memory leak or mystery cpu cycles, I have no idea, so I will often reboot the phone to get things back to normal again.

Force Quitting for iPhone 3GS users
1. Hold down the sleep button until the red “slide to power off” slider appears (don’t swipe it)
2. Release the sleep button, but then hold down the Home button until you see the “stuck” application disappear, and returns to the App icon menu screen.
[ iPhone 3GS tip is courtesy of reader Jim C. Thanks Jim! ]

For anyone looking to have a great desktop Mac without paying a small fortune, creating a Hackintosh is becoming an ever-popular solution, and building a Hackintosh just got even easier. Assuming you have the supported hardware, this awesome tool from LifeHacker makes creating a Hackintosh Mac even easier by eliminating some of the more complex technical hacks in favor of running a simple installer! I absolutely adore Apple and their products, but I’m a big fan of the Hackintosh movement, in part because it’s fun and also because it’s a more affordable way to run the best operating system in the world.

If you’re in the market for a new desktop Mac, don’t ignore the Hackintosh option, especially with how easy this is getting to do… Check out the full article on Lifehacker.

LifeHacker: Install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh PC – No hacking required

[Above image borrowed from Lifehacker]

The next super secret Mac OS X alpha is in the works! In an obvious jab at the feline obsession with Mac OS X build names, a satirical image of a 10.7 build installer has appeared on Flickr, titled…. Mac OS X 10.7 Ceiling Cat! I’ve never really understood Apple’s cat naming system, if anyone does please explain it to me, but Ceiling Cat does make you wonder what cat name we’ll see in the upcoming versions of Mac OS X.

Via Flickr

We know that Snow Leopard added some features to Mac OS X, but what about the things that Snow Leopard took away? Waffle has an updated list of things known to be removed from Snow Leopard, and there’s some interesting stuff on there. Here’s what I found to be most interesting (and surprising) that was removed in Snow Leopard:

* AppleTalk Printing
* Project templates in XCode
* Preinstalled developer examples
* Preinstalled API documentation
* ZFS Support

Now obviously some of these things were removed to save disk space, but I’m actually really surprised by the XCode and developer examples/templates being removed. Many beginning developers lean heavily on examples and now it looks like you have to fish around on Apple’s Developer Connection website to find this information.

Other noteworthy things missing include PowerPC support (this was expected) and the QuickTime Pro for $29, but check out the full list here:

Waffle Wootest: Things Removed in Snow Leopard