Filed under: Hardware, OS, Hacks, Snow Leopard
Perhaps Apple won't block Atom support after all
There was a report this week that Mac OS X 10.6.2 will block Atom support, leaving Hackintosh owners stuck at 10.6.1. Intel's Atom processors have been used in netbooks by MSI, Dell and ASUS for their low cost and modest energy consumption. Hackintosh owners were disappointed.Shortly after that report was published, Electronista noted that a newly-released build of 10.6.2 (10C535) brought it back. Of course, we're talking about "support" for hackintoshes in a developer build of the OS, so keep that in mind.
The moral of the story: Apple can kill this when ever they please, so have fun while you can.
[Via Engadget]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mikehild said 9:18AM on 11-05-2009
But the big question is why would Apple even need to support something they don't use? Unless they were planning on releasing a product that used Atom that is...
Regarding Atom support disappearing in the last build, I bet it was either someone accidentally unchecked an option somewhere, or Apple was just specifically testing how something worked w/o Atom enabled.
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mikehild said 3:21AM on 11-06-2009
Now I feel a little foolish... FYI, there was a Spam post here previously that I was commenting about but it seems now it's gone so my other comment looks a little odd now.
lynyrd65 said 9:41AM on 11-05-2009
What you do not realize is that the hackers will make it work anyway. It is probably much easier to force snow leopard to work on a partially unsupported intel atom processor than a completely unsupported AMD processor.
Hackers have found the time to force AMD support, they would simply view atom support as a very minor challenge.
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DrWho said 9:44AM on 11-05-2009
Maybe they never intended to block Atom support and this has all just been speculation and rumor.
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Archion said 9:46AM on 11-05-2009
The other question is why "The Unofficial APPLE Weblog" always gets the APPLE news after Engadget and the rest of the world...
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gotsmart said 9:47AM on 11-05-2009
Maybe Apple just wanted to demonstrate that they COULD block the Atom (and potentially other processors) if they so desired, to kill all manner of Hackintosh machines.
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Tom said 9:51AM on 11-05-2009
By the way "Newly released" was the build released on Oct 28th. Basically this proves not a single blog decided to actually verify what they threw online. "Hey, one guy said this, quick, lets twist it into a malicious action", when it was likely a bug. This is why 10.6.2 is in testing.
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Martin said 10:15AM on 11-05-2009
I doubt it was happenstance. I feel that Apple wanted to float a test-balloon out there to see what reaction would be. I'm interested to see if it happens again, and if so, does it stick?
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Puffenstuff said 10:22AM on 11-05-2009
"The moral of the story: Apple can kill this when ever they please, so have fun while you can."
No ... they can't. As the poster above pointed out, hackers can just put the support back in. They have already done it with most AMD processors and quite a bit of other unsupported hardware. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you are going to blog about hackintoshes please do more research.
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mangeek said 10:32AM on 11-05-2009
Has anyone considered that this might not have been on-purpose at all?
Remember that 10.6 runs some logic at boot that says 'run a 32-bit kernel unless this machine is on a 64-bit whitelist', which results in the 32-bit kernel being used on virtually all of the 64-bit product-line.
Maybe Apple changed the logic to 'boot into 64-bit kernel unless this machine is on a 32-bit-only blacklist'.
Since most Atoms are 32-bit CPUs, this relatively sane and beneficial cutover would actually prevent most Atom machines from booting, unless they identify themselves (via the fake EFI emulator) as a 32-bit Core 1 machine.
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balling said 10:30AM on 11-05-2009
Maybe they kept the support because they might plan to put an Atom CPU in the AppleTV soon? I mean, there's always that possibility too.
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Louis Wheeler said 3:02PM on 11-05-2009
Puffenstuff, Are you giving Apple a double dare? It seems unlikely that Apple would even develop this capacity, unless it intends to use it at some point. Nor would Apple reveal it, unless it had the means to make it stick.
