This page collects my notes about installing and running Mac OS X on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 laptop.
1 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD, WWAN base. For your sanity, I would advise not going below this level of RAM or disk capacity. There are people who have working 8 GB SSD systems, but it doesn't sound like much fun.
The "official" instructions can be found on the MyDellMini forum. You can also refer to Gizmodo's instructions.
During the installation, be aware that you'll need either an external DVD-ROM drive or a USB stick that's 8GB or larger. For the USB stick installation method, you may also need access to a Windows PC (or VMware installation) to make the USB stick bootable.
It probably goes without saying that this violates the Leopard EULA. If nothing else, make sure you BUY A COPY of Leopard for your Mini.
This is just a brief summary of what you'll be doing! Please read the other installation guides carefully for the blow-by-blow.
The display runs at stretched 800x600 until after the DellEFI driver package is installed, then runs at native 1024x600.
Things are a bit tight at 600 pixels vertically, but I've not actually found anything yet that I can't do because of it. Some apps may open windows that go off the bottom of the screen.
Some things that can't be accessed because the windows are too tall:
The brave can try messing with Mac OS X's display scaling to pack more window into the same amount of space.
Works normally. The DellEFI drivers enable the volume and brightness function keys.
A quick note on the ergonomics of the keyboard. For a netbook, it is fairly touch-typable. Dell has wisely emphasized the alphanumeric keys, at the expense of the punctuation and modifiers. Long story short, for general web surfing and email, you won't have much trouble. If you're writing a novel, it might get a bit frustrating. If you're writing code, consider an external keyboard.
For Mac purposes, the "Alt" key is the Command key, and the "Windows" key is the Option key. Fn-Z and Fn-X are F11 and F12 respectively.
Works, but is way over-sensitive. You'll want to adjust the sensitivity to almost nothing in the System Preferences. Even then it's a bit jerky. It's possible that something like USB Overdrive may help smooth out the acceleration curve. I haven't tried it yet.
Two-finger scrolling gestures are NOT supported at this time. On the MyDellMini forums, you'll find some posts about re-enabling them, but it's a bit rough around the edges at the moment, and not recommended unless you really want to hack on it.
The trackpad buttons are really bad. They're spongey, and have a massive throw, actually recessing into the case when pressed. Turning on tap-to-click gestures for the trackpad (Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences) is one way to work around this. I usually never use this feature -- but the trackpad buttons on the Mini 9 really are that bad.
Works normally.
Works normally. If problems occur on the first boot after install, reboot again passing "-f" to the kernel to clear kext caches. This only seems to need to be done once, if at all.
Haven't tested, but appears to be working normally.
One weird thing is it seems to be impossible to turn it off. The "On" checkbox in Bluetooth prefs is disabled. Perhaps it could be disabled in the BIOS if battery life is a concern.
Work normally.
Haven't tested.
Haven't tested. Paul K. reports that it works fine.
Haven't tested. Paul K. says headphone jack works, but mic jack is not listed as an audio input and thus doesn't do anything. There is however a built-in mic, presumably part of the webcam.
Haven't tested. The word is that it works with SD media, but not other types. Paul K. reports that it worked fine with an SD card.
The camera works normally. Has a much lower refresh rate than an iSight.
If available on your system, works normally (for the most part). It shows up as a network port in System Preferences. Actually it shows up as TWO ports, for reasons unknown. Rest assured you only have one 3G modem. I think the ports are interchangeable.
Refer to this thread for a link to configuration instructions and a modem script you'll need to install.
I have had some trouble with this working intermittently. You'll get one or two successful 3G connections, and then the next few will fail, and then it starts working again. I don't think this is a hardware problem. I think it has something to do with either the modem script or pppd's negotiation with AT&T's server. I'm still looking into this.
I've had better luck since changing the "telephone number" (which is actually the APN) from "none" to "isp.cingular", which is AT&T's default for laptop cards. If your SIM card is provisioned for AT&T's laptop service (for example, it came with a PC Card), your APN is probably "isp.cingular". If you're swapping in a SIM from an iPhone or other handheld, it is probably "wap.cingular" and in this case you should be extremely careful with your usage as using a handset-provisioned SIM with a laptop violates your contract.
Here is an AT command reference for the 5530 minicard.
Energy Saver functions work normally, including sleep-on-lid-close, with the exception of Hibernation, which (for now) is disabled by default by the DellEFI installer. It also removes the hibernation file from your drive, reclaiming 1 GB of space.
If you have problems waking from sleep, make sure to DISABLE the BIOS feature "Legacy USB Support".
One strange problem I have noticed is that when waking from sleep, the Mini may act as though the "0" key is held down. This may result in beeping if your selected window doesn't accept keyboard input. I don't know what causes this, but tapping any other key seems to make it stop.
I've found that the Mini will frequently hang during the final phases of a restart. It will tear down to the point where it is just a spinner on your desktop picture, and then eventually the spinner hangs. At this point your only recourse is to hold down the power button to shutdown, and hope that HFS+ journaling really works. There is a thread or two about this on the MyDellMini forums. I haven't dug too deep yet.
Thanks to Paul Kafasis for contributing some notes to this document.