Windows Live Mesh gets ready to step up to the plate

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:ef14e276-0a31-4d26-ae90-0ffbd5a4730a&showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Live Mesh Promo Clip">Video: Live Mesh Promo Clip</a>

I used to use Windows Live Mesh all the time, but then when I got my iPod Touch and my new mac, it kind of didnt matter anymore because it wasnt released for mac yet. Hopefully they will release a mac version soon; this just looks too cool!

Mac and PC can live together

So, after my recent success with getting Kalyway 10.5.1 up and running on my Dell, and then successfully getting dual booting to work, I decided to take Mac and my relationship to the next level. I could by now easily boot from Mac to Vista without a problem, and both OS's worked just fine.
I decided that it was time to upgrade to boot camp, parallels, or vmware fusion.
First, I decided to compare the 3. I had a spare desktop computer lying around that also happens to be a hackintosh, so I took said programs for a spin.

Boot camp:
Basically... it just didnt cut it. It was basically the same setup that I already had, and required a reboot to switch operating systems. I prefer the chameleon bootloader, with a regular vista and mac install.

Parallel desktop vs vmware:
Both are very nice applications and have similar features to each other. Both include desktop integration that I thought was rather nice (vmware had unity, parallels had convergence). I prefer unity over convergence because it integrated the application into mac osx, instead of just adding a taskbar to the bottom of the screen. It treated each application from windows separately and nicely, instead of just basically giving it its own separate location.
Another thing I loved about vmware was the 12 month free McAfee virus protection. I just recently ran out of my anti virus subscription (Ok, I didnt run out... I just kinda deleted Live OneCare because it was so bad) and so I needed protection from the vast expanse that is "the internet".
Anyway... after looking over the products I decided to go with vmware. I backed up my mac to time machine on my 500GB External HDD and copied my windows files over to the remaining space. Then I hopped onto vmwares help page looking for a quick start guide. Low and behold I found one.
Day One (Friday):
So, I began to follow the guide until about 1:12 into the video. I only selected my vista partition and moved on. Then I was presented with a message box that the guy in the video did not receive. It warned me that I could successfully copy this parition to a virtual disk, but I wont be able to boot because my partition was not active. This was because of my chameleon bootloader being installed on my mac partition and thus making partition 2 active. I quickly loaded up diskpart and made my first partition active. I grabbed a soda while I waited for my computer to reboot, and to my surprise it was rather quick...
Regardless, I loaded up vmware converter again and repeated the process and this time I got no error messages when I selected only my vista install partition. I should also mention that I resized the virtual disk to 60GB on that page (in case that effects me later).
As I proceeded through the video I got to the part that he says takes 1 minute per GB. I decided to leave it to do its thing and go to sleep.

Day two (Saturday):
I woke up, grabbed my breakfast, and got to work. VMware converter was finished, and now the video told me to boot into my mac. Sadly, my mac was on the current hard drive, and was only 40 GB large, so I decided to format my entire HDD so that I could use all 150GB. I ran the Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD like in my previous post. This time instead however, I clicked on options when partitioning my HDD and I chose GUID. On the customize page this time I left everything as it was and clicked install.
The installation took about 20 minutes and I was hoping that the install would succeed (the last time I tried to use GUID on a mbr HDD and so it didnt work).
Well... it was almost predictable. GUID did not work, so I booted kalyway dvd again and used MBR instead.
After the install I was presented with a black screen that said that darwin had failed to boot my volume or something like that... I figured it just had trouble changing to MBR from GUID so I rebooted and it loaded fine.
It asked me if I wanted to import data so I choose to import from my time machine backup.
Time Machine finished importing and everything loaded and worked just as it did before I formatted.
I installed vmware on my mac and it installed perfectly, the User interface was really cool.
Then I copied the Virtual Machine files to my mac from my External HDD. I opened up Fusion and followed the instructions to add my vista installation. The first time I booted vista after the installation it was extremely slow, so I added another virtual core and more RAM.

Day 3 (Sunday):
Worked on fusion for a few hours, but I was very busy today. My installation was very buggy and corrupt even when booting normally, and now it is quite messed up. I've decided to copy all my files to my mac and then reinstall windows. I will install Vista, XP, 2000, 98, and Ubuntu and I will detail all of my experiences in more posts.
Days 4, 5, and 6 will be in a new post.

Still no iPod Touch 2G Jailbreak

Sadly the iPod Touch 2G is still not Jailbreakable (have you been wondering why I haven't posted much about it lately?). The iPhone Dev Team is working hard, but they don't seem to be making much progress. I have a lead on a friend who thinks he's got it working, but I doubt it. I'll keep you informed.

Dual Boot Vista and OSX86 the Easy Way

This is a complete guide to correctly dual boot Windows Vista and Leopard (OSX86). The Hardware I used was a Dell Optiplex GX620 SFF, but this should work for most computers.
This guide has taken me over 3 weeks to write and I have tried every possible logical combination of customized installs, trust me, unless you know for a fact that your computer handles this differently (i.e. vanilla kernals): do it my way.

