

Snow Leopard Update Blocks Intel Atom, Kills Hackintosh - Freebytes
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/snow-leopard-update-blocks-intel-atom-kills-hackintoshes

======
jsz0
Intentional or not Apple doesn't sell any system with an ATOM CPU. There are
any number of reasons they could have made completely unrelated changes that
would break them. Perhaps due to security, or the 64Bit transition, or a
simple oversight. Installing OSX on CPU models Apple doesn't sell has always
resulted in your CPU being declared as "unknown CPU" so that suggests Apple
doesn't simply copy & paste all Intel CPU identifiers. I tend to doubt it was
intentional because the Hackintosh community will find a simple work around
that will add maybe 1 step to the process. Won't stop anyone who really wants
to do it. Seems more likely it was a case of Apple not going out of their way
to support hardware they don't sell.

~~~
alttab
Maybe if you remove all third party fonts it'll work again. </sarcasm>

Jokes out of the way - they did just release a new line of incredible and
ground breaking iMacs, Macbooks, etc. All along with the news of their most
profitable quarterly earnings, and the general disdain for Windows 7.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mind-flow went like this for consumers:

"Wow I want one of those new macs!" "Damn those are expensive..." "But I don't
want a windows machine..." "I'll get a netbook, and then hackintosh it, I'll
save money, get the experience I want, AND save 15% or more on my car
insurance!"

Apple could have seen something like this happening on a larger scale and
simply "tweaked" the OS with the latest update to prevent mass pirating.

~~~
naz
When would a consumer ever think of getting a Hackintosh?

~~~
alttab
I think the confusion from my comment resulted from a working definition of
"consumer". Have you payed for an apple product? Then you're a consumer. Let's
not differientiate ourselves just because we write software.

That said, that mind flow wouldn't be the TYPICAL one, it could result from
people still wanting Osx on a cheaper machine and doing a google search for
"mac netbook" or "osx netbook". Your typical "dumb" consumer may not know the
difference, if that was the argument.

Those searches could certainly turn up pages to hachintosh netbooks.

------
tptacek
Whether or not this move is an intentional swipe at the Hackintosh trend, I'm
rooting for Apple here:

(1) Just from a pure CS perspective, the Hackintoshers seem awfully smug, and
I'd like to see them get knocked around by Apple for awhile. In a theoretic
sense, it's far from established that Apple can't lock clones out. We have no
idea what tricks they might come up with to reject non-Apple gear, and I for
one really want to see what they are. When Microsoft did this to the Xbox and
X360, we got some incredible systems research out of people like Bunny Huang
and the MIT hackers.

(2) Just on general principles, if you don't have a monopoly and you aren't
specially regulated, you clearly should be able to sell whatever combination
of hardware and software you want to. Other people don't have the right to
force you to sell some random configuration of your stuff. It's a really
skeevy kind of Geek Exceptionalism that says "there's no GOOD reason why OS X
shouldn't run on my Netbook, so you can't stop me".

~~~
elblanco
1) There is no such thing as "non-Apple gear". The entire hardware platform is
the same as any Intel box running Windows or Linux. They use the same CPUs,
chipsets, graphics cards, memory, hard drives, form factors, etc. etc. etc. as
the rest of the industry with some minor changes to the boot system and system
startup entry points (nothing that hurts running Windows or Linux on the same
hardware for example).

2) true.

But I think the exception to Apple's behavior is that there are large numbers
of customers who would be more than happy to fork over another wad of cash for
an Apple branded netbook (in addition to their existing systems) and Apple has
(yet again) failed to listen to their consumer.

That's fine, Apple probably can't make the numbers work to preserve some
margin figure they want to maintain. All Apple demonstrates by this is that
consumer feedback is not as much a part of their development process as most
people seem to think (or hope) it is.

The problem is that not only is Apple saying "we can't be bothered with this
netbook thing right now" but they are saying it with a middle finger, fully
extended, at their customers. They've gone and put themselves out, expended
effort, to ensure their users can't operate as they want to.

