Autoblog

We've seen our fair share of vehicles whose obsessive diligent owners have chosen to integrate their favorite OS into their whips. While most of us are content to bring our iPods along for the journey, what happens when you put a professional on the job?

Mattes Interieurtechnik specializes in only the most luxurious interior accoutrements. Previous in-car upgrades run the gamut from a mild Cooper S trim job to a full on redo of a Porsche Carrera GT. The ride that caught our attention though was this 2006 Mercedes CLS. Before the interior was draped in its cream-colored leather, a 17" iMac was installed behind the front seats. At just over an inch thick, the fully integrated screen rests cleanly on the transmission tunnel, while back seat passengers utilize a wireless keyboard and mouse to operate this mobile mac-o-phile's dream rig. Any concerns about theft are nullified as the entire unit can be removed in under a minute.

We've reported in the past about hacking one's Prius in the search for higher mileage, but what about what about diving into the hybrid's matrix of bits and bytes in search of a more enlightening computing experience? (In the interest of full disclosure, I'm blogging this on a Powerbook G4, have an iMac G5 in the other room and am at the mercy of no less than three iPods.)

Regardless of your operating system preference, one has to appreciate the hack job of Jeremy Kusnetz, a systems architect from Leesburg, VA. Kusnets states his original motivation was to devise a way to take his entire iTunes library on the road with him and have and also for his young daughter to watch DVDs on long trips. I won't embarrass myself by attempting to explain how he did it, but the result is a Mac Mini installed in a cubbyhole of the Prius's center console. Not content using the Apple Remote to control the interface of Front Row on the Mac, Kusnetz programmed the Prius's touchscreen to handle commands for the computer.

You can check out a video of the MacPrius in action here on the designer's website.

[Source: Kusnetz.net]