Note: This software is incompatible with Snow Leopard.

With it now easier than ever to dual boot Linux and OS X, you might be considering giving Linux a try (or even more favorably, Ubuntu). Linux in general is great due to its stability, many customizable looks, and ability to run on aging/inexpensive hardware. It’s also great to have a multi-OS system, but there always tends to be that scenario where you need a file from one of your other Operating System’s partition. Linux has got you covered, boasting support for HFS+, NTFS, FAT32, and countless other File Systems. Unfortunately, OS X can’t return the favor, as it lacks native support for any of the Linux File Systems.

As you already well know though, we wouldn’t state flaws if we didn’t also know how to remedy them. That is why many thanks go out to Brian Bergstrand and his aging project, ext2fsx. With his program, you can now easily mount and access all your ext2 and ext3 partitions. And to top it all off, the install process is super easy. Instructions follow.

1. Install ext2fsx and restart when prompted.

2. Log back in and launch System Preferences.

3. Click on the ExtFSManager Preference Pane.

4. Expand a listed Drive to see its partitions.

5. Click on the partition you want to mount (it will most likely be grayed out) and then select Mount.

The partition is now accessible through Finder. You can set specific options for each partition (such as auto-mounting, mounting as read-only, and ignoring permission on the partition) through the Preference Pane. Enjoy your new Linux File System support!

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography, or by clicking on some ads around the site. Any amount truly does help.

A hackintosh, though not susceptible to viruses just like real Macs (due to them running the same Operating System), has unique reasons why it should be the victim of a regular backup. The Hackintosh user constantly installs new kexts that damage his system and render it unbootable. The need to backup your Hackintosh’s data skyrockets because of this factor. I can think of 10 instances alone in the past month where, if I had not backed up my system before installing a new kext, I would be reinstalling OS X and starting completely fresh. And don’t take the word “system” lightly either as I don’t just mean all of my pictures, music, and documents; I mean copying those previously mentioned files, as well as the filesystem (the system that organize these files and allows you to access them), to an external hard drive. This includes copying every document, application, setting, etc. on your Hard Drive (HDD) to another location. However, there are countless backup methods, so I’ve outlined the three most common for you today. From this information, you will then be able to decide what works for you and what doesn’t. Be sure to post in the comments which method you decide to go with.

All three of these common methods are universal amongst Macs and PCs; however, the specific programs in the third option are OS specific. For the reader’s convenience, I have included programs compatible with both OS X and Windows. Sorry Linux guys, guess you’re left out on this one. You can use an online service, NAS (Network Attached Storage), or another physical Hard Drive to backup to. Each one has its own benefits and downfalls.

Snow Leopard has been available to the public for almost 6 months now, has received 2 updates, and has been running nearly perfectly on the 1525 (and mostly every other hackintosh that could run Leopard). The newest update, 10.6.2, has been out since early November, but a lot of users have yet to make the upgrade.  Unlike the Leopard distro days, users are running retail copies of Snow Leopard and thus the upgrade processor is much simpler. So call it old superstition, or sticking to what you know, but users have been hesitant about performing the update. Well that fear of upgrading bears no merit in this case as the 10.6.2 is one of the easiest updates we’ve seen. Instructions follow, and I think you’ll be shocked just how easy the update is.

1) Download the 10.6.2 Combo Update from Apple.com. It’s a fairly large download, 473MB, so grab a cup of coffee in the mean time.

3) Download the new SleepEnabler.kext and unzip it to your Desktop.

2) Install the update from step 1 but sit tight; you do not want to restart you computer yet. Once Installer tells you the update is finished and to restart, launch a new Finder window. Copy the unzipped SleepEnabler.kext from your desktop to /Extra/Extensions/, overwriting your the previous kext.

3) Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions/ and remove IO80211Family.kext.

4) Now go ahead and restart.

That’s it! As long as you followed those four simple steps, you’ll be up and running 10.6.2 without a hitch. If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography or by clicking on some ads around the site. Any amount truly does help.

