Rebel EFI (Install OSX on any PC)

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 23, 2009, 8:08 pm

Hmmm, this looks pretty badass and might save me 1,699 on a new iMac

As some know, I've screwed around with OSX86 Hackintosh stuff but it's really frustrating with poor support.

This Rebel EFi software make downloading the correct drivers and installing Leopard a breeze according to reports.:

http://www.psystar.com/rebel_efi

Looks like it's good for those lame linux installs as well : )

May try it out this weekend, or I may buy a Mac, not sure. This Rebel EFi is all over the news today. Sounds like it works really well for supported Intel Chips (it Core Duo, etc) (no AMD for you!)

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » October 26, 2009, 2:21 pm

Please try it out and provide us more information and some gratuitous screenshots if you have the time.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 26, 2009, 2:54 pm

Ashur wrote:Please try it out and provide us more information and some gratuitous screenshots if you have the time.

It didn't work for me. It could have been my burned copy of Snow Leopard, I had to convert a dmg file to ISo then burn to DL DVD so I may have screwed something up there..

I've decided to just go ahead and buy one of the 27" iMacs that just came out for $1,699. I'm hooked on the 2560x1440 screen size.

If nothing else, i can use it as a very nice monitor and of course use it as a Windows 7 machine if I don't like OSX on my non primary machine. Also Fusion 3 looks awesome for virtual Window 7 on MACs with diectx 9c and Aero etc supported. Well see.

Apple sucks.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » October 26, 2009, 5:05 pm

"My name is Winnow, and I'm a Mac."

Xatrei · Post by **Xatrei** » October 26, 2009, 9:01 pm

Ashur wrote:"My name is Winnow, and I'm a Mac."

...a self-loathing Mac.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » October 27, 2009, 12:09 am

Oh god... If you actually end up liking OSX, we'll never hear the end of how Windows sucks..

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 27, 2009, 1:32 am

Animalor wrote:Oh god... If you actually end up liking OSX, we'll never hear the end of how Windows sucks..

Don't count on it.

Got the iMac 27

so far:

mouse sucks

-unbelievably slow even at max tracking speed, and
-the touch functions screw up and go off during normal use
-ergonomic hell

I'll have to buy a Logitech high dpi mouse for this thing

OSX sucks

-same complaints as always
-can only drag windows from bottom right corner
-all the app menus are stuck way the fuck up in the upper left corner of the screen where the slow as fuck mouse has to get to them, causing me to pick up the POS mouse (instead of slightly twitch my wrist using the G7 to get across the screen)

2560x1440 Display is stupendous

-the saving grace for this purchase
-back LED lighting makes the brightness and colors jump out.
-high pixel dpi make everything razor sharp
-no really, it's amazing and your desktop monitor doesn't have back LED lighting so you should stop by an Apple store to check it out.

which leads to....

Processor/Graphics card sucks.

-I'm very concerned about even 720p movies stuttering while playing. They couldn't possibly have actually sold a PC that has a humongous, gorgeous screen and not be able to, at minimum, push 720p and 1080p could they? COULD THEY? So far, the 720p videos I've played have stuttered. Sweet jesus, let it be some kind of fluke. I don't care about gaming but for the love of god, don't let that awesome monitor go to waste because Apple designers are a bunch of idiots, only worried about the outward appearance of their products.

-still pictures are breathtaking on it. (but man, I need video yo!)

This machine has a core duo clocked at 3GHz and a Radeon 4670? Shouldn't that be enough for HD video? Does OSX suck that much worse than Windows based PCs in performance?

Note: The poor video playback seems to be a Quicktime thing when playing inside browser window. If I go to full screen it seems to play OK.

The little mini Bluetooth keyboard is nice although I would have preferred having the number pad like my other Apple keyboard. This one's wireless though so kinda nice.

I'll play around with this thing for a week or so and pray to god that HD video will run without stuttering, and see how much I can tweak the OS to be more like Windows 7 (which blows OSX Leopard away in usability) If I can't, I'll load Windows 7 on it which should run HD video, swap out the keyboard and mouse for useful keyboard and high DPI mouse, and at least have some sort of Multimedia PC.

