A December video tutorial teaching viewers how to modify a netbook to run Mac OS X has landed tech magazine Wired in hot water with Apple's legal department.

Wired's Brian X. ChenÂ postedÂ a video podcast to theÂ Gadget LabÂ blog on December 1st that demonstrated the installation of an "illegal, hacked version" of Mac OS X Leopard onto an MSI Wind netbook.

"I start out by telling you where to download the hacked operating system software," Chen wrote.Â "You'll also need to download and install a copy of OSX86 tools.Â Then I walk you through the steps of how to put the OS on a USB flash drive (at least 4GB) to copy it onto the netbook."

Just hours ago, ChenÂ sent an update to his Twitter account: "Just found out Apple is suing Wired for my video tutorial on hacking netbooks to run Mac OS X.Â One hell of a way to start off the day." It later turned out that Chen misunderstood the situation, and a formal complaint has not been lodged with the US court system.

Since then, copies of the video have disappeared one-by-one from the original entry at Wired's site and from YouTube. However, a lone copy of the video remained on the video sharing website as of press time, which can be seen below.



Mac OS X running on the hacked netbook.

Apple has most likely sent a cease-and-desist letter toÂ CondÃ© Nast Publications, Wired's parent company, rather than suing for monetary damages.Â The Cupertino-based Mac maker probably took issue with Chen's links and directions to websites where readers could download illegal hacked versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, although he did encourage viewers to compensate.

"It would be very polite to have your own purchased retail version of Mac OS X Leopard," Chen says in the video before giving the URLs.