Tag Archives: Intel Atom

[MacOS] Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Kernel Patched for Intel Atom Support

Teateam a russian speaking Mac OS developer binary patched the latest Mac OS X 10.6.2 Mach Kernel to eventually reenable support for Intel Atom CPUs. His kernel seems to be running well in 32bit and in 64bit mode. Atom CPUs are now reported as Intel Core Solo or Core Duo.

The patch seems only to consist of modifying a couple of (simply) assembler instructions to permanently set the CPU type. In the meantime Apple has released kernel sources and people are working on adding Atom CPU support in a proper manner.

Congrats Teamteam. That’s what Ilfak made IDA for ;-)

» Tea’s Blog: Kernel 10.2 for Intel Atom 330…
» Apple.com: Sources for 10.6.2…

machkernel10-6-2atom

[MacOS] 10.6.2 Update Released – Intel Atoms Killed

Apple’s 10.6.2 update closes lots of security holes that could be used to compromise systems. Safari, iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, and some other apps are rumored to be working more reliable after updating.

Apple pwns back

For OSX86 users on netbooks this update is far away from being recommended at the moment. The update now has proved what has been rumored some days ago: Intel Atom support has definitely been removed from the kernel.

Thus rendering Intel Atom based netbooks non working. Netbooks will not boot after updating as the following video by Stellarola shows. It shows the typical behaviour if the CPU is not supported by the kernel, OS X will instantly reset the system.

» Stellarola: Official – Atom not supported in 10.6.2…
» Apple: About the 10.6.2. update…
» Apple: Support Downloads for 10.6…

"allowFullScreen":"true","allowscriptaccess":"always","src":"http://www.youtube.com/v/yx8tZF302Wc&hl=de&fs=1&","allowfullscreen":"true"

[MacOS] Update 10.6.2 to Break Intel Atom CPU Support

According to Stellarolla’s blog the upcoming Snow Leopard update 10.6.2 and the Leopard update 10.5.9 will most likely break Intel Atom support. Thus rendering hackintosh installations on netbooks inoperable.

Although Apple does not provide products shipping with Intel Atom CPUs, the Mac OS kernel did support those. Now with the growing amount of hackintoshs it seems Apple tries to stop the use of their operating system on cheap an tiny netbooks.

Probably this is another indicator that Apple is going to bring the long rumored tiny tablet Mac. Anyway for people willing to maintain MacOS on their netbooks the easiest way is to not update to 10.6.2 or 10.5.9 at the moment.

» Stellarolla: “10.6.2 kills Atom and other news”…