Snow Leopard Hacked to Bring Back Atom Support

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It's baaaaaack -- but it's not easy.

When Apple released its 10.6.2 update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, it decided to remove support for the Intel Atom chip. While that means nothing to legitimate Mac users, as there are no Atom-based Apple products, the adventurous PC crowd has been able to shoehorn Mac OS X into netbooks. With most netbooks using the Intel Atom, this meant that the latest update effectively locks out many hackintosh laptops.

Of course, with the hackintosh crowd being built on the foundation of hackers and modders, it didn't take long before someone has hacked 10.6.2 to work again with the Atom.

According to Macworld, a Russian hacker has been able to figure out a way of replacing the 10.6.2 kernel with one that includes support for the Atom. Those of you who aren't used to tinkering around with Mac OS X in Terminal should be very careful of this hack, as it's not a simple point and click operation.

Those going through this procedure will be replacing an Apple-provided kernel with one downloaded from the internet. If that sounds scary, it's because it should be. But hey, the world of hackintosh has always been about unauthorized adventure.

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • doc70
    why bother putting a limited OS on a limited-resource netbook?
    Reply
  • doc70
    "Of course, with the hackintosh crowd being built on the foundation of hackers and modders, it didn't take long before someone has hacked 10.6.2 to work again with the Atom"

    like hacking OSX was that hard... The Mac -powered laptop was the first to go down at that hacker's conf. a couple years ago, in a record time.
    Reply
  • For the same reason people climb mountians.
    Reply
  • sstym
    doc70why bother putting a limited OS on a limited-resource netbook?
    Apple has a couple niche markets in business. Say you are an IT consultant and you deal with people in those markets, a hackintosh is a cheap and convenient way to do get your hands on a computer that can communicate with those and run Apple software.

    You say it's a limited OS? Then it makes sense to not spend too much on a machine that runs it, even if you have to.
    Reply
  • tester24
    doc70"Of course, with the hackintosh crowd being built on the foundation of hackers and modders, it didn't take long before someone has hacked 10.6.2 to work again with the Atom"like hacking OSX was that hard... The Mac -powered laptop was the first to go down at that hacker's conf. a couple years ago, in a record time.
    Thats because the person who did it knew of the unpatched exploit before hand.
    Reply
  • tipoo
    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.

    Lukewarm regards,
    -Tipoo
    Reply
  • warmon6
    you cant win apple. you'll have to join the other side sooner or later
    Reply
  • bfstev
    He better release the source for that kernel. Aint no way I'd put it in before going over it abit.
    Reply
  • Honis
    it decided to remove support for the Intel Atom chip
    It never supported the Intel Atom to begin with. It just happened to work before.
    Reply
  • I think Apple is now going to follow the path of MS, seeing that it always was behind on everything... :D

    When a company says 'no modding', there will be those who will go against it.
    If apple would have just allowed the hack to exist, nothing much would have changed.
    But now some tweak freaks and hackaholics will spend their precious time of sleep, investigating the Apple OS, and publishing their finds on internet!
    In 2 to 3 years time OSX and about any other Mac OS released, will be open for hacking and modding just like internet.
    The former saying of 'a mac is safer' does not count anymore!

    I have a feeling that very soon some nice mods and hacks will become available to many people, and that the only thing Apple can do is generate a new OS (which is based on the previous OSes), and will probably be hacked too!
    Reply