So really it's "give us your money for our overpriced commodity hardware and
we don't care what you think or actually want, you'll think and want what we
tell you to, how dare you try and step outside of our carefully crafted
ecosystem"

~~~
tptacek
You seem awfully confident about (1). It's almost like you think Dell couldn't
sell a piece of software that was locked to Dell gear. I'm not so sure.

Remember, the goal of "software protection" (be it DRM, platform locks, or
anticheating software) isn't to make it _impossible_ to break the system; it's
to make it (a) impossible to do it cost-effectively, and (b) impossible to do
it permanently.

The rest of your argument, with the "middle fingers" and whatnot, I don't
care. Again: companies should be able to sell whatever they want, modulo
antitrust and regs.

~~~
elblanco
>You seem awfully confident about (1)

Take a Macintosh, open it. Inspect using the novel technique of "looking".

Not to be glib, but when Apple decided to ditch other platforms for Intel-
styled chips, they bought into the entire R&D work of their principle
competitors. Back in the day with the 680x0 Macs and the PowerPC Macs, even
things like RAM and video-cards weren't interchangeable between the platforms
(due to endian-issues and timing issues etc.). The early 3d cards were a prime
example of having to buy Apple branded hardware (or co-developed in
partnership) for Apple branded computers. So for example, if you wanted to
upgrade your Mac with a better video card, you couldn't run over and buy the
$199 Nvidia card that 90% of the market could buy. You had to buy the "Made
for Macintosh" Nvidia card at the 20% markup.

What Apple bought when going Intel was expertise in a vast marketplace of
hardware manufacturers and R&D departments, doing Apple's work effectively for
them. So what's in an Apple branded case? Probably some x-ATX board, the
standard combination of chipset chips from whoever Apple could purchase from
cheapest, a perfectly stock Intel chip and perfectly stock memory. With PCI-E
ports with perfectly stock video cards (or video on the mobo, like value PC
builders go with). If you are careful you might notice Apple uses a different
boot system that's equivalent to the traditional BIOS (and is the direction
some PC systems have already gone as well).

What Apple also bought when adopting an open architecture was that
unfortunately, it makes locking it down _really_ really hard. They came to the
same party as everybody else, but they don't like the music. Too bad.

If Apple wants to sell a closed architecture, then that's what they should
sell. But they decided to adopt an architecture that's designed not to be
locked down, then are trying to lock it down after the fact.

~~~
tptacek
It just took you over 300 words to say the same thing you said one comment
earlier. I think you know less about how platform technology works than you
think you do, and you'd benefit from opening your mind a bit. Again: Dell
could probably lock code down to Dell boxes, if they had anything worth
locking down.

~~~
elblanco
Well, you didn't seem to understand it when I said it >shorter<.

So tptacek, enlighten us, what's the principle hardware differences between a
run-of-the-mill desktop Mac and a run-of-the-mill desktop dell?

 _Protip: if you use the acronym "DRM" in your response you loose because you
obviously don't understand what "DRM" means._

~~~
tptacek
So, I just took the 7 minutes required to give a casual read to every comment
you've posted here, and here's what I've come up with:

* I have no idea what your technical expertise is, because you're anonymous, haven't filled out your profile, and have never posted a technical comment here. You have "a lead developer" and an ex CTO that screwed your company, so I assume you (a) didn't found that company and (b) don't lead a dev team. Once you typed the letters C++.

* You really, really dislike Apple. As evidence for that, I submit the fact that you (a) have never agreed with any pro-Apple comment here, (b) said you have an irrational dislike for the platform, (c) haven't used it enough to make sense in an argument about how app focus works on OS X, and (d) tried to win an argument about how overpriced Apple hardware is by linking to what appears to be the worst-reviewed input device on NewEgg.

* Your dislike for Apple currently constitutes the majority of all your comment-words on HN.

I have no problem arguing with you on how effective software protection could
or couldn't be on a standardized ISA with a tiny number of valid build
configurations, or how microarchitectural profiling works, or what the
parameters are for a "win" for Apple in this cat-and-mouse game are.

I fully accept that you might win that argument; I feel comfortable with my
position, though, with some fair amount of practical experience to back it.
But whatever.

I'm simply not going to do that until you tell me who you are and why I should
take you at all seriously. Otherwise, I'm just going to remember you as
someone never to talk to here.