Apple likes to use non standard shit so instead of a common HDMI port, they include a mini DVI port that nothing can use except Mac products. I'd like to be able to at least use this thing as a monitor for Xbox 360, PS3 and even for a real power Windows PC. Some third parties are working on DVI to HDMI adapter for this so hopefully that is successful.

Audio seems OK. Can get loud and remain clear.

To Recap:

Pros:
Amazing display

Cons:
See long list above

***These are just initial impressions. I'm sure I'll soften up some.***

BTW, I had to plug in my Logitech mouse to finish the set up with this. The "magic" blutooth Mac mouse wasn't' recognized by the system until I restarted the OS.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » October 27, 2009, 8:00 am

Gah you bought the Core Duo?

See if you can return it. The Core I5 and I7's come out in a couple of weeks for this.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 27, 2009, 12:37 pm

Animalor wrote:Gah you bought the Core Duo?

See if you can return it. The Core I5 and I7's come out in a couple of weeks for this.

I bought Core Duo on purpose. 1699 is already enough to pay for a secondary machine that I just want to watch movies on and do non gaming stuff on. my i7 PC destroys this Mac in performance and is where I'll do any heavy lifting. The i7 version will cost 2200 or even more and I don't want to psend an additional 500 on this just for basiv movie watching/surfing/music etc. Core Duo and lame ATi card (wish was nVidia) should work for that.

At minimum though, I want the thing to play 1080p movies. I rebooted (lame OSX requiring reboots!) and the movies seemed to play smooth after that. I was concerned that maybe I got a shoddy iMac with poor heatsink thermal or something and would have taken it back to exchange.

One concern I have is how hot it gets. I'm thinking the aluminum case is part of the thermal design but it gets really hot at the top of the screen (back vent) I'm worried about discoloration eventually like my Dell 24 got from heat.

Let me emphasize though....the picture is incredible. I played a 1080p demo move from Apple's web site on both my Del 24" LCD and the 27" Apple and it's not even close. I mean, you don't have to start scrutinizing the different pictures, the LED backlit screen is a jaw dropper. The Dell or even my 46" Samsung LCD feels like Im looking through a fog compared to the new screen. It has super pure white combines with very high contrast due to the LED backlighting. Also has very high brightness is desired with zero washout. Pretty amazing.

I really hope the stuttering video playback was some sort of resource error on initial first time boot up. I won't hesitate to exchange it if video issues creep up again.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » October 28, 2009, 12:16 pm

Color me confused, but if you HATE Apple, why did you BUY ONE OF THEIR PRODUCTS? Surely large monitors are available for your PC of choice. Is it self-loathing?

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » October 28, 2009, 12:35 pm

I haven't researched it a lot but I don't think there's a lot of large LED backlit displays out there. Most use fluorescent. And yes it does make a difference.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 28, 2009, 1:01 pm

Ashur wrote:Color me confused, but if you HATE Apple, why did you BUY ONE OF THEIR PRODUCTS? Surely large monitors are available for your PC of choice. Is it self-loathing?

There's nothing out there as nice as the iMac 27" monitor right now.

I'm considering returning the iMac even with a 169.00 restock fee. I honestly think somethings wrong with my iMac as it can't even play HD movies. It's also boiling hot along the top of the PC. The LCD screen is right there so it makes me very concerned about the lifespan of the display.

I have until Nov 9th to return it with the 169 restock. I can get a hella nice Window 7 PC even for 169.00 less. I'll take the hit and make the difference up by not paying tax online. It's unfortunate because I wasn't expecting any kind of good performance at all but playing 1080P movies should be cake for a core duo 3GHz even with a lame ATi 4760 (or 4650, not sure) card.

