Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
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!"
>> "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?
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.
One of the more uninformed posts I've read today.
Apple owns or participates in a HUGE number of open-source projects.
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...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
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.
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.
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.
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.
DATABASE WOW WOW
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.
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.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
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.
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.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
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?