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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?"
That way they'll save a lot on support (you hacked it, then we don't support you). And later it'll be a lot easier to "open it up" to comply with EU ruling ;)
When I saw the AppleTV announced, my reaction was lukewarm, mostly due to limited format support. Apple can get away with it on iPods, because you don't generally put every piece of video you have on your iPod. Conversion isn't as much of a hassle as a result. With the AppleTV, you might as well stream every piece of video to your TV, and format support kills that. I'd rather get Core Duo Mac Mini that has more available options (like 1080p playback), add some adapters, and hook that up instead. Now that the AppleTV can support more formats, I must admit that it's looking like a more attractive option, although I'd still probably cough up the extra for a Mini.
It's not very hard to forsee hacking of a small silent computer in a settopbox housing. There are countless sites that try to DIY such a thing. Now what happens if a popular brand introduces such a thing at an affordable price?
They will not sell that much more hardware directly, but the PR image they create with it is worth a lot, and all they had to do is produce something decent.
Linksys is a very good past example of this: their wrtg routers were nice to modify and already ran linux. I bought one for myself to play with and later advised my brother to get that brand. Marketing is easy if your customers start doing the selling themselves.
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"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." -- Mark Twain
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! :
.. 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! :)
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.
ìì!
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.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
MS had to be careful with their XBox, because they were adopting the Sony approach: sell the hardware at a loss, and make money on the software (games) afterwards.
Historically, Apple don't sell at a loss. I'm pretty sure that (even at the low price of $300 for a 1GHz/256/40G PC in that form factor) Apple will be making money off this - they don't care if you hack it.
In fact, the more hackable it is, the better - jo(e) public buys it so (s)he can watch their iTMS movies on the big screen, the geeks buy it to hack it. Box numbers go up either way, which helps Apple PR, and helps them persuade people they have *the* viable platform for the home.
I wonder how long it'll be before the USB-2 port is made available (it is running OSX, after all), at which point you get an external 1T drive on it as well, in one of the mac-mini style enclosures...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Linux wasn't hacked onto the PS3, Sony got it there.
And as for the PS3 being "popular"...
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.
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.
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I'm not an idiot, Apple.
For a meager $399, I could get an Xbox360 with all these features AND dvd playback. It even does Hi-def downloads, Live Arcade games, and awesome AAA titles (GTA IV, Devil May Cry 4, (possibly) MGS and FF). That's got a remote, Windows Media connectivity, etc- and is expandable to play HD-DVD, potentially Blu-Ray in the future if it "wins".
It'll even play music off your iPod. Unless you buy ALL your tv off of iTunes, why would you get this? I'd just get a 360 for this money. Both are simple to use, also.
You can probably rip those videos into WMV if you really set upon it.
Clearly, either of these devices can be modded- but I'm talking from a consumer standpoint.
over at awkwardtv.org we're basically doing the same thing. wiki at http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/
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.
According to the specs, the Apple TV supports AAC, MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV, MPEG-4, H.264, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG.
The only format Apple owns is Apple Lossless audio. The others are industry standards. AAC, Advanced Audio Coding, is part of the MPEG-4 specfication although I belive it doesn't need to be licensed (unlike MP3 which requires a per-machine license). MPEG-4 (aka MPEG-4 part 2) and H.264 (aka AVC: Advanced Video Coding aka MPEG-4 part 10) also require licenses.
I'm not sure if JPEG requires a license, probably depends on the lawsuit of the day.
I want to see somebody make a USB2 TV tuner dongle for the Apple TV, or, failing that, an entire mini-DVR that provides its video to the Apple TV over a USB2 mass storage interface.
Apple TV is neat and all, but I still want to record most of my shows myself.
To illustrate my point: when the studios started selling TV series episodes on DVD, I didn't throw out my VCR and Tivo! I do continue to buy new movies and TV series on DVD, but I also still do a lot of recording of my own. One of my TVs has a built-in VCR that still gets a lot of use, as does my Tivo, especially for timeshifting 1 - 48 hours until I have time to watch my favorite shows... many of which I enjoy, but wouldn't want to buy on a commerical full season DVD.
Does that make any sense? Or am I the only one who still records?
This "install VLC" article discusses the installation of an SSH server and Perian, NOTHING about VLC.
Indeed, I started following the SA thread yesterday, and there was nothing about installing VLC on the device there.
The people behind the SA thread have started a Wiki, which also deserves to be in the summary.
I'll be following this closely - I was thinking of picking up a Mini (if they ever slap a Core 2 Duo in the fucking thing), but the Apple TV would be sufficient if it'll play DivX/XviD.
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(s)h(it).
That is why they made the WRT54GL, you pay slightly more to have more NVRAM and it still runs Linux (the L in the model number is for Linux)
The change for the v.5 and 6 was to save money on the parts, not so that we couldn't hack it.
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
I don't get why anyone is buy these things the Galaxy IPTV looks about the same, is the same size, but has support for XVID and DIVX. They cost about half as much as the AppleTV does on ebay.
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.
Do inquisitive hardware hacking geeks have enough financial clout to significantly affect sales numbers and therefore make themselves an important consideration in product design, testing, and manufacturing? Probably, and the probability is probably growing.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I had the same problem with Video on iTunes. After a little searching about I found someone that recommended playing them in QuickTime. It was a hundred times better. The same video on the same system played flawlessly. You might give it a shot.
Will
The WRT54GL was an obvious money grab from them. They knew that people wanted to hack their routers, so they stripped down the WRT54G then released the 54GL, which was basically the same as the old 54G, for $20 more.
I don't know about you, but the basement I live in is more than 20 feet long.
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?
... 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.
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
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Unless cracking the box open requires some particular cleverness.
Installing a program on a hard drive on a computer that's got absolutely no protections against installing programs on it hardly qualifies as a "hack".
Looking at the forums pointed to from this story, it's amazing how naive a lot of these wannabe "hackers" are. You've got folks asking, apparently seriously, whether you can run Power PC binaries on the AppleTV. I mean, really...
There are MUCH more interesting tricks the AppleTV and its baby copy of OS X might make possible.
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...)
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They can create a $299 box with TV-out that has a discrete graphics controller built in, but they can't put one into one SINGLE model of Mac Mini? Wow.
Not so hard to believe.
The Dothan ULV is a chip Intel sells solely for "embedded" applications these days (similar in performance and power enveloper to AMD's Geode NX). Core Duo processors in the Mac Mini cost quite a bit more.
The Apple TV also includes a 40GB 2.5" 4200 RPM hard drive, which costs a lot less than the baseline Mini's 60GB 5400 RPM drive. Pair that with the smaller base memory (256MB versus 1GB), and you can see how they can sell it for so little.
As for the discrete video, well...the GeForce 7300 Go is a slower-clocked version of the desktop 7300 LE (very cheap). It is only included because PureVideo is so much better than Intel's Clear Video (for deinterlacing and scaling), and it also accelerates video decoding. With only 64MB of slow DDR2 on a 64-bit bus, it would choke on most modern (released in the last 3 years) games.
If you wanted a solid discrete graphics solution for the Mac Mini, you'd have to go with something beefier (like the GeForce 7300 GT or Radeon x1300 Pro) plus double the memory (128MB), or it just wouldn't be worth the effort.
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And occasionally whores for Karma.