~~~
elblanco
> I have no idea what your technical expertise is...blah blah blah

Correct, correct and correct. I did a fair amount of hacking about as a
computational linguist in my younger years. I haven't run into many others who
have. So I'd suspect that we'd talk past each other in any technical
conversation. Only one correction, I co-lead my company's dev team, usually
providing front-end design work, domain expertise and providing pithy input on
algorithmic analysis for some of the more problematic issues that regular
coding won't teach. Like, "should I recursively crawl an unweighted digraph to
find up-to n-length paths between disjoint and incomplete sets of nodes?" or
"how should I deal with a sparse matrix when computing the steady state values
of an Eigenvector on a graph with an uncertain morphology?" or my recent fav
"given a set of a large number of search terms with a lower cardinality bound
of 1 million, how can we scan a set of strings against this search set without
exhaustively scanning for every search term in the string set while preserving
lemmas on the search set? How can we do this phonetically? How can we do this
probabilistically in a weighted n-space?"

> You really, really dislike Apple. As evidence for that, I submit the fact
> that you (a) have never agreed with any pro-Apple comment here, (b) said you
> have an irrational dislike for the platform, (c) haven't used it enough to
> make sense in an argument about how app focus works on OS X, and (d) tried
> to win an argument about how overpriced Apple hardware is by linking to what
> appears to be the worst-reviewed input device on NewEgg.

I really _really_ dislike Apple's pricing scheme and worse yet Apple fanboys
who can inject even the most insane irrationality into any topic that even
mentions fruit. For example, our current "discussion" centers around pretty
basic business decisions, for which your reply is first disagreement, then
agreement but without agreeing with my principle point just to be contrary,
while simultaneously insulting me all because I said something to the effect
of "Apple can't make the margins work". I think it's the word _can't_
associated with Apple that got you riled up -- I dunno.

Specific responses: a) I have said and agreed with some things Pro-Apple where
I see it. Reread my posts in detail. If you want some more, Apple makes a
reasonably good OS, writes reasonably good software. It's nothing particularly
special, but it's at least modern and up-to-date.

b) I _do_ irrationally dislike the platform, you'll get no argument from me.

c) I used 'em off and on since at least the late 80's. But not terribly
hardcore or for any extended length of time. My pretty much unused MacBook Pro
goes down in personal history as one of the worst wastes of money I've ever
managed to throw away.

d) And then I linked to one of the highest rated input devices on NewEgg and
it was still 50% below the cost of the comparable Apple offering. And _still_
nobody could provide any rational statement why Apple's kb/mouse combo was
worth $100 other than vague hand waving about being more "productive" or
"feeling better about yourself" or some other touchy-feely nonsense. Which is
a small scale exemplar of the irrationality that pervades the entire platform
from top to bottom...correction, at the bottom. What Apple is doing at the top
is perfectly rational from a business perspective. They've managed to finally
crack the nut on two things: 1) How to sell absolutely vanilla PC hardware at
high margins - something no other maker does effectively, it's the holy grail
of the modern computer business. 2) How to get people to use their feelings in
a consumer purchase rather than their brains. So people will shell out 20-50%
above cost to buy said vanilla PC hardware because it runs that one killer app
you can't get on a Windows computer, Steve Jobs' love.

>Your dislike for Apple currently constitutes the majority of all your
comment-words on HN.

Good. When the entire Apple ecosystem stops being majority filled with
pretentious snobbish self-absorbed assholes too in touch with their feelings
to be healthy, I'll complain about something else and have only good things to
say about the platform.

>I have no problem arguing with you on how effective software protection could
or couldn't be on a standardized ISA with a tiny number of valid build
configurations, or how microarchitectural profiling works, or what the
parameters are for a "win" for Apple in this cat-and-mouse game are.

To be honest, I haven't kept up with the latest ISA developments from Intel
(and I guess AMD since they kinda diverged a bit for a while there into
mutually incompatible register and vector unit ops - but I guess they've
kissed and made-up). But last time I checked there's a CPUID opcode (0FA2h
with appropriate values in EAX for desired returns to check in EBX, ECX, etc.)
in the x86 ISA that Apple is probably using to lock out Atom chips.
Hackintoshers would have to find where Apple calls CPUID and fill the
registers with something else that would pass Apple's processor check, or just
force a positive reponse - probably 3 or 4 other approaches or whatever. In
other words, probably a 2 hour hack and patch. Maybe they're doing something
more sophisticated in their check, but I doubt Apple went through the effort
of counting clock cycles on some standard discriminator test-set of opcodes
just to determine processor type so they could salt the earth for
Hackintoshers.

