XBMC for your Mac

Posted May 12th 2008 6:30PM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: macs hacks

XBMC (formerly Xbox Media Center) has always been a popular choice for retiring an original Xbox. Maybe people install it for lack of something better to do or maybe it's the pride in having better media support than the 360. The XBMC team has found another device that has a pretty weak television experience, the Mac. Lifehacker took the latest XBMC for OSX beta build for a run now that it supports remote controls. It seems like a much more functional than Apple's built in Front Row. There are a few things that don't quite work yet, which you can find in the FAQ. We're definitely going to try this on our old Mac mini... once we upgrade it to Leopard, which is an unfortunate caveat that might prevent people from running XBMC on legacy hardware. There is no Apple TV support planned because of limited horsepower and the hacking hurdles that might be required. If you're interested in repurposing your old Xbox with XBMC, check out Lifehacker's install guide.

Reader Comments

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1. Actually putting this on an AppleTV would make it even more awesome.

Posted at 6:56PM on May 12th 2008 by AndrewNeo

2. This is based on the Linux port work. I was gifted and AppleTV by a friend and run XBMC on a minimal Ubuntu install. Requires a little kernel hacking but its nice to have a machine thats not as loud as my Xbox next to the TV.

Posted at 7:45PM on May 12th 2008 by mevans

3. The Linux port came first, this is a port of that one. Runs quite well on Ubuntu. http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52

Posted at 11:05PM on May 12th 2008 by BLKMGK

4. You can follow the progress of the Mac port on my blog: http://www.osxbmc.com

Posted at 11:29PM on May 12th 2008 by Elan

5. For people with older hardware this will only work on Intel hardware. no PPC

Posted at 7:44AM on May 13th 2008 by cy1701

6. Gutted that it only runs on INTEL, thought my powerbook 1Ghz was gunna have a new lease of life for a second :-(

Posted at 7:55AM on May 13th 2008 by DJ-Q

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