Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Realtek's Wireless Driver Drives Thoughts of an Apple Netbook

Posted by timothy on Tue Dec 16, 2008 09:47 AM
from the can't-get-there-from-here-in-cupertino dept.
Portables (Apple) Wireless Networking Hardware
Slatterz writes "With Macworld 2009 mere weeks away, one rumour that seemingly won't die is the idea of a Mac OS X Netbook PC. Asking a company to provide OS X drivers for their netbooks has, up until now, been met with silence, and probably a little quaking on the vendor side as they wait for the heavy footsteps of Apple's army of lawyers. It seems, however, that Realtek, who provide the WiFi chip found in the MSI Wind U100, are dipping their toes into the legally iffy world of the Hackintosh. Forum users at MSIWind.Net asked politely for drivers, and after a lot of patience, Beta drivers were provided."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Macworld 2009 rumour mill: Windkintosh? by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Realtek's Wireless Driver Drives Thoughts of an Apple Netbook 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Nothing in the EULA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by actionbastard (1206160) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @09:50AM (#26132497)
    There is nothing in the Apple EULA that prevents anyone from creating a driver for their hardware to work with OS X. The fact that RealTek does not make -or may never make- hardware for Macs is immaterial.

    • Re:Nothing in the EULA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nacturation (646836) * <nacturation@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:30AM (#26132929) Journal

      I think the bigger thing that component manufacturers are worried about is that Steve Jobs will call up MSI and say "Hey, we'd like to contract with you to develop a Mac netbook based on the Wind to run OS X. Oh, and by the way... don't use any RealTek chips in it."

      • But why would he do that if there is a RealTek driver already? It's not like Macs don't come with expansion card slots (PCI or ExpressCard) that could take a WiFi card with a RealTek chip. Provide drivers for OS X that allow people to buy these cards and use them in a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro, and then when Apple's looking for their next supplier you can say 'oh, and we already have drivers for your OS so you don't need to spend any money developing them.'

        • Re:Nothing in the EULA (Score:4, Informative)

          by Albanach (527650) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @11:06AM (#26133311) Homepage

          It's not like Macs don't come with expansion card slots (PCI or ExpressCard) that could take a WiFi card with a RealTek chip

          Actually the MacBook doesn't have an expansion slot - that's what caused the big hoo-ha about the lack of Firewire support, there's no way to add it in later.

          For the other Macs you're absolutely right - especially if they had a wireless N driver as I could conceive of some Mac users upgrading toa third party card to provide wireless N functionality.

          • MacBook Pros do. I have never used it... But it is there. Also a lot of older Macs do as well. And on old system you are more likely going to need a replacement Wireless card.

          • It's not like Macs don't come with expansion card slots (PCI or ExpressCard) that could take a WiFi card with a RealTek chip

            Actually the MacBook doesn't have an expansion slot - that's what caused the big hoo-ha about the lack of Firewire support, there's no way to add it in later.

            For the other Macs you're absolutely right - especially if they had a wireless N driver as I could conceive of some Mac users upgrading toa third party card to provide wireless N functionality.

            Well, MiniPCIe is certainly available

            • Re:Nothing in the EULA (Score:5, Insightful)

              by uglyduckling (103926) <uglyducklingNO@SPAMflashmail.com> on Tuesday December 16 2008, @01:07PM (#26134955) Homepage
              Sorry, are you really claiming here that Apple left the firewire port out for the sake of aesthetics and/or to protect us from the tyranny of a four-pin port?! It was left out as a profit-maximising measure because they know that the MacBook is incredibly popular with musicians and they want to force people who rely on FireWire (i.e. anyone who wants to get multi-channel audio into a laptop at a decent sample/bitrate) into buying the MacBook Pro. Simple as that.

              • four-pin port tyranny (Score:5, Funny)

                by commodoresloat (172735) * on Tuesday December 16 2008, @04:09PM (#26137557) Homepage

                It's true, and thanks to Apple, we are spared the wrath of these genocidal monsters. Four pin firewire has led to the deaths of countless thousands while millions of others slowly starve in the death camps. Thankfully Apple put an end to these Pinochets-in-plastic when they built the new MacBook without the four-pin port. Remember, folks, first they came for the floppy drive, but I did not speak out, because I didn't like floppy disks at all. Then they came for USB 1.1 but I did not speak out because I'm actually fond of faster protocols. Now that they are coming for these Little Eichmanns I can only jump for joy. Apple macht frei!!!

        • But why would he do that if there is a RealTek driver already?

