OS X Update Officially Kills Intel Atom Support

bonch writes "After apparently disabling and then re-enabling support for the Atom chipset in test builds of their 10.6.2 update, Apple has officially disabled support for the chipset in the final update. This makes it impossible for OSX86 users to run 10.6.2 on their Atom-based netbooks until a modified kernel shows up."

Comments

No biggie

[Puchku]

Since they don't sell any computers with Atom.. I don't think that you can blame them for dropping support. Tightens the code and all that.

Re:No biggie

[nomadic]

I don't think that you can blame them for dropping support.

Any other company and yes, they would be blamed.

Re:No biggie

[Pieroxy]

It's more about "user experience" than anything else. They don't want to allow OSX to run on anything other than their hardware, because some cheap chipset might make the whole thing malfunction and users would be fast to blame apple for a bad product... Even though it would be the user at fault for not respecting the hardware specifications...

That's a policy that have been enforcing for a long time now.

Re:No biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thats a load of crock, now isnt it?

Apple makes money on Hardware and software as a bundle.

Hackintoshes threaten this money making opportunity.

I'm not concerned with it, because I don't plan on running OS X on anything other than an expensive computer sold by apple. And since I have no desire to spend on such a frivolous thing, the plans happily sort themselves out.

The user experience Apple truly cares about is the one where the user pays apple a large sum of money. Everything else merely facilitates this.

Re:No biggie

[jimicus]

Any other company and yes, they would be blamed.

Maybe if "any other company" had sold the product explicitly with Atom support and then reneged on that promise.

AFAICT the argument from the whiners is "Even though OS X is explicitly sold with strings attached which make it hard for me to legally build a hackintosh, it shouldn't be because I don't like it and any attempt to enforce such strings, no matter how feeble such an attempt may be, is nasty!"

Re:No biggie

[PCWizardsinc]

Hardly, anyone that has built a hackintosh, or for that matter, modded a netbook to run OSX, would never blame Apple for it not working... the whole point is just to see if you can do it, ...

Re:No biggie

[nomadic]

I'm not judging the legitimacy or morality of their actions; I just know slashdot, and if any other company had done something like this they'd be excoriated here.

Re:No biggie

[dunkelfalke]

Well, in this exact case they make the software malfunction on a certain chipset and the only one to blame is Apple.

Re:No biggie

[mysidia]

The problem is the Atom supports a similar instruction set to the standard processors.

Dropping support in this case means they are adding explicit code designed solely to prevent use on a processor the OS would otherwise work with.

If Microsoft modified Windows 7 64-bit edition to BAN support for AMD 64-bit processors, and therefore encourage users to utilize only Microsoft Approved or Microsoft Manufactured hardware that utilizes Intel microprocessors.

Microsoft would be in court, at the wrong side of a lawsuit, pretty fast...

Again: it's not about hardware vendors not supporting a chip.

It's about hardware vendors adding code specifically designed to prevent use of a chip that otherwise works just fine.

Re:No biggie

[realityimpaired]

You seem to be operating under the premise that Apple is a Software company like Microsoft. They're not. They're a hardware company like HP or Dell. That the operating system they provide with their hardware is their own creation is irrelevant, and they're under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to provide support for any platform that they didn't sell.

That they're disabling support for the Atom platform is irrelevant. They're disabling support for a platform that they don't sell. The EULA that comes with their software specifically prohibits your using that platform in the first place, so if you were using their software legitimately, it shouldn't affect you. If it does affect you, too bad.

Re:No biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

...unjustly.

OS X is only licensed to run on Apple-branded hardware, in an even more direct way than Dell-distributed Windows installation discs are licensed (by both Dell and Microsoft) to be installed on Dell-branded PCs. You can't even pretend that Dell and Microsoft don't try to introduce technical "obstacles" to prevent non-supported use of those OEM discs, since they do at some level.

Without delving into the licensing specifics of the above examples, there is seemingly NO requirement for either Apple or Dell/Microsoft to provide support for any non-supported hardware/software combination. Apple is merely in the unique position of being the primary provider of both their own OS and their own computer hardware, therefore trivially enabling them to employ this more finely-directed method of preventing such a scenario.

