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Dang, I had to go digging for that patent url, when less than a week ago it was someone else's story. Its only slightly important to note that I'm not the only one that remembered this, and that the idea is somewhat currently in the collective consciousness. I figured when I saw it that it was going to be one of those patents intended to prevent any such thing from ever making it to market, for whatever reason Apple might not want it developed. But now I really hope Apple has a viable product for release whether they're granted a patent or not.

I'm not locked into the Apple ecosystem so it simply Does not work! I would have to use something that supports open standards.

The various Apple TVs have nice hardware, and It's easy enough to un-cripple the older versions (1&2) and run anything you like on them, including XBMC:

http://www.appletvhacks.net/

But no proper jailbreak yet for ATV3, AFAIK, so might go for a Pi if I was buying today. I suspect this is one product Apple would sell a lot more of if they made it hackable out of the box, especially internationally. It's silly to sell a product in the UK that offers MLB.TV (for all those dozens of British baseball fans) but not the BBC's very popular iPlayer service (though even an unhacked ATV is a good streamer for iPlayer content grabbed elsewhere with get_iplayer).

They should probably have a 'hackability' score - e.g., the tiny current version of the Apple TV is a very nice piece of hardware that's capable of much more than Apple's lockdown allows out of the box. Hack it and most of the limitations (lack of a web browser, limited media compatibility, access to non-iTunes network shares) go away:

http://www.appletvhacks.net/

Mac mini's come with iOS now as Apple wants them to Tivoized to not compete with their more expensive macs.

I'm no Apple fanboi, I only recommend them to computer illiterates and people who want a Unix system with a clean GUI. I was, however, intrigued by the truthfulness of your statement and it is simple: You are wrong: Included software: Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

You may be thinking of the Apple TV. That one never ran a full OS X. You could hack it (at least the original ones) to get it running OS X...

Like a lot of people, I've hacked an Apple TV to give me SSH/SFTP. You can upgrade the HD, install quite a bit. I run Boxee on it and it is a very flexible media server. Check out http://www.appletvhacks.net/ for info on what you can do with it. Max power draw is 48 watts.

Pricewatch:
$180 for CORE2 1.86GHz mobo+CPU+RAM
$ 40 for a mid-tower case w/600w
$ 45 for a decent but very small HD
$ 25 for a DVD-combo drive
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$290 - This is from Pricewatch, four vendors involved.

Dell
$279 for a Inspirion 530, dumbed down with a Celeron 2GHz pre-infected with Vista, but with a bigger HD and double the RAM (2GB).

Apple
I'll get running OSX on a $230 AppleTV, or Linux for that matter, out of the way first. Only brought up because we're talking about doing it the geek way and breaking though the fear of doing so. This is almost a no-OS situation like with Pricewatch, but the box is at least useful as an AppleTV when you get it.

For the "normal" comparison, their bottom-end machine is the $600 Mac mini. Core2 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM, and a decent small HD. OS X comes with it. As does iLife*.

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So, all that to point out that $290, $280 and $230 are not very far apart and all come with significant limitations or hassles, especially if something goes wrong later where vendor support is required. If that's your cup of tea it is all well and good.

$600 will get you a similar system in terms of hardware, but with a much better software load, higher quality components (Consumer Reports, nearly 70,000 in the sample size), and a verifiably better user experience all around. Assuming you're looking for something in this performance range, there are no limitations and maximum flexibility with this system, as well as access to the most software.

-Matt

*If you haven't used it, OS X and iLife are a stark contrast to the bloatware on any other OEM PC....akin to waking up from a bad dream. So is K|X|Ubuntu Desktop for that matter.

AppleTV is priced to sell a lot of units, but there's a hidden cost to it - most people will need to buy a new TV for it. It needs to work well on regular screens without a hack to really take off.

I recently purchased an Apple TV for my parents who have a 46" 1080p LCD TV.

I'd have to say that the associated press conclusion is correct about iTunes video content--barely watchable. They said the picture was "fuzzy", but I think they were really referring to the annoying artifacts present in low quality mpeg streams.

That is not to say that the AppleTV is crap, however. When playing high def content (that you rip yourself from DVD or from HDTV), it's not half bad. The thing can output at 720p at 4000kbit/s (maybe with a software upgrade (VLC)), iTunes just doesn't sell that kind of content.

Still though, with these kind of resolutions on these ginormous TVs, you're going to see artifacts even on some overly-shrunk DVD movies.

I bought the AppleTV so I could jerry rig it into something useful. If I were buying it simply based on its stated features, it's so useless I'd have a hard time justifying the $300 price tag.

It's a week after april fools day and people are still falling.

the wired article:

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2007/04/appl etvhacks_0406

links to:

http://www.semthex.com/

-look at the date that semthex posted 'OSX on AppleTV'.

and

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/04/01/mac-os-x-ru nning-on-apple-tv/

-check post date for the linked 'laborious 13-step procedure'.

I've not researched this story any further because I don't need to.

When are people going to understand the width and scope of april 1st on the internet?

I don't even read anything on the net that day...just wait a few days
and catch the 'best of'. ;-)