According to several reports making rounds on the Web, the forthcoming developer seed of the Mac OS X Leopard, 10.6.2, is not compatible with computers that utilize the Intel Atom processor, and other 'hackintoshes' - that is, machines running OS X on non-Apple hardware!

The latest Apple move, which some people fell is a rather petty one, will break the software's compatibility with many popular, low-power and economically-priced hackintosh netbooks, which have been 'hacked' to run the OS effectively on the more than passable Macs.

Since Apple's current hardware does not utilize the Atom processor any longer, the proposed software change by the company is being seen as a notable setback by the numerous hackintosh Mac OS X users who make use of third-party hardware to run the operating system, as it will devastate their upgrade plans.

Referring to the newest move by Apple, Stell's blog said: "In the current developer build of 10.6.2, Apple appears to have changed around a lot of CPU related information. One of the effects of this is Apple killing off Intel's Atom chip."

Though some of the conspiracy theorists may feel that the latest move by Apple results from the company's efforts to crack down on individuals who run Hackintosh machines, it still appears quite improbable that Apple would target the subset of Hackintosh owners who use Atom processor-equipped netbooks!