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No More Hackintoshing?

Nov 2nd

Posted by Zealot

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Tagged: in Software
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intel-atom-logo It appears that Apple is not content just breaking the ability of the Palm Pre to sync with iTunes. They are apparently expanding their vandalism habit to confront another “misuse” of their software which they have long expressed displeasure about…hackintoshing.

One blogger is stating that the new beta seed of Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) no longer supports the Intel Atom chipset, used by almost all netbooks and notebooks customarily used for hackintoshing. Hackintoshing is the installation of the Mac OS on a piece of non-Apple hardware, such as a netbook. Users often claim that they do this because Apple thus far refuses to release a ultra-portable or netbook version of their popular MacBooks. Cupertino has never been amused but has turned a mostly blind eye to the practice…until now.

It is unclear just HOW incompatible the new OS X beta is with Atom chips, but certainly at least the functions that required unofficial KEXT files to function, such as Sleep Mode, won’t work any more. Apple has made clear they will not be using Atom chips for any devices (preferring ARM chips for mobile computing) so there is no reason for them to strive to support them. The question is whether they spiked Atom support intentionally or if it just happened. Since we seem to be on the cusp of an Apple Tablet, I would have to say they DID break hackintosh possibilities with malice aforethought. After all, Apple will want to make sure that anyone who craves a smaller Mac-based device pays the (no doubt hefty) price for this new product.

Of course eventually some clever clogs will write new KEXT files or work arounds to make hackintoshing possible again, but does anyone really want to see yet another cat and mouse game between Apple and hackers. It seems to be there must be people at Apple who do nothing all day but try to break hacks at this point, between the ongoing war with the iPhone Dev Team, and of course the battle against Palm over iTunes. Do they have any TIME to create an Apple Tablet?

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Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).

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  • It looks as if this may be a non-issue.

    http://lifehacker.com/5397890/hackintosh-netboo...
  • Imagine you are Apple: for Macintoshes, you get almost all of your profit from selling hardware, not from selling OS upgrades. (Not to mention there is nothing that prevents people from installing a single copy of the OS on multiple pieces of hardware - there is nothing like what MS does with Windows installs that cripple the system without a valid license installed.) As that particular business, wouldn't you do pretty much the same thing?
  • I agree. What's wrong with spiking to OS to detect unsupported processors and not work?

    I do wish Apple would loosen up on iTunes, though. There are lots of people who don't want to buy an iPod but might not have a problem buying DRM-free music from iTunes if they could sync it with their player. While Apple certainly has the right to limit what devices can use iTunes, I think they're being shortsighted here.

    Does iTunes require you to have a device to download music from iTunes? If not, why prevent syncing? If so, they're just cutting off potential revenue by preventing non-iPod users from buying media from iTunes. How much does Apple make on iPod sales compared to iTunes sales?

    Steve
  • Actually, iTunes APIs are pretty open. Anybody can write an app that accesses iTunes libraries, including playlists, and sync them with whichever devices that they like. SuperSync is a cross-platform app that accesses the iTunes libraries, as an example. Blackberry Desktop can sync iTunes music files sans DRM to Blackberry devices; Mark/Space makes syncing apps for WM, Blackberry, Palm Pre and the iPhone that will sync music across from iTunes libraries. And now DoubleTwist syncs with many devices as well (though now with more capability in OSX, more Windows support is coming.)

    This is what makes me scratch my head a bit about Palm - they know this, their team is filled with engineers and coders who worked at Apple, they could easily write their own sync app for the Pre. (Though maybe they are just waiting to get it right and have just been using iTunes until they're ready.)
  • That's good to know. If Apple publishes the APIs for iTunes, I guess that's one less place to criticize their lack of openness.

    Steve
  • Will
    When people ask me why I refuse to give any money to Apple, I just refer them to articles like this. I bet that if they put all of the money the spend on anti-everyone-else campaigns, they would be able to produce the same quality hardware and software at a cheaper price.
    There will Always be people hacking other peoples stuff. it just happens. IMO they would be more successful by lowering prices and competing on a more level playing field, instead of just Forcing their idea's and software onto consumers.

    Then again, it seems like Microsoft is going to pull the same crap, by disabling 3rd party xbox hdd's. Sigh. These companies get pretty ridonkulous sometimes.
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