How To Install Mac OS X On An Xbox
How To Install Mac OS X On An Xbox
by , 1:30 PM EDT, October 7th, 2004
The Xbox modding community has taken their art to a new level, figuring out how to install Mac OS X on this Microsoft gaming console. You read that right: Using PearPC, the PowerPC emulation software we covered in May of this year, the folks at Xbox Modification have put together the convoluted process necessary to install Apple's world class operating system on this US$149 gaming console (US$149 - Amazon). From the site:
The Xbox is Microsoft's first console gaming device. Staying with what they know, Microsoft built their gaming system out of parts that are very similar to a desktop system. Its CPU is an Intel Pentium III 733-MHz processor. It has a custom Nvidia GeForce 3 graphics card. It comes with 64MB of RAM, an 8GB or 10GB Hard Disk, and a 2X to 5X DVD drive. In addition, it has an Ethernet port and each one of the controllers is a USB port.
At the time of its release, the Xbox had the components of a mid-range computer for half the price. Because the Xbox is really just an x86 at heart, the Linux community started creating distributions for it immediately. Our goal in this document is to show you how you can take you gaming machine and turn it into an inexpensive computer.
The above introduction doesn't mention Mac OS X, but the site has a dedicated Web page with the very detailed instructions for making this happen. Also not mentioned is the fact that running Mac OS X through PearPC in this manner will be a very, very slow experience. To keep that in perspective, the installation process alone takes 10 hours, and that's after all of the other steps have been followed.
Linux, on the other hand, runs natively on the Xbox, and the project also offers all the instructions for installing that OS on the unit.
Thanks to Observer Carnagex for pointing us to this project in the TMO Forums.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Apple hardly needs to worry about scads of would-be Apple customers rushing out to buy an Xbox instead of the latest iMac G5. It's just too slow to be of much practical use, and that doesn't address other issues relating to the fact that the Xbox isn't a true computer in terms of ports, drive capacity, etc. Running Mac OS X on an Xbox is more of climbing-the-mountain-because-it-is-there exercise than anything else, but we love the fact that some people have gone to the effort of figuring out how. That's good, clean fun.Observer Comments
And watch OSX fly, and you've got your headless Mac.
I believe in a round about way BGates is still trying to save the Mac and help the Mac be all it can be..
Apple stands to make a fortune just selling the OS, and that the way it should be. Leave the hardware to IBM and the Chinese. So glad you all agree.
Quoteaaronsullivan wrote:
Rumor is that the new XBox won't have a hard drive though, and it certainly won't have the right roms, so... no probably no Mac OS on new XBox sorry.
and they will be easy modifications, by intentional design, and MS will have taped into that tremendous latent demand for the lost cost headless Mac that for some very strange reason is an utterly impossible feat of engineering for Apple. MS will make a fortune by giving consumers a low cost headless Mac via the XBox, and of course Apple will make a bundle off the OS and Software packages as it should be. A more happy world, and a more Mac like world via the Xbox at that, and we all stand to mutually benefit from this.
I am so glad you all agree with me, lets all be friends.
And thank you BGates
Having Linux on MS hardware, or OS X emulation on Linux is sort of the opposite of "the computer users need to install and run Microcrap emulators (...) and other (...) programs designed to make Microcrap work on Mac".
It is a harmless exercise, a geek thing (more a nerd thing if you ask me) and incidentally totally not what you seem to dislike at all.
And finally something for you to think about: some day someone will make a more or less useful OS X emulation situation, you wait and see how fast Apple's lawyers will bully that someone into the ground...
Now, that may be perfectly within Apple's right, at least that's what the OS X license says anyway, but compared to e.g. the FOSS movement (you know, Linux, BSD, stuff like that) you'll find that Apple is more akin to MS than those guys toying around with their X-Box.
"le. MS will make a fortune by giving consumers a low cost headless Mac via the XBox"
No, this would be a disaster for Microsoft. Microsoft looses huge amounts of money on each X-Box sold. In theory they are supposed to make this back on the sale of games, but due to the excessive cost of PC based hardware (compared to PS2 or GameCube) they can't sell enough games to make their money back.
People who buy an X-Box to run Linux or OS X probably are buying few if any X-Box games, so this is a total loss for Microsoft. Microsoft has thus fought Linux-on-X Box any way they can.
It's possible that Apple might look the other way over OS X on X box 2. After all, they CAN'T sue over people putting BSD Unix or X11 on X Box, since those are open source. In any case, the kind of techno-geek who would have the skill to do this probably isn't Apple's prime market anyway. The geek cred that apple would gain by letting it happen might spur more sales then it looses.
