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Found Footage: Leopard on an OQO

by Scott McNulty Apr 29th 2008 at 9:30AM

An enterprising OQO user has gotten Leopard running on his tiny PC. If you aren't familiar with the OQO, it is billed as 'a full PC that fits in your pocket.' It has a slide out keyboard and runs a full version of Windows, and not Windows Mobile.

According to trf's forum posting Leopard is running pretty well except that video resolution is stuck at 800x480 and the WWAN card isn't working yet. Check out this YouTube video to watch the OQO boot up (it takes about 2 minutes to fully boot). Leopard seems to be running fairly well on the OQO, but don't whip out your wallet just yet. As with all non-Apple hardware that is running OS X, this isn't supported by Apple.

[via Engadget]

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An enterprising OQO user has gotten Leopard running on his tiny PC. If you aren't familiar with the OQO, it is billed as 'a full PC that...
 

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(01)

I totally wanted and OQO when then first came out, but luckily decided to read the reviews before I splurged. This is pretty cool, and like collide007 said, I like it a lot better than Psystar's offering.

April 30 2008 at 12:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
collide007

You know I cringed at Psystar's 'Open Computer' but this is quite intriguing, but I agree with Chad, with what you could realistically use this for, the iPhone/iPod touch is a lot more suited to the job. Keys on Post PC devices are either dead or at least dying in my opinion.

April 29 2008 at 12:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chad Zeluff

"Run Leopard on your wristwatch!"

...why does this stuff appeal to people? This is why I could never get into Linux, beyond trying out Ubuntu, Fedora etc.
There's so little support for niche devices like this, and once it's up and running...what would do actually DO on it? Run Photoshop?

(If you're thinking about using it for Safari, there's a great little device called the iPhone/iPod Touch.)

April 29 2008 at 11:25 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Chad Zeluff's comment
bluemonq

Why do people tinker with things in their garage? Why do people take weekend pottery lessons? Why do people sew their own clothing? Because it's fun, because it's an interesting challenge, because it's there. Some people spend the weekend watching The Game. Other people get OS X installed on things that were never intended to run it. trf isn't harming you, or anyone else (well, if there's a significant other, they might be a little annoyed at the time spent on this project). While I have no desire to run OS X on an OQO, more power to him/her.

As for what it can be used for: plenty of things. It could be installed in a car to run video, or act as a controller to a media server. It has a larger, higher-resolution screen than the iPhone/iPod touch. If the digitizer works, handwriting recognition is a possibility. There are probably other things, too. I'm not saying that it will do these things *well*, or that it's the best tool for the job. But it'll do them.

What I don't get is, trf *wants* to use OS X. Why are you objecting to it?

April 29 2008 at 12:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
maarten.vancoile

@ramond: Leopard doesn't actually care if the device has quartz support or not, it will display animations anyhow. Though if they are to heavy, they will be skipped. (this is the behaviour I'm experiencing on my aging mac with no quartz support)

April 29 2008 at 10:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to maarten.vancoile's comment
indiekiduk

Without Quartz I find it too slow to interact with the finder windows and you get lots of annoying tearing, its the same as running Windows without graphics drivers installed, the main reason OS X performs so well is the GPU accelerating the user interface. My hackintosh was a server so Vesa mode didn't bother me because obviously when I was using remote desktop, but if it was a machine I was going to use directly I think running without Quartz would be unacceptable.

April 29 2008 at 1:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
superpixel

All I know is that I want one. I really hope Apple is taking the design experience gained from iPhone and Air to craft a slick tablet Mac, maybe even dockable like the old Duo series.

April 29 2008 at 10:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to superpixel's comment
Stephen Lang

The 'OOQO' (Open OQO) is coming out soon...

April 29 2008 at 11:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
umdstu

the oqo doesn't have a touch screen

April 29 2008 at 10:20 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to umdstu's comment
tnkgrl

But it does have a Wacom active digitizer, just like the ModBook.

April 29 2008 at 1:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
indiekiduk

The important stuff would be to mention if Quartz extreme is working or not, it would be pretty pointless without that. I'm not sure what video card is in the OQO so can't say for myself. And the other major thing would be is the touch screen working? Also maybe next time he can turn auto focus on since he is zooming in and out.

April 29 2008 at 9:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to indiekiduk's comment
tnkgrl

It's currently running in Vesa mode - no Quartz.

April 29 2008 at 1:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
WickDC

Had been running Tiger on a handheld VAIO for a long time. Same sort of thing tho, graphics and wireless issues, so made it not really very useful as a handheld portable. ;) There's a number of people out there working on porting various unix drivers for these things so they will work, but it's time consuming and tedious work it seems, so I just gave up finally. It'd be cool if it would work, heck, I'd even pay extra to get some of these drivers and such. Half way between the iPhone and the MBA.

April 29 2008 at 9:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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