Apple’s Worst Mac EVER!

This is a brand new factory sealed, never been opened original Apple TV from 2007. It's still in a shrink wrap and it's like actively falling apart as I touch it. If I crack this thing open, I'm going to find something that, frankly, you might not suspect. This is not a streaming box, as you might think it to be. It's a Mac with a full Intel processor, NVIDIA GeForce graphics, 256 megabytes of RAM, a two and a half inch hard drive, and Mac OS X Tiger. Yeah, the same operating system running on MacBooks of the era, just stripped down and hidden by a TV interface. Which means... With a little bit of work, I'll be able to peel back its true Mac identity and run not just Mac OS, but Linux, and as of literally 2025, this year, Windows 10. That's wild because in 2007, everybody was trying to build the next DVD player, which was a huge hit. Now, Blu-ray and HD DVD, they existed, and they were already locked into a format war that, frankly, most people thought was pointless because the writing was on the wall, the internet was getting fast, everybody knew optical media was dying, Discs, they were not the future. Game consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were quickly becoming the primary entertainment hubs of the living room. And Microsoft wasn't stopping with the Xbox. They were heavily pushing Windows Media Center. Intel, a huge partner of Microsoft's, had developed the Vive platform for living room computing. And OEMs were cranking out sleek home theater PC boxes with TV tuners and media center software. This was not a niche thing. It was industry consensus that your TV would become a computer. Then, in September 2006, Steve Jobs walked on stage and said, uh, yeah, no, uh, we're not doing that. At the It's Showtime event, he'd unveil what he called iTV, a device that would wirelessly sync your iTunes library to a box connected to your television. And I mean, the pitch was straightforward, right? You've already got your music, your TV shows, and your movies in iTunes on your computer. Frankly, on your iPod in your pocket. Now, you could watch them on your actual TV without burning DVDs or running cables or running to Blockbuster. The demo showed Front Row's familiar cascading menu interface, the same one that Mac users had been introduced to the year prior, it just was adapted for the big screen. Navigate with that tiny little white Apple remote, pick your movie, watch it, and that's it. You're done. The irony, of course, is that for as simple as this was, this machine was a Mac, not all that dissimilar from other home theater PCs, just with a laundry list of limitations that those other devices did not share, many of which we'll discover later. But the pitch was good. And frankly, so is the price. iTV works with iTunes on PCs or Macs, just like iPods. And we're going to price it at just $299. When Jobs returned to the stage at Macworld in January 2007, he had two things to do. First, officially rename the device to Apple TV to avoid getting sued by British broadcaster ITV. And second, unveil the iPhone, which he then spent 90 minutes doing, completely overshadowing the set-top box he had just unveiled. Look, pre-orders for this thing went up almost immediately, but the device wouldn't ship for another two months. And this Apple TV has been in that box, this box, For almost that amount of time. 17 years? I was 15, I'm 32. Time's a cruel mistress. Let's crack this thing open. That is so much dust. It's just been caked on for the last 15 years, probably sitting in some warehouse, waiting to be purchased by some idiot on eBay. It was too expensive, but it wasn't horrible, honestly. Like I think I paid less than a new Apple TV. I might need a knife. Nope, nope, nope, nope. I can fashion my own tools. There we go. Dude. That looks sick. You walk into an Apple store now and everything is white. That was an Angela Ahrendts era Apple store change that they haven't walked back. It's like one of the few things she did to the Apple stores that they haven't like reverted on. We refer to them as town squares. I wish they would, cause this looks sick. And like, you can look at the box and see what it does. Now it's just like, oh, generic shape. Designed by Apple in California. Speaking of the sleeve, it shows us the user interface. This is the Take-Two interface after Macworld 2008. It does say 2008 right here, look. It's Jon Stewart. He's like 40 years old. That's how you know this thing is old. Wow, look at that. This is not a device, frankly, that would go through the effort of being repackaged, but there are tons. If like, if you buy a fifth generation iPod video on eBay, 100% it's counterfeit. Look at that. Mother frigging styrofoam. Tim Cook's ovaries hurt by just looking at this. If you think that the Apple TV remote now is thin and useless, buddy, this is like the size of a stick of gum. Okay. Look at