When Apple announced that all Macintosh computers made from then on would be Intel processor-based, there was a great deal of excitement from people who already owned Intel-based machines. Unfortunately for us, Apple decided to lock the operating system so that it would only run on Apple IDed hardware. Fortunately for us, some very smart people have figured out how to circumvent that lock and allow us to install OSX on our Intel machines. Most of the information you'll see below comes directly from the OSx86 Project and it is on the shoulders of those giants that I'm standing upon. What I've done is to take that information and gear it specifically to the Sony UX handtop platform.

What you'll need:

In order to install OSX on your UX, you'll need the following items:

• An official version of OSX 10.5 (Leopard). You can get thathere. It's only $129.
• The VAIO UX (naturally) (While you should be able to install OSX on a 512MB RAM model, you'll probably prefer running it on a 1GB RAM model.)
• USB 2.0 Optical DVD Drive. You can find some model suggestions and some other useful information inthis thread.
• Jas' hacked OSX Tiger image file: 10.4.8 JaS AMD-Intel-SSE2-SSE3 with pp1 and ppf2. I can't tell you where to get this, but a little Google work should deliver that information. "Wait!", I hear you saying"Why do I need Tiger if I'm installing Leopard?" The reason is simple (and annoying, but true): The retail version of OSX Leopard assumes you'll be installing it to a system with Mac OSX already on it. As a result, it doesn't install the boot-loader at all. You need the Tiger install to install the boot-loader so your Leopard install will actually boot.
  We'll also use Tiger to create the disk image files we need for the installation process.
  
• A USB stick drive (with at least 40MB of space) to store...
  
• The Leopard9A581 (GM) Patch. You'll find the links to get this patch here. You'll also notice that much of the early part of this procedure is there as well. Thanks to BrazilMac and the folks at OSx86 for doing the hard part. The patch contains three folders (files, leopatch, and resources) and two shell scripts (9a581-patch.sh and 9a581PostPatch.sh). You'll need to take the files from this patch and place them on a USB stick. Put the scripts and folders in the root directory of the USB stick and name it PATCHER.
• A printed copy of the contents of the 9a581PostPatch.sh file.
  
• Two blank DVDs. (One for the Tiger installaton and one for a patched version of Leopard.)
  
• Lots of patience, a very careful hand, and your favorite caffeinated beverage :)

Optional, but very helpful:

• The docking station. You can do this with just the UX, but the docking station has additional USB ports that allow you to use the external DVD reader at the same time as you use an external keyboard and mouse and/or a USB stick. Speaking of that...
• An external keyboard and mouse. You can either use USB-connected versions or PS2 versions with a USB-PS2 adapter. This makes typing and on-screen work a lot easier. Likewise...
• An external display. One of the nice things about OSX 10.5 is that it enables the external display very early in the installation process so you can move windows to the external display for more easy reading.

Before you begin:

Before you attempt this procedure, you should read through it at least once to know what you're getting yourself into. The whole procedure will take about three hours, so block off at least that much time to get it done. Finally, make sure your UX is update with the latest BIOS before beginning. This is specifically to make sure OSX can use the maximum shared RAM for graphics.

You'll also want to decide whether you want to keep your Windows install or go completely "native" and install OSX alone. There are some important considerations:

1. At this point, there isn't any way to update the BIOS under Mac OSX. If you want to retain that capability, you'll either need Windows on a bootable external drive or set up a separate partion for OSX and keep your Windows partition intact.
2. There is a limited amount of hard-drive real-estate. Two OS installs can take up a good deal of it, leaving very little for applications and data.
3. It's a whole lot easier to go back if you keep your Windows partition.
4. Once you start running OSX, you may never want to go back :) (but you can always delete the Windows partition later)
5. You might have some software that doesn't have an OSX counterpart. If you keep your Windows partition, you can run Parallels or VMWare and run Windows "inside" of OSX to run those apps.

For the purposes of this guide, I'll assume that you want to install OSX on your main partition but I'll note where you'll need to do things a bit differently if that's not the case.

