Apple TV Hacked

As expected, while some were reviewing the Apple TV box, others were taking it apart and figuring out how to make it do things it was not intended to.

The people over at Tutorialninjas.net have posted a step by step guide to taking apart the Apple TV and tweaking the software to remove the hurdles put in place by Apple. Of course, like all such first generation efforts, the process is quite long and does involve a lot of know-how in order to get right. Also it requires you to open up the box and removing the hard drive, which is not for the squeamish.

While the details of the process are unimportant, what matters is that total control of the machine was achieved. No longer limited to running Front Row, the little Apple TV box was made to run other applications such as iTunes and Firefox, not to mention games such as World of Warcraft. While such efforts will appeal to those with technical inclinations, for those who want an Apple TV for uses such as those advertised by Apple, it is worth mentioning that Third party video players were run on the box and xvid encoded movies were watched. Furthermore, it looks like with another few tweaks, it will be able to playback divx and WMV movies (Microsoft Windows Media Video 7 to 9) as well.

While this is certainly cause for excitement, such tweaks are still complex and not for everyone. Not only is input to the box crippled to the remote, meaning that such applications must be controlled remotely from another computer, but it still requires taking apart the entire thing.

Fortunately, it looks like work is already underway for a simple, USB based solution that will simply require you to pop in a memory stick in order to access all this functionality. That is, unless Apple decides to make an update that will break nay such efforts.