Re:No biggie

[tak amalak]

And you know all this how? Yeah, I thought so.

You have no idea how booting off an Atom machine was broken.

Re:No biggie

[winthrop]

I think the complaint is that the requirement for a Mac computer is a business requirement for Apple to make money, not a technical requirement in order to run the software, except in so much as Apple cripples their software (from the end-user's perspective) in order to achieve their business goals.

Re:No biggie

[poetmatt]

well, you can either blame a: the users who made the decision to support/purchase/use OSX, or b: blame apple who locks down the OS more than a videogame console.

Hmm, well, most of the time people don't like to acknowledge their own mistakes so I'd suspect they go with B more times than not.

Re:No biggie

[Z34107]

I'm pulling this out of my nether regions, but the last slashdot article implied that they didn't "disable" Atom processors, per se. They turned on compiler optimizations that generate instructions that the Atom doesn't support.

If that's the case, it "tightens the code" because the new instructions run faster on the Intel processors Apple actually uses. However, Atom no longer works because the cheaper processors don't support those instructions.

Re:No biggie

[Vectronic]

They sell an experience.

They sell placation of the buyers ego.

Re:No biggie

[ThrowAwaySociety]

The problem is the Atom supports a similar instruction set to the standard processors.

Dropping support in this case means they are adding explicit code designed solely to prevent use on a processor the OS would otherwise work with.

And you know this how? There is zero evidence to support this. The much more likely scenario is that something simply broke compatibility with the Atom chipset, and Apple never bothered to test it and doesn't care that it's broken.

Re:No biggie

[masmullin]

WTF do you mean Stolen? I _bought_ my porsche engine. They sell the engine separately and w/o any attachment to a car. They do not label the engine as "replacement."

Porsche has no business telling me that I cant install the engine in whatever car I want to. They don't have to help me do it, but they cant stop me from building my own car around the porsche engine which I used my hard earned money to buy.

If they specifically cripple the engine so that it doesn't work unless its attached to a porsche branded car then thats sueworthy... especially if they somehow change the engine AFTER purchase!

Re:No biggie

[howlingmadhowie]

and although i repeat what hundreds have said before me, you are creating a strawman. nobody wants apple to support intel atom processors and there is no way their eula can tell me what to do with an osx cd in my own home. people who buy an osx cd and install the software on their own netbooks have done nothing morally wrong.

they are perfectly allowed to disable support for whatever they want to. i'm not saying (and i don't think anybody is saying) that apple doesn't have the right to do that. what others are saying is that it is morally questionable for apple to do so.

there is a reason why many here have mentioned intent. if apple has deliberately disabled os x from running on intel atom processors, then in the minds of most here we have a very different situation from the one if os x no longer ran on intel atom processors because of some technical reason.

in general we are arguing morals here, not law. legally i doubt that apple has done anything wrong. morally there is a very strong case to be made (which you have in no way countered) that apple has done something morally wrong.

Re:No biggie

[xouumalperxe]

So I take it you think 3-4 stories on the subject, with half the posts in each of them ranting about how this sucks isn't enough excoriation?

Re:No biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

Its embarrassing to see a place like slashdot that supposedly is all about the DIY ethic defending bullshit actions by one of technology's most controlling and DRM friendly companies.

Yeah they're so DRM-friendly the CEO spoke publicly saying it was unworkable for music and pissed off important partners of Apple in so doing. Then, in an attempt to sell more iPods, pushed so hard for the removal of DRM from music they were selling, they almost single handedly killed it in the music download market in the US. Finally, Apple is so DRM-friendly they don't bother with serial number or online registration for their flagship OS so users can install it on pretty much any hardware or multiple machines if they feel like it, in violation of the license.

Your bias is what is embarrassing. Sure, if Apple did this intentionally to stop Atom based users, it was them locking down their OS a little bit, which for me serves to emphasize how unlike Windows OS X is not locked down at all now. Apple does use DRM in some markets, mostly where they have basically no choice, but they've been one of the strongest forces for the removal of DRM in recent history. I have no illusions that this was for anything but catering to their bottom line, but for you to assert exactly the opposite is absurd.

