Remember the early days when we actually saw Mac computers run on Intel-powered processors? Well, weirder amalgamations have happened in the industry since then, those that one would never have thought would happen. Today, we bring you news that the Chromium OS has been ported over to the MacBook Air, which isn’t a bad thing entirely. After all, certain quarters claim that the MacBook Air is nothing but an expensive netbook with a starting price of one grand, while Chromebooks from Samsung and Acer are touted to be overpriced netbooks at $349 apiece for the cheapest model. Guess to see your MacBook Air with a Chromium OS port treads middle ground in the argument, no?
This is made possible thanks to seasoned Chrome OS hacker Hexxeh – the wonders of open source. Of course, this does not mean you will get official Chromebook capabilities all the way to the end, since no hardware-specific security features or boot speed optimizations are available. According to Hexxeh, the Chromium OS build on the MacBook Air will boot up in around 22 seconds, which is extremely zippy.
The downside to it? You will need to erase OS X first before Chromium OS is installed onto the MacBook Air’s SSD. While dual-booting is an option, neither Hexxeh nor Apple are willing to step forward with official support, so proceed at your own risk if you know how.