Hacker Turns $300 Apple TV into Cheapest Mac Ever

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.'"

Comments

Of course..

[michaelhood]

This pricepoint is pretty much based on pirating a copy of OS X.

Re:Of course..

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

Re:Of course..

[Richard_at_work]

That is if you have any dead Intel Macs just lying around, as PPC Macs wont do....

OS X PPC and OS X Intel are different products.

Re:Of course..

[1110110001]

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

Re:Of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly right, because all $200 Linux boxes have an HDMI as well as component audio and video ports, come with a remote, run silently, and fit in a shoebox. And please don't reply with a "I don't care about X" post to justify your pricing. That's just retarded.

Re:Of course..

[daveschroeder]

From three previous comments of mine, that address pretty much all the issues here:

-----

People have jumped through a lot of hoops to attempt to justify to themselves running the hacked Mac OS X on non-Apple systems, coming up with ridiculous sophistries like "What if I have an Intel iMac, but want to only run Linux on it, and then want to use that same OS X license on my Gateway laptop???" ...

AppleTV is an interesting case, because it is an "Apple-labeled" product, which is what the Mac OS X license agreement stipulates. And that's the key.

The license agreement specifies that Mac OS X can only be run on an Apple-labeled computer. And that is Apple's right. Now, you can ignore it, or ignore legal frameworks that may (or may not) enforce license agreements within certain countries/jurisdictions, and so on, but that's why running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is "illegal". There are NO prohibitions to doing things like hacking the kernel, etc. It's open source, and you can do with it what you wish regardless.

But there are still some interesting considerations:

- There is no way to legally get a standalone, retail copy of Mac OS X (Intel) for AppleTV, unless you make arguments about transferring an abandoned license from another Intel-based Mac. (And no, there is no conventional Mac OS X license that comes with AppleTV, either explicitly or implicitly.)

- Technically, you could purchase and run Mac OS X Server 10.4.x (Universal) and legally run it on AppleTV - there would be no prohibitions to this.

- Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) will be the first version of Mac OS X to have a legally purchasable standalone retail Intel version (actually, Leopard will be Universal).

But there are some other things to think about:

- Even when Leopard ships, at retail pricing, it's still $299 + $129 for AppleTV + Mac OS X. It's $171 more for a much more capable Mac mini. However, $171 may be enough to get people to consider this.

- This will really be interesting if Leopard can run unmodified on AppleTV (i.e., without a hacked kernel).

- This will still be relegated to the hobbyist/experimenter/hacker crowd, as you need to disassemble AppleTV in order to do this, image drives, have another Mac handy, and so on, not to mention that the warranty is likely void while OS X is installed on the machine (which of course is reversible, etc.)

So while this is all very interesting, please consider the fact that there are no legal ways to get Mac OS X for it currently.

This post is obviously not for people who think EULAs are BS, or that since it's an Apple product "it's okay", or that since it has some stripped down OS X on it already, "it's okay" to also install OS X from their friend's iMac, etc.

I'm simply raising the legitimate concerns surrounding licensing on AppleTV, some of which get interesting with Leopard since it is, indeed, and Apple-labeled computer, and Leopard will be available standalone.

There are also no prohibitions on using a modified kernel, but one very interesting question might be, does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that is what the Mac OS X license agreement explicitly states?

-----

The point is that right now, there is NO way to buy Mac OS X (Intel) separately at all, license agreement or not.

If people want to make ridiculous arguments like "what if I just dropped four grand on a Mac Pro, but now suddenly only want to run Windows Vista on it, but I still want to use the OS X license on my Sony Vaio," more power to them. They can make their own moral/ethical determinations. If they want to ask if it's "legal", the answer in many jurisdictions is still, "probably not", because of what the EULA says.

The other consideration is that Apple is a hardware company and prices Mac OS X accordingly. They're also the ones who put hundreds of thousands of manhours and billions of dollars, collectively, into R

Re:Of course..

[kestasjk]

Exactly right, because all $200 Linux boxes have an HDMI as well as component audio and video ports, come with a remote, run silently, and fit in a shoebox. And please don't reply with a "I don't care about X" post to justify your pricing. That's just retarded. Don't forget the investment that an appleTV is for Apple.
When you buy an appleTV you're essentially guaranteeing that you will, in the future, be buying content for it too. The price of the content you buy for the appleTV makes it cheaper, just like most game consoles.

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.

Re:Of course..

