What’s an orthopedic surgeon doing in a tech startup camp? Ask me.

I don’t know.

In fact, I found myself the odd man out in the hordes of hopeful youngster ready to change the world for the better. Anyhow, there are things I liked about tech community that draws me into a startup scene.  The craziest bunch of tech people have the fresh-iest ideas in my opinion.  The startup tech community is exactly made of such crazy people:

Open-ness

No matter how naive and crazy their ideas may sound, it is shared. Every person inside this room is crazy enough, bold enough to think they will change how we live our lives. In fact the craziest ideas are usually the one that flourishes under the hood. This environment of open-ness emboldens innovators to go beyond boring repetitions and hack useful ideas. Each seem to be excited to share and listen what others have in mind. Here, openness and sharing leapfrogs an idea from the incubators to the field.

Techies doing all the discussion under the watchful Steve Jobs…

Collaboration

If there’s a word to describe a tech startup community, it is collaboration. This is how brilliant ideas become useful tech. Of how a simple hack makes our boring lives exciting. One guy posted a problem, another piecemeal-ed it into workable algorithm, and another totally tosses an idea out into the open.

Craziness

If theres one way to measure how an idea could change our world, it is the degree of craziness that idea may sound. Tell a tech guy how crazy he is and he will get back to you with a crazy idea that works. Most of the guys here would love to tell mainstream guys (yup, that’s me), “You are crazy. How were you able to survive your life when you can simplify it with this, hack?” . Note the reversal of perspectives?

Amazement

Everyone hoots and wow with every idea presented. A candy bar moment every time. The sense of wonder and thirst for knowing is unlimited. “How’d you do that?” or “Let’s do something like..” is such a norm, I ran out of brain cells to store ideas.

Serendipity/Connectedness

“Oh you are working with this idea? I was kind of working too with part of the same idea!” Every person in the room is working with something that touches, connects or ends with an idea that someone else is working. The connectedness is infinite, and serendipity is just a natural consequence.

My last tech moment of ideas was a gazillion years ago when the norm was still tin can radios. Just joking. But I love this tech community. It’s out to change the world. Like or not or call me crazy. 🙂

Next to a memory upgrade, an SSD drive is probably the next bang-for-the-buck upgrade you have to make on your hackintosh. I’ve upgraded my hackintoshes recently and frankly, I’ve never been as happy.

The 50% less boot up time and loading of apps is remarkable. I encountered a few hiccups during the upgrade but I manage to run the hackintosh after a few trials. Occasionally I get freeze ups and sudden reboots, but I pretty damn understand my hardware isn’t the best there is for a mac.  Still, the markedly reduced boot up time and noticeably faster loading of apps is fantastic.

A do it yourself  SSD upgrade for Macbooks, especially the retina ready later models, is not for the faint hearted. Generally, If you’re not ready to waste your Macbook, don’t do it. Have the professionals do it for you. Repairing Macbooks are a tad difficult, not to mention expensive. It does require some technical skills mind you.

It can be done though. It will present some unique challenges and it will require a ton of patience, luck and willingness to learn! I will share how I did my upgrades in my future posts!

Note: If you’re looking for a guide or how to install OSX on intel PC hardware, sorry you’re on the wrong page. The net is overflowing with information on this topic, there’s no point adding one more.

This post will lessen your sleepless nights over kernel panics and will make installing Maverick on your Intel PC a bit more enjoyable than frustrating.

You should NOT:

1. Forget to check OSX hardware compatibility list (HCL). OSX is quite unforgiving with hardware – processor, motherboard, video cards, sound cards, WIFI cards and recently with bluetooth dongles. Sometimes, buying a “compatible” but a bit expensive peripheral pays off better than hacking kexts. Unless you’re into hacking kexts and not installing OSX primarily.
2. Jump at an installation method just because it is popular. Unibeast-Multibeast installation method by Tony Mac is a lot easy and popular, it’s a shame though it didn’t work for my rig. I got the boot:0 error. Myhack method fixed that and a few more kinks (like trashing off some useless kexts off the vanilla maverick installation app).
3. Cheap out on your USB installation drive. Choose a Hi speed 8G (or more) USB drive  to install OSX on your rig. Faster USB drive means faster installation and will save your hours off the waiting! The usual 15 minutes on a high speed quality USB is equivalent to an hour or more in a cheapo USB.
4. Snub the Solid State Drive! Of all the investments you will make on your PC parts,SSD (as a primary OSX drive) will do wonders on your boot up time and app run time!
5. Stick those WIFI cards, Bluetooth dongles and sound card into your rig’s slots just because it works flawlessly with windoze. Apple has this habit of nipping out hardware unceremoniously off its HCL . Read, read and read some more. If you still chose to put them inside your rig, make sure you have the right kexts (drivers) and the right method to install it.
6. Complicate your installation by adding all those hard drives while installing a Maverick. Plug in your primary OSX drive only and install first on that drive. Add you’re other drives later. On the other hand, do not install OSX Maverick using a bluetooth keyboard, trackpad or mouse. If your bluetooth won’t work, I don’t know how will you can proceed with your OSX installation.
7. Push your luck! find a compatible video card and don’t complain to apple your VC is not supported.
8. Forgot the UEFI, or bios boot program settings. Set your IDE/drive state to “AHCI” or “enhanced” and OS to “plug and play”. If you have virtualization, turn it off!
9. Shun off the boot flags or the boot commands. Some peripherals will work with addition of boot flags. If you’re stuck with kernel panics, the boot flags will help you troubleshoot and identify the culprit, which is usually an incompatible hardware.
10. Forget installing your bootloader during Multibeast post installation. Sounds really crazy but yes I made this mistake many times before. The boot error on restart is just awful to say at least. So make sure you have a bootloader installed on your target disk!

I know this is neither exhaustive nor a finished list of don’ts. It will never be. However, taking these warnings saves you half of the installation frustrations than when you don’t heed it. Of course thats just approximate, but if you want to risk precious time, go ahead try your luck. 🙂