One upgrade possibility is to move to a 7200RPM Hard Drive, albeit it does kill your battery more quickly than its 5400RPM counterpart. And then there’s the widely popular Memory/RAM upgrade. Upgrade to the 4GB limit on most computers (including the Inspiron 1525) and you’ll see a nice speed improvement. But what happens once all of these upgrades are completed? Is that really as far as you can go?

Well, I was stuck facing the same question when I realized the answer: no! There is still one more hardware upgrade that you can perform on your system to give it a speed bump; you can upgrade your Wireless Internet Card. This upgrade has much less of a direct effect on your computer’s speed as all it does it potentially speed up the load time on Webpages and downloads. Nevertheless, it is a hardware upgrade and it does provide increased speed in your web browser.

Wireless Card upgrades are much less common then, say, RAM upgrades, as not many users are aware that they can be performed. They are insanely easy though and I recommend them to anyone looking to jump from that aging Wireless g to the much faster Wireless N. This upgrade does have its quirks however, such as requring a Wireless N router to see any improvement. On the positive, you’ll be future proofing your laptop and possibly even upgrading to a card more compatible with OS X (if you’re a hackintosh user, that is).

See part 2 of the post for a How To guide featuring the upgrade being performed on my trusty Inspiron 1525.

Part 2 will be up in the coming days.

I do have one issue with the phone, however, and it’s the certain smugness it causes all of it’s owners to have. Most every iPhone owner I know has this certain feeling of greatness because they own said device. Just compare the attitude of any iPhone owner to their nearly equal iPod Touch user. The two devices are practically one and the same, with one lacking the phone aspect, of course. And though the two devices are so similar, their owner’s attitudes are not.

The only thing keeping this iPhone-ridden world from collapsing under the smugness is the fact that, officially, all iPhone users in the United States have AT&T. The whole AT&T contract is a real conversation killer and I feel that it’s the key to keeping the iPhone’s cloud of smug at a controllable size.

It is widely rumored that, in 2010, the iPhone will come to Verizon. While I am pleased with this as I have Verizon, I am also scared. With iPhone users taken under Verizon’s wing, the only thing keeping iPhone smug controllable will go right out the window, along with our tolerance for those idiots. Just imagine a world where some jerk not only has the best phone around (Like I said, I do want an iPhone), but he always has service, and not just that slower 2G coverage. No, he always has 3G coverage. I mean, have you seen those maps? The red coverage map dominates its blue counterpart. And do you think we’ll be able to tolerate these idiots. That is if you don’t become one of them yourself.

All I’m suggesting is that a world with iPhone users that always have 3G coverage sounds like the exact opposite of a Utopia; more like a sort of hell, if you will. The thought of having a sleek iPhone is glorious, albeit I will not get one; I forbid myself from owning the attitude altering device. I am perfectly content with my iPod Touch and standard Verizon phone. The evidence couldn’t be more blatantly obvious, iPhone + Verizon = Hell on Earth.

Currently, I’m sporting a T2370 1.73GHz Dual Core Processor with a 533MHz FSB, not exactly the finest babe on the block. Actually, she’s rather old and saggy, if you will. I’ve had my eye out on an upgrade for a while now and I’ve finally chosen the one. Yes, she’s the one for me. As soon as I save up enough money, which is hard now that I’m splurging on Apps for my new iPod Touch, I will be purchasing a T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Processor with an 800MHz FSB for my trusty Inspiron 1525.

At a price tag of ~$140, I really can’t go wrong and the speed increase is much needed. However, money is a little tight. Between the hosting costs of this site and the no job factor, $140 is a lot of money for a high school student. That is why I am asking all the dedicated DailyBlogged users to please make a small contribution to this project. Any amounts are truly helpful and plus, once I am able to purchase this processor, I will document the entire upgrade process with pictures, possibly some videos, and most likely some speed test as well. So now that you know why I need the donations, are you going to help me out? Plus, all users who donate will have their names included in the new Hall Of Donations page.

Update: I found a sweet deal on a T7300 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo with an 800MHz FSB for only $70 so I purchased it. When it arrives, which will probably be a week, I will document the entire upgrade process.

