make the freakin' thing bigger so I can have my cake, eat it too, and have a BETTER computer.
You can change that, but since they made room only for 2.5" HDDs, you can only have as much. Slower, more expensive storage.
Agreed. Still though, I can't say I like it. Any desktop machine should be more serviceable than even the most serviceable laptop. In Apple's case, their bottom-of-the-line desktop is less serviceable than their mid-top of the line laptop; that's just wrong.
Remember that Apple sells so-called solutions, and that solutions come before computers
They've come a long way in recent years. It's now much easier to build and maintain, provided following directions and looking up stuff on the internet isn't a challenge. In fact, as far as Mac OS X based file servers go, it's probably the best deal you'll ever come across given the lack of expansion on the Mac mini and the iMac, and the costliness and (for this purpose) overkill of the Mac Pro. My housemate has one alongside his MacBook Pro and swears by them. Much like me, the MacBook Pro is the only Mac that Apple makes that he'll ever buy and a Hackintosh is the only Mac OS X laden desktop he'll ever buy as he's more than capable of maintaining it, and it offers more flexibility than even the Mac Pro.
I actually based myself upon recent posts when I looked for an error code that only happens on Hackintosh, usually. I'd find a Hackintosh would be fun to play with, but for production purposes, I'd stick with Ubuntu.
True facts. I just assume that any Mac that ships with Lion is not going to take kindly to any Mac App Store-estracted InstallESD.dmg-made Thumb-drive/DVD of Lion. Unfortunate, really. Again, having to wait for my OS to download is inconvenient. I'm also pissed that they stopped shipping the Apple Hardware Test discs. I mean, I can still download the disk image of what it would've been via GSX, but the fact that it's not available to me as a consumer anymore is annoying.
It's not Mac App Store extracted. It's downloaded through the only path available, from the EFI loader. Installation is started, and interrupted. Then you can extract it using a working external clone using some Terminal magic.
Honestly, having had issues with Mac before, AHT weren't that useful. GSX =?
As for your back-up drive, it looks like a great emergency drive. I'd make one like that too if I had the extra drive lying around; though thankfully, I haven't ever needed such a thing.
It's the actual backup drive, not an additional one. I never used the clone until I needed to extract the Lion installer. It's made so even a dead internal drive doesn't prevent me to work.
USB isn't going anywhere, it's a cheap format and a perfect fit for things like keyboards and mice. The idea that they'd dump USB and expect users to buy a thunderbolt mouse or keyboard is flat out comical.
Maybe he thought about Thunderbolt as a gateway for slower legacy ports?