I grabbed Fusion 3 last night and migrated my entire install of Windows 7 to a virtual iMac VMware image. That went extremely well. Very cool and hassle free and had all my apps, settings etc without even having to reactivate Windows 7. The problem? It's slow as molasses. I'm talking waiting 10 second for a right click menu to pop up. ..and then other times, it would play fairly high res movies from within the Virtual windows with perfect audio. My suspicion is poor thermal or heatsinks or something or even a bad fan. Movies (mostly) seem to play ok for a few minutes and then start to drop frames and eventually freeze up. I'm sure I could have it looked at but I'm not convinced that even at full performance (which I hope isn't what I'm seeing now) it wouldn't be enough to satisfy even basic multimedia needs.

I'll play around another day or so just to be sure since I have until Nov 9 and i'm basically renting the thing now for 169.00 now.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 29, 2009, 2:41 am

I'm starting to whip this POS OSX into shape.

Couple things so far.

For some inexplicable reason, Apple likes their mice to go about 2 miles and hour and I like them to go 100 miles an hour.

USB Overdrive 3.0.1 to the rescue! It adds speed and support for most USB mice. It doesnt recognize the touchpad of the new Magic Mouse but at least my mouse is speedy again with a right click. With the Magic Mouse being so uncomfortable, if I kept this, I'd be getting a Logitech mouse.

I installed VLC for videos and it plays HD videos fine. It's the ASS Quicktime that comes with OSX that sucks so much ass on HD content. I copied my 1080P 14GB Watchmen movie over the the Mac to test things out and VLC played it fine.

Fusion 3 seems to be running well tonight also. I deleted some of the apps that transferred over as a whole when I migrated my entire Windows 7 install to Fusion. Pretty amazing migration tool. That's about as easy as it gets and I have every app I use in Windows 7 now either in a 1920x12000 Window (which now isn't the entire screen on the 2560x1440 display or you can integrate the windows apps directly into OSX in separate windows. Since 1920x1200 doesn't hog the entire screen anymore, I tend to keep Windows 7 in it's own window.

A definite improvement tonight with a third party video player, third party USB mouse support to speed things up, and Fusion 3 humming along so I have my real apps (windows) at my fingertips.

Pending any overheating and video frame loss, etc, things are looking much more promising for me keeping the iMac. The temperature on the top of the iMac is still troubling.

Translation: The more I UnMacSuckify this computer, the better it gets. Can't wait for Bootcamp to have Windows 7 support so I can ditch OSX altogether if I want.

My LDC arrangement is getting pretty nerdy. Got the 46" 1920x1080 Samsung that I do most my gaming, surfing, etc on (+360/ps3). The 1920x1200 Dell I run my power apps on (newsleecher, photoshop, etc) and the 2560x1440 iMac beside that, then two HD projectors

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 29, 2009, 8:13 pm

Well, I'm not making this stuff up.

The slow ass performance has been explained in a monster sized 27" iMac problem thread. It appears there's a massive memory leak issue associated with the video drivers for the (lame!) ATi video cards in teh 27" Macs.

There's a bunch of people reporting severe slow downs and choppy video play.

Wow, what crappy quality control from Apple! Isn't Apple supposed to be this amazing experience with plug and play, no issues?

Good news is that it is hopefully fixable with a software release. I'll hand on until right before my return deadline to see if they get it fixed.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 31, 2009, 9:15 pm

Few more updates:

It's been discovered that Airport is the cause of the massive 105% CPU usage on the new iMacs. For some reason using the wireless service just plain flips the shit out of the OS. Apple programmers/quality checkers must be morons to let something like this get by them before releasing a new product.

Thankfully, I can turn off Airport and use a regular ethernet land line until the Apple fuck ups get it straightened out. After spending a few days on Apple forums, it amazed me that we see those gay commercials about Apples "just working". They don't and this is the biggest fuck up I've encountered on a store bought PC ever.

I also have been able to speed up the mouse (which tons of people complain about being too slow in Leopard). I was using USB oVerdrive which cost money (I hacked) but lost all touch control of the magic mouse. I found a free app called "Mouse Zoom" which keeps all functionality but speeds up the mouse. Again, amazing that Apple gets away with this shit.

