Atom lives on in the beta build of Mac OS X 10.6.2

The only question is for how long will it stay?

Mac OS X 10.6.2 running on an Atom powered machine

The buzz that was making rounds all over the internet that Apple will most likely kill the support for Atom processors in its latest release of Mac OS X 10.6.2 is beginning to die down. It was a major shock for vast “Hackintosh” community which was enjoying the features of a Mac on Atom powered netbooks. Major reason behind killing the support was the lower battery life of the processor. For most netbook manufacturers like MSI, Dell, and ASUS, the Intel Atom line of energy-efficient microprocessors has been the perfect CPU due to its low cost. The relatively cheaper atom powered machines, often below US$300, have made them the choice of many Mac users who want a very portable and affordable laptop solution that they're not currently getting from Apple. This might come as of no concern to people who install Mac OS X on Apple-labeled computers, but for those of you who decide to exercise your rights as consumers by installing Mac OS X on non-Apple labeled computers should surely take notice: this practice is quite popular among netbook owners, such as the Dell Mini machines.

Until few days back, the word coming out from many developers who were testing the most recent build of Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard was that support for the Atom CPU was gone, the only solution being, either run Mac OS X 10.6.1 for the foreseeable future or wait for some enterprising hacker to build a patch to add Atom support back to the upcoming OS release. Another, more involved option would have been to upgrade to 10.6.2, but use an older kernel, or maybe even a custom kernel with Atom support.

This is not the first time that Apple has tried to kill support for the Atom processor, the Atom 330 i.e. the dual core desktop variant of the Atom line was not properly supported from Mac OS X 10.5.7 and up. Users had to turn off HyperThreading in the BIOS to even get Mac OS X to boot at all. Like we as users have our free will to temper with a software and install it on machines we deem fit, Apple also has the right to change its version of OS in a way it does.

Well, from the latest news that’s making rounds over the internet, we have found out that Mac OS X 10.6.2 (10C535) i.e. the latest build version of the OS X offers support for Atom based machines. So, we are quite hopeful that for once Apple will not reject the Atom processor support especially when the market for such netbooks is growing at a faster rate. Let’s wait and watch for the full version of Mac OS X 10.6.2 to be released.