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Software Hackers Reverse Ill-Effects of Apple's Update, Restoring Intel Atom Support
Jason Mick (Blog) - November 20, 2009 12:59 PM

29 comment(s) - last by Regs.. on Nov 30 at 12:45 PM

OS X 10.6.2 support for Atom processors has been restored by a Russian hacker who released a modified kernel which he dubs "Mach". (Source: tea blog)

Snow Leopard no longer confined to the steppes of Apple's restricted hardware

OS X hackers are threatening Apple's business model by give people the ability to build or buy OS X-driven "Hackintoshes" -- netbooks, notebooks, or PCs with third party hardware -- at a much lower price than Apple's slickly packaged, but pricey offerings. Apple has seen success against commercial OS X hackers, recently scoring a summary judgment against Hackintosh vendor Psystar. However, Apple's apparent attempts to squash out the independent hacking movement by killing Atom support via a Snow Leopard update have been less successful, as hackers have managed to undo the changes.

A newly released hacker-modified kernel restores the support in Snow Leopard for Atom processors, allowing Hackintosh makers to once again take advantage of the operating system's slim footprint to create fast and functional OS X netbooks. The installation process isn't for beginning users as it requires basic low level operating systems knowledge and the knowledge of how to use a terminal to perform system commands.

The "dirty bithack" fix was released by Russian hackers and detailed on their blog, tea blog. The new kernel is a modified version of Apple's Mach microkernel.

With hackers back to being able to use Hackintosh netbooks with the latest version of Snow Leopard, the ball is now in Apple's court. While it was clear that Apple attempts to kill the Palm Pre's syncing or its attempts to kill Hackintosh vendor Psystar were deliberate, some still believe that Apple only killed the Atom support on accident. After all, it would be unlikely to test the support, as it does not sell any products with Atom processors.

Whether or not Apple makes further attempts to kill Atom support or Hackintoshes in the forthcoming OS X 10.6.3 update should be telling of how resistant the company is to the non-commercial Hackintosh community.

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Nice

By damianrobertjones on 11/20/2009 1:16:03 PM , Rating: 5

Hello Apple,

Welcome to the world of Microsoft. Soon, very soon, you'll gather enough interest that the hackers, trojan writers, malware players and general nasties will come your way.

Good luck. You won't win.

x

RE: Nice

By Omega215D on 11/20/2009 1:42:42 PM , Rating: 5

You must be able to see it, Mr. Jobs. You must know it by now. You can't win . It's pointless to keep fighting. Why Mr. Jobs? Why do you persist?!

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RE: Nice

By sprockkets on 11/20/09, Rating: -1

RE: Nice

By HaZaRd2K6 on 11/20/2009 4:21:53 PM , Rating: 5

Nice job completely missing the joke :)

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RE: Nice

By muhahaaha on 11/20/2009 2:22:31 PM , Rating: 2

that made my day lol

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RE: Nice

By scrapsma54 on 11/20/2009 8:01:47 PM , Rating: 2

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RE: Nice

By decalpha on 11/21/2009 11:20:30 AM , Rating: 2

Probably haven't heard of "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated."

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RE: Nice

By quiksilvr on 11/21/2009 3:05:05 PM , Rating: 2

Because I choose too and this movie sucks.

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RE: Nice

By PrezWeezy on 11/20/2009 4:54:54 PM , Rating: 5

What do you mean trojan and malware? All they have to do is disable the NIC, problem solved as far as Apple is concerned.

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RE: Nice

By damianrobertjones on 11/21/2009 6:09:25 AM , Rating: 5

I like your thinking!

A safe computer. Now all they have to do is convince people that they no longer need the interwebz.

If anyone can do it.. apple can!

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RE: Nice

By seamonkey79 on 11/22/2009 2:18:34 AM , Rating: 3

All they'd have to do is cancel support for any and all networking devices, and Apple people would applaud the forward thinking and pre-protection of the new Internet-less Macs.

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RE: Nice

By vcolon on 11/23/2009 10:39:46 AM , Rating: 2

ROFL. Good one.

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Not That Hard...

By brshoemak on 11/20/2009 2:52:45 PM , Rating: 5

quote:
The installation process isn't for beginning users as it requires basic low level operating systems knowledge and the knowledge of how to use a terminal to perform system commands.

Not sure where they got that idea from. I just upgraded my Dell 10v a couple hours ago to 10.6.2 and it was easy and painless.

1) Run Netbook Installer [latest version - RC4]
2) Reboot
3) Run Software Update in Mac OS X, install 10.6.2
4) Reboot
5) Run Netbook Installer [latest version - RC4] again

Wow - that sure was tough. Credit due to those who spent their time and effort to make this possible and easy for Apple EULA-hating bastards like myself.

RE: Not That Hard...

By harmaton on 11/20/2009 3:42:14 PM , Rating: 2

I foresee Apple going back to less mainstream chips. So people can't buy their Dell and have it work.

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RE: Not That Hard...

By hiscross on 11/21/09, Rating: 0

Battery life

By kmmatney on 11/21/2009 1:16:23 AM , Rating: 2

Do you get longer battery life if you install Snow Leopard on something like a Dell laptop, or does the increased battery life require Apple hardware as well?