Dunno, don't care. Point is Apple chose to expend resources building this kind
of processor check into their OS for the explicit purpose of preventing
_specifically_ Hackintoshers that use Atom powered netbooks. Hackintoshers on
other x86 ISA hardware are unaffected. It's kind-of mean spirited in my book.
It's also another demonstration that Apple's hardware is perfectly vanilla
Intel platform hardware.

I mean, it's not my field. But I can buy a MacBook Pro today and install
Windows on it. I suspect the differences between the MacBook Pro and an Atom
Netbook are about as great as the MacBook Pro and the Wintel desktop sitting
next to me. So I'm not pointing at a particularly small set of hardware and
calling it "vanilla". But Apple has to keep their software a bit flexible
through mid-cycle revs of their hardware (when was the last time they stealth
swapped out motherboards for ones from a cheaper manufacturer or changed video
card chipset vendors? The point is that Apple tries really hard to make that
kind of thing not matter).

>I fully accept that you might win that argument; I feel comfortable with my
position, though, with some fair amount of practical experience to back it.
But whatever.

We are probably in violent agreement regarding the technical aspects of what
Apple is doing re: stopping Atom based users of their software -- I'll even
defer to your greater expertise in the field. And I suspect we're in agreement
over why Apple is doing it. What I don't understand is why you've felt the
need to pointlessly disagree with me and then insult me and how I've chosen to
make my responses. This isn't Twitter last I saw. If my posts are tl;dr for
you, then don't bother. Best yet, is that you've so far just disagreed with me
for no particular reason other than to disagree with me. You've provided no
counter-argument, no factual statement, no business reasoning, nothing except
disparaging remarks about conciseness.

>I'm simply not going to do that until you tell me who you are and why I
should take you at all seriously. Otherwise, I'm just going to remember you as
someone never to talk to here.

Good. Don't talk to me. Other than general statements of adolescent
contrarianism I'm attempting to use as a foil against which to provide more
overly verbose commentary, you haven't said anything of any particular value
in this thread before this post re:using the ISA to check processors. And now
I know you're openly vindictive so I don't see this going in a particularly
positive direction.

Oh, and once again, no response to a simple question (diff between Apple
branded hardware and stock PC stuff). Just contrarianism.

~~~
tptacek
Thanks for the writeup. I've decided not to take you seriously. You might
consider jumping back to the top of this comment thread, rereading my comment,
and taking my word for it.

~~~
bobhoska
I actually made an account due to this thread after lurking for a while. I
think elblanco raised some very interesting points from a business perspective
that you didn't counter.

He was kind of a jerk about it. But two salient questions remain:

1) Why doesn't Apple have a netbook offering? "Because they don't" isn't
really a good answer. That space is booming and still evolving right now.
Apple could come in and define it for the entire marketplace. 2) Since Apple
doesn't have one, why would they go through the trouble of shutting down atom
based netbooks? Wouldn't this jeopardize future uses for an atom in a lower-
end device like the Mac Mini?

I don't think you answered either question in your original comment: _"Whether
or not this move is an intentional swipe at the Hackintosh trend, I'm rooting
for Apple here:

(1) Just from a pure CS perspective, the Hackintoshers seem awfully smug, and
I'd like to see them get knocked around by Apple for awhile. In a theoretic
sense, it's far from established that Apple can't lock clones out. We have no
idea what tricks they might come up with to reject non-Apple gear, and I for
one really want to see what they are. When Microsoft did this to the Xbox and
X360, we got some incredible systems research out of people like Bunny Huang
and the MIT hackers.

(2) Just on general principles, if you don't have a monopoly and you aren't
specially regulated, you clearly should be able to sell whatever combination
of hardware and software you want to. Other people don't have the right to
force you to sell some random configuration of your stuff. It's a really
skeevy kind of Geek Exceptionalism that says "there's no GOOD reason why OS X
shouldn't run on my Netbook, so you can't stop me"."_

So I'm not sure what word anybody is supposed to take exactly.

~~~
tptacek
(1) Because introducing a product at the netbook price point would cannibalize
sales that would go to the lowest-cost Macbook, and torpedo their
profitability.

(2) Because allowing clones forces Apple to compete with other hardware
vendors, and Apple sells a unified hardware/software product, and there is
nothing in law or standard business principle that allows us to dictate to
Apple how they package their products.

