Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Rumors, Odds and ends
Dept. of deja vu: MacBookMini found in Adium stats
Reader Josh sent along this little note -- nothing too important, just something for you to file away for future reference. He just wanted us to point out that way, way down in the stats for Adium, the IM client for everyone who's not using iChat, there is one surreptitious listing for a "MacBookMini."Now, I assure you, we're thinking the exact same things you're thinking: these stats are totally bunk, anyone can edit their computer ID to be listed as anything they want, and one stat on Adium's page does not mean that Apple is coming out with some sort of revolutionary miniature laptop.
You might say that makes it doubly likely for someone to tweak their computer's settings to show up as some legendary Apple test machine, and again, we'd agree with you. But it's a big world out there -- unless you work at 1 Infinite Loop, you have no idea what Apple is testing and working on right now. Like I said, we just thought we'd let you know. Just in case.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
token said 1:20AM on 4-28-2009
Wow, TUAW, just wow...
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Ali said 12:48AM on 4-28-2009
i want one
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Cameron said 7:36AM on 4-28-2009
Me2 that's cool
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godDLL said 1:31AM on 4-28-2009
A conspicuously named Dell 9 nebook/hackintosh? Maybe?
Just maybe?
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GutterIsATool said 3:47AM on 4-28-2009
That was my thought. I have one, but I don't know where to rename that. Might look into that now.
glryx said 10:53AM on 4-28-2009
my thoughts exactly
Ricardobrusd said 2:46PM on 4-28-2009
Or, maybe, the MSI Wind, or even the EEEpc...
oliver hart said 4:56PM on 4-28-2009
Yup, my msi wind hackintosh is named..wait for it.. MacBook Mini.
Very interesting though.
nathan7 said 12:22PM on 4-28-2009
That was me, I configured my Chameleon 2 smbios.plist to name the model MacBookMini1,1 briefly a few weeks ago on my Dell Mini 9.
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nikster said 3:09AM on 4-28-2009
That stats page is interesting - GTalk is bigger than Yahoo, who would have thought?
I agree with godDLL this could be anything. Maybe the real thing, maybe not. We'll find out in a few months time.
BTW where can I mod my computer's ID? ;)
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ahha said 3:15AM on 4-28-2009
...and so the "Mac Pronc."
and "BigMac"
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spyke23 said 3:43AM on 4-28-2009
i think most dell hackintosh owners call their netbooks macbookmini. i know i do.
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Josh said 5:46AM on 4-28-2009
Further investigation shows that it only appeared during Week 17 of this year. Haven't been able to find it anytime before or since, although it's likely that they'll be loads of people changing their machine names now
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stevengreen said 8:43AM on 4-28-2009
I use my Hackintosh with the name MacBook Mini because it just seemed like the right name :)
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Michael Rose said 8:49AM on 4-28-2009
Just to be clear, this is the 'Model Name' you'd see in Apple System Profiler, not the name of the machine that you adjust in the Sharing pane as you see fit. Changing this identifier is not particularly simple.
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jmetts said 11:13AM on 4-28-2009
In the Hackintosh community, it is second nature. More difficult than the sharing pane, but not very hard to do.
orksnork said 8:59AM on 4-28-2009
yes...but all of us with the mini 9 change this with a kext anyway, to display at the very least the correct processor information.
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jmetts said 11:11AM on 4-28-2009
Come on! Don't report this stuff.
Most of the hackintosh netbooks out there go by the names Macbook Mini, Macbook Nano, etc. My hackintosh Wind reports as a Macbook Air. The reason I use Macbook Air is that it makes it easier to enable the remote disc feature since netbooks don't have built in DVD or CD ROMS. I could easily change it to Mac Book Mini or whatever I want.
As for a Mac Book Air showing in similar stats before being released....OK, I can see it. The name Macbook Air is a little more unique, but the name Macbook Mini has been used by the netbook hackintosh community since it began. It is far from unique to see it.
That said, since I use Adium, my Wind would be showing as one of the Macbook Air's, but it isn't a Macbook Air.
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brian said 1:17PM on 4-28-2009
The stat I want to see is how many hackintoshed netbooks are out there. I counted 50% of twitter mentions of the Dell mini 9 reference OS X or hackinstosh and I've seen numerous mentions in comment threads like this.
I've got one (mini 9), and it appears I'm not alone.
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Dave said 2:58PM on 4-28-2009
If all you guys are calling your hackintosh's Macbook Mini, why is there only one showing up during one week? I'd think if it is so common there would be more then this one occurrence...
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