Quotealgr wrote:
"le. MS will make a fortune by giving consumers a low cost headless Mac via the XBox"
No, this would be a disaster for Microsoft. Microsoft looses huge amounts of money on each X-Box sold. In theory they are supposed to make this back on the sale of games, but due to the excessive cost of PC based hardware (compared to PS2 or GameCube) they can't sell enough games to make their money back.
People who buy an X-Box to run Linux or OS X probably are buying few if any X-Box games, so this is a total loss for Microsoft. Microsoft has thus fought Linux-on-X Box any way they can.
It's possible that Apple might look the other way over OS X on X box 2. After all, they CAN'T sue over people putting BSD Unix or X11 on X Box, since those are open source. In any case, the kind of techno-geek who would have the skill to do this probably isn't Apple's prime market anyway. The geek cred that apple would gain by letting it happen might spur more sales then it looses.
From what I understand IBM is supplying Uncle Bill with some high tech custom 64bit processors 90nm. So these new Xboxes are going to smoke whether they are running OSX or MS games. BGates has a whole team of software engineers using Apple G5 Macs to write the software and games.
You have to admit the guy does have some business savy. And he is up to something that he obviously has a passion for, as if he had to work another day in his life.
Anyways, go figure. Cooking up something big, they are!
Since there are already x86 ports of Darwin it might be nice to run Darwin natively on an Xbox for server type applications (WWW server, mail server, firewall, etc) where you don't want to waste a real Mac (or even a PC). You could do this with Linux of course, but for Mac OS X users Darwin would probably be preferable.
I wonder if you can you install Mac OSX on an XBOX 360? It has 3 core PPC running at 3.2 GHZ with AltiVec. Overall performace 1 Teraflop!
Xbox 360 System Performance Specifications
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
* Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
* Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
* VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
* 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
* 1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance
* 9 billion dot product operations per second
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
* 10 MB of embedded DRAM
* 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
* Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance
* 500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate
* 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance
* 48 billion shader operations per second
Memory
* 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM
* Unified memory architecture
Memory Bandwidth
* 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
* 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
* 21.6 GB/s front-side bus
Overall System Floating-Point Performance
* 1 teraflop
Storage
* Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive
* 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
* Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB
I/O
* Support for up to four wireless game controllers
* Three USB 2.0 ports
* Two memory unit slots
Optimized for Online
* Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music
* Built-in Ethernet port
* Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g
* Video camera ready
Digital Media Support
* Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
* Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
* Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive
* Custom playlists in every game
* Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
* Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Game Support
* All games supported at 16:9, 720p, and 1080i, anti-aliasing
* Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio
* Multi-channel surround sound output
* Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio
* 320 independent decompression channels
* 32-bit audio processing
* Over 256 audio channels
System Orientation
* Stands vertically or horizontally
Customizable Face Plates
* Interchangeable to personalize the console
in the next edition of the xbox, xbox 360.
It seems some people have no idea what is going to be installed in the machine. Will it have a hard drive? Will it be wireless? Will make you a cup of coffee.
Well Yes it will have a hard drive! Yes it will be wireless! Sorry but it will not make you a cup of coffee. Well... 2 out of 3, pretty good odds. xbox 360 natively supports up to four wireless controllers.
Type-- Game console
Media Type-- DVD-ROM 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
Processor type-- IBM Custom PowerPC-based 3.2 Hz
RAM technology-- GDDR3
RAM installed size-- 512 MB
Video Output-- ATI Xbox 360 GPU
USB2-- 3 ports
Storage-- Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive
I believe with all this installed and using a "Custom PowerPC" processor this should be one MODable machine.
Yeah the 360 would be a differnet ball game but i am looking into it right now. i already have one xbox 360 and the thing is so damn powerful it haunts me at night to crack it open and mod it. so once i buy another i will see if it is possible to put OS X on it. and if it is i plan to get some emulators so i will be able to play WoW on it. lol i love that game.=P
Wed Dec 13, 2006 9:27 am Subject: MAC OS X on Xbox 360
It would be possible to install Mac OS X on the Xbox 360 since it has a PowerPC-based processor. Mac OS X Tiger runs on this processor. The tricky thing is: how do you get to install it? Microsoft has put protections. How do you break them? Hacking it? It would be necessary a modchip and a new bios. Then you will only be able to play games through emulators, which wouldn't give you the greatest results. But it would be nice to have mac os x on it, thats for sure.
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