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Hacker Turns $300 Apple TV into Cheapest Mac Ever

Posted by Zonk on from the another-bite-at-the-buck dept.

An anonymous reader wrote with a link to a Wired story about a fun play-along-at-home project: Turning Apple TV into a very tiny workable computer. "Apple TV is dead, long live the Mac Nano. Sort of. Just two weeks after Apple released its streaming media box to the public, hackers successfully installed OS X, Apple's desktop operating system, on the $300 device, making it the cheapest PC Cupertino has ever sold. 'The breakthrough is done, OS X runs on Apple TV!' wrote Semthex, the anonymous hacker responsible for the mod, at his website. 'Now we got (the) low-budget Mac we ever wanted.'"

8 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Twice! by cabinetsoft · · Score: 4, Informative

    in same week... first mentioned here

    1. Re:Twice! by aarku · · Score: 3, Informative

      True, but there is actually a worthwhile update to the story, not that I know if it's mentioned in TFA. You can boot Mac OS X on it now without opening the box.

  2. Re:Of course.. by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wow. They got a computer than ran OS X to run OS X.

    Well, but it's not that simple: many embedded devices run some kind of desktop OS (Windows, Linux, as opposed to an embedded OS like VxWorks), but running a generic version of the OS on the device is noteworthy because there's more to it than just sticking a shell in it: usually one has to reorganize the bootloading process, making a custom image of the OS, possibly make custom drivers, etc... So making an Apple embedded device running a custom OSX run a generic version of OSX isn't necessarily trivial, and is interesting.

    What I want to know is when is it going to run Ubuntu... (grin)

    If it can boot OSX, it surely can boot Linux without much work at all. That on the other hand is old news.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. Re:This could get interesting by phalse+phace · · Score: 4, Informative

    But why bother doing the upgrades to it when an Apple certified refurb Mac mini with

    # 1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo
    # 512MB memory
    # 60GB hard drive
    # combo drive

    is only $519?

    After doing all the upgrades, the price difference between it and the refurb Mac mini won't be that much.

  4. Re:Of course.. by 1110110001 · · Score: 3, Informative

    With the Mac mini you get: Mac OS 10.4, iLife 06, Comic Life and Big Bang Board Games. That's ~$260.

  5. Re:This is a cool hack by daveschroeder · · Score: 3, Informative

    Unfortunately, you can't buy a copy of Mac OS X (Intel) anywhere. Mac OS X (PowerPC) is a different product. Even in the UK.

    And all of these "hacked" instances of Mac OS X 10.4.x running on non-Apple hardware are using a hacked kernel from Mac OS X 10.4.3 (!) from the development systems that shipped with BIOS - nearly all of the work was done for them.

    Once Leopard ships, it will require a *significant* amount of work would be required to get Leopard running on non-Apple hardware, much less hardware with BIOS (including VMs). Even if someone does get Leopard running on non-Apple hardware, it will very likely require particular brands of motherboards, etc...meaning people have to go out and buy something anyway.

    None of the hacks from 10.4.x, especially the critical kernel, will be able to be reused on 10.5.x. Even now, no one has successfully used a newer 10.4.x kernel on non-Apple hardware - it's all still the old 10.4.3 development kernel that was never released that supported BIOS. Ugly, ugly hack.

    So no...there's no legal way for you to get Mac OS X for Intel, even in the UK. Unless you use sophistry to build ridiculous arguments about reusing the license from the Intel iMac that you "no longer want to run Mac OS X on" anymore, etc.

  6. Re:Of course.. by Greg+Titus · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is why I expect Apple will do everything they can to fight against people running a flexible system that can run whatever content they want on their artificially cheap hardware. I would be surprised if Apple's lawyers didn't start coming out of the woodworks soon. Yeah, that's why an Apple spokesman was quoted as saying "it's your box, do with it what you please -- but be mindful of voiding that warranty" a couple days ago. See http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/05/apple-not-fight ing-back-against-apple-tv-hacks/.
  7. Linux booting on AppleTV by kad77 · · Score: 3, Informative

    How's free for a pricepoint?

    Given we had OSX running on the AppleTV back on March 30, I'm not surprised that the article missed Linux is running with full nvidia hardware acceleration. After 5+ years, the journaled HFS support in the kernel is basically worthless though (FIXME).

    As usual, AwkwardTV has the scoop--

    http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Linux_on_Apple_TV

    thanks gimli!