• Copying or selling OS X
• Inducing, aiding, assisting, abetting or encouraging the infringement of Apple’s copyrighted Mac OS X software
• Circumventing the systems put into affect by Apple to inhibit the use of OS X on unauthorized hardware
• Basically, Psystar is prohibited from doing anything apple related

While banning the sale of these professional built machines, hackintoshing by the home user is continuing to go strong with seemingly no effect on the average user. And though Apple may have won this case, the installation of Apple’s operating system will continue to be installed on unautorized hardware, no matter the courts decision. Long live the hackintosh!

If you found this guide useful then please feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography or in the sidebar. Any amount is truly appreciated and will help with hosting costs..

**Post updated with Chameleon RC4 files**

The most widely used and probably the best bootloader out for OSX86 systems, Chameleon, is out with yet another update. This latest version ditches that ugly, white text and black background junk from Chameleon 1 and upgrades to 100% sexy. But not only sexy was added to the latest version. Now, you will see a logo for the OS you select to boot from which only increases the sexy. Plus, non-bootable partitions are no longer displayed and Snow Leopard support has been added. Additionally, you have the option to hide partitions. RC4 mostly boasts behind the scenes updates, with the exception of the new hidden partition option.  You can see the official release notes here. To be honest, I’m still waiting for a final release as Chameleon is in its 4th Release Candidate!!!

So now that you know about the update, go ahead and download the file and then follow the instructions below. Pay close attention as these instructions have changed from previous versions of Chameleon.

1. Make sure the untarred folder is on your desktop.

2. Open Terminal and type “diskutil list” w/o the quotes

3. Find the partition with OS X installed on it and remember its identifier ie. rdisk0s1

4. Type cd /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Desktop/Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-bin/i386 but replacing YOURUSERNAME with, you guessed it, your username.

5. Copy and paste the following commands into terminal but replacing DISK_IDENTIFIER with the code you were supposed to remember before (Don’t forget the r in the front of the disk identifier)

sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0

sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/DISK_IDENTIFIER

sudo cp boot /

6. Reboot

***For those of you that had any custom settings in com.apple.boot.plist – this file will remain untouched so any boot flags or other stuff you may have added will still be used at boot***

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Authors Mini-Biography. Any amount truly does help.

One way to remedy this is to make a shared partition and format it with FAT-32. This way, both Windows and OS X can copy data onto this partition. Unfortunately, the 4gb limit on individual files is a real deal killer. Wouldn’t it have been easier (and made more sense) to write directly to that original NTFS partition? Thanks to some fantastic Open source software, you can do just that!

First off, you should probably back up your computer as these programs mess with the filesystem. Check out our backup guide to learn how without using the dreaded Time Machine.

Now that your data is all backed up, we can get started. To not only add the ability to read and write to NTFS partitions, but also format them, you’re going to need two programs. Follow along with these 3 simple steps to ensure everything gets done right:

1. Boot into Leopard/Snow Leopard.

2. Download and install Macfuse. Restart your computer when prompted.

3. Download NTFS-3G and install that as well. Once again restart your computer.

Upon rebooting, the transformation should be complete. You will now be able to write to NTFS partitions, and the erase menu in Disk Utility will be updated to include a “Windows “NT Filesystem (NTFS-3G)” option.

If you found this guide useful then please feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography or in the sidebar. Any amount is truly appreciated and will help with hosting costs..

The much awaited for and long talked about sequel to Infinity Ward’s popular Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (COD 4) was officially released yesterday and, being the cool-cat I am, I picked it up from EBGames that same day. Owning neither an Xbox 360 nor a PS3, I purchased the PC version of the game. I didn’t mind though as I also owned COD 4 for the PC and it was absolutely amazing. Anyway, I picked up Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (or, unofficially, COD 6), installed it, and then unwillingly installed Steam. I have never been a big fan of Steam as I find it a little tedious to run extra software just to run another game but, being forced to as COD 6 wouldn’t run without it, I installed the bloated program.

The problem didn’t start until I decided to play around with the features a bit. I registered the product on Steam, played a bit of Multiplayer, and then proceeded to Log Out of Windows so that my brother could make his profile. After logging in, he couldn’t find any shortcuts to COD 6 on his Desktop or in the Start Menu. This was odd as I had installed COD 6 onto the computer, not just my account, yet I had shortcuts galore. I figured it was because he wasn’t logged in to Steam so I granted him access to my account and he started it up. COD 6 immediately launched but with something rather surprising… my game save.