[keytohwy]

I disagree. I own an AppleTV and have yet to buy any content. It's awesome for showing family photos on my HDTV. In addition, its a great, visual music browser for listening. And lastly, Apple makes availabe a shitload of podcasts on the ITMS. I have a lot of those. Some video (even HD), some audio, but all free. I think that the AppleTV will transcend people's initial reaction, which is like yours. There's plenty of content you already own that make this a worthwhile venture for many.

Re:Of course..

[Greg Titus]

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/.

Twice!

[cabinetsoft]

in same week... first mentioned here

Re:Twice!

[aarku]

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.

This could get interesting

[oddeirik]

"Without video acceleration, games can't floor the graphic chip's throttle. There's no audio or ethernet support either[...]"

Which means it's of fairly limited use, atleast for now. I'm guessing that'll improve over the next couple of months though.

And if it's possible to clock the CPU up to 1 GHz (it's underclocked to 350 MHz?), maybe put in some more RAM and upgrade the HD, $300 ain't so bad for a HTPC with a design that your wife can accept in the living room. It having HDMI, DVI and WLAN isn't a bad thing either if they can get that working.

Re:This could get interesting

[phalse phace]

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.

Re:This could get interesting

[peragrin]

you clicked on the wrong box.

Also a mac Mini is One tenth the physical size and a heck of a lot quieter than any desktop PC I have come across.

I can use my Mac mini in my living room and not hear it. Yet I can hear the steady hum from my pc's in the next room over.

Compare Apple's to Apple's. At least price out a shuttle, or a custom mini-itx setup before you compare the tiny mac mini to a dud.

Yes I said Dud. Both dell's I have bought were cheap pieces of crap. even the machine I custom built was better and cost a lot less. It wasn't always so. There is a dell at work that keeps on going. Of course it is now 13 years old.

This is a cool hack

[poofyhairguy82]

But it is honestly not that useful. With only a 1GHz processor and 256MB of RAM, it might run OSX but not well. If you are gonna hack OSX why not just build a beige box and put OSX86 on it- I recently put together a Pentium D system that would run OSX well with twice as much ram (in a MicroATX case) for less than the Apple TV. Also a well built hackintosh will have use of the audio and ethernet. For those that just want Apple hardware, for around the same price point as the Apple TV you could get an older mini that would be legit.

I just don't see people going out to buy this for a new (even secondary) Mac.

Re:This is a cool hack

[Richard W.M. Jones]

AFAIR running OSX on non-Apple hardware is illegal.

If I didn't buy a copy it would be illegal. But if I did buy a copy then in the UK at least it would be quite legal for me to run it anywhere I wanted. Under the Unfair Contract Terms Act and the Software Directive / Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, any license terms which tried to prevent me from running OS X virtualised or on non-Apple hardware are sure to be tossed out in court.

Rich.

Re:This is a cool hack

[daveschroeder]

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.

PowerMac G4 Tower

[OrangeTide]

Was a whole $80 off eBay. With a $200 upgrade it's dual 1Ghz G4 now, but honestly it ran OSX fine without the upgrade so I could have skipped the big upgrade and saved some cash.

I won't be impressed until someone shows me a programmable/extendable device for under $40 (for new, not used). The $300 price point is not really an exciting price point when you consider PCs have been under this for a while.

I recently spent like $65 on an Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane cpu. a few other parts and it's a whole computer. Granted an Apple TV is a really tiny computer, and it hooks up to a TV in a very convenient way (but doesn't hook up to a CRT/LCD without some effort). For a tiny computer it's not a bad deal, but if smallness is not a priority then there are better bargains out there to be sure.

Not necessarily

[brokeninside]

With three Macs in the house, the most economical way for me to legally upgrade is Apple's household bundles that come with five licenses. Meaning that at any given time, I've usually got one or two licenses that I'm not using. I doubt that I'm the only person in this situation.

Linux booting on AppleTV

[kad77]

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!

Forget stolen (ok-unlicensed) OSX; Where's MythTV?

[karlandtanya]

I didn't know this thing existed, but it looks like it's out-to-TV only.
It's not difficult to cheez together a MythBox for ~$500.00, but it'd sure be nice to have some of that slick apple hardware running Myth.

It's got a USB port, and a 40G HDD, so you'd still be at about $500.00 if you added an external USB video encoder (There are has some supported by Myth--Plextor makes 'em IIRC) and boxed up a spare HDD from another computer.

Still, I'd buy one instead of the MicroATX setup I'm eyeballing today.

Which is just an overly verbose way of saying...

Nice...but will it run linux?

(Sorry, had to do it).