kernel
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Apple to users: Don't hack your Intel Mac
Ah, the halcyon days of OS X, they seem to be coming to a close. What the hell am I talking about? Why, Apple's decision to close the kernel of OS X on their new Intel machines. This means that no longer can you recompile, slim down, or otherwise monkey around the kernel of OS X (if you are on Intel hardware).Why would Apple suddenly turn very proprietary when they were yelling Open Source from the rooftops not so long ago (and you can still hack your kernel on pre-Intel hardware)? One word: piracy. Apple doesn't want some enterprising young hooligan to get OS X running on other Intel hardware.Let's hope that Apple has a change of heart, since they themselves say that Darwin (the open source project that covers OS X's kernel) is in 'flux.'Thanks, Eliot!
Apple needs to fix their PowerBook DL trackpad software
Ever since I picked up this 15" PowerBook DL (Dual Layer SuperDrive) about a month ago, I have occasionally run into situations where I see the kernel_task in Activity Monitor spiking to about 60% CPU usage, grinding my machine nearly to a halt and making it generally unusable until I restarted. None of the typical maintenance tasks seemed to help matters, and since I was planning on wiping the book clean this weekend for the upcoming semester anyway, I simply chalked it up to some little utility I had been playing around with. Oh the troubles I go through for you readers...Well after wiping the book this morning and getting everything reinstalled (huge time-saver tip: keep all your 3rd party apps in an Applications folder in your Home folder, this way OS X can still find them, yet it's easy for you to back them all up), I found I was still having these kernel_task issues - even before I installed all my extras. Getting frustrated, I finally decided to do some googling and discovered that, once again, MacOSXHints had already gotten to the bottom of this issue.As it turns out, this kernel_task usage problem is a result of Apple's own trackpad software horribly misbehaving on these latest PowerBooks, even on a 100% clean system, which I verified this morning. MacOSXHints did find a 3rd party solution in the form of SideTrack, a shareware trackpad software replacement for PowerBooks and iBooks that has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. While I can verify SideTrack fixed the issue on my PowerBook, it alters the behavior of two-finger scrolling and, of course, costs money ($15). I also can't stand some weird thing it does to mouse movement and acceleration; it feels and acts differently than Apple software, and these two dings caused me to uninstall it and take my chances with keeping kernel_task happy again.Moral of the story: Apple needs to fix their PowerBook trackpad software, and soon. This kernel issue destroys productivity, usability and battery life, and also causes a PowerBook to get pretty hot. If you're running into issues like this (or any other kind), I urge you to add your voice to the pile at apple.com/feedback.
