Unofficial "official" WiFi drivers brings the Mac Netbook ever closer -- albeit in a shady legal fashion.
UPDATE: Apple has announced January 2009 will be its last year at Macworld. Steve Jobs will not deliver the keynote address. More here.
With Macworld 2009 mere weeks away, it's all rather quiet on the rumour front, which is somewhat unusual. One rumour that seemingly won't die is the idea of a Mac OS X Netbook PC.
Apple's remaining mum, but that hasn't stopped the Hackintosh community from "porting" OS X to a variety of Netbooks, albeit with limited functionality -- most notably, a lack of Wireless functionality due to the absence of suitable drivers.
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.
There's still a few catches; aside from the obvious legal issues, the drivers get WiFi functionality working, but not via Airport. Instead, what you end up with looks like a Bluetooth connection to OS X, which could be interesting if you wanted to pair with a mobile phone as well.
Whether this will spur Apple on to release its own Netbook model (or just release the army of hungry lawyers in Realtek's direction) is, naturally, anyone's guess.