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.'"

Of course..

[michaelhood]

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

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:Of course..

[Anomolous Cowturd]

If it's not pirated, then the price is not $300, but $300 + cost of OS. Duh.

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.

Re:This is a cool hack

[Anonymous Coward]

"But it is honestly not that useful. With only a 1GHz processor and 256MB of RAM..."

What are you smokin'? Show me something in a 1.1x7.7x7.7 inch package that looks good and can be a media PC (Xvid playpack!) or a auto PC for $300. The closest thing is the Mac mini at 2x6.5x6.5 inches at $600. Double the money will buy you a lot more, but $300 bucks is toy money. I be stackin' me web servers and slingboxes all over the place for that price point. Plug in a 10" LCD and a DC converter and this guy goes in my car. It would be a great web surfing appliance for the kitchen. Great possibilities are out there. It may not be quite ready for primetime yet, but there is a large community that won't stop until this box runs everything under the sun. It's only a matter of time. Just look at the XBMC project as an example.

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 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.

And if that counts, I can beat the price.

[Mr2001]

I bought a Dell Dimension 4600 from a pawn shop for $20, "as is" because someone said it wouldn't boot. When I brought it home, I discovered there was nothing wrong with it. I slapped an old Radeon inside, installed OS X, and that's what I call the cheapest Mac ever.

Blue & White G3 Tower

[Megane]

Blue and White G3s esentially cost nothing now beyond the cost of the RAM and HD inside (and the cost of shipping), and they run Tiger quite decently. They also take the same CPU upgrades as the early G4 systems. The only problem is they don't take 512M or larger DIMMs, and they don't take 8-chip 256M DIMMs (the 16-chip versions have been a bit hard for me to find as salvage). I've got two of them working quite well next to my (purchased new) MDD/Windtunnel dual 1G G4 (which is awesome for having four HD bays and two optical bays).

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.

Re:Of course..

[anothy]

okay, well i guess i ought to repost my correction to you from that thread, as well: --- Also keep in mind that there are other legal ways of acquiring Mac OS X 10.4.x for Intel Macs, such as membership in the Apple Developer Program. The license there has other restrictions on use, but it is acceptable in a large number of cases. --- generally, i find your post informative, but it'd be nice if you could stop repeating the false portion about there being no legal way to obtain Mac OS X for Intel.

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.

Yawn...

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Putting full OS X on this is uninteresting...

What I'd like to see is putting Linux on it and turning it into a full-blown living room appliance. In terms of hacking the Apple TV has much potential, it could easily replace the XBox as most useful hackable livingroom hardware. It has more powerful hardware, has an HDMI port, and appears to require less messing around with the hardware.

The only thing that sucks is lack of RCA and S-Video outputs, for those of us who don't give a flying shit about HDTV. My existing TV set works fine, thank you very much. What the hell was Apple thinking?!