Hacker Turns $300 Apple TV into Cheapest Mac Ever 169
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.'"
Re:Of course.. (Score:2, Insightful)
What I want to know is when is it going to run Ubuntu... (grin)
This is a cool hack (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't see people going out to buy this for a new (even secondary) Mac.
Re:Of course.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course.. (Score:4, Insightful)
OS X PPC and OS X Intel are different products.
Re:Of course.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 [apple.com] 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?
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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.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course.. (Score:3, Insightful)
As I've said elsewhere, the Family Pack argument isn't a bad one, and frankly, it seems reasonable to believe it within the "spirit" of things. But even that doesn't change that there is still no way to get Mac OS X (Intel) other than pirating it. In the case where you happen to have an Intel Mac, or a friend does, then you can start kind of making up reasoning for why it's "okay" - and I'll agree, much of that reasoning isn't really bad.
As to Apple's public statements, I'd say they're largely referring to the hacks to the Apple TV as-is, i.e., enabling ssh, Remote Desktop, and so on, not pirating Mac OS X (Intel) and installing it on Apple TV.
But, to your larger point, I do agree that for home/hobbyist use, Apple probably will continue to take a hands-off approach; after all, individuals running Mac OS X on an Apple TV have, in fact, purchased an Apple TV. Those who actually have family pack licenses and/or other licenses for Mac OS X can certainly consider themselves to be within the spirit of the license. (However, from a purely legal standpoint, I'd take issue that an attorney would agree that it's "perfectly legal": your license for Mac OS X 10.4.x (PowerPC) and the associated family pack only covers that product, which can be argued to be only for Mac OS X (PowerPC), which is a distinct product from Mac OS X (Intel), which, itself, is not purchasable or available separately. This is especially true since there is a parallel precedent set by the two distinct versions of Mac OS X Server.)
The landscape changes considerably with Leopard, since it will be separately purchasable, and will be Universal, and the licenses for it and that of the associated family pack that one would presume would be available definitely cover a version of the product able to run on Intel, including Apple TV. But even then, the question exists of whether Apple would strictly consider Apple TV a "computer" in the context of the license. The fact that Apple will probably ignore this in the context of home/hobbyist/experimenter use no doubt remains. But that doesn't remove the veracity of any of my statements, either. Overall, though, you're right that Apple probably will care a lot less since it's being run on their own hardware someone has purchased, even now before Leopard.