SL on MacBook

Hello, the other day I bought a MacBook, the one with the Intel GPU, allthough I really don't intend to use the MacBook as my main SL computer I've got my Linux system for that. But is there any way to get SL to run on the MacBook, I know that only new ATI or Nnidia GPU are supported, but is there a way?

Thanks
Findal

yes it can I play on my macbook just with the new update the client keeps on crashing

Thanks for the quick replay I have downloaded SLmac but it does crash on loading, all I see is a white SL window, no graphics and then a crash. It's a shame really I've allways felt even when using SL it's graphics engine lets it down, but in saying that my Windows client is very slow but when used with the Linux client, it's very much faster.

I don't have much problems running sl unless I get in a sim with heavy lag but like you say right now Linden labs seems to care less about us mac users

I've heard bad things about the OSX port, and only know of one other person who uses SLmac, I guess they focus on the Windows crowd as most PC's come installed with that.

well what ever you heard about mac most likely come from pc users that don't actually own a mac and just saying things that they don't know about but oh well hopefully they will correct the problem soon

I guess they might fix the SLmac client soon but the system requirements say that if it's not ATI or Nvidia, it wont work, so as far the Intel GPU macs I can't see them either working or supporting them, unless there is a workabout.

My Intel Mac works fine, so that's not the problem.

Yes, my Intel Mini also works fine with this update.

You're not trying to run the program straight from the DMG file are you ? Linden labs says you have to copy this one to /Applications before it will work.

I guess you mean the Intel CPUs I was talking about the Intel graphics that some Macs like the MacBook uses, in the system requirements it's says that Intel graphics are not supported.

And yes I did copy the application from the dmg file into my applications folder.

Thanks for the replys

It looks like I've managed to solve my problems, I set SL to run under Rosetta and although it's kinda slow (I guess thats my small RAM and graphics) but it's running I guess.

For me, the solution to the new "crash on start" problem on my mac was to change the color setting from thousands to millions of colors.

Minis and Macbooks use the Intel integrated GMA950. It is not supported, but that doesnt mean it doesn't work, just that they wont support it. If it works now don't be surprised if sometime down the road some update causes it to not work anymore, and Linden will say tough cookies because we don't support that anyways.

As of right now, the GMA950 will run SL.

Well after setting SL to run under Rosetta it does work, a bit slow however, I guess I can see Linden doing something like that not because they are nasty people, only their main target platform is Windows as most of the users are using Windows, well if that happens I guess I always have my Linux box with SLinux....

But thanks for you help.

I've been on a mac in SL for a long time - been working great for me. (and yes, I use a pc and linux client too, so do have something to compare it to). If they only supported multiple monitors I would be even happier...

I am running an Intel Macbook with few problems, the last three SL upgrades over the past month have made it better each time.
The only major issue I have found is memory, the factory 512m was not enough, it ran slow and somewhat jerky at times, I upgraded to 1gig and it is a lot better, ( only wish I had gone for the 2gig).

I'm on the basic white MacBook with 1G ram and it works splendid. Only slows down in busy areas. So I can annoy everyone I like.

should not ever run it under rosetta, that will kill performance majorly. Targeting Windows has nothing to do with performance ont he macs with GMA950s, there are Windows PCs that use the GMA950 too, and they are also not supported. Intel leaves many features out of their integrated video chips. There is many things that the chip cannot physically do, and there are many games out there that simply cannot run no matter what on the GMA's. The GMA3000 is better, it supports much more. Apple only uses Laptop parts though (except the Mac Pro) so its going to be sometime in 2007 before we have laptop versions of the GMA3000 for Macs

What version of SL are you running?!? Cuz SLmac has been universal for ages now. If you are running under rosetta you are running the PowerPC version in emulation on your MacBook, while the native Intel binaries sit useless right next door. I'd advise you to download the latest SLmac from the website (cuz SLmac downloaded direct using SLmac can sometimes corrupt the preferences) and do a clean install. You might have to trash the previous app as well as the preferences in ~/Library/Application Support/SecondLife. I have a MacBook Pro, and a MacBook and SL runs in native mode just fine on both.

I have a macbook with 1g ram. It works great. My only issue is when asking for help with SL functions, people tell me the pc shortcuts and they're not always the same.

oh well.

The support of mac users by the lindens is, in my humble opinion, unsatisfactory thus far. Macs are becoming more and more popular, so hopefully you folks at LL will take us into consideration when creating future versions,(i haven't been able to function normally in SL for over four months) give a little love to us mac users huh?

I've had the Mac SL client crashing on my old G5 PowerPC ever since the October 25 update. The problem is the new login window. The client tries to load the login window from a website, and crashes when it does so. There are two ways around this.

(1) Hit the "connect" button as soon as it appears. You have 3 seconds at most to do this before it crashes.

(2) Go into the client application bundle and remove some lines of code from one of the files. This was discovered by another SL resident. Here is what she said:

=====
Backup the file /Applications/Second Life.app/Contents/Resources/skins/xui/en-us/panel_login.xml - VERY IMPORTANT!

The load it into a text editor and remove the lines that say:

<web_browser
name="login_html"
left="0"
right="-1"
top ="-1"
bottom ="0"
follows="top|left|bottom|right"
border_visible="false"
start_url="data:text/html,%3Chtml%3E%3Chead%3E%3C/head%3E%3Cbody bgcolor=%22#000000%22 text=%22ffffff%22%3E%3Ch1%3E%3Ctt%3Eloading...%3C/tt%3E%3C/h1%3E %3C/body%3E %3C/html%3E"
/>
=====

Once I did this, the client displayed the old login screen, and functioned perfectly.

However, the Lindens have introduced another bug in the latest update: a memory leak. There is no excuse for this: the Apple programming environment provides several tools for detecting these leaks. What happens is that the SL client grows larger and larger in memory as it runs, until finally it runs out of memory and crashes. According to the Console utility (in Applications/Utilities), someone as forgotten to put an autorelease pool in one of the subroutines. This can be fixed with a couple of lines of code; but God only knows when they'll do it.

Rachel

P.S. The SL client code was changed in the last update. The lines that need to be deleted now look like this:

<web_browser border_visible="false" bottom="0" follows="top|left|bottom|right" left="0"
name="login_html" right="-1"
start_url="data:text/html,%3Chtml%3E%3Chead%3E%3C/head%3E%3Cbody bgcolor=%22#000000%22 text=%22ffffff%22%3E%3Ch1%3E%3Ctt%3Eloading...%3C/tt%3E%3C/h1%3E %3C/body%3E %3C/html%3E"
top="-1" />

the program runs fine for me... but the fan gets so loud that its really annoying... anyone else have that problem with the macbooks?