          As retribution for encouraging running OS X on non-Apple brand hardware.

      • Re:Nothing in the EULA (Score:5, Interesting)

        by code4fun (739014) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @02:17PM (#26135951)

        One point about RealTek's driver, it looks like a plain Ethernet device from OS X. From what I understand, you need a special program to set the wireless settings. That is, you can't use existing wireless configuration. It also doesn't work as smoothly as Airport, either. What others have done on the MSI Wind is buy a wireless card off eBay that uses the same chipset Apple uses. This way, OS X sees it as an Airport device.

        I'm more interested in Apple coming out with a netbook based on the ARM processor that will give me a day's worth of use instead of 4-5 hours on the current netbooks. In addition, I would like to be able to use the device as a tablet so I can jot things down and read PDF documents. Now, that's a netbook! Build it and I will buy.

        • Re:Nothing in the EULA (Score:5, Informative)

          by nacturation (646836) * <nacturation@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday December 16 2008, @11:08AM (#26133335) Journal

          I think the bigger thing that component manufacturers are worried about is that Steve Jobs will call up MSI and say "Hey, we'd like to contract with you to develop a Mac netbook based on the Wind to run OS X. Oh, and by the way... don't use any RealTek chips in it."

          I am not a lawyer but that sounds like tortious endangerment of interstate commerce to me.

          Quite right, you're not. If you're Apple and you approach a manufacturer, nothing prevents you from stating that you don't want to have a particular supplier's products in your custom built product. Now if Apple were to tell MSI that to do business with Apple, they would have to completely drop RealTek as a supplier from all of MSI's products then you might have a point.

        • Only if you are super blatant about it. Nobody(who isn't a complete idiot) is going to call up and tell the other guy about how he has a personal grudge against RealTek because of their driver support for hackintoshes.

          On the other hand, if Steve just happens, on the good faith advice of his engineers, to have some legitimate concerns about the quality of upcoming Realtek chipsets... Well, maybe another supplier would mean reduced liability exposure...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yttrstein (891553)
      And not only that, but this is one of the reasons that Darwin was open sourced in the first place. My company has done the odd bit of consulting here and there with other entities that provide all sorts of weird hardware drivers for OS X, and they don't call Apple and ask them for one first.

      Because they don't have to. That's part of what Darwin is for. This is FUD, and should be treated as such.

    • The fact that RealTek does not make -or may never make- hardware for Macs is immaterial.

      But they do! RealTek makes chips which are placed on PCI wifi cards (check out the RTL8185).

      With this driver, those wifi cards can be used in a Mac Pro or Power Macintosh with PCI slots.

      So Realtek has a legitimate reason to make these drivers. osx86 support is just a side effect.

    • Many manufacturers do not make drivers for the Mac for the same reason that many do not make drivers for *nix. The simply do not want to have the responsibility of support.

      This does not mean that no one supports mac. I use a third party wireless device for one of my old Macs. I wanted the 'n' spec, and the only way to get it was to hook up through the USB. It works well enough, not as seamless as built in Airport, but it is, obviously, faster.

      And this brings up a second issue. Many things have alwa

      • The only thing they could really do is add a driver signing system like Vista has. And unlike Vista, they could actually enforce their rules.

  • About time (Score:5, Funny)

    by dread (3500) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @09:51AM (#26132507)

    Suddenly I think I will play with the Wind tonight.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Suddenly I think I will play with the Wind tonight.

      Just don't break it.

  • darwin (Score:5, Insightful)

    by leuk_he (194174) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @09:54AM (#26132537) Homepage

    Doesn't OSX run on Darwin [wikipedia.org], An open source bsd based OS? Why would you not be allowed to create drivers for darwin?

    • Re:darwin (Score:5, Informative)

      by falcon5768 (629591) <Falcon5768NO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:20AM (#26132827) Journal

      The story is bunk. Its making a lot of assumptions due to lack of knowledge on just why a Hackintosh is illegal, and how this is not.

      Nothing prevents ANY company from making drivers that will run in OS X. The ONLY prevention is from someone putting OS X on a non-apple machine due to the licensing agreement.

      So Dell, HP, MSI any of them can make drivers for their machines that work in OS X, they just cant put OS X ON their machines nor inform you how to do it.

      • nor inform you how to do it.

        Oh really? I seriously doubt that Dell, HP, etc... signed into a contract with Apple forbidding them to explain how to install OSX.

        They just don't want the hassle of an Apple SLAPP.