Re:No biggie

[jo_ham]

They make a product that you are using. They are in no way morally obligated to provide it to you in a way *you* want.

There is no ethics issue with them explicitly disabling functionality in their product for something they do not sell just because you found out that you could get it to work with non-standard hardware.

If you buy a socket set and discover that while it's calibrated in metric and sold as a metric socket set to work with metric bolts, that it can still just about undo imperial bolts then great - you don't need a second imperial set. If you then find that the newer set from the same company has been updated so it still works to undo metric bolts (as it is sold) but no longer fits imperial bolts, is that company morally wrong?

Morals and ethics come into play when a company breaks good-faith promises or advertising/trade descriptions, or specifically does anti-competitive things by leveraging other monopoly positions. Since Apple has no monopoly in the OS or hardware field, and they didn't sell OS X with assurances that it would run on Atom CPUs, and in reality all they are doing is *reducing* their marketshare by disabling Atom CPUs there is no issue here.

Why exactly is is morally questionable for then to disable Atom CPUs? What promise did they break to you? How are they obligated to ensure that their product continues to work on a processor that they do not support? Why are they obligated to ensure the OS X hackintosh community can continue installing OS X on Atom-powrred netbooks?

If they don;t want you to use OS X on Atom powered Netbooks what are they "allowed to do" in your opinion that is not morally wrong? Are they allowed to try to stop you from using their (updated) product in a way they didn't intend?

I'm just curious. I don;t necessarily agree with Apple's decision here, but I don;t think they were morally wrong to make it.

Re:No biggie

[gtall]

Yes, and see what happened when BE attempted this. M$ knifed them. Apple appears to be that stupid.

Re:No biggie

[howlingmadhowie]

How are they obligated to ensure that their product continues to work on a processor that they do not support? Why are they obligated to ensure the OS X hackintosh community can continue installing OS X on Atom-powrred netbooks?

they aren't and they aren't. but that's not what this argument is about.

the problem is that it is a generally not nice thing to do. many people (i am not one of them, as i would not sully my hands with os x) have quite happily installed os x on intel atom powered products and (presumably) enjoyed using the hardware with this operating system. for apple to deliberately disable their systems from working is just not nice. what harm is it doing apple? why do they have to say to these (presumably hundreds if not thousands of people) "we don't like what you're doing so we're going to make sure you can't!"? it's just small-minded, egocentric behaviour which would get a reprimand if a child did it.

Re:No biggie

[howlingmadhowie]

There's no legitimate reason--ethical, legal or otherwise--that Apple should be obligated to continue supporting a processor they don't use in any of their own products.

And once again i must repeat myself. nobody is asking apple to do this. you are arguing a strawman here.

Re:No biggie

[UnknowingFool]

Well there is an underlying assumption that it was intentional. It may or may not have been. If they broke Atom support unintentionally, Apple support might just say "Well it's an unsupported platform. Sorry there's nothing we can do."

If it was intentional, I think hackintosh owners can probably thank Psystar for that. For years, Apple did nothing about hackintoshes as Apple probably didn't care. Psystar might have forced Apple into action. After all, legally if Apple does not enforce OS X exclusivity on their machines, then Psystar might argue "Well Apple lets these hobbyists run OS X on unsupported machines, why won't let us?" There are differences between what Psystar is doing and what hackintosh owners are doing but Apple may have been forced into a position that allows for no exceptions.

Re:No biggie

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more than one "atom chipset" out there. So if it doesn't work with all of them, given that the atom is a standard x86 processor just like a Core Duo or an AMD Athlon XP, it means that there is explicit code that break atom support.

Re:No biggie

[mmeister]

You are under the false notion that Apple's $29 Snow Leopard upgrade is the same thing as buying a full retail copy of Windows (or any other full retail OS product) that runs on indiscriminate hardware. It is not and never has been. The box for Snow Leopard says that it requires a Macintosh (that's hardware.. or "the car" for your analogy). This has always been the case, even if you are unwilling to actually read the requirements and accept them.