~~~
bobhoska
I don't know what your previous (1) has to do with this (1) ;) But I agree. I
think elblanco agrees with you also, only he/she managed to give a reason.
I've reread this thread a few times and still can't figure out why you two
seem to be disagreeing over agreeing on this.

(2) Apple closed the loop on this when they killed off their clone market.
Done right, hardware sales can bring in more money than pure software sales.
Allow me to be contrary on one point. _"and there is nothing in law or
standard business principle that allows us to dictate to Apple how they
package their products"_. Supply and demand would seem to dictate that you
should supply what the consumers demand. Apple's done an effective job at
controlling/predicting/creating what their consumers demand (for example, I
didn't even think about a mult-touch mouse before, now I'm drooling in
anticipation of getting one). But they seem to have gone a bit off-kilter here
w/r to ultra-small notebooks. The 13" Macbook is huge compared to the 10"
netbooks I see at Costco. If it weren't for their ridiculous battery life, I
could see trading in my Macbook for a netbook since that's a hugely compelling
feature for me.

------
xal
It's really quite straight forward: Buy a Mac if you want OSX.

It's great to spend money on something that you enjoy!

~~~
unalone
Jesus, you got downvoted hard. Damn shame.

Guys, it's really, really not that difficult. Apple offers you a combination
hardware/software package. They design the software to work brilliantly with
the hardware they design, and they work very hard to make sure your experience
is the best imaginable. That's why they pair the two together. And Apple
doesn't want you using their software on hardware it wasn't designed for,
because they want to make sure you get their full experience. They're
designers. They win international awards for their computers. They want you to
get their product, not a hybrid of half of their idea with half of somebody
else's cheap refuse.

If you don't use OS X, you don't miss out on that much. It's not like you need
OS X to live, and Apple's depriving you of something by asking you use their
computer. If you don't want a Mac, then use Linux or Windows. If you want
Apple's product, buy Apple's product, not a cheap third-rate knockoff.

In return, when you buy a high-end Mac, you get a superb, pleasurable
experience. For as low as, what, six hundred dollars now?, you get a beautiful
piece of hardware that does what you want it to splendidly, has the best
third-party ecosystem I've ever come across, and doesn't lose you cred among
any fashionistas you might know, plus it runs on Unix so you can tinker away
with it however you see it. It's a very nice machine and millions of man-hours
were spent making it, so perhaps it's worth your saving up a little money to
purchase the full package. I and many other Mac owners can testify that we are
very happy with our buy and may buy another one in the distant future.

I know the line of thought is that computers are just tools to get a job done,
but that's like saying all a chair has to be is a plank of wood to get your
ass on. There are planks of wood, and then there are chairs that lots of
thought has gone into to make you as happy as you can be. We pay more for
those chairs because while we don't need it to live, it makes our lives a
little better. That's how Mac OS X's been made, and I don't think it's
ridiculous to ask that we honor its maker's wishes, or at the very least, not
bitch when the maker puts a little effort into ensuring you do it their way.

~~~
rbanffy
I have to disagree Apple wants to make the experience the best possible. For
instance, I spent a couple hours trying to make Munin work on a Mac and all I
could monitor from the main computer was disk space and a couple other things
I don't use. The lack of up-to-date versions (they don't update stuff between
major OS releases) and the lack of proper package management (ports is
subminimal) drive me crazy.

And that's precisely why my Mac ended up being my "play" computer. It runs
iTunes and syncs my iPod like nothing else can.

And, BTW, when I updated my iPod, one of my _cables_ (yes - a cable) stopped
working because it's "not supported". What evil mind besides Apple's would
consider DRM-cripple cables?

No... Macs are pleasing, but Apple doesn't aim to please it's clients above
anything else. It strikes a balance between profit and an as-abusive-as-
possible relationship with its customers.

------
tvon
I can't find anything that says non-Atom Hackintosh machines are affected.

