Silencing pop once and for all

More than a few of you may be thinking that the title suggests a way to keep the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake from being emitted from your poor computer’s speakers, but no, I’ve found a solution to the speaker popping problem we talked about yesterday thanks to the venerable MacFixit. Their solution (which is sure to disappear to the purgatory of their paid archives in mere days) involves a little hackery but should be generally manageable.

The definitive fix, however, is to revert the kernel extension /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext to the version included with Mac OS X 10.4.9, via this process:

1. Download the appropriate Mac OS X 10.4.9 combo updater from Apple’s download page.
2. Download and install the shareware application Pacifist
3. Drag the Mac OS X combo installer package (e.g. MacOSXUpd10.4.9Intel.pkg) onto the Pacifist application icon.
4. Click the disclosure triangles next to System, then Library then Extensions and find the file AppleHDA.kext.
5. Select the file AppleHDA.kext and click the Install button in Pacifist. You will be required to enter your administrator password.
6. Go back to the Mac OS X Finder and navigate to /System/Library. Drag the file Extensions.kextcache to the Trash. You will be required to enter your administrator password.
7. Restart your Mac

While this may be to the answer to your many prayers, keep in mind that, as they also note, mixing system components between versions is very trick and dangerous business that may result in other unexpected bugs. So, should you decide to undertake this, you could be inviting other instability (consider yourself warned).