Just because you can currently circumvent the requirement Apple has on its software does not put you on high-moral grounds, nor does it obligate Apple to support your actions in any form what so ever.

OS X 10.6.2 continues to run on every Macintosh that Apple said would run OS X 10.6. Just because you found a way to circumvent it does not obligate Apple to support your move in any way. Sue all you want, you will lose.

Sadly, you may ruin it for the rest of us as Apple may have to start taking Windows 7 like steps to guarantee people are running on legitimate hardware.

Re:No biggie

[MeatBag PussRocket]

Full disclosure: i'm a happy hackintosh user.

i think it was intentional and i'm totally OK with that. Apple is protecting their business model by excluding hardware they dont sell. their selling their pretty hardware made it possible for them to write their pretty software. i think you hit the nail on the head by blaming Psystar. Apple probably couldnt care less about the few of us that have modded our own netbooks to run OSX especially if we have a purchased copy of the OS. even those that torrented it probably dont reap much ire from apple. We're just dudes having fun with computers and making our own lives better without really damaging anything else in the big scheme of things. Psystar was running a business off of this, and was parasitic to apple. its well within their right and i dont view it as a move done in poor taste.

Re:No biggie

[jpmorgan]

Why? Psystar doesn't build machines with Atom processors. More likely this is to kill the netbook OS X market, so that that group of uses will be desperate for something in a similar form factor when Apple releases the iTablet.

Re:No biggie

[jo_ham]

Well, that is if you agree with Stallman, and what you're saying is that holding Apple to Stallman's ethics because it "represents a legitimate and influential school of thought" is equivalent to me being held to a Christian's ethics because they have decided that doing something with your body is "morally wrong" (wanking, sex before marriage, abortion) and they also "represent a legitimate and influential school of thought".

It's not quite so cut and dried I don't think.

Apple here haven't actually "officially" done anything (nor have they "dropped support" for anything since they didn't support it in the first place), and they are not going around forcing people with hackintoshes to nuke and pave their HD. It's just that the latest version of 10.6 doesn't boot on Atom CPUs, whether deliberately or just through coincidence - there were no guarantees that it would work either way.

In that you should be able to do anything you like with the things you have bought, software or otherwise, I agree (within the law of course - if you use your software to defraud a bank or something then no, but you see what I mean). If you have a retail copy of OS X you should be able to do what you like with it, but similarly, Apple is free to do whatever it likes with its own code, including putting in or taking out code that doesn't pertain to its own interests.

I'm not sure you can make the argument that Apple should be morally obliged to ensure that OS X continues to run on Atom CPUs just because it did before - if this was a genuine case of some code being changed that was necessary for something else and Atom support just happened to be a casualty (rather than explictly disabling Atom support - we don;t know either way) then are they obliged to explain what happened (to a product and customer base they do not support) or fix it so that it continues to work?

I'm not seeing anyone sued over hackintoshes, apart from Psystar who are attempting to sell them - the personal user who buys a copy of OS X and a netbook is not being chased down here, but nor does he have any guarantees that Apple won;t change something so it won't work any more if they update. 10.6.1 will continue to run for them.

Dell Zino

[tompeach]

I wonder if the recently launched Dell Zino could have been a motivator? http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Desktops/inspiron-zino/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-zino&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1

Re:Dell Zino

[socsoc]

I'd say no more than the countless netbooks that it (previously) could be installed on.

"Officially"....?

[benwiggy]

I RTFA, and there's no acknowledgement by Apple of what they have done or why they have done it. So the update does not "officially" break Atom support, it just breaks Atom support.

Re:"Officially"....?

[LWATCDR]

I don't think that OS/X ever had official atom support to start with. The interesting question is this caused by intent or because Apple didn't test the update on an Atom. Of course they have no reason to test the update on an Atom because they do not sell a single computer that uses the Atom.

Re:"Officially"....?

[nine-times]

Even saying it "breaks Atom support" is perhaps a little inaccurate. There has never officially been Atom support in OSX. It just happened to work. Now it happens to not work. Maybe it was intentional on their part, but it was never "official".

Re:"Officially"....?

