Dishwasher dilemmas

When we first moved out, and into an apartment, it had an ingenious device in it hidden underneath the island counter. A large drawer, integrated with the rest of the cabinetry, that was a dishwasher! This was the Fisher & Paykel dishdrawer, which first came onto the market circa 1999, around the time the apartment was built. It was a sign that these apartments were high end at the time.

It seems that those who haven’t had one aren’t able to appreciate the joy of being able to gently pull open a drawer at waist height, greeted by an ascending chime as you open it, without having to bend over at all, and just stack dishes right into it.

To operate any other dishwasher, you would have to grab the handle at the top of the door, and pull downwards in a wide, swinging motion, a motion of 90 degrees until the door is parallel with the floor. Obviously, this means bending your knees and/or your back. With that motion completed, you could proceed to pulling out the racks, before beginning to stack the dishes in. At this point in time, the open door would be taking up about half a square metre of floor space in your kitchen, ready for someone to bang their shins on. You would then close the door by repeating the above process in reverse.

I used to think that the dishdrawer’s killer strength was the fact you could run half a load, the equivelant of one drawer, at at time. But looking at modern standard dishwashers from other manufacturers, they have Automatic modes that sense how much crockery you have in the dishwasher, and adjust power and water usage accordingly.

Let’s look at the data then.

YOU’VE GOT TO BE CAREFUL WHEN READING THE WATER USAGE

Fisher & Paykel specifies the Double Dishdrawer uses “6.9L per wash cycle”, and without saying which mode this is in. Most people would assume that that’s for the entire dishwasher, meaning both drawers together. But no. Choice magazine points out that the ratings are in fact for a single drawer. “Per cycle” is the giveaway here – two drawers means you are running two cycles as they operate independently, you can run one at a time, or both, each on different settings if you like. So, double the usage then, you say? Perhaps, but we’re not done yet.

6.9L is also the number quoted on the Water Rating star label. But delve into the back of the operating manual, and you’ll find that the AS 6400 test is based on Eco mode. So what is the actual usage then in Automatic mode? Fortunately, Choice has the data as they test in Auto mode – 18L, and that would be for both drawers together. Let’s say 9L for one drawer.

For comparison with a standard dishwasher, we’ll use a mid-range Miele. Miele specifies “Water consumption in the Automatic programme in L from: 6L” on the website. Delve into the operating manual, though, and you’ll see the actual figures for Automatic mode:

6L (half load, light soiling) to 13L (full load, heavy soiling)

Looking at the standard dishwasher numbers, I would hypothesise that half loads use between 6 to 9.5L, and full loads use between 9.5 to 13L, with a full load of normally soiled dishes using around 11L of water. But Choice has tested an equivelant model using 13L which is the upper bound. So let’s take 13L for a full load, and 9.5L for a half load.

So a table for comparison:

Dishwasher (Auto mode)	Half load	Full load
F&P Dishdrawer (Auto)	9	18
Miele mid-range-ish dishwasher (Auto)	9.5	13

Dishwasher (Eco mode)	Half Load	Full Load
F&P Dishdrawer (Eco)	6.9	13.8
Miele mid-range-ish dishwasher (Eco)	9.2	9.2

The conclusion here is that for half loads, both dishwashers are roughly equal, however, for a full load, the standard dishwasher is more water efficient.

I would’ve also compared the energy usage figures, but F&P doesn’t disclose the electricity figures. It was tricky enough determining that the water figures were actually in Eco mode!

There is another consideration though. Dishwashing tablets.

If you are using both drawers and using dishwashing tablets, you should break your tablet in half and put half in each drawer, or you will be using too much detergent. Or, use powder and put the right amount in each drawer. With a full size dishwasher, you would just use the one tablet. I think that if we were to go with dishdrawers, powder would be the way to go.

Even though they may have lost most of their advantage of doing half loads, there are other benefits of the drawer system. One other benefit of having two drawers is that some people don’t even empty their dishdrawers. They take what they need from the clean drawer, and then as they use dishes, they put the dirty ones in the other drawer, alternating between them. Lazy, but neat! While I probably wouldn’t go that far, I do think though that one would be inclined to put dirty dishes straight into the drawer after each meal rather than letting them accumulate on the counter due to the ease of loading the drawers.

