Filed under: Hacks, Odds and ends
Found Footage: Leopard on an OQO
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
WickDC said 9:39AM on 4-29-2008
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.
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ramond said 9:59AM on 4-29-2008
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.
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tnkgrl said 1:24PM on 4-29-2008
It's currently running in Vesa mode - no Quartz.
umdstu said 10:21AM on 4-29-2008
the oqo doesn't have a touch screen
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tnkgrl said 1:22PM on 4-29-2008
But it does have a Wacom active digitizer, just like the ModBook.
Victor Agreda Jr said 10:29AM on 4-29-2008
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.
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Stephen Lang said 11:19AM on 4-29-2008
The 'OOQO' (Open OQO) is coming out soon...
maarten.vancoile said 10:36AM on 4-29-2008
@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)
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ramond said 1:34PM on 4-29-2008
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.
Chad Zeluff said 11:25AM on 4-29-2008
"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.)
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bluemonq said 12:09PM on 4-29-2008
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?
collide007 said 12:18PM on 4-29-2008
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.
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(01) said 12:22AM on 4-30-2008
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.
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