[LWATCDR]

Not exactly. I have been programing for a long time. Way back when the PII came out our application blew up. We used Borland Pascal and there was an issue with the CRT.o unit that blew up on the Intel PII. At the OS level the Atom is not 100% identical with the Core2Duo, P4, i7, or AMD line. It is possible that their is a bug that only happens on the Atom and Apple didn't test for it because they do not support the Atom or plan on supporting the Atom with this OS.
You think that they did this to be a pain but to be honest if they where going to do this then why not break all hackintoshs and not just netbooks?
They may have done it intentionally or it could just be a side effect that they didn't test for and frankly don't need to test for.
What I am saying that I can not say why it happened or what exactly did happen. But then nobody outside of Apple can know for sure.
But since Apple never officially supported any none Apple hardware it seems funny that people are saying that they officially stopped supporting Atom netbooks.

Re:"Officially"....?

[Mysticalfruit]

Nope, not a line of it. Luckily this is the internet so I can make completely unqualified statements!

It just seems odd that OSX was working quite nicely on netbooks and now suddenly a patch later they are not.

Who knows, maybe there's some feature that all the other Intel processors have that the Atom doesn't and Apple wanted to suddenly use it, stranger things have happened.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[Nursie]

"Free" software people won't touch Apple with a long pointed stick. It's even more closed and unfriendly than MS.

makes me rethink things

[Skraut]

It's funny as someone with an aging MacBook Pro, I was contemplating passing it down to my wife, claiming her netbook, installing osx86 on it, and then picking up a new Mac desktop, either an iMac or a Mac Pro, and just standardizing on OSX throughout the house.

Now I wonder if I'm better off just installing Ubuntu on the MBP and the Netbook and spend a lot less money on the desktop and build myself one with Ubuntu as well.

I'm not totally stating that this has caused Apple a hardware sale, (at least not yet) but it has made me re-think my strategy.

Re:makes me rethink things

[StuartHankins]

OS X vs Ubuntu have not only entirely different target audiences but are entirely different experiences. I use XP, OSX Tiger, RHEL 5 and Fedora 8 daily but switching my laptop from OSX Tiger to Fedora or RHEL would be a huge difference in capabilities and would greatly reduce my performance -- until I found replacements for all the things I do, assuming that's possible.

And please before you tag me as not friendly to open source, I've been using Fedora since it was called Red Hat 5.2. Just make absolutely sure you are willing to put up with the change in scenery... Ubuntu tends to be a rather cutting-edge distro. Hope it works for you.

Oh, great.

[saintlupus]

Time for another thousand posts on how Evil Apple should leave in support for hardware that they don't sell. Fantastic.

--saint

Re:Oh, great.

[Quantumstate]

There is a difference between leaving in support and explicitly disabling "support". I put support in quotes because there was never anything extra done to support atom, it just acts like a normal processor. This si like websites which look at your browsers user agent and deny you access because you are running the wrong browser, when the page would run in the blocked browser anyway.

Re:Oh, great.

[ircmaxell]

You haven't read through the previous comments, have you? I see far more people (at least at this point) complaining about the anti-apple comments than anti-apple comments...

Now, with that said, I think it's genius what they are doing from a business perspective... Making the software an beacon to their hardware profit center. From a moral perspective, I don't care what they do, cause I'm not spending $3k on a MacBook Pro... OSX may be amazing, but I am quite happy with Ubuntu, so this news has no consequence for me. If you want the freedom to do what you choose, use a free OS (Linux flavors, BSD flavors, etc). If you want the polished yet non-free OSs (OSX, Windows), then you have to live with the restrictions... It's as simple as that. They own the copyright on the OS, so they can tell you how they want you to use it. You can argue about the moral implications of what they do all day long, all it does is keep their name in the news...

Re:Oh, great.

[ThrowAwaySociety]

There is a difference between leaving in support and explicitly disabling "support". I put support in quotes because there was never anything extra done to support atom, it just acts like a normal processor. This si like websites which look at your browsers user agent and deny you access because you are running the wrong browser, when the page would run in the blocked browser anyway.