A DISHDRAWER IS KIND OF LIKE AN OLED TV

I’ve told people before, that once you see an OLED TV next to an ordinary one, you can’t unsee the difference. The true blacks! I feel that a dishdrawer is the same. Once you’ve used one, using an ordinary one with that cumbersome, space-eating, knock-your-shins-on, pull down door and pull out racks isn’t the same.

The Galaxy S20 Review

We had just bought our lift passes at Nozawa Onsen, and had gathered outside the kiosk, getting our gear on. I bent over, most likely to adjust my boots, and out it slid. My naked white Pixel 3, from the top pocket of my ski jacket, onto the concrete. From the very place I had put it to protect it from damage on the slopes, as I had figured any pockets further down would be more susceptible to a fall.

It landed face down on the corner, damaging the corner frame, as well as cracking the front and back glass in the corner. Fortunately, the crack in the front barely reached the top of the screen, because of what turned out to be an asset: bezels.

I could have lived with that, but soon it became apparent  that the crack affected the front facing camera.

Anne asked me if this meant that from now on, with future phones, I would use a case. At first I thought I would, but then I realised, no. If I had made it over 11 years since the iPhone 3G and this was the first phone-smashing incident I’d ever had, then I’d be willing to take my chances again.

A PREMATURE PARTING

It was premature parting with the Pixel 3. A solid phone it was, with a pure Android experience, fast, and with a faultless camera.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I could get a discounted S20, the obvious thing to do would be to wait the Pixel 4a, the main drawbacks being the middling processor and lack of wireless charging. Others will also say the lack of water resistance and the plastic build, but to me are not a big deal. In fact the plastic polycarbonate build can be an advantage, as it’s less likely to crack like glass does. But the 120 Hz bezel-less screen, flagship processor, and telephoto lens on the S20 were certainly significant advantages.

The most notable thing I found is that there is nothing actually wrong with the Samsung software, but it takes quite a bit of tweaking the settings to get it how I would expect it to work. With the Pixel, it just works, with optimum settings just out of the box.

I compiled a laundry list of things I had to change to make the software behave more like a clean Google phone:

Enable features that should be enabled:

120 Hz Screen – This is disabled by default which I think doesn’t make any sense given it’s a key feature of the phone. I presume Samsung did this for battery life, but at least make it an option presented to the user at first boot.

Gesture navigation – By default, it uses the old 3 button navigation although gesture navigation has been out for quite a while now.

Turn on always on display – Not sure why they disabled it, probably battery, but AOD is expected on modern phones.

Lock screen notification (details) – By default, the notifications on the lock screen don’t show you the details in messages.

Turn on swipe down for notification panel

Pare back the bloatware:

1. Customise pull down bar – A bar designed for quick access won’t be quick if it’s a kichen sink of options. Removed most items and kept only the items used.
2. Replace Samsung Keyboard with Gboard. Better predictions and cleaner look.
3. Disable edge panel – A feature I find that gets in the way
4. Turn off notifications badges. This isn’t iOS, and the notification bar is all you need.
5. Turn off notifications for Samsung Store updates. These are annoying.
6. Uninstall Samsung apps
7. Turn off Samsung Daily – More bloatware.
8. Disable Facebook – Bloatware. Because you can’t uninstall it fully.
9. Disable bixby on Long press power

Once all those things were done, the software experience is pretty much perfect. The launcher and UI in general work well, no complaints at all, even coming from a Pixel. There’s even a feature Samsung provides that is useful, and that’s Bixby routines. You can make it apply different settings by different triggers, for example, go silent after midnight, or turn on Always on Display when it is put on the charger. Questionable though, is why Samsung made the icons on the Always on Display in colour, as they are much more difficult to see than the standard white icons, and you can’t turn this behaviour off.

The in-screen ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is a great concept. While it works most of the time, it’s not quite there yet. You have to place your finger more carefully and also for a longer time, and there are more false rejections than with a standard capacitive sensor. Given the choice, I would have the capacitive sensor, even if it meant having to have it on the back.

