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Also fixes flaws that made researchers call the firewall ‘a mess’

Apple Inc. today issued the first update for Leopard, its three-week-old operating system. The update fixes a wide range of out-the-gate bugs and patches three security-related design flaws in the revamped firewall.

The update to Mac OS X 10.5.1 includes changes to a host of Leopard features, including some that have given early adopters fits, such as a gaffe that cripples some software, including Skype, when the firewall is set to the most flexible option. It also tackles problems formatting drives before they can be used with Time Machine, the integrated backup and restore software.

Click for more on Apple releases first Leopard update »

Dream finally becomes reality: use vanilla OS X kernel on normal PCs.

This might not be sth. new to some readers as the patch was initially released few days ago. The newest version as of today is v5.1, which includes various bug fixes and multiboot support.  Again, as the previous installation guide, this is also based my very own experience and not a simple duplication of the readme.

All credits go to netkas(who made this patch), def(for multiboot), Turbo and everyone works on the osx86 scene.

Update 1: Fixed a mistake in the tutorial  which will cause “endless reboot loop”. Sorry for everyone who encounter this issue!

Update 2: The EFI patch has been confirmed to work with current 10.4.11/10.5.1 update. Many hackintosh users have enjoyed the same update experience as genuine MAC users.

Update 3: Download in this guide updates to the latest pc_efi version, which is v5.1 as of today(11/17). Link to ToH kernel is also updated.

What is EFI and why is this “patch”?

The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware.

EFI is intended as a significantly improved replacement of the old legacy BIOS firmware interface historically used by all IBM PC compatible PCs. But as of today, most PCs running Microsoft Windows still rely on BIOS, while Intel based Macs, since the day one, are using EFI. Despite the technical advantage, this is more like an artificial barrier to prevent normal PCs running OS X.

Ironically, Microsoft Windows support BIOS only, and Apple makes Boot camp to fill the gap. The EFI patch works in a similar approach: it emulates EFI data for normal BIOS-based PCs and let OS X treat them as genuine EFI-based Macs.

The EFI emulation is a long dream in OSX86 community, but prior to this, thanks the Apple’s open source Darwin Project and those Hackintosh gurus, we can still enjoy OS X on normal PCs, with patched kernels/kernel modules which just bypass EFI. Now with the EFI patch, the hackintosh can boot off VANILLA UNMODIFIED OS X kernel and use  vanilla kexts, which gives a more clean room and great peace of mind for future system updates.

Click for more on HowTo: Install EFI patch and Use Unmodified OS X Kernel in Hackintosh »

Backup over NAS

Although we’ve been mostly happy with Leopard, one of the features we were most looking forward to was the ability to set Time Machine to use a NAS volume like Airport Disk, thus making laptop backups wireless and sexy (well, sort of sexy) instead of wired and cumbersome. Sadly, Apple cut the feature at the last minute, but as with all things OS X, nirvana is usually just a defaults write command away, so just pop open a terminal window and enter:



defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

and you should be able to select NAS volumes in the Time Machine prefs. Of course, you should only re-enable this for giggles — we don’t know why Apple turned it off to begin with, and it could very well be full of bugs and hose your data. Considering some of the other glitches that have cropped up in Time Machine, we’d actually recommend staying well away from this one.

Has been seeded to developer, build 9B13.

With the number of bugs that’ve already been reported for Leopard — most of which are fairly inherent in any .0 release, but are no less annoying — it doesn’t take much of a rumor-enthusiast to figure out that Apple is hard at work on a 10.5.1 update. The first fruit of that effort just hit ADC developers today, in the form of build 9B13. The update is pretty broad, and since this is just the first seed of 10.5.1, there’s no telling how long it’ll take for Apple to get this all tightened up for public consumption. Issues that are being addressed include:

• Mail Sync
• Spotlight Index
• Disk Management
• DesktopServices and moving files across partitions
• Text Drawing
• iCal and CalDAV syncing
• Keychain login
• Read-Only Issue with SMB
• AirPort 802.1X
• Application Firewall
• To-Do Notes
• and Smart Mailboxes.

Click for more on MAC OS X 10.5.1 Almost Here »

Install OSX Leopard on your x86 PC, dual or triple boot OSX with Windows XP/Vista.

Credit goes to BraizlMac@osx86scene forum who made the original patch to make all these possible. This guide is a summing up with some  corrections.

If you’ve get your Leopard running, try to add EFI capability and enjoy the vanilla kernel.

This currently works on INTEL system with SSE3 support ONLY. An AMD/SSE2 patch should come  shortly. Use CPU-Z to check the system capability if you are not sure.

Warning: the patch is rather experimental atm, and even your processor supports SSE3, the installation might still fails due to various compatible issues. Also, the patched DVD seems to be problematic, missing the booting setup part, and most likely would render a system unbootable. Most guides online are based on the instruction comes with the patch file, they didn’t actually install it! I did manage to install the Leopard on my own PC and this guide is based on my very own, first-hand experience. I’ll try to make it as accurate and correct as possible.

Update: AMD/Intel SSE2 users try this. Need to patch the original Leopard DMG though, no pre-patched disk available atm.

What you’ll need:

• Optional: Original unpatched Leopard installation disk image, and patch file to enable x86 PC support and strip the image to 4.3G so it can fit on a single layer DVD. This requires access to an working OSX Tiger system, so might not feasible for everyone.
• Optional but highly recommended: Patched 10.4.10 Tiger installation disk(torrent download). Other Tiger disk will also work.
• the patched DVD image(torrent download), post install patch file.
• a DVD burner and empty DVD media
• a USB Flash Drive formatted as FAT or FAT32, flash memory+usb card reader will also work
• Computer with Windows installed, HDD with at least 10G free space.

Click for more on Howto: The Complete Mac Leopard Installation and Windows Multi-Boot Setup Guide »

Leopard vs. Vista: it’s on.

There no doubt, Vista and Leopard are both extremely advanced, feature rich consumer operating systems. But way back in January when Vista launched knew we had little choice but pit the two in a head to head chartngraph Thunderdome competition.

NOTE: This chart is only for out of box features, and does not take into account 3rd party software.

Click for more on Leopard vs. Vista: feature chart showdown »