Since turning off Airport, the back of my iMac has been cool to the touch and 1080p videos run smooth. I also learned that Flash has always performed extremely poorly on iMacs and they don't seem to care that sites like YouTube, and other sites on the most popular destinations on the web, perform like ass on Macs.

Don't believe the hype of those lame commercials. Apple has plenty of issues. Windows 7 is better than OSX for sure.

That said, the screen is beautiful and I'm going to keep my iMac for that reason alone, now that I know I'm not supposed to be able to fry eggs on the back of my iMac. I just hope no permanent damage to the screen occurred from being super heated for a few days due to Apple's incompetence.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » November 5, 2009, 4:38 pm

Surprise! Psystar's Rebel EFI Software and Customer Service are Shady

Psystar's Rebel EFI software promises that you can install OS X on any PC with a Core 2 Duo, Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem processor for $50, but we are discovering that you will probably end up getting screwed royally.

While CrunchGear was able to get Rebel EFI working, it is important to point out that we tried several times get the software up and running with no success on the same exact computer. Then we got this email from a frustrated reader:

2 weeks ago, I purchased Psystar's RebelEFI software. While I own several Macs, I also have a fairly new PC with a Core 2 Duo and Intel motherboard that I thought would be a perfect specimen.

Before I purchased the software, I downloaded the trial version of RebelEFI. Sure enough, I was able to boot and install OS X 10.6. I installed the RebelEFI utility in OS X and because it was a trial, the hardware compatibility feature was disabled. (Why this feature would be disabled in a trial version?) I called Psystar with several questions and asked what would happen if some of my hardware was not compatible? The sales person told me that they would be able to access the software's hardware compatibility list and be able to supply me with drivers for the incompatible hardware.

I purchased the software and ran the hardware compatibility test. It showed me lack of compatibility for my video, audio and USB 2.0, however there was no way to send them the results of this test. When I questioned this, I sent Psystar a tech support ticket through the software's Customer Support feature. I was told in a reply that I would have to fill out a DCR form. I asked what a DCR form is and where I could find it. (They assumed I would automatically know this information).

After not hearing anything for a week, I tried calling Customer Support and was greeted with a message that support is only handled via email. I again asked the same question via email and 3 days later I received a PDF file in response. It basically says I have to send Psystar my computer for them to make it completely compatible. WHAT???? At no point during the purchase was I told I may have to send them my computer. I am now in the process of trying to get my money back.

Mac OS X on any computer? FAIL
...continued at URL above

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 5, 2009, 5:48 pm

Boogahz wrote:Surprise! Psystar's Rebel EFI Software and Customer Service are Shady

Considering now that I own a Mac (for the time being!) and see how crappy the OS runs on even "official" systems, I'm not surprised it doesn't work well on anything else.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 14, 2009, 3:03 am

Leopard 10.6.2 fixed the slowdown issues with the new iMacs according to reports. I haven't notices slow down on mine.

Here's funny spoof of the Imac intro video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY2X4a1a0u0

funnier if you saw the original.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 16, 2009, 1:26 am

Still fine tuning my iMac to make it as Windowsesque as possible.

I tried both new versions of VMWare Fusion 3 and Parallels 5.0

After playing with them both, Parallels is the better choice. Both can be full screen, windowed or have "Integrated" modes where you have the Windows start menu on the Mac Task Bar and only see the individual windows for Windows 7 Apps pop up.

Couple things...Fusion 3 has the better migration tool. Parallels doesn't take your existing Windows 7 install and convert it to a Virtual machine. Fusion 3 does this quite well. It's pretty amazing. Everything works except for links to Hard drives that aren't there anymore (if you saved stuff on the non OS partition, etc).

Thankfully, Parallels can convert a Fusion Virtual Machine so I converted my Windows 7 Fusion machine to Parallels. That went extremely smooth as well. I've had a Windows 7 Fusion and Parallels machine running at the same time so they don't interfere with each other.

