I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii • Hacker News Board

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#81

Post by blkhp19 » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

tverbeure wrote: post #43

blkhp19 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only tested on Safari - whoops! Fixed now.

Minor usability comment: the screenshots are too small to be readable. Whenever that's that case in my blog posts, I make those screenshots clickable and add (Click to enlarge) below it, to make it easier for readers to see the image are original resolution. In markdown, I do that like this: [![Image comment](image_url.png) ](image_url.png) (Of course, I can also right-click and do "Open image in new tab", but that's…

Images now expand when clicked - thanks for the feedback!

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#82

Post by bombcar » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

blkhp19 wrote: post #52

glenstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost think such projects are worth it just to immortalize comments like these. There's a whole psychology of wrongness that centers on declaring that not-quite-impossible things will definitely never happen, because it feels like principled skepticism.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a very tiny part of my motivation :)

It's a variation of "because it's there" when asked why would you climb some giant mountain.

Impressive work! Now run Dolphin on it. ;)

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#83

Post by jedberg » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

guyzero wrote: post #17

In addition to the incredible engineering work here the OP casually flexes by showing the development happening _in an economy class airplane seat_.

And the guy next to him is just staring at his phone, probably thinking, "I'm not even gonna ask".

Although if it were me I'd probably annoy the heck out of him asking why he had a Wii on the airplane!

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#84

Post by kogasa240p » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

Wonder if it can happen on the Wii U

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#85

Post by zadikian » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

nickpeterson wrote: post #78

The one that really bugs me is the Apple TV. It would be a great little box to use for terminals/thin client style work and there are a ton of old cheap ones. Having a $50 dollar used box that was low power and could run OSX would be great.

The original one does run a modified OS X Tiger. I jailbroke it a while ago to run custom stuff, but didn't do much with that. Just remember being able to VNC or SSH into it.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#86

Post by zadikian » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

CrazyStat wrote: post #68

WorldPeas wrote: post #53

Given that the original Apple TV ran on a modified version of macos, what are the chances one could turn an old wii into an Apple TV..? EDIT: also, I just noticed on a second pass the system is addressing 78mb of ram, potentially meaning the ram spans the gddr3 and sram, I'm amazed this works as well as it does with seemingly heterogeneous memory

Apple TV came after the switch to Intel processors, so you would have to have some kind of reverse-Rosetta layer to run it on a PowerPC Wii.

Tiger had a native PPC version too

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#87

Post by jjice » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

frakt0x90 wrote: post #18

If all the AI stories on this site were replaced with amazing stuff like this, the world would be a better place.

I probably have rose colored glasses, but this is what I associate with Hacker News when I first started coming to this site. Truly absurd projects for no reason other than the love of the game and detailed write ups.

I'm not an LLM post hater, but it definitely has been a bit draining lately. This is exactly what I love to see here.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#88

Post by steve1977 » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #36

Not only is this an insanely cool project, the writeup is great. I was hooked the whole way through. I particularly love this part: > At this point, the system was trying to find a framebuffer driver so that the Mac OS X GUI could be shown. As indicated in the logs, WindowServer was not happy - to fix this, I’d need to write my own framebuffer driver . I'm surprised by how well abstracted MacOS is (was). The I/O Kit…

I guess having targeted multiple architectures and in the case of OPENSTEP also operating systems early on certainly helped.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#89

Post by mackid » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

Congrats, great project and great writeup. That would have won MacHack back in the day.

Now that the MacBook Neo has an A18, I wonder if you could get MacOS running on an iPhone? :)

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#90

Post by k38f » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

Debugging kernel panics on a Wii in an economy seat is a level of focus I can't even imagine. Most people can't read a book on a plane without losing their place every 5 minutes.