If you decide to keep your Windows partition, you'll need to set up a separate partition. Here's how you do that with Diskpart, a disk partition program which is built into Windows:
Run a Command Prompt window and type diskpart at the prompt. Then type the following commands:

• select disk 0 (Select the first (and only) hard disk drive)
• list partition (you should see 1 partition)
• create partition primary size=16000 id=af
  size is the space to allocate for the partition (you could use the whole free space)
  id=af is the OSX-compatible (HFS+) partition format
• list partition (you should see 2 partitions now)
• select partition 2 (this is the partition you've just created)
• active (set this partition toboot first)
• exit (quit Diskpart)

Reboot your UX.

WithinBIOS setup, check that you have enabled the LCD Stretch option as well as the External Optical USB DVD Drive as first primary device for boot.
(Thanks to Sev7en for the Diskpart commands.)

Now we're ready to install Tiger.

Install the patched version of "Tiger":

Create a DVD from the JAS hacked Tiger image using your favorite .ISO buring software. I recommend Active ISO Burner. Insert the newly created disk into the Optical drive and boot your UX. If you're installing on your primary partition, when the Welcome Screen appears, choose Disk Utility from the Utility Menu and format your main partition for HFS+ format. This will erase everything on your UX. You should also name your partition something appropriate. I named mine "Leopard". Once the format is complete, exit the Disk Utility.

Follow the prompts to set up Tiger on your UX. Be sure to "Customize" the installation. Don't add the additional fonts or X11. Do add the support for Intel processors (and not the AMD support).

Once the Tiger installation is done, reboot and make sure your UX boots into Tiger. If it doesn't, something went wrong and you'll need to fix it before proceding.

Along with Tiger, you've also installed the "Darwin" boot-loader. That's important, because Leopard doesn't install the boot-loader and your OSux won't boot without it.

If we were keeping Tiger as our OS, this would be the time when we updated some drivers, tweaked some settings, and made more of the hardware in the UX work under OSX. As it is, we only need to be able to access the DVD burner and the USB stick (if you're using one). Also, if you're using an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, these also should work without fiddling.

Now we're ready to prepare the Leopard installation.

Preparing the patched Leopard DVD:

First put the retail Leopard DVD into your DVD drive. The install window will pop up. Close it. After the "Mac OS X Install DVD" icon appears on your desktop, open Disk Utility(Open your hard-drive icon, open the Applications folder, open the Utilities Folder, then double-click the Disk Utility icon.) select the retail Leopard DVD from the items in the left panel, and tap the "+New Image" icon. When the dialog box appears, change the image format to "read/write", the location to your Desktop (so it's easier to find), and change the name of the image file to "osx-leopard106" (which is the name the patch script expects to find). Click the Save button and you'll create a Mac OS X Install.dmg (DMG=Disk iMaGe) file to be patched. Take a break. This takes a while.

Remove the retail Leopard DVD (right-click or click-and-hold on the desktop icon and select "Eject..." from the menu) and place your PATCHER DVD or USB Stick in the UX. After it's icon appears on the desktop open it, select all of the contents and copy them to your desktop. (You'll copy the three folders and two files mentioned in "What you'll need" above.) Once they're copied, double-click on the 9a581-patch.sh file to edit it. You'll need to edit the APDIR= and DMG= lines to match the user you set up under Tiger. In my case, the first line reads "APDIR=/Users/meansquare/Desktop". Once you've edited both lines, close and save the modified file.

This is also the point where you should modify the "9a581PostPatch.sh" file. Double-click on 9a581PostPatch.sh and modify the "PATCH=..." line to point to the "leopatch" folder on your and the "LEO=..." line to point to where you installed Leopard. (In my case the lines read PATCH="/Volumes/PATCHER/leopatch/" and LEO="/Volumes/Leopard") Close and save the edited file and also copy the edited version back to your PATCHER USB stick. (We'll need it for later.)

Open a Terminal Window (Open your hard-drive icon, open Applications, open Utilities, double-click Terminal). The "bash-3.2#" prompt will appear in the window. Type the command "sudo -s" and put in your password to approve "escalating to administrator level." Type "cd Desktop" to change directories to your desktop (where the patcher and disk images will reside). Now type "./9a581-patch.sh". The patch will execute. Take another break. This also takes some time. A "leopard.iso.cdr" file will appear on your desktop while this is happening. That's what the file the patch is creating which it will rename when it's done. If you get "prebinding errors" when the script is executing, don't worry. Those are OK. If you get other errors, check your editing on the script file and try the process again.

