Update:

Due to people not having any luck, I’ve uploaded my boot files, put these in the extras folder and use the latest Chameleon version.

GTX285Kext

Following this, here is my boot.plist.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-x32</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>1</string>
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>6c0200000100000001000000600200000d00000002010c00d041030a010000000101060000030101060000007fff04001e00000072006f006d002d007200650076006900730069006f006e0000002e0000004e5649444941204765666f7263652047545820323835204f70656e474c20456e67696e65205b4546495d22000000400030002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000004e00560043004100500000001800000004000000000003000c00000000000007000000000e0000006e0061006d00650000000b000000646973706c617914000000400030002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d41100000006d006f00640065006c0000001a0000004e5649444941204765666f72636520475458203238350e0000004e00560050004d000000200000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000014000000400031002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d4220000000400031002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d6163220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a0065000000080000000000004020000000400030002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616322000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c61791c0000006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e74</string>
<key>Default Partition</key>
<string>hd(1,2)</string>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>y</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Hope this helps. The only thing I cannot get working is Quartz.

Its taken absolutely fecking ages to get files moved today. Been working on and off whilst I’ve been installing apps, fonts, files, music…. Transferring from MBP to HDD then HDD to Hackintosh is a time eater. But hey its done now. Trouble is I’m paranoid that doing the slightest update will screw everything up so I’m backing up my daily efforts on Time Machine. Once done, I can relax and try and hack my way into getting the 3D driver to work on Snow Leopard. As it stands its fast, but simple tasks like small animations stutter. This is due to the fact the GTX 285 isnt being recognized yet and running in Software mode. I’ve been given a method from one of the guys from EFIXusers.com in which I’m going to do as soon as the backup is finished.

130gb out of 162gb to go. Its been over 4 hours so far backing up, but its worth it as I don’t want to waste another day. But it will be worth it in the end.

Anyway I’ve installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 & OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.1. Only problems I’m having is getting sound and the right video card driver. But that’s another days work, will stab at this over the weekend.

Windows works like a charm. Windows 7 seems very fast bootups and gaming is…. Whoa! I’ve installed Aion and running it on 2560 x 1600 (My native 30″ Apple Cinema display) with 8x AA, Bloom 3 and everything set to max. Getting an average of 150fps and looks absolutely beautiful. I will post some screenshots soon. Installed Call of Duty 4 and maxed everything out on top resolution. Getting about 100fps and it looks fricken awesome.

As for Aion only level 7 and so far its amazing. Chain spells are awesome.

If you want to join me on Aion my server details are:

Aion EU Server: [EN] Kalil
Faction: Elyos Faction
Class: Mage
Name: Spooksie

I’ve not had much time to play due to customer deadlines, so once I get the work done by tomorrow I can have a gaming marathon on Aion.

My new rig

PSU: Gigabyte Superb Power 550W ATX
HDD1: Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATA2 MAESTRO (for Win7)
HDD2: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB SATA2 32MB MAESTRO (for OSX)
MEMORY: Mushkin Extreme XP3-12800 DDR3 1600 6GB 3×2GB
CASE: NOX NX-1
MB: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Socket 1366
COOLERS: Nox Acid Blaster 120×120 & Nox Acid Blaster 80×80
CPU FAN: Arctic Cooling CPU Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 – EXtreme Rev.2
CPU: Intel Core I7 920 2.66Ghz Box Socket 1366
DVD: LG H22LS50 Grabadora LightScribe Negra SATA
GPU: GeForce GTX 285 1gb PCIx16

I’ll post some more when its built. This should be a beast for gaming.

However Macs are great, bla bla bla. You don’t need to know this. However you do need a loan or an extended mortgage to buy Mac. Where with Windows you can buy a PC from as low as £200, Cheapest Mac is £500. Expect to pay an extra 2.5x what you would normally pay for a PC. I’ve compiled a truthful list of what I have noticed in using Macs, I’m not going to be biased on this. So if your thinking of going Mac let me give you the rundown.

Pros of using a Mac

1. When you get your new Mac, it makes you feel special. Not special-needs, its like you’ve joined the club and been awarded a brown star.
2. When you first boot you time the speed and compare it to Windows. Wow it takes 6 seconds to boot
3. You do notice the speed difference in apps and the OS feels stable (note, I’ve not upgraded to Snow Leopard yet)
4. Mac support is excellent, even if you don’t have Apple care
5. Major games are being ported to osx now, and is recognised in the gaming world (World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4, Warhammer Online to name a few) More in development i.e. Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 to name a few.
6. Everything is preloaded onto a factory Mac, iLife is very good and you will use it daily to manage your photos. Even the video editor is spot on.
7. 