While both are impressive with their ease of setup, Parallels wins on just about every area beside the initial conversion (if you wanted to port over your existing install) Parallels is faster, integrates better, handles Aero windows better (according to reports runs Windows 7 20% faster than Fusion 3)

The shared folders work well for both Fusion 3 and Parallels 5. I have my media folder on my PC shared so my iMac can access all my movies, music, books, etc. Fusion and Parallels both access this shared area easy as well. I'm going to have Parallels running all the time while using the Mac...in fact, I just use the Windows apps on the Mac. It really is just for the screen at this point which is amazing. OSX stays out of my way so much that I don't even notice it. Not sure why anyone would want to use that PoS over Windows.

I'm still in awe of the 27" 2560 x 1440 screen. I've read a few comics on it as well as viewed some other quality images and there's really no comparison. The LED high pixel density screen blows you away. I'm not saying it's for everyone. The text gets pretty small due to the pixel density. Some may also not like the reflection because you can see yourself whenever the screen is black. I also had to move the gay Mac Taskbar to the right side of the screen as fully expanded windows would not expand over the taskbar, wasting valuable space. I always hide my task bar in Windows. I now have the Mac bard on the right side as well as hidden.

I'm going to buy a Logitech MX Performance Mouse in the next few days to replace the lame "Magic Mouse" and will eventually replace the mini bluetooth keyboard with another full sized metal Mac keyboard that has number pad and page up/down etc keys. I was forced to use a third party utility app to increase the mouse speed. (Apple sucks, who the fuck can possibly use a mouse that has a max speed as slow as Apple provides? I mean, seriously? It's bad enough on a normal sized monitor but on a 2560 x 1440 screen it's beyond retarded to have a mouse that slow)

So far, I got what I expected. An iMac (after 10.6.2 patch) that can handle multimedia, and then Parallels which lets me treat it like a Windows 7 Machine and take advantage of the beautiful display. I've fired up Second Life and some other games using Parallels and it works fine.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » November 16, 2009, 1:10 pm

Your inability to leave things alone is amazing to me. Never accept the status quo! Make X be Y, dammit!

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » November 16, 2009, 3:06 pm

All of this kinda read to my like a fear of actually missing/not experiencing something.

You could've gotten a 30" TV for less money than the mac, hooked up a desktop PC to it, have had more flexibility with the overall machine and the only thing missing would've been OSX that you dislike using so much that you're trying to "Windows-ize" it anyways..

I'm not trying to tell you what to do with your money/time but you seem to be running around in circles quite a bit with these experiments..

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 16, 2009, 3:38 pm

Animalor wrote: You could've gotten a 30" TV for less money than the mac, hooked up a desktop PC to it, have had more flexibility with the overall machine and the only thing missing would've been OSX that you dislike using so much that you're trying to "Windows-ize" it anyways.

I'm not saying I didn't get ripped off. Apple is way overpriced, but for me, everything beyond the 27" screen is a bonus that I'm trying to make usable.

30" TV != 2560 x 1440 resolution. That would = 1920 x 1080 (see the difference?)

It also wouldn't be LED backlit screen for that kinda coin and the pixel density would be a hell of a lot less. So no, I coulnd't have just gone that route but I do understand that if the display was available by itself, I hopefully could have gotten it for less than 1,699.00

Hit up Newegg for pricing/resolutions (stand alone monitors. be sure to notate if it's LED backlit)

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » November 16, 2009, 3:55 pm

You should start up a blog to document this and share all this work you're doing. I'm sure a lot of this stuff could be valuable to a lot of people that don't visit the vault. Also, how's the video in on that monitor. Have you tried hooking your PS3 or 360(assuming yours had HDMI) to it yet?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 16, 2009, 4:13 pm

Animalor wrote:You should start up a blog to document this and share all this work you're doing. I'm sure a lot of this stuff could be valuable to a lot of people that don't visit the vault. Also, how's the video in on that monitor. Have you tried hooking your PS3 or 360(assuming yours had HDMI) to it yet?

I have to wait for the third party adapter for the video port before I can hook up PS3 pr 360, etc. The problem is that the current adapters can't scale to 2560 x 1440. Should be less than a month.

VeeshanVault

Rebel EFI (Install OSX on any PC)

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