Mac OS X now fully functional the MSI Wind netbook

Apple may not be interested in selling a Mac netbook, but that's not to say that netbook owners aren't interested in using Mac OS X. Thanks to a concerted effort by hackers, however, it is now possible to make your own Hackintosh netbook – all you need is a suitable netbook and a hacked version of the Mac OS X operating system.

So, after our Windows 7 netbook test, we were curious to see how far the hackers are along the Hackintosh path and decided to try and to install OS X on our own MSI Wind U100 – one of the better supported netbooks, by all accounts.

OS X compatibility is a hot topic in most netbook user forums and there's lots of (often conflicting) advice on how to install the operating system successfully and get everything working. None seemed particularly straightforward and most involved delving into the terminal at some point. So, confident that we wouldn't really learn anything from trying to follow second-hand instruction, grabbed a torrent of MSIWindosx86.iso (a hacked version of Mac OS X designed specifically for the MSI Wind) and dived in.

Before we go any further, we should point out (as if you didn't know already) that downloading a hacked version of Mac OS X is piracy, so if you're going to try this, the least you can do is buy a legitimate copy of the operating system from Apple. We will also point out that our installation didn't last any longer than the time it took to make this video and the MSI Wind U100 is now back running Windows XP.

So, how easy is to install Mac OS X on the MSI Wind? Very easy. The installation itself takes about 30 minutes and required nothing more than stepping through the usual installation screens. Almost everything worked, too – we only had problems with an unsupported screen resolution (easily solved using SwitchResX) and networking.

Ethernet connectivity was resolved by changing the adapter's settings under Preferences (as explained in the video), while Wi-Fi simply required the correct driver – Mac OS X doesn't support the MSI Wind's chipset by default.

The MSI Wind is available with two Wi-Fi chipsets, from either Realtek or Ralink. Both have produced their own Mac OS X Wi-Fi drivers (apparently in response to the Hackintosh community – Apple doesn't use chipsets from either manufacturer), but only Ralink has a Mac OS X Wi-Fi driver available for direct download and there's more information at the MSI Wind user forum.

With the appropriate Wi-Fi driver installed, the MSI Wind worked almost as well as any MacBook. The low screen resolution caused a few problems with tall dialog boxes and there was the odd graphical glitch, but the interface was snappy and applications responsive. Until, that is, we updated the installed 10.5.4 version of Mac OS X to 10.5.6, after which just about everything stopped working.

As mentioned above, the MSI Wind U100 is one of the better options for installing Mac OS X, but BoingBoing Gadgets has a useful Mac OS X netbook compatibility chart that give a good overview of how things stand with other netbooks.