The Rare Apple ...

Yesterday this auction popped up on eBay:

VERY RARE PROTOTYPE Apple Interactive Television Box

In June 2008, I did this story on my tech blog FixYourThinking:

Is The Apple Set Top Box A Prototype Or Is It Even Rare?

The majority of the units that are availible in the United States are NOT prototypes. They were actually used "in room" at hotels at Disneyland California - roughly 5000 units were distributed. There was never ANY intention for these to be availible to consumers. Most of the "rare" jargon was written by a guy who acquired a bunch of these and wanted to sell them on eBay a few years back.

What is rare (and is mentioned as "not included" in this auction) is the remote control that came with these units. The remote controls the MacTV and all Sony TVs.

If you'd like to see a detailed discussion of the Apple set top box look at this page on Apple Fritter.

Unlike the people in the Apple Fritter forum, I was able to get one of these working back in 1999 - I basically pulled all the data from a SCSI hard drive that was built into the unit - it was mostly all interactive shopping and park navigation at Disneyland.