The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 has been shipping for a few days, and I’m aware of at least two people who tried installing OS X on the netbook. While Apple doesn’t officially support OS X on anything other than Apple hardware, some users have been successfully booting the operating system on the MSI Wind and other hardware for a while now.
Liliputing readers Tommy Yoo and sillycat have both installed OS X on their Lenovo IdeaPad S10 units. The results? The operating system boots up just fine. But you’re left without support for WiFi or LAN connections. The sound doesn’t work, and the sleep function doesn’t work.
The webcam does work, and you can apparently get the display to properly display 1024 x 600 pixels by installing a GMA950 kext. But without any way to connect to the internet or play audio, I don’t see much reason to bother installing OS X just yet.
Of course, you can probably find a USB WiFi dongle that will work with OS X and use that to get online.
Update: As you can see in the comments below, Tommy reports that he was able to get the WiFi working by running a script that adds support for the Wind’s WLAN card.
Apparently you can get sleep working, per this post at the MSIWind forums:
https://forums.msiwind.net/mac/review-installing-msiwinosx-lenovo-ideapad-s10-t3812-40.html?sid=e1949e2d8796019d0b39f78bd5407ddf
Even though OS works, software (especially released by Apple) might not work. That was my experience with Mac OS X and my Asus laptop.
Really? Which programs? I’ve had no issues with iLife, iWork, or anything else. I couldn’t install Adobe Illustrator CS 3 because of the resolution, but I’m sure I can get around that.
Unless the program makes a specific call to identify the system hardware, most anything should (and does) run.
Update: Wifi does work, after running a script to add the built-in wifi card to the proper kext – i.e. hacking the driver. Audio and sleep not working are the two largest concerns at the moment. All else seems usable.
I’m working on two things at the moment – a tear-down guide to disassembly and a *nix/OS X install guide.
Any chance you have a link to the script?
You got it:
https://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=51725
It modifies the IO80211Family.kext – which I’ve made a copy of since I’m not going to want to run this script every time I reinstall OS X.
“But you’re left without support for WiFi or LAN connections. The sound doesn’t work, and the sleep function doesn’t work. ”
Which isn’t surprising as Apple only ship drivers for THEIR hardware… But anyway… Nice experiment!