There are many additions to Snow Leopard's 64 bit security which could be used to block Hackintoshes. Checking for the model number of the processor is just one.
One of those additions was a recent change to Snow Leopard's DVD install. It now loads its installer into a virtual space on the disk drive before it starts asking questions. I have no idea what Apple has planned next, but I can imagine that Apple will restrict its OS to special hardware, but it could also call up a central data base to verify that you own an Apple computer.
Could a hacker spoof this? Perhaps, but Apple has known about its move to Intel processors for over four years. It should have been obvious that hackers would attempt to place its OS on PC's. Of course, it must have been totally accidental that Apple had Boot Camp ready, only a month or so after a hacker installed Windows on an Intel Macintosh. It must have been purely coincidental and took Apple by surprise.
Or Apple could be far ahead of you on this. But, there are technical reasons for why Apple cannot proceed. The new security enhancements need to be in the 64 bit kernel and it will take most of the next year to migrate the vast majority of Mac Applications to 64 bit.
Apple is moving slowly and carefully. If you think this implies helplessness in the face of the relentless hacker enemy, then this is likely what Apple wants you to think. Apple won't lock you out until it has the power to make it stick.
Don't be confused this with the jailbreaking the iPhone. The iPhone's ARM processor was very limited. Shoe horning as much of the Mac OS as they did was close to miraculous. Even the iPhone's security will improve when the Cortex A9 dual core iPhone's come out next year.
This protection against Hackintoshes might not happen with 10.6.2 or .3, but it is shaping up to be a real fight, so sharpen your wits, you hackers. I'll go get the popcorn.
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Dave said 4:02PM on 11-05-2009
Where there is a will there is a way. That has always and will always be the case.
If anything, the iPhone model and even Palm Pre (iTunes syncing) has taught us that Apple is annoyed with hackers; however, they only divert necessary resources to combating that front. A group of people installing OS X on netbooks is probably not a significant battle for them. If it were, their solution would likely be to release something to fill that market gap (tablet rumours aside).
Remember when the iPhone expanded beyond the USA? Steve joked that it was a popular phone, with the coy notion that they recognized people were unlocking and sending iPhones abroad. Apple's solution? Make the iPhone available in other markets. They still fight the jailbreakers. They still fight Palm Pre syncing. But not to the same extent as actually creating a product that people want.
At any rate, all of us are just speculating as to why Atom support was dropped then included. I'm inclined to believe it was just a part of troubleshooting and bug fixing. This is my opinion; we may never know the real reason.
For me, I have a Dell Mini 9 (and a Dell Mini 10v on order). I love having OS X on them and even bought extra licenses for that purpose (to help contribute some revenue toward Apple). However, the value I get from my netbook far outweighs the OS on it. I love using OS X, but if I couldn't on my netbook, I would switch to Windows or Linux and keep OS X on my primary machine. Apple doesn't provide any sub-notebook that can do what I want. Other manufacturers do provide that, and for quite an affordable price too.
hachu said 3:10PM on 11-05-2009
I'd have to agree with mikehild and DrWho. It's not malicious.
It's probably just some programmer somewhere in there was updating a chunk of code and missed a corner case. I think the only reason it got fixed is somewhere, somebody else was playing with a prototype with an Atom and noticed it died and filed a bug. Cuz realistically, this happens all the time behind the scenes at any software company.
Heck, yesterday at work I had to file a bug cuz somebody tweaked a data format just enough to break some old code I needed.
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Yuusharo said 6:37PM on 11-05-2009
"The moral of the story: Apple can kill this when ever they please, so have fun while you can."
Uh... Apple never killed anything. At worse, hackintosh users could simply use a modified kernel to get it to boot. AMD machines have to do it this way.
All that 10.6.2 update would have done was make it 'slightly' less convenient to hackintosh a netbook, but never actually killed it. Its likely something Apple will never be able to do, and they'd be foolish to waste money and resources trying to do so.
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