When it's done, you'll have a "patched Leo_Patched_DVD.iso" file on your desktop. This is an DVD ISO image that we'll use to burn the patch Leopard install DVD.

To burn the .iso onto a DVD, place a blank DVD into your DVD burner drive. Open the Disk Utility (as we did above) and select the DVD burner drive in the left panel. Click the "Burn" icon (at the top right) and browse to the Leo_Patched_DVD.iso file on your desktop. Once again, take a break while the image is burned.

You can just leave the DVD in the drive for the next step, but at some point, you're going to want to label it so you can start at this point if you ever need to do a total OS reinstall.

Installing Leopard:

Begin by placing your patched Leopard DVD in the drive and booting your UX. Proceed through until you get screen with the heading Mac OSX will be installed on the "Leopard" Volume (or whatever you've named your volume) and the choices below include "Customize". Choose customize (see the picture above) and make sure that only "Essential System Software" is selected. (Additional Fonts, Language Translations, and X11 should all be un-checked.) (Those items were removed when we created our patched disk.) Here's what it should look like:


Follow the prompts as usual from there to install Leopard.


When the process completes, the system should re-boot. Don't let it boot into Leopard just yet. Instead, put either the Tiger or Leopard install disk back in and boot into it until you get to the "Welcome" screen (shown below):


Select "Terminal" from the "Utilities" menu. The terminal window will open with the same "bash-3.2#" prompt you remember from the last time you used it.

I ran into a problem at this point. For whatever reason, the terminal window from the Utilities menu would not let me run shell scripts. This is why I mentioned the printed copy of the "9a581PostPatch.sh" file in "What you'll need." (You can try it yourself by placing the PATCHER USB stick in a USB slot and changing the directory to the root of the stick (cd /Volumes/PATCHER/). Then issue the command "./9a581PostPatch.sh". If it works for you, great. Otherwise do the typing that follows:)

In the terminal window, issue the following commands, one at a time:
(If you named your "Leopard" volume something else when you formatted it, change the name in all references.)
cd /Volumes/Leopard/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/
rm -rf ossmgr.plist
cd /Volumes/Leopard/
rm -rf mach_kernel
cp -R /Volumes/PATCHER/leopatch/mach_kernel mach_kernel
chmod -R 644 mach_kernel
chown -R root:wheel mach_kernel
cd /Volumes/Leopard/System/Library/Extensions/
(You may get a "not found" error on two of these "rm -rf" lines. Don't worry about it.)
rm -rf AppleACPIPlatform.kext
rm -rf AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext
rm -rf ApplePS2Controller.kext
rm -rf AppleSMBIOS.kext
rm -rf dsmos.kext
rm -rf IOATAFamily.kext
rm -rf IOAHCIFamily.kext
rm -rf AppleAC97Audio.kext
rm -rf AppleAHCIPort.kext
rm -rf AppleAzaliaAudio.kext
rm -rf AppleVIA.kext
rm -rf AppleVIAATA.kext
rm -rf IOHDIXController.kext
rm -rf IONetworkingFamily.kext
rm -rf AppleHWSensor.kext
cp -R /Volumes/PATCHER/leopatch/ext/*
chmod -R 755 *
chown -R root:wheel *
reboot
(That last line is actually a command.)
Allow the system to reboot, this time let it go into Leopard. It should boot normally and you'll be greeted with an amazing first boot sequence (part of which you see below):


After it gets down showing off, you'll be asked to set up a user and do some other specification and finally, you'll drop into the OSX 10.5 (Leopard) desktop.