HIGH REFRESH DISPLAYS: YOU ONLY NEED ONE ONCE YOU’VE HAD ONE

When I first started using the phone, the screen did seem more fluid, but nothing to really rave about like what I’ve seen with some tech reviewers. Some months later though, I just happened to use an older iPhone to browse a website, and the scrolling turned into a blurred mess. That’s when I realised, once you go 120 Hertz, you can’t go back. After you’ve used one a while, the difference becomes obvious. You really don’t need it, until you’ve become used to it, at which point you won’t be going back to anything less.

The camera? It’s decent. While it’s not a big step up from the Pixel 3 it replaces, the colours are more vivid on the S20.

Left: Anne’s Pixel 3; Right: Galaxy S20

More daylight shots to compare:

Left: My old Pixel 3; Right: Galaxy S20

In low light, the Pixel still can’t be touched. Low light comparison:

Left: Pixel 3; Right: Galaxy S20

It turns out that while it has optical zoom, I haven’t actually used it in the last 7 months of being mostly at home, so it’s actually not as big a deal as I thought it would be. Someday, I am sure it’ll come in handy.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised about, is the speaker sound quality. I expected it to be worse than the Pixel 3 which has dual front firing speakers, but it’s not. It actually sounds like it does have dual front firing speakers, even though one of them is bottom firing.

I still do think about the Pixel 3. There was plenty of life left in that.

And I still don’t have a case on my S20, unless hiking.

Pixel 3 Review

In my review of the Galaxy S7, I explained why it was the perfect phone. Solidly built, flagship hardware, a good size, no gimmicks or real flaws. It lasted me 24 months, a personal record. The previous record was the iPhone 3G from back in 2008-2010.

But the rise of computational photography had me question why I needed to own a mirrorless or enthusiast compact camera. Previously, I had a NEX-6, which I replaced with a RX-100 III (1-inch sensor) when I decided the NEX-6 was too bulky for my liking when hiking. The photos that were promised to come out of this phone, were, too close to the photos that came out of these larger-sensored dedicated cameras.

I had two options. Both would involve selling the RX-100 as it would be somewhat redundant if I had the Pixel 3. I could replace it with a Fujifilm X100F, or a XT-20, or not replace it at all with anything and rely solely on the Pixel 3.

THE BEST CAMERA IS THE ONE YOU HAVE WITH YOU

I sold the RX-100, and for the past 9 months, have relied only on the Pixel 3. After trips to Tasmania and New Zealand, it became apparent that that’s all I needed. This is the liberation of having your primary photographic device being there with you, in your pocket, no matter when the moment arises. But it’s not only the portability, it’s just as much about the ease of sharing, accessibility, and backup. Not only can you share to Instagram just like that, but your photos are already available on your other devices, including PC, as soon as you log on. And they are backed up to Google Photos automatically, with free unlimited original quality storage exclusive to Pixel owners. None of that manual memory card or cable transfer business.

The beauty of the Pixel’s camera is the ability to take good shots in challenging lighting conditions. It can also save RAW + JPEG so you have the option of post-processing. It also has a wide-angle selfie lens which is great for getting more of the location behind you, or to get more people in the shot. I use this all the time. Portrait mode, which does artificial bokeh is also great but not as buttery smooth as the real thing.

If Google can do such great imaging using just computational photography on a small sensor, imagine what they could do if they could pair this with better camera hardware. Phones with larger camera sensors and better lenses.

NOW, THE PHONE

The Pixel 3 is very smooth, in fact, too smooth. The frosted glass back is very slippery. I wish that phone manufacturers would make a simpler, more practical design, even if it was a bit bulkier. Something like the Nokia Lumia 1020, with a durable, simple unibody made from polycarbonate and geared towards photography. Pity about the OS.

The Lumia 1020

Still, the mint green accent button is a wonderful touch on the Clearly White model, which goes well with marble.

The haptic feedback in the Pixel 3 is solid. The vibration you get when you touch the keyboard gives excellent feedback and makes it a pleasure to use.

Even with 4GB of RAM the software on the Pixel is butter smooth. This is the iPhone of the Android world. Things just work seamlessly. With the release of Android 10, the iPhone-like gestures are just so fluid. When you swipe up to go back home, the app tosses itself like a ball back into its icon space on the home screen, just like you’re playing Paper Toss. The swipe left/right at the bottom to switch apps is also so seamless. The back gesture could be improved though, as the animation is certainly not as intuitive as on the iPhone.