RE: Battery life

By kmmatney on 11/21/2009 1:27:02 AM , Rating: 2

Looked it up - looks like you do get some great battery life:

http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-del...

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Do the authors read their articles before posting?

By apaxi on 11/20/2009 9:36:05 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
OS X hackers are threatening Apple's business model by give people the ability

I've been reading Jason's articles for awhile and see similar mistakes throughout many articles. Do you guys read these things before posting?

Stop wasting your time on "Hackintoshes

By crystal clear on 11/21/09, Rating: 0

By crystal clear on 11/21/2009 1:22:56 AM , Rating: 0

Maybe good for school kids to fool around their machines with their parents hard earned money.

Read this for serious users who generally dont waste their time on such things.

3 Year Laptop Malfunction Rates by Manufacturer.

ASUS and Toshiba come out on top. With 3 year malfunction rates forecast to be under 16%, laptops from these two manufacturers are nearly 40% more reliable than Hewlett-Packard, the worst performer in our study. Sony and Apple also performed better than the average.
The industry leader HP, which shipped nearly 16 million laptops in the past year according to IDCiii, ranked dead last in our reliability study with over one-fourth of laptops expected to malfunction in 3 years. Gateway and Acer, the #2 maker of laptops, were also nearly as unreliable as HP, with an expected malfunction rate of over 23%.

Conclusions on laptop reliability
Given the high overall failure rates of laptops and sizeable difference in reliability by brand, reliability should be a concern for consumers shopping around for the best holiday deals.
While our study found netbook malfunction rates to be trending 20% higher than more expensive laptops, the variance between manufacturer is far greater and should be a bigger factor in making a buying decision. ASUS and Toshiba laptops failed just over half as frequently as HP, which makes them a solid bet in terms of reliability.
Given that netbooks have only really been around in volume for about 12 months, it will be interesting to see how their reliability plays out over the course of the next 12 months. SquareTrade will continue to monitor the progress and publish an update of laptop and netbook failure rates in 2010.

http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_lap...

These Hackers

By Regs on 11/20/09, Rating: -1

RE: These Hackers

By MrPickins on 11/20/2009 1:45:35 PM , Rating: 3

Who says they don't have day jobs and just hack OSX as a hobby?

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RE: These Hackers

By BrandtTheMan on 11/20/2009 2:39:20 PM , Rating: 2

Or they hack OSX at work :)

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RE: These Hackers

By The0ne on 11/20/2009 1:50:50 PM , Rating: 2

And you're assuming they are old enough :)

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RE: These Hackers

By pakotlar on 11/20/2009 4:10:39 PM , Rating: 2

Actually it doesn't matter. Regs was basically saying they're not productive by the standards of their chronological age. That's obviously asinine, but your response isn't much better. If they're not of age to work, that underlines the likelihood that they are taking up the degree of responsibility appropriate for their chr. age, as something like 99% of American children are engaged 5 days a week in some sort of schooling.

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RE: These Hackers

By Regs on 11/30/2009 12:45:12 PM , Rating: 2

Regs was being sarcastic.

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Just another example

By Suntan on 11/20/09, Rating: -1

RE: Just another example

By wolrah on 11/20/2009 1:45:04 PM , Rating: 2

The kernel of Mac OS X is open source, so it's not cracked commercial software, it's a perfectly legal modification of open source code.

Jason did miss one big detail though. Mach is part of the kernel used by OS X, so the "mach_kernel" bits are the same as what they'd be on a retail OS X system, not some name the "hackers" have come up with.

This guy seems to think he can write about hacking communities like the OSx86 crew and Xbox 360 modders, but he's proven fairly well that he doesn't do a bit of research.

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RE: Just another example

By PhoenixKnight on 11/20/2009 1:45:29 PM , Rating: 2

Yes, because finding those links in 10 seconds on Google is so difficult.

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Disinformation

By sebmel on 11/20/09, Rating: -1

By sebmel on 11/20/2009 7:42:06 PM , Rating: -1

quote:
Snow Leopard no longer confined to the steppes of Apple's restricted hardware

They never were. Atom support was broken but many other processors that Apple does not use remained functional.

quote:
OS X hackers are threatening Apple's business model by give people the ability to build or buy OS X-driven "Hackintoshes"

That is only a threat if there proves to be a sizeable market for said hackintoshes. So far there is no evidence of that.

quote:
However, Apple's apparent attempts to squash out the independent hacking movement by killing Atom support via a Snow Leopard update have been less successful

What you mean is that Apple have been actively pursuing Psystar and breaking Palm iTunes synching but haven't been actively doing the same breaking compatibility with CPUs the company doesn't use... but that won't stop you wording your report in such a way as to falsely suggest that have been active but unsuccessful breaking unsupported CPU compatibility.

quote:
Whether or not Apple makes further attempts to kill Atom support or Hackintoshes in the forthcoming OS X 10.6.3 update should be telling of how resistant the company is to the non-commercial Hackintosh community.

One cannot claim that Apple may make 'further' attempts when one has no evidence that the breaking of Atom compatibility by 10.6.2 constitutes a first attempt and not simply a lack of interest in Atom CPUs... as Apple doesn't use them.