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.'"

Twice!

[cabinetsoft]

in same week... first mentioned here [slashdot.org]

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: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 [youtube.com].

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: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:Twice!

[gEvil (beta)]

The product name is 'OS X' (oh ess ten). This is similar to how the product name for windows is 'Windows XP' The version number of the program is 10.4, the same way the version number of XP is 5.1. On the Mac side, they refer to the product name + the version number (ie, OS X 10.4.8). On the Windows side, the version number is usually left off, instead being replaced by service pack number (ie, Windows XP Service Pack 2).

Re:Of course..

[Megane]

Because the retail discs of Tiger (DVDs, not CDs, unless you special-ordered CDs) only contain the PPC version.

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.

Re:Of course..

[daveschroeder]

Your correction wasn't correct then, and isn't now:

There is not at present, and never has been, a standalone, installable version of Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) available via Apple Developer Programs.

The only version that is available is Mac OS X Server 10.4.x (Universal), but that is Mac OS X Server, not Mac OS X.

So the statements to this effect I have made in my post are correct:

There is no legal way to get Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) separately. It only ships with CPUs.

Further, even if Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) were available via the Apple Developer Programs, the cost would be a minimum of $500/year for a Select membership, or $3000/year for a Premier membership (the only kinds that come with software seed keys, required for access to operating systems).

Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard), which will be Universal, will, of course, be available via Apple Developer Programs. But it will also be available for $129 ($69 edu/govt), so the Developer Programs argument doesn't make sense in the vast, vast majority of those potential cases, either.

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/ [engadget.com].

Re:This is a cool hack

[TJamieson]

...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...

Nope, sorry. The latest ones are using the Darwin 8.8.1 (aka 10.4.8) kernel. Built from public sources no less!

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 [awkwardtv.org]

thanks gimli!

Phenomenal graphics power...

[argent]

On the other hand it's got a real GPU with real VRAM, not the apalling GMA950 integrated video that eats 64M of RAM, so it's more like the equivalent of a 320MB Intel mini. So long as you don't fire up Rosetta it's going to beat the original PPC minis, and those are still eBaying for more than the AppleTV costs.

Phenomenal graphics power... itty bitty memory space.

Re:Of course..

[outZider]

No one was quoted -- that was a summary of the feeling they get.

Re:Of course..

[toddestan]

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.

Yeah, except a lot of that hardware doesn't even work. From TFA:

"... the resulting installation is unable to take advantage of all the Apple TV's hardware. Without video acceleration, games can't floor the graphic chip's throttle. There's no audio or ethernet support either, making the box useless for its original purpose as a media hub."

Perhaps it may some time in the future, but at this point the $200 Linux box is going to be more functional.

Re:Blue & White G3 Tower

[OrangeTide]

I have 1GB of ram in my B&W G3, and yes. they are dirt cheap. You can find 800Mhz G4 chips to drop into those G3 systems pretty easily. No AGP slot though, just a dual speed PCI slot for the video card.

The little ATI Rage card handles Tiger's fancy graphics quite nicely though.

I have 4 hdds in my B&W G3 after I put in a SATA controller and got the dual-drive trays to replace the single drive trays. (same trays fit in the early G4 systems too)