that. I've never seen an Apple TV that isn't just scratched to high heaven. I have my family's 2007 Apple TV here. This thing has UV damage. It's yellow. If you think this side is bad, that's not even remotely the same color rubber. Okay. Let's keep unboxing. That's so informal. They're just like power cable. Gotta get this stuff in. Everything now has got like a perfect little pocket and it's wrapped around 10 times. Nope. Setup guide. Oh, that's beefy. That's a 40 page manual. Problem? No problem. Apple stickers. Apple TV, important product information guide. This product incorporates copyright protection technology. DRM. Do you know what I just realized? There is no video cables in this box. No component cable, no HDMI cable, nothing. And like, okay, they don't do that now either. But we've got a power connector, USB, Ethernet, 10-100, HDMI, component video, red, green, blue, red, blue, green. I know my letters, colors. Analog audio and Toslink optical audio as well. And then that's it. Little power LED and infrared blaster receiver. This thing is quite heavy. It's 2.4 pounds, which is surprisingly bulky given its size. And that's because it's got aluminum everywhere. You've got plastic on the top, but then at the bottom here, you've got a bunch of passive vents. There is no active fan in here. And I should mention a couple of strange things about particularly the HDMI port. It's only 720p, despite being HDMI 1.3, which did support up to 1080p. It was a compute limitation. The processor and the graphics card inside literally could not drive it, but as we'll discover in the teardown, modders found their way around that. Also, this USB port in the manual, it says for service and diagnostics. You weren't allowed to get in here, and this was just for the Genius Bar, should you have bricked your Apple TV and needed it restored. All right, contact. Booting. How long will it take? Ah! There's an Apple logo! SSDs. What a thing. Although I guess... The iPad still takes this long to boot. Language selection screen. English, danés, español, coreano, portugués, japonés. Hey, oh, the battery is low. You don't say. This thing has been in a box for 17 years. I can't believe it actually works. But it is cool that it tells you, hey, low voltage. Searching for wireless networks. Snazzy Labs. There was a problem connecting to this network, probably because the device is so old. It's like, no. Can we get your ethernet cable? Can't go wrong with a cable. You know, there's an amazing intro and I don't know when it's gonna play, but when it happens, it's gonna be so good. It's right now. I don't think I've ever seen this like in real life. I've just seen crappy YouTube rips of it. To connect your Apple TV to iTunes on your computer, you'll need to enter this passcode. Here it is. Yeah, you ever seen one of these before? This is a ModBook Pro. It's a tablet, but a Mac. I did a video on these several years ago. They're freaking awesome. Oh my gosh, it shows up. Apple TV. Yo, that's pretty slick. Okay, is it gonna work? If I go to movies, I only have, there are no movies. Maybe I have to sync them. This might be too late of a version, honestly. Authorizing Apple TV with the iTunes Store. That's going to be a problem because this device is no longer authenticated because the way that I got this thing was perhaps illegitimate. But that's OK, because look how cool it is. I don't care, you can steal if it's for something cool. Wonder if any trailers are still online. They're not, there's no way. Because back in the day when this thing came out, trailers for videos were hosted on apple.com. You would go to apple.com and it'd be like video trailers. Like movie trailers was part of the website. Apple had at one point the most popular movie trailer website on the planet, and it was just on their homepage. Weirdest thing ever. Oh my gosh, though, hold on. Yeah, okay, check that out. Syncing Apple TV, copying one of 143. I think I've only got two movies on this MacBook. Yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy and Pirates of Silicon Valley, and then everything else is gonna be music. So it's syncing 141 songs and two movies to the Apple TV. It's not done syncing, so I don't think anything's gonna work. Can I start it while it continues to download in the background? That would be sick. Not looking promising. Not looking promising. Wait, what the heck? It just stops. It stopped syncing. I tried to play the movie and it's like, nope, you're done. I will admit that the speed on here is probably honestly a bit horrible because this is also on Wi-Fi, but now it doesn't even want to sync, but I don't have a progress bar. Hmm, boy, you really can't do anything on here unless you're synced up to your Mac. Well, Flickr, add a Flickr contact? What does that even mean? I don't know, I'm scared. Dot Mac, wow, and YouTube. There's no way YouTube's gonna work either. Most