After a little pondering I realized that the issue was because he was logged into my Steam Account and thus my data was being loaded (DUH!). So after creating an account for himself, he attempted to activate the product under his account (so that it would install) but without success. Steam gave an error saying that the product had already been registered. This was completely understandable as I had registered the product under my account. What wasn’t understandable was that there was no way for him to create his own COD 6 user profile! If I couldn’t create another user profile from within COD 6 when logged in under my Steam Account and he couldn’t use his own Steam Account to play then what the hell was we supposed to do… use my account?

I’m all for sharing and that other shit but I am not ready to give up access to my COD 6 profile to anyone but myself, no matter how close/brotherly they are. And I shouldn’t have to. I’m not the only person complaining about this too as users of both codnation.net and modernwarfare247.com have posted questions about this. This is obviously a ploy by Activision/Infinity Ward/Steam to get multiple users of the same computer to buy multiple licenses of the same game. Both Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare and Call of Duty World At War (which was made by a completely different company) allowed different users of the same computer to have their own profiles. And with the majority of computers having multiple users/User Accounts, I can’t help but wonder what would lead Infinity Ward to the exclusion of this option. And don’t even get me started on the removal of Dedicated Servers from the game, or the fact that matches are constantly paused when the host of a server leaves and everyone waits while a new one is found. I’m not going to even mention those problems ;-). All I can say is that choosing Steam was a bad idea!!!

Update: I contacted Steam about the issue to ensure that I wasn’t overlooking the function and they confirmed my fears, stating: “There is not the ability to create multiple Modern Warfare 2 profiles within the game. [You] would have to use the same profile.” A wrote back to them with a formal complaint and the request that the featured be added with a future patch. I will update this post accordingly as they respond and if they respond.

When you drag an application to the trash, you’re only deleting the actual program. You’re not deleting any of the files that allow that program to run. In Windows terms, it’s like deleting a program yet leaving all the registry entries intact; it’s just not good for the longevity/speed of the Operating System. This is why AppDelete is so essential to the life of OS X.

Fortuntely, AppDelete is very reasonably priced at $7.99 for a new user and $3.99 to upgrade from a previous version of AppDelete. And if that’s not good enough, the makers are also offering a free trial of AppDelete so you can see how amazing the app really is before you purchase it. I tried it out and I absolutely love it; so much, infact, that I purchased it for my own system. So give the trial a shot and, if you like it, buy the damn program. It’ll be the best $8 you’ve ever spent.

Recently, Alex did a post on iTunes 9 being beaten with the ugly stick. While I can’t say I disagree, I will admit that he left one thing out; iTunes 9 is insanely slow! Clicking pause takes a couple seconds before it pauses the song, clicking play has the same issue, and iTunes takes longer to launch. Call me crazy, but I am not willing to give up speed and reliability for home sharing, iTunes LP, and a so-called “improved” iTunes store. Once I realized how god awful iTunes 9 was, I immediately tried to downgrade back to iTunes 8. Fortunately, this was easier than I thought it would be. To downgrade back down to iTunes 8:

1) Quit iTunes

2) Delete iTunes from your Applications folder

3) Go to your ~/Music/iTunes folder with ~ referring to your Home/User Folder. Delete or rename the “iTunes Library” file

4) Open the “Previous iTunes Libraries” folder and look for your iTunes 8 library. You’ll be able to tell by the date as it should be dated at about the time you first ran iTunes 9. Copy the most recent pre-9 file to ~/Music/iTunes and rename it to “iTunes Library”

5) Go to the /Library/Receipts folder and delete the iTunesX and iTunesAccess packages

6) Download iTunes 8.2.1 directly from Apple. The page says it’s for G3, but it’s actually the regular iTunes kept online for G3 users who can’t run iTunes 9. Launch the dmg and run the installer.

7) iTunes should now launch with all your Music, Video, Playlists, etc. already added. Any changes you made while running iTunes 9 will be lost, but it’s a small price to pay for reliability.

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography or by clicking on some ads around the site. Any amount truly does help