The always-on display is also very practical, with the time/date, weather, and your notifications always present but dimmed on the OLED screen. Incoming messages also appear on the always-on display momentarily.

Having the fingerprint sensor on the back takes some getting used to, coming from the S7 which had the sensor on the front. When the phone is on the desk, you have to pick it up to access the sensor on the back, or use a PIN instead. You also need to be careful when putting it back in your pocket that you don’t put your finger on the sensor and accidentally unlock it.

While Chrome would be the natural choice of browser on a Pixel phone, believe it or not, I choose Samsung Internet over it for a number of reasons. Chrome on mobile does not have ad blocking or anti-tracking while Samsung Internet has both. Anne and Jackson got me onto ad blockers some time ago, and I can’t go back. Chrome also doesn’t have quick links (kind of like quick-access bookmarks that appear when you touch the search bar). It also places the New Tab and the Change Tabs buttons at the top which is harder to reach, unlike Samsung Internet which has them at the bottom where your thumb will be. Samsung Internet is fast, reliable, and polished, and I have no reason not to use it even on a Pixel phone.

The user experience on the Pixel is great. Is my next phone going to be a Pixel? Possibly, but Samsung has also made strides in improving its software, and never compromises on its hardware specs. Samsung’s designs are also arguably nicer, have higher end hardware, and they depreciate less. For a phone that was released just under a year ago, and when the new model hasn’t been released yet, it’s disappointing that it can drop 50% in price (from $1199 down to $598). To a buyer who isn’t hanging out for the Pixel 4, that’s a bargain.

I’m still hoping for a practical, polycarbonate phone which is just as much camera (in hardware and software) as it is phone.

Privacy in a convenience world

A few years ago, I lamented the fact to Anne and Jackson, that I was getting distracting ads on webpages. These ads were distracting because they were of products and stores that I had already viewed, and therefore my eyes were naturally drawn to them. But I was not interested in seeing them constantly on my screen on each subsequent website I visited. It was re-targeting, Anne said. And that’s when I first got an ad-blocker. I can’t imagine ever going back now.

Recently I’ve been seeing Apple trumpeting their pro-privacy stance. News such as a giant billboard in Las Vegas, where CES is hosted, trolling Google by saying “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone”. A clever play on words given it is Vegas. A new TV ad has also been running. “Privacy. That’s iPhone.”, goes the tagline.

What really caught my attention the other week, was an article by the Washington Post, Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s Web browser has become spy software. It describes how Chrome allows thousands of cookies tracking users between sites. After reading the article I also realised that Chrome had also signed me in even though I had never signed in. It had changed so that a Gmail login would also automatically, and quietly, sign into Chrome.

The problem with that is, when signed in, your web history is all tracked and recorded. No wonder then, that my Pixel phone’s news feed was filled with relevant articles based on my previous searches. And the autocomplete feature in the browser offered up exactly what I had been searching for before. It certainly seemed convenient at the time.

The Associated Press had an article on how Google still tracks your location, even after turning Location History (in your Google Account) off. Looking at my Location History, I had six years of location history, dating back to when I had my first Nexus 4, every venue at any given hour. I could tell Jackson exactly which pizzeria we were at in Brooklyn on a particular day back in 2013, and when.

Part of the issue here is transparency. People aware of this tracking would have thought that turning Location History off would have stopped location tracking, but to actually stop location tracking you need to also turn off Web & App History. If you visit Google’s Privacy Checkup page or their Activity Controls page, it seems Google has put in significant effort (most likely influenced by legislation) to give users control over their data. Yet the existence of these pages is not well publicised and few would know about these controls.

A few people I’ve spoken to say they consciously give their data to Google, it’s the price you pay for these services and they are comfortable with that. When people say that, however, how much of that data they know about, varies. Uploading photos or using Gmail is one thing. Tracking, through web history, cookies, or location, is another. Is it right though for a single corporation to know everything about you? What if there was a data breach? Or a foreign government hacked it? Or down the line, Google changed their policies quietly and started doing things you were really not comfortable with, like handing over your data, at which point it may be too late? Or what if your Google Account got compromised with all your location and web history recorded in it?

There is no doubt that Google’s services are great – a fantastic mail service, and oodles of Photos storage (unlimited storage of Original quality photos for Pixel phones). It all just works so seamlessly for Android devices. Gmail stopped scanning mail for ad targeting purposes in late 2017, which is good to know.