Hold your excitement for a little while longer. There are still a few things to do to get your UX working as well as possible. Here's what works without any further fiddling:

• Built-in and external displays (including switching displays when you dock/undock)
• USB ports (including high-speed USB 2.0)
• Firewire
  
• Touch screen
• Built-in and USB-connected keyboards
• Built-in track stick and mouse buttons and USB-connected mice
• Bluetooth
• Sound from the headphone jack (but not from the built-in speaker or in through the microphone)

Here's what isn't working:

• WiFi
• wired Ethernet (but we'll fix that in a moment)
• Special function buttons
• Screen rotation
• Cameras
• Sleep and Hibernation (more about this in a moment)
  

Making wired Ethernet work:

The Mac OS already recognizes a number of built-in wired Ethernet adapter by Marvell, the same company that makes the one built into the UX. It just doesn't recognize the specific model. However, Sev7en discovered an easy fix for Tiger that also works for Leopard:

First, open a Terminal window (By now, you're familiar with that.) and type the following command:
sudo nano /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/
PlugIns/AppleYukon.kext/Contents/Info.plist
(all on one line)
This will bring up the nano text editor with the Info.plist file loaded. Use the ^V to move down in the file until you find the following lines. (They're near the end.) If you go too far use ^Y to move up.
<key>Yukon-88E8053</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.iokit.AppleYukon2</string>
<key>EnableLowPwr</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>IOClass</key>
<string>yukon2osx</string>
<key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key>
<string>0x436211ab</string>
It's that last string that we need to change. The 11ab part is the Vendor ID (Yukon) and the 4362 is the Model ID. 4362 is the Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8053. We want to change it to 4351 (the Yukon Megabit Adapter 88E8036 in the UX). Simply use the arrow keys to move your cursor over to the 62, type 51 and delete twice to get rid of the 62. Now press ^O to save the updated file, return once to accept the file name as is, and then press ^X to exit. A little more work and we're done.

You should find yourself back with the "bash-3.2#" prompt. Type in the following commands:
sudo -s
(type your password when prompted)
chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/*.kext
rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions/
diskutil repairpermissions /
reboot
After you system reboots, OSX will recognize your wired Ethernet card and allow you a wired connection to the Internet and your local LAN if you have one.

Fixing the TrackStick push-to-click:

If you're using the built-in trackstick on the UX, you've undoubtedly already noticed that if you push just a little too much, it's as if you're holding the mouse button down. In fact, that's exactly what's happening. Fortunately, there's also a fix for that, thanks to dgarcia42. Now that you've got a working Ethernet connection, you can connect to the Internet and use the Safari web browser to download a new version of the ApplePS2Controller.kext file. It should default to downloading to the "Downloads" folder on your hard-drive. Once it's there, open a Terminal window (yet again) and issue the following commands:
sudo -s(type in your password at the prompt)
cd ~/Downloads
unzip ApplePS2ControllerAndALPS.kext.zip cd /System/Library/Extensions
mv ApplePS2Controller.kext OldPS2Controller.kext
cp -R ~/Downloads/ApplePS2Controller.kext ApplePS2Controller.kext
chown -R root:wheel *.kext
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions/
diskutil repairpermissions / reboot
After the system reboots, pressing your trackstick won't click for you.

What's still not working:

Unfortunately, that's about all you can fix at the moment. Sleep and hibernation don't work at all. It's a good idea to go into System Preferences and set sleep off so your UX won't do it automatically. If it does, you have to manually shut it off (by holding the power button up for over four seconds) and then restart. Fortunately, OSX boots very quickly compared to Windows (only about 20 seconds on a UX with an Solid State Drive). Get used to shutting down and booting up for now.

WiFi is also still not working. There's a work-in-progress that's attempting to create support for built-in Intel WiFi cards, but the last time I tried it, it hung my machine. There are two other options: First, you could get an external USB WiFi card. Some folks have had success with the Belkin Wireless G USB Network Adapter. You can find the instructions for doing that here. The other option is voiding your warranty, opening your UX, and swapping the WiFi card for one that is supported by OSX. There's a discussion of this here, but so far no one's been brave enough to test it out.

Likewise, the cameras, special buttons, screen rotation, and the built-in speaker and microphone are all non-functional under OSX... for now. dgarcia42 is starting to work on drivers and support software for these items. You can find out more (and cast your vote for what you think should take priority) here.

A few more things:

First of all, if you don't own a licensed copy of Tiger, now would be a good time to destroy that patched Tiger disk you made. It was only a means to an end and you're there now.

Second, from time to time you may get a message that there are software updates available for your system. Do not install any kernel updates. Kernel updates will wreck the patches that allow you to run OSX on a non-Mac system. You can, however, install updates to applications and other items without fear.

Finally, enjoy your "new Mac." :)