OS X Update Officially Kills Intel Atom Support 610
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."
Re:No biggie (Score:5, Informative)
They should explicitly state their product's system requirements and let the consumer decide (like everyone else).
From the Snow Leopard Tech Specs:
General requirements
Mac computer with an Intel processor
Only Apple makes Macs and Apple does not make any product with the Atom processor. Therefore, no computer with the Atom is supported. Neither is any computer with an AMD procesor. Or any computer not made by Apple, since all Mac clones are over ten years old and used PowerPCs.
None of those computers are supported. The fact that it works on some of them is a happy coincidence. There it is, written clearly in the very first requirement.
Re: Any other company? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I doubt that.... The computer industry has a LONG reputation of building OS's that only run with specific hardware configurations sold by the OS vendor. Until the idea of a "PC clone" came along, this was pretty much how ALL personal computers were sold. (You weren't going to get your Commodore 64 to run anything written for the Atari 800, and your TI99/4A didn't work with any of those, OR a computer from Radio Shack....) SPARC machines ran their own operating systems too. (I think Intergraph had to sell a special port of Windows NT for them, to get them to run that.)
Certainly, the minicomputers and mainframes out there all ran their own proprietary OS's too.
Re:No biggie (Score:3, Informative)
Not necessarily, although a combination of funny and insightful would probably be appropriate.
Not all people who buy Apple products are out to fluff their ego, just like not all people who buy Dells are too dumb to assemble their own from whitebox parts, or all people who run Linux are too cheap to spend money on an OS.
Huge generalisations really help no one. Regardless of your personal opinion on the "Apple experience", there really is something to it for some people - I personally love having a machine (white intel iMac) that I can carry in a box with a handle over to my friend's house for a quick game night, that runs OS X and XP, takes 5 minutes to pack and unpack, doesn't have to worry about antivirus and malware issues (but is still security conscious enough to understand that we're not and never likely to be 'immune' to security threats), and don;t consider myself better than anyone else because I use a Mac.
The computer I own ticks all the right boxes for what I want to use it for - it's a tool (albeit a very nice looking tool - also a consideration, but not the only one). I'm sure there are PCs out there that are all-in-one and come in a box that has a handle on it that make it easy to transport it like a suitcase, protected by the original packing it came in from the factory, but can that one run OS X out of the box with no need to modify it?
It's not like I went into the store and said "I want to buy a computer that shows how much better I am than everyone else" - I bought the one that fitted my needs best, and was prepared to pay the money for it. The cost of an all-in-one is more than worth it for the convenience of moving it, and the way it looks, and the fact I can run both OS X and XP as needed (calm down, I have Ubuntu on a Powerbook) really does make it an ideal single main machine.
Re:Start complaining, "free" software people (Score:3, Informative)
True Apple doesn't always keep all of the bundled OSS apps updated... OTOH they don't prevent you from compiling and installing (or finding pre-compiled) an updated version. I rarely use the bundled versions of PHP, MySQL or Ruby on my Mac.
Just be sure to install them under /usr/local/ or a similar standard but not Apple default location or your next Apple update will wipe them out.
There are a few apps which while OSS are tightly coupled to the OS itself and do not have timely support from their original maintainers for OS X - these often do require Apple to keep up to date, but in general they are pretty good about fixing security issues, with some notable exceptions... for which there is always the option to disable the service or app until the fix has been ported.
Re:Not in Darwin? (Score:1, Informative)
you'll notice that the 10.6.2 sources aren't there...
Re:That's fine (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Any other company? (Score:2, Informative)
.....You can buy MacOS at apple.com....
only for computers built by Apple.
Re:No biggie (Score:2, Informative)
The atom is only one. Could it be, just possibly, that Apple has decided to increase the efficiency of their operating system by optimizing for multiple cores?
Not the case.. There are dual-core atoms, for example, the Atom 330 [intel.com]
Also, There are old Apple systems that are single-core 32-bit like the Atoms: the Mac Mini Intel Core Solo 1.5GHz
Which is supported by Snow Leopard...