Apple TV Already Being Hacked

TunesBoy writes "Only a couple of days after being shipped, the Apple TV is already being modified in a variety of ways. A thread at Something Awful discusses installing VLC, and a dedicated site, AppleTVHacks.net, has appeared and is cataloging hacks including a hard-drive upgrade tutorial. Did Apple intend for the Apple TV to be so easy to upgrade and hack?"

Oh yeah...

[MrCoke]

Now I'm definatly buying one...

It's cheap, runs OS X and can decode HD. Excellent deal.

Intentionally, or just not-unintentionaly?

[White Shade]

I don't think it really matters whether apple "intended" it to be easy to hack, I think it's more of the fact that every single piece of "cool" hardware with the potential for added functionality has been hacked or broken within an extremely short amount of time. Maybe rather than intending it to be easy to hack, Apple instead decided to not spend as much money on implementing all kinds of crazy protection schemes, thus allowing a higher profit margin. Which, in my mind, makes a hell of a lot of sense! :

It does seem like the norm these days is for companies to build equipment with huge amounts of power, but then they lock it down in an effort to.. protect. .. something... PSP for example; I don't know exactly what the point of locking it down was, but obviously it didn't help much. Kinda like anti-features, or un-products; you have all this potential and you lock it down. Lucky for us, apple isn't quite so far up their own butts as Sony and whatnot are, so we have a sweet new product that we can do sweet stuff on without having to go through hoops to crack it! :)

Go with the flow

[Joebert]

Did Apple intend for the Apple TV to be so easy to upgrade and hack?

I don't think it was intent to "be easy to upgrade & hack" as it was realizing how much time & resources get wasted by other companies trying to achieve somthing that's not possible.

Will it stay open?

[solevita]

I think that's the important question. If all rev2 models will only run Apple signed binaries, then we'll know Apple's intentions.

It's tempting to buy one now in case they decide to toughen it all up in the future. And that's my tip for any device you may want to hack sometime in the future.

Double whammy in Apple's favor

[localroger]

One thing people might be missing is that one of the reasons the Apple TV is so cheap is that they aren't paying any of the licensing fees that manufacturers have to in order to support other formats. Much of the cost of your DVD player, for example, goes not into the hardware but to the folks who license the formats it supports -- JPG, MP3, CD audio, and of course DVD (and some of those license also include stupid requirements like Macrovision on the output, which is ANOTHER license).

Here, Apple is only supporting formats THEY own, so they can spend the money on the hardware. Hacking it only drives up their market share, and to the complaint that people are watching all these unlicensed formats on it Apple can say "Hey, we didn't do it." But you still bought a box from them.

Re:Will it stay open?

[ScrewMaster]

Kinda like Linksys did with their WRT54-series WAPs. Fortunately, they had to good sense to realize they were costing themselves money, and put out a hacker-friendly version. I understand that the PSP/X-Box business model of selling the hardware at a loss with the intent to recoup losses in software sales really motivates manufacturers to keep their products from being purchased for other purposes. I mean, if you buy an X-Box and put Linux on it and never buy a game, you just got yourself a cheap computer at Microsoft's expense (not that I have any particular problem with that ... it's your property, and they chose to sell it to you at a loss.) But there's no real reason for a vendor whose profit comes from hardware sales to attempt to predetermine what software runs on that hardware. Well, not in the $50 consumer-grade market anyway.

Unless, of course, you're an Apple Computer with the obvious intent of becoming the 21st century king of content distribution. You probably wouldn't want people hacking into your real-time swarming video distribution system getting movies and TV shows for free. This apparent friendliness to the hacker underground may just be a ploy to get as many of the things out there as possible, by eliminating complaints that were common to late-generation Tivos and Dish Network products. They can always lock it up later.

Time will tell.

Re:Awesome!

[dr.badass]

I think that apple could make a much better set-top box, with TV Tuner, big hard drive (at least 300 GB) and a remote, and an application like MythTV or SageTV.

In other words: by making it entirely different. This is the same argument that comes up every time Apple releases anything. Why a TV tuner? If I'm downloading content, I don't need one. If I'm not, why do I need a device to help me play downloaded content? Why not just get a TiVo?

Re:Why don't I just buy a 360?

[nuzak]

I'm not an idiot, Apple.

You're not in AppleTV's target demographic then.

Re:Why don't I just buy a 360?

[limecat4eva]

And for all those bulletpoint features, the one thing still desperately lacking is the one Apple has down pat: Good taste.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just rip your DVDs into a more standard format? There's no good reason to use DivX.

Re:Why don't I just buy a 360?

[-noefordeg-]

360 is UGLY!
It makes more noise than a medium sized air craft at take off. -Seriously!

Re:Intentionally, or just not-unintentionaly?

[blakmac]

Given the origins of Apple, I'd hardly think they would be completely *against* hacking anything...

Re:Why don't I just buy a 360?

[tuxedokamen]

Because the 360 is a great gaming machine that happens to play multimedia, and some people simply have no need of that. I personally don't (cannot, for epilepsy reasons) play games, nor does anyone else in my house, so buying a device with a primary functionality I'd never use would not make sense. I've gotta think the no-gaming-multimedia-streaming demographic is pretty big. Also, people who already own a game console they're very happy with but that doesn't do multimedia streaming stuff should just be able to buy the Apple TV or something like it, instead of another console they don't really want to use for gaming.

Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please!

[Ilgaz]

Buy Mac Mini, enjoy a real computer which connects to your HDTV. I would also recommend El Gato USB stuff coming with EyeTV. I plan to get a firewire blu-ray player for it when Lacie like companies figure there are people who needs "player", not "recorder".

Apple TV or Apple is not to blame, they are not selling a computer or suggest it is a computer, it is a high tech "deck" which happens to run OS X inside to do its job.

Obligatory linux comment

[confused one]

But does it run Linux!?

Ok, more to the point: I look at this and see more than a DVR. I see a $299 (very) small form factor computer with a Pentium M (per Anandtech), 100base-T ethernet and wi-fi. $299 is dirt cheap and there's a lot you can do with a lowly Pentium M... It doesn't have to run Linux as long as it's installed OS can be modified.

Smaller, quieter. outputs, more dedicated to use

[SuperKendall]

So for only $100 more than the Apple TV, you get a device that is:

1) Much larger
2) Much noisier
3) Lacks HDMI output
4) has media support as an addition, not as the primary foucs of the device.

The two are almost totally seperate devices. I'll grant that if you are getting a 360 already then you have many features which are duplicated by the Apple TV. But the AppleTV is aiming at a much broader market than a game console (and this includes the PS3) can really reach I think.

Furthermore by focus, I really mean focus - as in the AppleTV is dedicated to ease in delivering internet video to your TV. Not even just any video like DVD or newer HD disc formats, but just IP video. That kind of focus usually results in a simpler system that is more appealing to people in that is does what it is meant to do very well.

Re:LOL:The Mac Demographic

[malevolentjelly]

It's more expensive. Of course its user base comes from higher-income households, on average. It is THE suburban daughter PC.

Other jackass-

Macs do not make you creative.... it's just a goddamn white-plasticky computer. Its operating system is aesthetically-pleasing. Christ, you guys are worse than scientologists.

Apple is more than just a computer- it's a personality disorder.

I've got a mac laptop and a Vista PC. Somehow I am able to be productive on both without grossly changing my personality.

THINK FOR YOURSELVES, PEOPLE. It's a MARKETING CAMPAIGN.

Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't make sense to me. But then again, I've got better uses for my free time than watching TV.

Re:Obligatory linux comment

[snuf23]

"I look at this and see more than a DVR."

I look at it and see no tuner or program guide or recording capability. I'm not sure how that equals more than a DVR. It's not even comparable to a DVR.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

iTMS (iTunes Music Store) wasn't created until the iPod was already popular. Of the 4,000 songs currently on my iPod, around 10 were bought at iTMS (the rest were ripped from CD). Rippings DVDs is not as easy or popular as ripping CDs, which means downloading from iTMS becomes much more important to the Apple TV's success.

Re:Awesome!

[jonwil]

I suspect the limited format support has to do with:
1.not wanting to pay royalties for formats and codecs they don't need
2.not wanting to take up space on the unit for formats and codecs they don't need
and 3.possibly not wanting to support certain formats seen more on pirated or illegally copied content than on legitimate content.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Greed always beats malice.

[Kadin2048]

How much does everybody wanna bet that Apple scraped and scraped away at OS X to make sure it could run in as little RAM as possible?

I'm absolutely sure they did. They would have been stupid not to.

Why? Because they wanted to make sure that if anyone found a way to run "real" OS X on it, it would be close to useless because of the small amount of RAM. Sigh.

An interesting conspiracy theory, but here's one that's slightly easier to believe: they minimized the amount of RAM ... because RAM costs money. Given that they had probably already decided on the price point (based on what people will pay for such a thing), the more they can cut down on the hardware, the bigger the profit margin.

Quicktime IS that dumb-looking player

[TechnicalFool]

I'm not paying money to have full screen video when I can use any number of other video players for free. True I can't play a MOV file easily without it, but I don't consider that to be a loss. Maybe on OS X it's good, because it forms the backbone of the Mac's entire video system in a similar way to Windows and Media Player, but outside OS X it really is that dumb, crappy video player that hits me with nag screens about "Going Pro" every time I use it.

(Don't get me started on the Macromedia Shockwave Flash player...)

Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please!

[Yvan256]

Apple TV is neat and all, but I still want to record most of my shows myself.

I think you're missing the point. What Apple are trying to do is to switch you from your current content provider to the iTunes Store.

The Apple TV may not look too interesting in the USA with the many content providers and TIVOs and all, but here in Canada, it will be a very interesting choice. Here's why.

Just as a lot of people stopped buying CDs and now buy single tracks from the iTunes Store, some people will drop their cable/satellite and buy content à-la-carte from the iTunes Store. And frankly, I'm one of them. Cable or satellite costs too much, most providers lock you in so you can't use 3rd party decoders/PVRs (TIVO? You wish!), they force you to get channels you don't want (stupid "channels packages" and/or limited à-la-carte choices) and without their expensive PVRs the whole VHS + decoder box makes it hard to record stuff.

I can't wait for TV shows to be available on the Canadian iTunes Store, so I can drop the monopolistic content providers.