   Windows on a Mac, no problem

   You can run Windows inside osx using a free application called Virtual Box, yep its free and not developed by a noobie. Sun Microsystems have developed this and is very stable. There are other paid opens like Parallels & VMware fusion. You do not need to reboot, it shows directly in osx, you can open and close Windows as you please. Please note you will not be able to play games with Virtual Box its mainly for using none cpu / gpu intensive applications for example Internet Explorer, Sage, etc

8. Apparently you can run Windows games in Parallels and VMware Fusion pretty well.
9. You can run older Windows games without using a virtual drive, its this called Crossover and supports a heap amount of games including Values back catalog. But you have to pay for this app.
10. 

    Mac Firefox 3 and Windows Internet Explorer 8 Click to see in full screen

    Websites look so much better off a Mac

11. Easy installation, just drag the application into the Apps folder, if you want to delete just drag to waste bin. No installers (on most) apps, no compatible problems (unless your a early bird installer of Snow Leopard)
12. Bootcamp is free from Leopard to Snow Leopard, it offers you dual booting into Windows XP / Vista / 7 naively. So gaming on this is very good. I dual boot for Windows games that are not available on the Mac.
13. Little tweaks like having zip preinstalled is nice, you can just select your files and right click to archive the files. Easy as eating pie. You will notice other small tweaks added that makes life alittle easier like PDF viewer without having to download bloatware to just view it.
14. 

    Viewing a folder full of images is a breeze

    Viewing a selection of images is easy using coverflow, perfect for going through your stock image photography for work. Yep its all preinstalled.

15. Web developer, you will love this as most opensource development platform are supported. Ruby-on-rails and Php all work correctly
16. iPhone & iPods work without the need of drivers and software, its all preinstalled on your shiney new Mac.
17. Time Machine / Time Capsule is a god send. Get a second hard dive and set it up on the Mac. Your backups will be saved and categorized, daily, hourly, monthly & yearly. You don’t have to worry about loosing files ever again. Its backup doesnt slow down the computer like on Windows systems, you don’t even know its running.
18. You could buy Microsoft Office or get iWork which I use for proposals, works a treat.
19. No real need for Virus or firewall software, the firewall on osx pretty secure regarding virus’es as the market share is shifted on Windows your more than likely to get a virus. However this isn’t the case for Macs, but as Macs grow more and more popular this could be a problem in the future.
20. 

    Hitting the space bar on Mac does this

    Viewing a quick image view is a time saver, just select an image, doc, file and hit the space bar. Bam you see your image, hit space and bam its back. Saves so much time. You can even do it with multiple images.

21. Adobe supports Apple and if your a designer, UI designer, Mobile designer & even a web designer you will be safe. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver….. all works.

Cons of using a Mac

1. Playing decent games requires you to buy a Mac Pro, iMac or Macbook Pro to play serious games, buying a cheap mac forget it.
2. Updating Memory officially is stupidly overpriced
3. Installing your own memory voids your warranty and may make the Mac slower than before if you buy a cheap brand.
4. Updating any other hardware is crazy expensive like video cards
5. Running Windows games off virtual drives will be slow and buggy, you may just use bootcamp to play that game with no problems.
6. Updating video card drives….. what drivers, your stuck with the factory Apple video card drivers so new games suck, there is no way to update your drivers in OSX without a 10.x.x release.
7. 

   Amd is the only one who offers bootcamp drivers, but they are nearly 2 years old

   Updating video card drivers in bootcamp. Windows says no its not compatible. You have to hack the driver to get it working, but once done you see a great difference.

8. Web designer and need to use IE 6 / 7 / 8 to test your sites? forget it, you can use Virtual box but can either install one internet explorer at a time. I know there is software to allow you to view multi IEs, but they dont work correctly as IE6 will think its IE8 and any detection scripts are out. To get it truly working you have to create a different image of each OS. However this is really a Microsoft Windows issue.
9. iPhone application development can only work on a Mac.
10. 

    Building your own Mac could save you 2/3's of the price

    Its stupidly expensive, a decent spec Mac Pro can cost £3000. You could build a better spec for around £1100 if you built a comparison PC. However this would have be a compatible Hackintosh spec.

11. Copying files from bootcamp to Mac is a problem. Its only compatible with Fat32 on file transfers and the limit is 3gb per file. NTFS can be read by Mac but cannot add to the drive. So you end up setting up 3 partitions on a Mac: 1 for Mac, 1 for Bootcamp NTFS and 1 for transferring files between os’s in Fat32.

Conclusion

If you currently use a PC for email, word processing and browsing the net, you wont feel the pinch from the move. However if you depend of specific software, you may have to find alternatives or use Virtual Box to run them in realtime. Gaming, forget it unless you buy a Mac Pro. Don’t get me wrong, games run well but the later games suffer due to the 2 year old+ video cards they supply in Macbook Pro and iMacs.

If you are a gamer get a Mac Pro or build your own hackintosh. Best of both worlds

However I’ve not touched Windows 7 nor Apple Snow Leopard. I’m going to dive in to build my own Hackintosh and will review both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. I’ll be recording my problems along the way building it.