Apple has reportedly restored support for Intel’s Atom processor in the latest Snow Leopard build.
“Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535,” confirmed a post on Stell’s Blog. “The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of [Snow Leopard] 10.6.2 is out.”
Unsurprisingly, the short-lived Atom ban sparked rampant speculation that Apple was attempting to shut down the fast growing Hackintosh Netbook community.
For example, a TG Daily reader known as Los opined that Apple was only interested in forcing consumer to buy the company’s overpriced hardware.
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“It’s the same thing with the Palm Pre. Palm got their phone to work with iTunes and Apple now blocked the Palm Pre in the latest iTunes update. They’re like a bunch of selfish children,” wrote Los. “It [is] another reason why I don’t like Apple or their OS. I look at Apples as ‘Computing For Dummies’ anyway. Most people I know buy Apple for 1 of 2 reasons: To either look cool because they’re different or because they have no clue what they’re doing and need a very simple OS.”
TG Daily reader Johnnyricomc expressed similar sentiments.
“To me this is just another petty attempt by Apple to control things. Microsoft would get a **** storm if they were to do something similar to Apple branded hardware.”
?Although the latest build of Snow Leopard supports the Atom processor (for now), Apple will undoubtedly continue its efforts to thwart the deployment of OS X on “unauthorized” hardware.
See Also
Apple drops Atom bomb on Hackintosh netbook rebels
Apple’s small-minded strategy
Why Apple should license Windows 7
Unidentified bug causes massive CPU spike on 27-inch iMacs
Opinion: Ditching Windows has never felt so good
