10.6.5 brings ExFAT – makes sharing files between OSX and Windows easier!
EDIT on 02/16/2011 – It works again! 10.6.6. Seems the bug was ironed out on 10.6.6. Thanks all who reported it. I didn’t have the chance to test it out on a Win7 machine (as I was fresh out of one).
EDIT on 12/09/2010 – As Clinton pointed out in the comments below, a partition formatted in OSX as exFAT will in fact not work on Windows 7. You can however, format the partition in Windows 7 as exFAT to make it r/w on OSX. Sorry for this! I will update when I know more.
What a wonderful surprise last evening with the release of 10.6.5, especially for us dual-booters – support for ExFAT in OSX! Windows 7 and Vista SP1 have supported it for months, as did the 27″ iMac (mid 2010), but with 10.6.5, this has been released for all. The possibilities are just mind-boggling.
For the first time ever, native support for reading/writing files on a partition by both OSX and Windows! This has been a pipe dream, that has worked dodgily at best. One has had to resort to MacDrive on Windows to read/write OSX partitions, and poor OSX folk have had to wrestle with NTFS-3G drivers – don’t even get me started on how much I hate NTFS-3G. But with ExFAT, OSX and Windows 7 can work with the same partition with no extra software required. Wow. Just wow.
To get started, just format a partition on your drive, either on OSX or Windows 7 in ExFAT and watch the fireworks! Things like these bring out the geek in me. This alone is worth the update to 10.6.5. GO GET IT!
Best bandwidth monitor for Snow Leopard or Leopard
There has been a lot of debate over the lack of bandwidth monitor apps for OSX. Many will point the clueless reader to iStat Menus, and other such pointless apps, which don’t maintain the amount of data transferred, after a reboot. For Windows there’s the inimitable DuMeter, but nothing did I know came close to its functionality, for OSX. That is, till I discovered – Net Monitor.
Hands down, it is the best Bandwidth Monitor for OSX (Leopard and Snow Leopard). Customizable, and very low in memory imprint, Net Monitor will inspect the traffic out of all your ports. It displays this traffic in a very customizable graph. It not only monitors the amount of data, but also can present customizable reports of the bandwidth usage, broken down by day, or total volume, etc.
I have been using this app for nearly two years with nary an issue. Those MBs sure stack up fast, and if you are one of the unlucky users whose usage is metered (see Comcast), this app is invaluable for the $10 that it costs. I highly recommend it. Give it a whirl.
Watch this space…
I am going back to my roots. OSX is a dish best served Hackintosh’d. An iMac was my cowardly way out. But that is history, the iMac’s on eBay and I am going back to my Hackintosh. Watch this space as I journal my way back, and get back up to speed with the developments since November ’09. Many more how-tos coming up!
Snow Leopard 965P DS3/DS4 – Extra Extensions Folder
Hi all, by popular demand – here are the contents of my /Extra folder, including the working DSDT.aml and the extensions (kexts) therein. These work superb on my 965P-DS4 system, and should work for those with the DS3 motherboards as well. Let me know how it goes!
Chameleon 2 RC3 & EFI String Graphics Issues
So I am back from an extended road-trip with former colleagues from the Netherlands. It was an enjoyable trip that took us 1300 miles from home to Catskill, New York, and Washington DC, and back again, with stops here and there. I am headed back to work after a long break, and I must admit I did miss using my brain cells the past week.
In the interim, the world has been busy releasing new apps/functionality and updates. The biggest of course being Chameleon 2 RC3. It is out, and for the selected few, it works great. It no longer errs on large drives and has full Snow Leopard support. One advantage of using it over Netkas’ 10.1 EFI is that it weeds out non-boot drives from the startup menu. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the best of luck with this version of Chameleon. It seems to oddly enough not work with my Graphics Card. As I wrote in an earlier post, I use EFI strings in my com.apple.Boot.plist for my Graphics card. The same however, does not work with Chameleon RC3. QE/CI seems to chug along just fine, but the resolution is stuck at VESA 1024×768. I refuse to use boot flags to force a resolution, and I am unable to get to the root of the issue. In the meantime, I have started using a DSDT.aml fix for my Graphics card. As a result, I now have full audio (in/out), QE/CI for my GFX card, and Gigabit LAN using my DSDT.aml. Life is indeed good.
Huzzah – Logitech is out with drivers for Snow Leopard (both 32 and 64 bit) and they work really well. Finally I can use my MX Revolution and VX Nano mice with Snow Leopard without additional hacks.
With new beta releases of DropBox, MenuMeters, Growl and the like, the migration to Snow Leopard can finally be proclaimed – a done deal.