------
mpk
This is going to make a lot of people very upset. But really, news like this
becomes a lot easier to swallow once you simply accept that Apple is a
proprietary platform that works really hard at vendor lock-in.

~~~
rbanffy
I am not sure how can anyone in his right mind claim this is unexpected. Apple
has always been one of the more closed companies in this market. It's is the
only remaining computer maker from the 70s/80s that makes its own exclusive
platform. The fact it uses a somewhat open Unix is a historical accident:
Steve Jobs wanted to enter the Unix workstation market with NeXT and it had to
be Unix-based.

~~~
tvon
You're saying that Jobs made a decision to create a Unix workstation so it's
just a happy accident that he had to use Unix to make a Unix workstation?

~~~
elblanco
It's a happy accident that when Jobs returned to Apple, he brought the NeXT OS
stack with him and had Apple stick a decent GUI on the front end that turned
into OSX.

~~~
tvon
Apple purchased NeXT with the explicit goal of making it the core of their
next generation system. I fail to see how that can be called an accident.

~~~
rbanffy
The accident is that they were desperate and would have bought any decent OS
they could to replace the gigantic failure Copland was. NeXT had the one with
the more eloquent salesman and the only person who could have given back any
semblance of credibility to Apple's lineup.

Were NeXT based on VMS, Amiga, TOS, MP/M or anything like it, that would be
OSXs base.

~~~
elblanco
They should have gone with Plan-9 ;)

~~~
rbanffy
You said it jokingly, but I think this x86 world where the OS-space seems
divided between a bastard child of VMS and variants of Unix is unbelievably
boring.

~~~
elblanco
Years ago in my undergrad I took a most excellent OS course offered by the
indomitable Peter Denning. As presented, his course basically considered each
part of an OS, chose the best of alternatives for core system concepts, and
built the OS from there. The result was something not grossly unlike a modern
_nix, but still leaving enough wiggle room for the large number of variants we
see today.

His comparisons between the way these concepts were instantiated in an _nix
and in other OSs were particularly good (and scathing).

That being said, it is a pity that there aren't still a dozen or so major OSes
out there, each coming from a completely different approach, oh the days when
an Amiga or a BeBox were interesting consumer choices. You can still find lots
of minor OS variants around, but they are very small communities and it's
really all boiled down to a very small and "boring" handful.

Additionally, most new OS approaches suffer from a distinct lack of software.
And slowly but surely we find the inevitable creep of software Ports into new
OSs, using bringing *nix like infrastructure in with them.

------
JeremyChase
Everytime a Hackintosh thread comes up I wonder why no-one ever mentions that
they don't have a software license to run OS X on that hardware.

Excerpt from Snow Leopard license: _... you are granted a limited non-
exclusive license to install, use and run (1) copy of the Apple Software on a
single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run
the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to
do so. This license does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than
one computer at a time, ..._

~~~
anigbrowl
Fuck the license terms. If people pay for the copy of the OS and are willing
to accept that Apple will only offer support for OS X on Apple hardware, it's
not really any of Apple's business what they run it on. For end users who
don't have contractual relationships wth software publishers (eg special
pricing deals, technology sharing agreements or whatever), those EULAs are
basically meaningless; the moral rights of the software publisher are
adequately protected by existing laws on copyright and so forth.

~~~
Zev
How many people that install osx86 actually _buy_ a copy of OS X and then
modify everything as necessary themselves? It seems like its far more common
to find it online and then complain when it breaks.

~~~
anigbrowl
I have no sympathy for such complaints, or even for expectations that Apple
should support it on non-Apple hardware. I'm just saying that there is no
reason for legitimate purchasers to lose any sleep about the morality of
otherwise violating the EULA.

------
cubtastic71
Sad, because it was my little Mini9 OSX that really made it fun to hack on the
go. It was also a nice cheap way to test on OSX for doing web dev at work,
much easier to keep a little 9 inch netbook for browser testing!

------
watmough
You know, I wonder if this is a way to keep OS X off of some ATOM-based
forthcoming hardware?

Is the tablet definitely ARM-based?

------
tomjen2
Too bad, I had considered emulating OSX to see if it was worth something but I
guess I will just continue using a real computer.

------
mhunter
Do they not realize that this will cause more people to use Windows 7? What if
people actually like it?