Disclaimer: This Guide is for educational purposes only, I suggest you buy yourself an actual Mac. Also please do not post links to the Torrent’s as they will be removed.

Well, before we proceed with the guide, here is the stuff that you will need for a successful dual boot setup.
• Vista Already installed on your Primary Hard Disk.
• Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD. (Download this at the usual place)
• Chameleon Bootloader
• Windows Vista Boot DVD (Just incase something goes wrong)
• Some computer knowledge (Power User)

Well now that you have everything ready, let’s get started then. Keep in mind that this will take quite a while so do yourself a favor and find something else to do while you wait. I will let you know approximately how long each step takes.

• Vista must be installed on your HDD and must be the ONLY Operating System on there. I will not discuss tri-booting.
• Right click on My Computer and Click on Manage. Select Disk Management. Now create a new volume for OSX by shrinking the existing vista volume (right-click>shrink). Right-click in the unoccupied space to create a new simple volume. I recommend somewhere around 40GB for typical use, and about 100GB for lots of media and programs.
• Now restart the machine and boot into the Leopard DVD that you burned using the Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD Image.
• Press F8 as the darwin countdown begins and type -v at the prompt and hit enter.
• You should see scrolling text on the screen now. If the scrolling text stops anywhere then this install may not work for you. Post where it stops or Google the error.
• After a while you should be looking at the Leopard Installer. Click the right arrow to continue. The loading bar will be present for about 90 seconds.
• Once the Loading Bar disappears Select Utilities -> Disk Utility.
• Select the new volume you created earlier and format it as MAC OSX Extended (Journaled). Now the volume will be ready to install Mac OSX
• Now get back to the Leopard Install Screen by closing disk utility. Choose the partition that you made in the beginning and follow the instructions on screen.
• DON’T CLICK INSTALL. Now we will need to change the installations boot type. Click customize and change the bootloader from GUID to MBR. Make sure GUID is now unchecked. Don’t check anything else.
• Now click install… wait about 10 seconds and skip the disk check.
• The installation process will take about 25 minutes. When you come back you will most likely be greeted with a welcome screen. Click OK and continue to set up your new Mac as you would like.
• When you have finished setting up your mac you may find that you need drivers for video, audio, network, etc. to find these please google what you need or search it at the insanelymac.com forum.
• Now we will need to install the new bootloader so that you can also run vista. Please install chameleon now.
• Now you should be able to boot into both Mac and vista when you turn on your computer.

If something goes wrong and you can't boot into vista and you need to get in anyway, open terminal and execute the following commands :
fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1
quit
reboot

Handy iPhone typing trick

From iPhone Alley

If you're like me, caps lock is rarely used on the iPhone but sometimes you just need the next couple of letters to be capitalized. A good example is if you're typing out something like "OK" or "IM", or any number of other upper-case abbreviations. Thankfully, iPhone's multi-touch is smart enough to allow you use the shift key just like you can on a computer. Simply hold down the shift key while you type on the iPhone's keyboard and every letter will be capitalized.

I've got to say thanks to iPhone Alley for pointing this out, I know I'll be using this trick a lot.

Easily Install Mac OSX on Dell Optiplex GX620 SFF (OUTDATED)

Edit: I have posted a new guide that makes this process much easier. Please read that instead.

Today I am going to show you how to install and dual boot Kalyway 10.5.1 (OSX Leopard) onto your Dell PC. My system specs are:
Optiplex GX620 SFF (small form factor)
2.5GB Ram
3.0 GHz Pentium 4 HT CPU
160GB HDD
default intel onboard graphics chip
VGA output ^

I have vista installed already (home premium) and nothing else (not xp or linux).

What you will need:
Kalyway 10.5.1
Chameleon Bootloader
Vista Preinstalled (or XP)


Step 1: Prepare your PC
You will need to shrink your XP/Vista Partition.
To do this in vista right click my computer and go to manage.
In XP you will need to find another program to shrink it because xp doesnt have this feature.
From there click disk management.
Choose your vista disc and rick click it>shrink partition
Choose a reasonable size of your liking. (I recommend about 40 GB)
Right click your new partition and create a new volume.

Step 2: Install
Turn off your PC and place the kalyway disc into the Drive
Press F8 when prompted and then enter -v
after about 8-10 minutes you will see the installer
open up disc utility from the menu bar and format your new partition (erase)
Now proceed through the installation until you are given two choices, install and customize. Select customize and select the MBR bootloader instead of the GUID bootloader.
Now click the install button.

Step 3: Final Procedure
about 20-25 minutes later you will be presented with the setup screen
set it up as you would like and then when it loads the OS open up iTunes. It will ask you to update, click yes or OK.
Then you will be presented with a few updates (probably 6)
Choose everything but the last one which should be 10.5.5
Do not update to 10.5.5 yet, we will do this in my next post in a week or so.
Once the updates are done please reboot the computer as it asks.
When your computer boots back up please install chameleon.

Now your computer will dual boot with Vista and Leopard.

Please ask me any questions you have in the comments.