view, on all of YouTube, most viewed? Yo, I missed that logo, that's sick! This is not gonna load. I don't even know why I'm waiting here trying to do this. Is there a page on YouTube where you can just go and be like... Most viewed video of all time. Okay, let's see our settings. General about version 2.2. So this is the Take-Two software. Interestingly, TV resolution, 1080p HD, but it only outputs at 720p. So maybe it detects display is 1080. Technically it's 4K, but what does it know? Okay, you can sign in. I'm not even gonna try. That's not gonna work. Update software. Yeah, there's no way the update servers are still online. Apple keeps their update servers for a long time, but not 17. It detected an update. Can you update right on device? You could not do that on iPhones of the era. This came out in 2007. I mean, I guess it's a Mac. It's still gonna be equally broken. Nothing's gonna work. It's not gonna connect to YouTube. It's not gonna connect to Flickr.Mac. Maybe it'll say, MobileMe. I don't think so. Oh, wow. Update now. The hard drive just clicked. It's still not very high resolution. By the way, we're not faking any of this. This is really happening. It's just that this is a monitor now and not a computer. Check out my video on that if you haven't seen it. This is like the Mac updater bar. Again, I keep saying, oh, it's like the Mac. It is a Mac. I'm easily impressed. That's why I'm perceived by many of you to be such a positive reviewer. Whoa, what the heck? This is a completely different interface. Okay, this is version three. I forgot that version three even existed. You know what this looks like? It looks like the PlayStation bar and column thingy. Maybe we'll have better success syncing to the iTunes library. Let's open it up. Pirates of Silicon Valley. Dang it, I should not have done that because it was syncing again from iTunes. And then as soon as I tried to play it, it stopped syncing. Oh, hey, mobile me. Yeah, that's not going to work either. So you can get the update, but you still can't see diddly squat. Flickr. Maybe the Flickr API still works. Dog. Can we talk about how aggressive that button is? Yeah, it doesn't work. YouTube. There was a problem communicating with YouTube. Try again later. Hey, that's the same problem I have with YouTube when I try to talk to them. Radio? Loading internet radio stations. If there's anything that might still work a decade on, it's internet radio. They're not known for cutting edge technology. And yet. AirTunes. Oh my gosh, I haven't heard of that in a long time. AirTunes was the precursor to AirPlay. It was renamed to AirPlay when it could start doing video and other content, but originally, it was called AirTunes. Sick. Hey, okay, so, oh, look at that. It tells me I'm syncing one of 143. We're not close. Oh, wait, hold on, hold on. Oh, LKing, that's pretty dope. This is Star Wars. When you're trying to do something that's not downloaded, boy, it is slow. All right, well, we're going to get some stuff syncing, and in the meantime, let's use my other Apple TV to run some crazy modifications. I guess the last thing of interest is, how do you get inside? Well, the answer is underneath this rubber foot. My rig's still broken. Which is impossible to remove without completely destroying said rubber foot because check it out, the whole bottom thing is a sticky tape. So you start to pull this thing and buddy, no matter how hard you try, you're gonna rip it open. And the reason I'm not going to open up this Apple TV is because it is brand new, it looks gorgeous, and I don't wanna ruin it forever, which will happen if I try to open it. I already did once on here, so we'll just open this one again. Okay, I'm gonna use my handy dandy iFixit kit from linustechtips.com or whatever the hell to open up this thing. Wow, that's a tight screw. Whoever screwed that in last time, me. There's one screw, two screws. I think there's just the four, because these four screws hold on to the two and a half inch hard drive. Oh, those are not the same lengths. I try to remember that when I put that together. My long thing's on the front too. And then we're just gonna do some prying. There we go. And there is our IDE hard drive. Been a while since you've seen one of those, huh? Wow, this thing is dusty. For not having a fan, wait, what? It does have a fan? This is the base model. It is a 40 gigabyte IDE hard drive. And I'm actually going to take this out because I need this to provision Windows onto it. Did they tape this thing into place? They did. So that's for heat transfer from the drive to spread it out. It's just very much deteriorated over the years. Look at that. Wow. Okay, well, hopefully I didn't bend it when I pulled it out. Can I just say that this is a very densely packed logic board? First of all, we have a semi-enclosed... Plastic, just so we don't die, which is nice. Power supply. It's tiny, teeny tiny. Five volts at 7.2 amps. That's 37, what's 30, 37, 38. Hey Siri, what's five times 7.2? 