They are not "explicitly disabling 'support'" and they were never "leaving in support." As you said, they never did anything to support Atom, and now they've coincidentally broken it. Just like when a website starts using a JavaScript function that breaks in Opera/Safari/Chrome because it was never tested on that browser.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[3vi1]

>> "Free" software people won't touch Apple with a long pointed stick. It's even more closed and unfriendly than MS.

You do realize that OS X comes bundled with 100's of 'free' open source utilities/apps, right?

Not that big of a deal

[Fred IV]

Hackintosh users can live without the 10.6.2 update. This doesn't really break anything, it just prevents netbook users from having the latest set of OS patches between now and whenever the community finds a workaround.

Re:Not that big of a deal

[Zandall]

Hackintosh users doesn't need to live without 10.6.2 update: make a copy of 10.6.1 kernel, install 10.6.2, DON'T REBOOT, rename new kernel to kernel10.6.2, rename old 10.6.2 kernel again, reboot. The hackintosh user will have everything updated except the kernel. you can even use new and updated kexts made for the new kernel... You can also a small patch on source code and have kenel 10.6.2 but it's a little bit of work for a tiny hackintosh:

Mods on crack today?

[StuartHankins]

One of the more uninformed posts I've read today.

Apple owns or participates in a HUGE number of open-source projects.

Re:Mods on crack today?

[ducomputergeek]

Reminds me of a conversation with a Linux Zeloat the other day:

LZ: "Look at my Ubuntu, it automatically finds my printer!"
Me: "Thank Apple"
*LZ GIVES ME A CONFUSED LOOK*
LZ: "What do you mean?"
Me: "Point your browser to localhost:631"
*screen: CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple Inc. for Mac OS® X and other UNIX®-like operating systems.*

Having to deal with linux printing a decade ago, be glad that Apple bought CUPS and continued to develop it.

Re:Mods on crack today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you noticed? Plenty of slashdot moderators are easily won over by insults, the us-against-them mindset (whether real or imagined), and general internet "tough talk", while the less-exciting yet technically accurate posts go unnoticed.

This is why on slashdot, you often find the agitated "this sucks" posts modded to +5, while the calm and logical response is modded down. It's not how much sense you make, it's how "strongly" you feel about it and how loud you can yell. Just like in politics.

Re:Mods on crack today?

[IndustrialComplex]

It's not how much sense you make, it's how "strongly" you feel about it and how loud you can yell. Just like in politics

Really? In that case, $5 for everyone that mods me +1.

Now it's just like politics.

Parent Posts Case In Point

[Ukab the Great]

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/29250/1023/

Nowhere does the article say "Jailbroken", even though the worm only targets jailbroken, non-officially sanctioned stuff that lives outside Apple's cage. This is an open and shut case of Apple's hardware getting blamed for something the hobbyist hack community does. An IT manager who's considering brining iPhone's into the business might read the article, not go the extra mile to find out the exploit's for jailbroken phones only, decide that iPhones are not secure enough yet, and go with a blackberry or something else.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[drinkypoo]

You do realize that OS X comes bundled with 100's of 'free' open source utilities/apps, right?

You do realize that I can get all the same shit for free for Windows with Services for Unix, right? It's not bundled so that you're not forced to receive it if you don't want it, but it's a free download.

Further, you do realize that Apple is abysmal at keeping up with updates on that Open Source stuff, so that it's almost always outdated and thus often useless anyway, right? And in fact creates security holes that they do not see fit to address?

Re:That's fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm. No it doesn't. It actually means *more* bloat, albeit insignificant, because they have to explicitly check to see which CPU you are using.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[vadim_t]

You do realize that OS X comes bundled with 100's of 'free' open source utilities/apps, right?

Do you realize that getting the apps themselves isn't the point?

I can get things like GCC and bash on Linux, Windows, Solaris, OS X and so on.

The difference is in that when something goes wrong, on Linux and OpenSolaris I can debug all the way up to the kernel, while on Windows and OS X I'm stuck if the problem happens to be somewhere in the closed components of the system, and the core system is very unfriendly towards any kind of interesting customization.

If this were another company...