Which brings us to Android. Apple makes its profits from selling devices, Google from data and advertising. This podcast talks about an experiment comparing an iPhone to an Android phone and monitoring the callbacks it made over a certain amount of time. The Android phone sent data back (including location data) far more frequently than the iPhone.

Would I give up my Android phone? With the slick interface, and tight integration of Google services, I would be reluctant to. Not to mention the fact that an equivalent iPhone (the XS) would cost $400-600 more. But these are the steps I could take:

• Not use Chrome. On Android, I use Samsung Internet, which believe it or not, has more useful features over Chrome, including a “jump to top” button, anti tracking, and ad blocker support. The navigation bar is also at the bottom which is easier to reach.
• Use an ad blocker.
• In Google Account, turn off Web & App History, Location History, Voice & Audio Activity, and Ad Personalisation.
• Turn off Google Assistant.

I can live without Google Maps or Google Search autocompleting prior searches, or without a relevant news feed on my Pixel. Even having taken those steps, it’s still unclear what my phone is sending back – but on the balance of things, I’ll live with that.

 

The Bike Lock Connundrum

Context

Pilu at Freshwater. The pizza cafe at Alexandria. By the beach at Cronulla. Outside Anaconda at Arncliffe. The Little Marionette at Annandale. Inside the carpark at Top Ryde. By the beach at Brighton. On a ride, it had never been an issue, the situations were relatively low-risk and there were always multiple locks to go around, if we actually needed to lock up.

Canley Vale wasn’t quite the same. We only had one lock for four bikes, and this end of Sydney was not what I would consider low risk. The actual lockup location also was round the corner from the restaurant, in a side street. This was slightly risky business.

In a dicey side street: One snip – Four bikes!

Which brings us on to the conundrum. In the bike world, generally, the better (and more expensive) the bike, the lighter it is. In the lock world, however, the better the lock, the heavier and more cumbersome it is. All locks will add weight which is why roadies won’t usually carry one at all.

The bike messenger from Premium Rush. That chain and lock would weigh at least 5kg – but he needs it.

From what I’ve been reading, in the US, and especially New York, bike theft is rampant. Thieves are equipped with tools to break or cut the locks. If you use a cable lock, you can pretty much expect your bike to be stolen, as cutting the cable is less than a five second job with bolt or cable cutters.

WITH BIKE LOCKS, “LIGHT” AND “STRONG” DON’T BELONG TOGETHER

D-locks (aka U-locks) are universally accepted as the most effective lock as they require angle grinders to cut, or jacks to break. The problem with D-locks, however, is their weight and cumbersome nature. They start at around 1KG and go up to 2KG. You also need a way to carry them, either in a backpack or cumbersomely mounted on a frame. For commuting, when the bike is going to be parked for a long period of time, there really wouldn’t be any other option.

For our purposes however, our recreational rides usually find us in low risk situations, generally safer localities with people around and often right outside our stop, and for short stops. With distance and time spent on the bike, a D-lock would be a nuisance. Keeping in mind that cable locks only stop opportunistic thefts – where the thief isn’t armed with tools, the quest to find a cable lock began.

The Knog Party Coil

The first product I looked at was the Knog Party Coil. Knog products are well made, for what they are. They look good, and you can tell that they are quality by handling them. They really know how to market them too. “Patented seamless overmould using industrial grade UV stable silicone“, they say. And “The unique combination of braided steel and fibre core crush before cutting, making bolt cutter attacks more frustrating for smash and grab thieves“. They even have a video:

They’re going full on for the trendy angle here.

The truth is, the actual cable inside the silicon was a mere 5mm diameter, with the silicone covering adding another 5mm on top. Even with the silicone making it 10mm in total diameter, the whole thing still felt a bit thin. I actually bought one at the Rebel sale for $15, thinking that all cables can be cut anyway. Even so, it feels quite thin and I decided it wasn’t enough of a deterrent – so I returned it, unopened.

Marketing aside, in this test here, the Party Coil was cut in 3 seconds. In another test, the Party Frank (which internally also contains a 5mm diameter cable) was cut in 20 seconds which is actually pretty good, but if it’s the same cable as the Party Coil, I’ll take it as it could have been cut in 3 seconds. Knog also makes stronger, thicker locks. The Kabana has a 10mm internal cable which is decently thick enough, but in this test it was cut in 6 seconds.