36, wow, that's embarrassing. They're like, uh-uh, spicy bits stay on the inside. I think the trick is to bridge your fingers over this capacitor. Just kidding. I am gonna need to disassemble this further, otherwise we're not gonna see a darn thing. That's this little tiny daughter board for our infrared blaster. Aha, this is interesting. So this is our Broadcom antenna. This is handling the wifi for this device, which supported 802.11, A, B, G, and N. It is using the kind of, Entire front metal part of the device as an amplifier antenna. Anyway, it goes to this card that is actually connecting to the device via mini PCIe. This slot became crucial later on for all mods because there was a device called the Crystal HD. It was a decoder card that would replace this wifi card and offload much of the H.264 decoding. It has HDMI 1.3, but it's hardware limited. So you add more powerful hardware to handle some of that decoding You've got 1080p, pretty cool. Wow, lttstore.com, what incredible bit length. I should probably remove the CMOS battery because there's no way that thing's still good. There's a little bit of thermal interface material, just thermal compound right there, right there, and right there that is directly touching the chassis. So this top thing is all aluminum, which is interesting. It's not one piece. So this exterior frame is milled and then this is an insert. What is this? You look through and that's just a cable pass through deep inside that channel is the antenna board that's just directly attached to this plastic top. Pretty simple man. This little guy, this is actually our CPU, an Intel Pentium M Crofton chip running at just one gigahertz. Its base clock is actually 1.5, but it's underclocked because while this is an x86 desktop class processor, they just don't have the thermal headroom or the power consumption requirements to run this thing full hog. And I guess the cut down version of macOS that they're running didn't really need it either. They wanted to use just one fan that was really quiet and this was not really cooling the CPU or the GPU at all. Pretty much just the power supply, and that's paired with a super wimpy little GPU. This is an NVIDIA GeForce GO 7300 with just 64 megabytes of GDDR3 NV RAM. It is a laptops-grade graphics chip, but a pretty low-end laptop at that. Remember, this thing was only $299. And then over here, well, You've got another reminder of price. We've got our RAM modules. There's four of them, but in aggregate, they give us just 256 megabytes of DDR2 SD RAM. Very unimpressive, even for 2007, but they modified macOS pretty heavily to make it work because that was actually below macOS's minimum system requirements for the era. But again, had a price target to hit. And then this little guy right here, this is our Intel. 945 GUX Express chipset, and then our Southbridge as well. It's the same that was found in MacBooks of the era. And well, that's pretty much it. I mean, it's not. There's a ton of other components on here for audio and for Toslink and all sorts of crap, but I don't understand it and I don't give a crap because it doesn't matter. You know, the jump from x86 to ARM between this Apple TV and its successor was a pretty big leap, but it's nothing like the leap we've seen in display technology. Screens have gotten insanely good, and even projectors. Which brings me to today's sponsor, Valerian and the VisionMaster Pro 2. Look, most projectors under three grand, they've got to compromise somewhere. Either they're bright, but they spill all of that light onto the blacks of the scene, making for a kind of grayish image, or they've got decent contrast, but they can't handle a room with any ambient luminance. But not the Pro 2. Thanks to its enhanced black-level technology, which does real-time frame analysis, modifying the laser's active output, it achieves a shocking 15,000 to 1 contrast ratio. That's 15 times better than most consumer projectors. And when paired with a 3000 iso-lumen RGB laser, the result is an image with all of the benefits of projection, with few of the downsides. Then there's the color. The Pro 2 is ISF-certified with 110% Rec.2020 color gamut coverage, which is wider than most TVs. So whether you're watching Dolby Vision content, IMAX-enhanced films, or HFR gaming, the color accuracy is legitimately impressive. But here, honestly, is what sold me. The practical stuff. Optical throw from 0.9 to 1.5x throw ratios means that you can enlarge or shrink your image without resolution loss, crucial for flexible room setups. And with auto screen fit, keystone correction, and obstacle avoidance, it means setup takes minutes instead of hours. And because this runs Google TV with built-in apps, you're not dealing with the nightmare that this one created. Valerian is running a Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion. Purchase a Pro 2 now and get a high-end projection screen, plus their 4.1.2 wireless surround sound system, Or buy the projector by itself and save $700. Check the links in the video description. The Apple TV's biggest limitation was that even though it was a computer, it really didn't act like one. You couldn't purchase from the iTunes Store on the Apple TV itself. You couldn't directly download the content you had purchased. You couldn't even stream it from your computer initially. Everything was handled by iTunes and synced to the Apple TV, kind of like a wireless iPod. You couldn't just buy a movie and start watching. You had to buy it on your computer. Wait for it to download, then wait for it to sync to your Apple TV in its entirety, and then you could start playing. It was probably just faster to go to Blockbuster and rent a movie than to do so on the Apple TV. So at Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs announced the Take-Two update. So named because, well, frankly, it was an admission that they had missed the mark. The update brought direct movie rentals from the Apple TV itself. At the same time, movie rentals had become a thing on iTunes. No longer was a computer required. And while you still had to download the content from the iTunes Store in its entirety before you could watch it, there was no real streaming, they did bring local streaming over your network directly from your Mac for the stuff that was already stored on your computer. And the interface also moved from text-based to poster-based, much like what we're used to today, and added a flurry of services not present initially, like podcasts, photos, and even YouTube. It was a course correction that transformed the Apple TV from an iTunes accessory to a standalone streaming box. But that, of course, did not stop tinkerers from adding even more stuff. One of the most popular options of the era was ATV Flash from the folks at Firecore, developers of the popular Modern Infuse app. This paid shareware brought a bunch of features to the native Apple TV interface. Streaming files over a network share, using that USB port for external storage and media playback, playing DVD files and other formats not supported by the Apple TV. They added a web browser, air control, which was like a gyroscope-powered Wii remote for your TV, and a heck of a lot more. Another option was OSMC, an open-source Debian Linux-based Kodi shell that brought a new UI, support for tons of file formats, and its own proprietary app store. Proprietary open source. And open-sourcely proprietary apps, you get the idea. The company is actually still around today. Kept afloat, it would appear, by selling their own streaming box, which is wild. Maybe I'll have to buy one of those and try it out. Let me know in the comments below. And they also support the Raspberry Pi platform. The first-gen Apple TV is no longer supported, but was kept supported until the end of 2017. Not a bad run for such a weird little device. But the most exciting, of course, is this. Installing macOS... wrong drive. This. Installing Mac OS X. This USB drive is imaged with the full version of Mac OS X Leopard, the same that the Apple TV would be updated to run natively with the Take-Two software, or in the case of mine, shipped with from the factory, just with a bunch of parameters disabled. Worth a note, given that this computer has but one USB port, we have to use a hub. We can either choose to write over the top of our Apple TV's operating system on the internal hard drive, or we can just boot from the USB. I'm gonna do that. I've got my USB drive in, I've got Leopard, and to my understanding, it's gonna go into recovery mode? Back in the day, you could just boot straight off of USB, so I think it should just take us, is it on? If I bite really hard into this cable, I can find out, but. Oh, and it's already beach balling, that's a good sign. Oh, yeah, yeah, the intro! There was nothing better than getting a brand new Mac and just seeing this video the first time you opened it. It was so much better than now, where it's like, welcome to the setup, you must set, this was fun. This is playful. We're in space. Oh, in just a few steps, you can register your Apple products, set up your computer and sign up for a .Mac membership. No, are you kidding me? You have to do this? First name, Big Chungus. Big boy lane. State, Alabama, of course. Email address, if you have one. I don't, never been on the internets. Tim Cook's from Alabama, isn't he? Oh my gosh, this is slow. This is slow. Let's change my desktop. Clownfish, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, nice, nice, nice. Display the CPU menu meter. Okay, so it's at 4% utilization right now. What happens when I go back to the root? 54% utilization just to open up a menu. iTunes is gonna melt this thing. 