Mac OS X 10.6.2 unofficially re-enabled on Atom netbooks

Stephen Withers
Monday, 23 November 2009 03:17

Opinion and Analysis

As predicted, the hackintosh community found a way of running Mac OS X 10.6.2 on netbooks after the update broke compatibility with Atom CPUs.

One of the developer builds of Mac OS X 10.6.2 prevented the operating system from running on Intel Atom based systems. No big deal for the majority of Mac OS X users, but there are a number of enthusiasts that have installed the operating system on a netbook, notably the Dell Mini 10v.

At the time, there were suggestions that it might be possible to create a modified kernel to support Atom based hardware, but it turned out that a subsequent build (10C535) didn't spit the dummy when it found itself running on a netbook .

But when 10.6.2 actually shipped, it turned out that Atom hardware was a no-no.

It took hardly any time at all for a hackintosher going by the name of 'Tea' to come up with a small patch for the mach_kernel file that enables the updated operating system to work on Atom hardware. Tea made a patched file available for download.

An alternative approach described by 'Meklort' involves replacing the mach_kernel file with the one from Mac OS X 10.6.1. Meklort's NetbookInstaller utility (which applies kernel extensions and other fixes to suit specific hardware) was also updated to incorporate Tea's kernel patch.

Although the work was done earlier this month, it's taken some time for it to come to broader attention.

The whole business has left a lot of people wondering whether Apple was deliberately trying to make things difficult for hackintoshers, or if the Atom incompatibility was just a side effect of changes made to the code.

Since the incompatibility apparently results from the Atom CPU 'failing' a test of the CPUID value. Given that this test was so easy to patch out, it seems unlikely that anyone at Apple put any real effort into preventing the use of Atom CPUs.

Still, this is the company that incorporated the 'bozo bit' in early versions of Mac OS. Setting the bozo bit on a file told the Finder that it must not be copied. As Wikipedia puts it, "It was called the bozo bit because it was copy protection so weak that only a bozo would think of it, and only a bozo would be deterred by it."

The Mac OS X licence only provides for the use of the software on Apple-labeled hardware.