[C10H14N2]

Microsoft ended up in hot water for tying a !@#$ing BROWSER to their operating system and everyone cheered for their defeat. If Apple's market share wasn't so comparatively small, they'd be torn to shreds by the DOJ over this.

Re:If this were another company...

[Old97]

And that's what happens when you become a monopoly. Some previously permissible behaviors are no longer. If Microsoft wasn't a monopoly they'd not have had a legal problem. Besides, they didn't get torn to shreds by the DOJ. Their wrists were slapped.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[Gothmolly]

1) buy Dell mini
2) download DellEFI
3) boot DVD
4) swap DVD with OSX DVD
5) wait...
6) reboot into OSX

Since clearly you haven't tried or done this, perhaps you should STFU.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[phooka.de]

The difference is in that when something goes wrong, on Linux and OpenSolaris I can debug all the way up to the kernel, while on Windows and OS X I'm stuck if the problem happens to be somewhere in the closed components of the system,

Granted, but let's be honest:
- have you ever done this?
- would you know how to debug the application?
- do you believe that you'd be able to just debug the kernel or some complicated framework, understand the coding, write a fix and be sure that it won't break all other applications because your fix breaks some other expected functionality?

I agree that with colsed source, you just can't do it. But let's be honest, for most of us, we still wouldn't do it if we (technically) could because we lack the skills and the knowledge about the underlying layers of software.

This comes from a software developer currently doing development support (that means fixing bugs in our applications). If something goes wrong in someone else's coding - hand the issue to them, don't touch it; chances are you'd break something you didn't understand.

Once again, so what?

[jht]

Apple doesn't make an Atom-based Mac. Nor did they in the past. They explicitly sell and license Mac OS X to run only on Macs. If you want to try and get it to work on a non-Mac with a different CPU and/or chipset than what Apple supports, you're on your own, good luck to you.

Apple isn't going to send an army of lawyers to your house to stop you from trying to build a hackintosh. They will if you figure it out and then start selling them - see Psystar for details. But they won't do anything to make it easy for you to build a hackintosh, and if it breaks - oh well, sucks to be you, next time buy a Mac or stick to a supported OS on your hackintosh.

Me, I stick to Windows 7 Pro on my eee901 for now, but I may switch to eeebuntu soon. I like it. I'll keep Mac OS on my Macs.

Re:Start complaining, "free" software people

[jo_ham]

I'm sure you do, but your assertion that "OS X is even more locked down than Windows" is a little bit a stretch, surely. How much of the Windows source is open? How much of OS X? Clearly both are closed OSes, but the core of OS X is a lot more open than Windows.

On the second point, some citations would be nice. Apple is moaned at a lot for their contributions to the OSS community and their "theft" from it (funny, I thought it was free) especially in cases like Webkit/KHTML and Darwin itself.

So, what currently unaddressed security hole exists in the open source stuff Apple ships? Are you claiming that Apple doesn't update the OSS stuff it ships in security updates? Are you claiming they specifically ignore security holes?

What's to stop you from rolling your own implementations of these vulnerable services on OS X if they are open source and you need to run them but are concerned that the shipped Apple version is insecure, assuming that the current OSS version has also been patched, or are you claiming that because Apple doesn't push a patch down on OS X the very same day a patch to the OSS stuff is done by a third party because they may need to test it on their internal OS X builds first that they are "abysmal at keeping up to date".

Re: load of crock?

[twosmokes]

Wait, so Apple fixed a hardware error and we should cheer them for it? After they gave her the runaround twice? Yes, stellar customer service there.

That's an issue that should have been resolved the first time she brought it to the store. If not then and there she never should have been required to mail the laptop back herself. Which then should have never been returned without a repair.

I'm sure there are many happy Apple customers, I just don't think that's the best story to show how great their service is.

1/2 Right - 1/2 Vast

[konohitowa]

Well, I RTFA and followed the links there. I found the part where this build isn't working with the Atom processor. However, I was unable to find the "official" part. Any links to that?

Atom vs PPC

[not-my-real-name]

What I find ironic is that there is more fuss being made about support for Atom processors than PowerPC processors, and Apple even made PowerPC based computers. Once could also complain about the lack of 68k support, but probably most people don't remember back that far.