84, 97, 99. Dashboard, oh, okay. Low key, I miss dashboard. Widgets are great, but like putting them on the desktop is not cool and it looks convoluted and just messy. I love just being able to Boom, widgets. Are you kidding me? Look at that effect. You drop the window and liquid glass, boring as hell. Make no mistake, it's better than what we had. But this, I mean, come on, that's sick. And the notes, it actually looks like a sticky note. Hello, son. Hi, daddy. Let's open up applications. Yeah, boy. Y equals two X squared plus three. Oh, should we do something else that insults my intelligence? Whoa, yeah. I think that's what you're supposed to do, right? Immediately expose your queen? Oh, that little horse he took. And now he's gonna go right there and take my bishop. I know what that's called. Methinks a chess player we have. How's that doing with to the CPU? That's pretty intensive. If you thought that was crazy, just wait, because as of this year, 2025, you can now install Windows NT on the first generation Apple TV, and not just Windows 2000 or XP or even Vista, but Windows 8 and even Windows 10. This madness was done by DistroHopper, who made an awesome, if frankly, a bit above my pay grade video about how he was able to pull his feet off. And thanks to his awesome documentation and guide, we can do this too. I picked Windows XP because how could I not? It was my first exposure to Windows, which as a lifelong Mac kid, totally melted my brain and made me look like a stupid little troglodyte in front of my third grade computer class. All right, time for Windows. This was actually kind of a pain in the butt. I had to take out the IDE hard drive and I had to directly write the entire operating system to disk because it's not bootable because it was never supposed to boot. Hopefully it works. There's life. Welcome to Windows, what does XP stand for? It stands for Windows Experience. Experience what? Pain and suffering, oh gosh, no matter where I go. Let me put it this way. I'm not an idiot. I'm fairly academically, I've done things, but I don't do like the traditionally smart things. Like I don't watch Star Trek. I didn't know you could do this. Yeah, boy, bring back the Windows 95 vibe or Windows 98. Didn't they look the same? You didn't have to use an Add a Printer Wizard on Mac OS. There's better games on here than on the Mac. That was the one thing Windows was good for. Pinball. Yeah, boy. This thing is warm. Do you have to use the mouse? It's not WASD. Player controls. Right table bump. What does that even mean? Like slapping the table? Management comes and yells at you. I know my controls. I'm going to do so good. Heck yeah. Oh no, I think I like the Apple TV operating system best. So let's plug this thing back in and see if it's done. All right, I have to think it's synced now. Let's try it. It's an MP4. There's H.264 decoders in here. I'm installing Linux on this freaking thing. This is ridiculous. Uh, what was this video supposed to be about again? Oh, right, yeah, sales told the story. About 256,000 Apple TV units moved in the first six months. Not very good. Maybe one to two million total before Apple decided that it had moved on, and Jobs continued to refer to the Apple TV as a hobby for years, and he meant it. It wasn't until September 2010 that Apple would finally release the second-generation Apple TV, completely rebooting the concept and what the device was meant to be. They ditched the hard drive For pure streaming, they switched from x86 to ARM, from macOS to iOS. They shrunk it down to a tiny puck, dropped the price to $99, and built in Netflix and YouTube from day one. This new device, finally fulfilled the promise that the original had failed to deliver on. It established what streaming boxes would become. But here is what's wild. While Apple created the blueprint that every streaming box and smart TV manufacturer would copy for what the TV would be, Apple failed to capitalize upon what would be on the TV. They spent years pushing iTunes rentals at five to six dollars per movie, while Netflix proved that Frankly, people wanted unlimited streaming for $8 to $10 per month. The App Store didn't arrive until 2015. Apple TV didn't launch until 2019, and by then, Netflix had dominated for a decade. Apple set the entire industry up, showed everyone what the future could be, and then they let Netflix own the content, Roku own the affordable hardware, Samsung and LG own the built-in software, and while they've recovered with Apple TV, which admittedly has won a lot of Emmys and Oscars, most people watch that Apple TV content On their TV's crappy built-in software, the Apple TV hardware remains a niche product reserved for Apple enthusiasts, home theater geeks, and peculiar people like me. Probably people like you, too. That's it. That's the Apple TV. Farewell and goodbye. Thanks for watching, and as always, stay snazzy.