The upside to the Party Coil is that it’s only 330g and being 1.3m in length, it’s long enough but not overly long like most 1.8m cables, so it is rather compact. And did I mention Knog feels quality? It even comes with a coiled wrist band for the keys. Truth be told, I might have considered the Kabana, but at 500g and $33 delivered, it wasn’t going to be a contender.

The Brief

I did look at some D locks, but found there weren’t any in existence that were light enough and mountable. The lightest ones were rather small and didn’t come with a mount, either.

After some looking around, I decided on a criteria list:

• Light (Up to 500g)
• Compact (a shorter coil will be more compact)
• Easy to mount (a coil cable can just go around the seat posts)
• Not spaghetti thin, but not too thick (10-12mm ideal)
• Key operated
• Branded (but not too expensive)

Ideally a combination cable lock would be the most convenient as it is keyless, but there have been stories of some of these locks coming apart, and even more youtube videos of them being picked. This comes as no surprise, as there are more moving parts (the rotating number rings) which are not as well protected as a simple key lock and cylinder. This makes the key operated lock a criteria.

The Shortlist

Kryptonite Kryptoflex 1218: 12mm diameter, 1.8m length, 790g. Too heavy!

Abus Booster 670: 12mm diameter, 1.8m length, 642g. It defeated bolt cutters, but rather large and heavy!

Onguard Doberman #8029: 10mm diameter, 1.8m length, 413g. Did not review well.

Tioga TLK1218: 12mm diameter, 1.8m length, 421g. Reviewed well, cheap ($15), and light.

Abus uGrip 585 Chain (not cable): 5mm diameter chain, 0.65m length, 650g. Too expensive ($50+).

The Chosen One

In the end, I settled on the Reid 1212 Key Cable Lock. It ticked almost all the boxes – it would be lighter than the Tioga which was my 2nd choice, and more compact than all the other cables, due to its 1.2m length It was still 12mm diameter, so not too thin or thick, and easily mountable a given, like the other cables.

The one thing it didn’t have was brand. Reid has evidently ordered these from China, rebranded. You can tell it’s not quite the same quality as the Abus, Kryptonite and Knogs of this world, by the quality of the keys and the plastic coating of the cable not being as tightly wrapped. But for $9 at the Reid sale, how could you go wrong? At the end of the day, (almost) all cables can be cut.

BUT WAIT – DON’T BELIEVE THE SPECS

As I mentioned above, the plastic coating is not as tightly wrapped. On inspection, you can see there is a gap between the cable and the outer plastic, particularly when you shine a torch through the cable. I measured the inner cable, and it looks to be more like 7mm, with the total diameter including the plastic being 11-12mm. I certainly don’t recall seeing a gap when looking at the Abus and Kryptonite ones in the store, which means they were definitely thicker and that the Reid is lesser than its stated specs. I think this one will have to go back to the store for the Tioga instead.

La Perouse loop

One good thing that has come out of 2008 – a little bit of persistence paid off. After a polite letter to the bike shop, they agreed to swap the frame out for the correct size frame, a medium 17″. Of course, I appreciate that they came to the party, but there’s still that shadow of doubt as this could have been rectified earlier.

What was supposed to be a trail ride turned into an exploratory scenic ride from Warren’s house at Maroubra to La Perouse, including a dead end at a golf course, riding through the ghetto of housing commissions just past Malabar, and on a boardwalk through bushland into another golf course. 22KMs.

Not Mac or PC. Mac on PC.

Lately I’ve been hearing things about how Mac OS X is in fact a superior operating system to Windows, even Vista, particularly in the areas of security and stability. I was at work one day, and then, for some reason, a thought popped into my mind: Is it possible to run Mac OS X on PC hardware? A quick google search brought home a resounding “yes”.

Since Apple moved its Macintosh platform to intel processors in the last year or two, it has been possible to run Mac OS X on a PC. From what I remember reading, there is a security chip inside Apple Macs that Mac OS X will only run in the presence of. Of course, it was only a matter of time before this was circumvented and modified versions of the operating system were released that could run unhindered on the PC.

So this was the beginning of a new project: to convert my PC into a Mac.

