Apple kills hackintosh netbooks with Snow Leopard update

Apple is reportedly breaking Hackintoshes -- meaning netbooks illegimately installed with Mac OS X -- with its latest update to Leopard.

The current developer build of OS X -- 10.6.2 -- will not run on the Intel Atom processor commonly used in netbooks that ship with Windows or Linux, according to an account in Wired, attributing the report to a hacker named Stellarola.

"Apple appears to have changed around a lot of CPU-related information" in the build, says Stellarola. "One of the effects of this is Apple killing off Intel's Atom chip."

Stellarola suggests that while most Hackintosh users should stick with 10.6 for now, they might try upgrading to 10.6.2 if they're running an older or modified kernel, according to OS X Daily.

The software in question is only a developer build, and it still might change before Apple releases a real update.

But Apple has already drawn fire lately for actions such as blocking Palm Pre users from iTunes and banning Google Voice users from its App Store.

With Apple refusing to release an affordable low-end mobile PC of its own, hacked netbooks from Dell and other manufacturers have been turning into an increasing popular alternative in the Macintosh community.