Crippled Atom in Snow Leopard was temporary

Word that Apple had disabled Atom support in a Mac OS X 10.6.2 beta seed may have been premature, an update from the same discoverer says. A newer build, 10C535, now appears to have brought the feature back and hints that the lack of Atom support may have been a bug or an otherwise temporary action. Apple's code doesn't have any immediate clues as to whether or not the move was intentional.

Those with access to the developer seeds are cautioned that no guarantee exists of Atom support continuing on to the publicly released version of the Snow Leopard patch.

Apple is known to regularly allow at least basic support of processors outside of those used in Macs but often doesn't provide full feature support or any guarantees that this support will persist. Recognition of Atom processors has been relatively unique but has usually required unofficial hacks to work properly; the Mac creator hasn't signaled any intentions of its own to produce Atom-based systems and routinely criticizes netbooks that use it for being too slow.

by MacNN Staff

• facebook
• linkedin
• twitter
• reddit
• google+