Re: Any other company?

[ADRA]

NT4 did ship with 4 OS revisions: X86, Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC.

Apply did intentionally cripple their OS because Atoms are standard X86 instruction sets. Its not like building some new fangled incompatible technology like mips, alpha, PPC, or ARM. Its like building an Intel X86 architecture instruction set supported OS then checking to see that the CPU version ID is 5 instead of 7. If 7 then fail to boot. That is effectively what Apple is doing.

Re:Uh, you come off too much as a fanboi

[ogdenk]

Latest stunt? WTF?! What makes you think Apple owes it to you to support hardware they don't even use in their products?

I could see getting pissy if they stopped supported all but a couple specific Core 2 Duo chips but Atom was never officially supported in the first place.

I like my Macbook and my Hackintosh desktop but I don't think they owe it to me to support my hardware. They don't support it and I don't expect them to help but if they tried to sue me for running OS X on a PC, I'd be angry but this is a silly non-issue.

Mac OS X? What about NT? Huh?

[toriver]

Spare some thought on the multitude of NT 3.5 users, happily running on MIPS or Alpha, when EVIL Microsoft decided to just release NT 4.0 on Intel hardware!

Seriously, it's their product. Want to run an operating system on Atom? Make and sell one! There is a market opportunity for you to exploit instead of whining.

Re:"Kills Intel Atom Support"?! What support?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, everyone here knows that hackintosh machines are not "supported", so thanks for the pointless comment. Second, the existing hacks have nothing to do with enabling Atom support, so you're also wrong.

Sorry you just proved you're a fanboy!

[syousef]

So at THIS point, despite it all being relatively minor stuff - she was PISSED at Apple and their products and service. She stormed back to the Apple store to complain about the repair not being done properly, and you know what? They "bent some rules" for her, and swapped her for a BRAND NEW Macbook Pro which had more RAM, a better graphics card, faster processor and more drive space than her low-end Macbook that was just out of the 1 year warranty!

Have you ever dealt with a keyboard that sticks on a laptop? What the fuck are you smoking? Calling this a "minor issue" is insane! It's enough to make a computer so frustrating it's UNUSABLE. On top of that they didn't fix it when it was shipped for repair at considerable inconvenience to her, and you call that a minor point too. Lastly you blame her for being a clueless user - yet isn't one of the big selling points of the Apple p latform? That it "just works". A swap of hardware at that point sounded like a reasonable thing, but nothing extraordinary or that required special mention of extremely good customer support.

Making excuses for your pet company doesn't do it any favours. The service just keeps degrading if you let them get away with it. Blaming the user is asinine.

Re:Sorry you just proved you're a fanboy!

[pdabbadabba]

OK, I happily grant that a stuck key is a major issue. But giving her a new MacBook Pro as compensation for the Apple repair department's failure to fix the key is phenomenal customer service any way you slice it.

Let us know what happens next time you have a stuck key on your Dell (or whatever). I'll bet they will not give you a new Adamo.

Call me a fanboy if you want, but you might be interested to know that I just bought my first Mac (literally) four days ago. So, either I can't be a fanboy, or you must concede that Apple is doing something right if they've already made a fanboy out of me.

Re: Any other company?

[R3d M3rcury]

Apply [sic] did intentionally cripple their OS because Atoms are standard X86 instruction sets.

But what is a standard X86 instruction set? Does it include SSE3?

The Atom includes SSE3, but Intel's compilers require a special switch to generate SSE3 compatible code for the Intel Atom. So I would assume there is something "special" about SSE3 on the Atom.

So, possibility one is that Apple is explicitly saying that they want to crush these people making Hackintosh Netbooks. Possibility two is that Apple is now using instructions that are not available on the Intel Atom because they don't make an Intel Atom-based machine and would rather optimize their code for the machines that they do make.

Which one seems like it makes more sense?

Re: Any other company?

[shutdown -p now]

There's no single "standard x86 instruction set". There are variations between AMD and Intel offerings, and there are now many generations of x86 even if you disregard those differences.