        • I think falcon5768 refers to the DMCA, and to the fact that to install OS X on non-Apple hardware you must circumvent the copy protection, which you're not allowed to do or instruct others about.

          • Last time I checked, the protection in OSX is not copy protection, it's a hardware lock in system, but in no way does it prevent copying or access to OSX.

            • Last time I read up on the subject, I found Amit Singh's article claiming that various executable files in MacOS X are encrypted and require a 64 bit code delivered by the SMC chip to decode them. Quite foolproof (little chance of things going wrong for users of Apple hardware), not very difficult to circumvent, but 100% necessary to circumvent to get full MacOS X running. It doesn't prevent copying the installer DVD with the encrypted executables, it doesn't prevent installing MacOS X with the encrypted ex

      • can make drivers for their machines that work in OS X, they just cant put OS X ON their machines nor inform you how to do it.

        And that is what makes this story likely to be true. IE Realtek has been asked to provide drivers by people who clearly plan to use those drivers to extend the functionality of devices that apple lawyers keep a real close eye on, with the intent to prevent this application. While Realtek's work wouldn't aid in overcoming copy protections, it probably encourages people to overcome those protections. Clearly taking a close look at laws like the DMCA was required before proceeding, and they apparently came

      • If Realtek helped they can kiss their contract renewal goodbye.

        In fact I fail to understand what realtek chip does inside an Apple computer.

  • Non-Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by Benanov (583592) <.brian.kemp. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday December 16 2008, @09:54AM (#26132541) Homepage Journal

    Really, this is a non-story. RealTek makes GPL drivers for *nix, so I'm sure at some point it wasn't going to be really hard to make a driver for Darwin.

    I'm also certain that RealTek makes chips that can be used in USB dongles (RaLink certainly does) so therefore it's a cheap way to provide connectivity to an older Mac which has USB but no wireless (I'm sure there are a few models still in production; I'm not a mac head).

  • Since OS X is based on Darwin, and Darwin is open source. What is the legal problem with making low level drivers available for Darwin?

  • Odd. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus (1223518) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @09:59AM (#26132621) Journal
    So the realtek driver doesn't show up as an "airport" device; but as some other sort of connection. Does anybody know if this is just realtek being realtek(that is to say, painfully mediocre and not really adequate), or is "airportness" like CD-Burning support, something that is confined to Apple-shipping hardware by design?

    As somebody mentioned, OSX's lower levels are largely open, at least enough to write drivers for; but that doesn't mean that the higher level polish stuff is. Anybody know?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If they integrated into Apple's Airport utility, they would probably be violating some agreement with Apple.

      By providing drivers to a separate bluetooth device, it provides a workaround that hopefully keeps Apple away.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Gizzmonic (412910)

      I don't know, but some early revisions of the Linksys WMP54G were compatible with Macs, simply because the Linksys and Apple Airport card used the exact same reference design with no changes. They show up in the Airport menu as "third party" but work exactly like the built-in airport. Later revisions used a smaller version of the chipset though, and they weren't Mac compatible.

    • Educate us non "Mac People", what the HELL does a wifi adapter have to do with burning CD's?

      • Re-writing the GP's point "is airport-support like cd recording support, so third party wifi cards suffer from the same integration issues as third party CD-Rs, which aren't quite supported?". It wasn't that unparsable to begin with though.

  • On the legal issue (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Spad (470073) <slashdotNO@SPAMspad.co.uk> on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:03AM (#26132653) Homepage

    While everyone is asking why this would be a legal problem, I can only assume that the writers of these articles are taking the view that if Realtek have produced these drivers as part of some future OSX-based netbook then they would probably be protected by some kind of NDA with Apple. Obviously if this rather unlikely scenario is assumed correct then Realtek would potentially be breeching said hypothetical NDA by providing the beta drivers to members of the public.

    Or something like that anyway.

    • Re:On the legal issue (Score:5, Interesting)

      by olddotter (638430) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:08AM (#26132703) Homepage

      Which is probably as good as saying Realtek has no such agreement with Apple.

      I don't think Apple will produce a traditional net book. Look for something like a larger iPhone/Ipod Touch or a 12" Mac Book Air (that is so light weight you can tie a string to it and use it for a kite).

  • PCI Cards et al. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Midnight Thunder (17205) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:04AM (#26132669) Homepage Journal

    While this effort might be targeted at the MSI Wind, the work performed should allow any device that use the chipset to work with MacOS X. Think of PCI cards for MacPros, or USB sticks allowing older Macs to get 802.11N support.

