David Flynn15 May 2009, 3:19 PM
Is Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5.7 simply more power efficient or has it been optimised for the Atom – and if so, does this point to an Atom-powered Mac in the neat future?
Owners of ‘Hackintosh’ netbooks are reporting dramatically enhanced battery life following this weeks’ release of Mac OS X 10.5.7 update.
The first reports came from a thread in the discussion forums at MSIWind.net, with several claims of battery life jumping from an average of 3.5 hours to 4 hours on the standard three-cell battery and just over five hours on the six cell 4400 mAh slab.
There are now reports trickling in that Eee PCs running Mac OS X are also seeing a noticeable boost, and the coming week will be telling as more ‘hackintosh’ enthusiasts netbook grab the update and run their own tests. Any gains will be welcome because sub-par battery life has been an Achilles’ Heel of OS X netbooks when compared to Windows.
Naturally enough, many bloggers have jumped to the conclusion that the 10.5.6 update must contain power optimisations engineered specifically for the Atom processor which drives almost all netbooks.
This begs the question: is Apple laying the groundwork for an Atom-powered Mac? And if so could this be some form of netbook or the rumoured ‘media tablet’ for which Apple has ordered 9.7 inch touchscreen panels from Taiwan-based component supplier Wintek, according to Asian tech site DigiTimes.
It’s equally possible that Apple’s update might just contain better power management throughout the OS regardless of the processor and architecture. If so, we should start to hear similar stories of increased battery life from the owners of authentic Apple laptops.