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ixus_123 · Mar 31, 2007, 10:37 PM

Could be an April fool but looks like someone has hacked iTV and got OS X up & running on it.

Mac OS X running on Apple TV | Apple TV Hacks

There seems to be a hack a day for this thing and I'm pretty sure it's as Apple intended. Give people a building blobk & see what happens - obviously they don't have to support any wild offshoots but can easily gain an understanding of what the public want.

I think iTVs would be great as thin clients in the home - that;s all most of need for email, web surfing, browsing photos. When you need more power just tap int the power mac machine buzzing away somewhere else in the house.

TheoCryst · Apr 1, 2007, 12:59 AM

I'll believe it April 2. The fact that it's on April Fool's day is just too coincidental for me to accept wholeheartedly. But if this is true, then I may just need to buy one myself. It'd make an amazing webbroswer/media client.

ixus_123 · Apr 1, 2007, 09:40 AM

That's what I thought too but I am inclined to believe it as it basically has everything one needs to be a functioning computer.

Practically any computer you can buy at the low end these days is vastly over specced for use with office apps / email / web browsing etc.

LCD TVs are becoming the norm so it would be great to have one of these in every room with a TV as a cheap solution to web browse - if you need more power then it's available from the powerhouse desktop powermac somewhere else in the house - or maybe have your 3 appleTV's & powermac acting as a cluster so you can rip DVD's at light speed or transcode video in final cut / iMovie

SLiMeX · Apr 1, 2007, 09:46 AM

See, as I am a bit skeptical, I could see this totally being plausible.

krove · Apr 1, 2007, 11:36 AM

It's real.

imitchellg5 · 01:23 PM

If Boot Camp will run on it, I'm getting it. Cheapest and coolest PeeCee evar. Although 256 Mb of RAM sucks for Tiger. (My dad needs Windows for work every once in a while).

Big Mac · Apr 1, 2007, 02:07 PM

Very cool if true - video looks legit. I guess video won't run very well on it until they get the Nvidia Kext problems worked out.

mfbernstein · Apr 1, 2007, 11:28 PM

I can see the AppleTV as a great internet appliance. But until you can hook up a real monitor, I'm not sure how much of a thin client it can be. Wonder if an HDMI to VGA adapter would work?

But as a stereo, web-router, and lightweight entertainment center, it looks pretty appealing. Now if we could just upgrade the RAM and processor a bit...

applgeek · Apr 2, 2007, 03:15 AM

I would love it as a a tv side OS X box. WEb surfing on the TV!

Simon · Apr 2, 2007, 03:53 AM

I don't find it a "great thin client" at all.

It's got a 40 GB HDD, 256 RAM soldered (so no expansion), no optical drive, no FW or SATA, and a 1 GHz Dothan (no SSE3 so OS X needs to be hacked to even run on it). And to get it to be a "Mac" you need to take it apart and screw around with it's hardware and software.

$300 extra buys you a real Mac, albeit a humble one. It might be fun for us geeks to see that it can be done. But as a thin client it absolutely sucks. The mini is your thin client.

mdc · Apr 2, 2007, 10:13 AM

I haven't been reading too much about this OS X on Apple TV, so I don't know if it has been debunked, or proven true.

I find one thing strange about it.

That screenshot is firefox running on the Apple TV, and you can see in the About This Mac box it has 10.4.7 and the Startup Disk.

In the screenshot that was in the link for OS X on the Apple TV it says 10.4.8 and the About This Mac box doesn't have the startup disk part.
I think it's strange that their OS X is running .1 higher and the About This Mac box is different.

Anyway. I hear they're making good progress on the Apple TV, so it's only a matter of time before this is true.