Installation

It started with disconnecting my primary Windows hard drive to avoid damaging the Windows partition. After a lengthy boot from the DVD and after the OS files were installed on my secondary hard drive, the computer entered an endless reboot loop when booting from the drive I installed Mac OS to. I reconnected my Windows drive but booting from the primary Windows drive resulted in an all too familiar boot error. It seemed that the system had been royally screwed, even my Windows partition. Even though that drive had been disconnected, when I reconnected it, the boot sequence must have corrupted it somehow.

Fixing that was just a quick repair away using the Vista DVD. I then came across a guide specific to my motherboard, complete with details on setting up the video and audio and more.

The second attempt at installation proved successful. After modifying some BIOS settings and not selecting any driver packages included in the installation, the system actually booted into the Mac environment.

• Network connection and internet worked out of the box
• After installing NVInject,  I could configure the video resolution. Although the system would freeze upon selecting the resolution, it would boot with the new resolution.
• On-board sound worked after installing two kexts and applying the HDA patcher.
• To my complete surprise bluetooth worked right out of the box with my USB bluetooth adapter!
• Installing the HP Printer driver update through software update allowed me to add my HP psc all-in-one.

Mac OS X could even see my Windows partitions. However, I found that it could not write to them. Some research revealed OS X doesn’t support writing to NTFS partitions, but the unofficially developed NTFS-3G and MacFUSE extensions facilitated this. After applying this I had write access to the partitions. Although, for some reason, it wouldn’t write to my downloads partition.

Next I had to get a bootloader working so I could switch between Vista and OS X at boot up, without having to switch boot drives through the BIOS. I was using Easy BCD, and two or three times I had copied the boot image file from Mac to to the boot drive incorrectly. Even after finally getting this right, it still didn’t boot the Mac drive. Eventually I found I had to select generic OSx86 instead of Mac in the Easy BCD GUI. Finally got that set up.

One key thing I wanted to get set up was Mozilla Thunderbird sharing the same mail profile and folders from my Windows partition. This way, whether I booted into Windows or Mac, the mail would download to the same location and I could access all mail from either OS. Fortunately Thunderbird is cross platform and the Mac version had no trouble reading my Windows Thunderbird mail profile, even though it was quite fiddly configuring it to find the profile. I had to go through Terminal to run the profile manager.

Round 2: Update to 10.5.2

It wasn’t over yet. After downloading the OS update directly from Apple, and running the commands that facilitate installation on my Hackintosh, it applied successfully. Sound stopped working but this was fixed by reinstalling the kexts.

Unfortunately my PS/2 keyboard and mouse had stopped working as a result of the update. I wasn’t keen on having non-functional PS/2 ports even though I could just connect via USB. Research indicated this had something to do with AppleACPIPlatform.kext but there was no definitive method of restoring it to a working state. I also found that the PC wouldn’t recognise the USB keyboard until the OS had loaded which meant I couldn’t use the boot menu. I tried multiple USB ports, with no success. Then I found that there was a USB keyboard support item in the BIOS that was disabled by default for some reason.

In an effort to get my PS/2 ports back, I tried reinstalling the kext, didn’t work. I tried just overwriting the kext with a backup, didn’t work. In fact, somehow I broke the system and it wouldn’t even boot, it would throw a kernel panic every time.

I tried to get into safe mode unsuccessfully many times. At this stage, the frustration was getting to me. Eventually I booted with the DVD and opened terminal, and used the remnants of my knowledge of Linux to copy a different backup of the kext into the system folder (Mac OS is based on UNIX, so is Linux, so the commands are the same). By some miracle it worked and the system booted. I then reinstalled that kext with kext helper, the proper way, just to be sure. And the PS/2 ports were even functional, all I hoped for at that stage was a bootable OS!

A day or two later, I found that Thunderbird wasn’t starting. Somehow I had lost write access to the Windows partition and gained write access to the downloads partition. After some searching without finding any solid solutions, I thought maybe NTFS-3G would only automatically mount one of the partitions, but not all, which might explain why the downloads partition was now mounting. I tried mounting it manually without success. Eventually I found something that indicated a scandisk on the partition might bring it back. Booting into Windows, it automatically checked the disk and the disk would mount with write access in Mac OS again.

More to come: Usability and commentary on OS X