  • OMG someone is writing drivers for Mac OS X?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Henriok (6762) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:20AM (#26132835)
    OMG OMG OMG! Some company is actually writing drivers for Mac OS X! That's about bloody time! Everyone is wining on Apple to write drives for every thinkable gadget out there when it should be pretty obvious to ask the manufacturer of that gadget to do just that. Is this so hard?! It's not Apple's fault nor responsibility that MP3 player X doesn't integrate with iTunes, or cell phone Y with iSync, or video card Z.. or.. or..

      • All Linux needs is a dedicated hardware manufacturer that is creating complete solutions for users in hardware and software. For example, the entire OS X, iTunes, iPud, iTunes store solution. Where are the applications like that?

        Get some and we can talk.

  • Bullshit. (Score:3, Informative)

    by petard (117521) on Tuesday December 16 2008, @10:33AM (#26132959) Homepage

    The driver is not specifically for the wind. That's the same chip used in cheap USB wireless adapters like this one [geeks.com] and RealTek has been providing their OS X driver for some time. The driver and associated utility do not work very well, FWIW, and I don't suggest trying to use them with a Mac unless you really have no other option.

  • The AirBook is only 2-some pounds, has limited core and disk memory and peripheral connectability. Except it costs four times other netbooks. But I can barely read the fuzzy screens the cheap ones.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We can barely understand your posts the incoherent ones.

  • Apple has a history of allowing development by third parties for a time, and then ordering a "cease and desist" leading to a loss of the development costs and killing any future profit. I suspect Jobs fears someone actually doing apple better than apple. Just a guess on my part, but it would no doubt erode his business model. As I remember he killed the upgradable Umax clones etc This is only a driver, but...

    • They could buy a Apple mini, download XCode (or install from DVD), launch XCode and code kernel extension of whatever chip they will support. Others could ship PCI/PCI-X cards based on their chip and put "OS X compatible" to the box.

      They don't do it and yet they help hackintosh community or something?

      It seems Apple got rid of Realtek junk on next edition of Macs and someone is out to take revenge.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Hal_Porter (817932)

      A netbook should have the following characteristics:

      1. Small (10" or less screen)
      2. Long Battery Life (4 hrs +)
      3. Light weight (under 2 kg)
      4. Cheap (under $500 US).

      Apple can do 1 and 2, and 3 but 4, I don't think so.

      No, but they can convince people that netbooks are an unsustainable business model

      http://theappleblog.com/2008/12/15/netbooks-the-race-to-the-bottom-has-begun/ [theappleblog.com]

      • I saw someone make a comment, and I don't remember who or where, but I think it's insightful. Netbooks should be thought of more as larger, more capable PDA's/Smartphones, than they should as smaller, less capable computers. Given that premise, it would make sense to use a modified version of Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch OS with slightly expanded capabilities, instead of trying to get a stripped down Mac OS X to work well on a netbook.

        I think Apple might find they *could* build a winning Netbook if they took t

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Hal_Porter (817932)

          I saw someone make a comment, and I don't remember who or where, but I think it's insightful. Netbooks should be thought of more as larger, more capable PDA's/Smartphones, than they should as smaller, less capable computers. Given that premise, it would make sense to use a modified version of Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch OS with slightly expanded capabilities, instead of trying to get a stripped down Mac OS X to work well on a netbook.

          I think Apple might find they *could* build a winning Netbook if they took that approach. Maybe they already are. Apple likes to deny they are doing something right up until they announce at WWDC.

          That's not true. As one of the comments on the Apple Blog put it

          wait a minute... on an iphone, can i...

          view flash-based websites? nope
          edit word docs? nope ...edit any docs? nope
          copy/paste? nope
          multi task? nope
          install any application i want? nope
          change my background? nope
          delete all the icons on my desktop? nope
          instant message across different networks? (even messaging on single networks suck) nope
          video chat? nope
          connect to bluetooth devices? nope
          replace the battery? nope

          You must be retarded if you think it

          • From my original post. . .
            ". . .it would make sense to use a modified version of Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch OS with slightly expanded capabilities. . ."

            There's no reason the modified version of the OS for the Netbook couldn't have a lot of those things added to it. The iPhone OS already has the capability to add applications. So, Apple could either port Open Office, or their own iWork productivity suite (perhaps a stripped down 'express' edition). Apple could port iChat for the netbook to add instant messagi

      • They already make two, the iPhone and iTouch

        If your iPhone has a hinge, I think you may just have been ripped off by an unscrupulous and rather lazy counterfeiter.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.