Slashdot Mirror
AppleTV Runs iOS, Already Jailbroken
Wired has noted that "Soon, thanks to the tireless efforts of the iPhone Dev Team, you will be able to install apps on your AppleTV. An upcoming Jailbreak tool, called SHAtter, has already been used to unlock the new Apple TV's firmware." The units are supposedly now shipping. I have a lot of questions about the device (like how will it handle the photo screen saver if your local machines are offline) but hacking it might make the thing more usable (divx please, and how about letting my screen share my desktop to my TV?).
does it run ARM?
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
I see what you did there! You said he should have bought the white-walled tires, instead of the plain black ones if he wanted to have the +1 Ego boost.
Tragic, of course, that people would buy something so crippled and locked down they must "jailbreak" it to make it more useful.
Certainly this is effort better spent improving solutions that are more open from the get-go?
Does it bother anyone else that Apple products are so quickly hacked? I don't mean from a security standpoint, I mean because people feel the need to hack them so they can do what they want.
Doesn't that mean they should just buy something that isn't so limited in the first place? Or is this one of those "we buy a locked device because we want to hack it" sort of things...
Living With a Nerd
It's only "already jailbroken" because the same iOS 4.1 issue used with the iOS 4.1 jailbreak that has already been developed works on this device, which is also running iOS 4.1.
i have it set up with the photo screen saver and when local sources are offline it displays a black screen with small white text in the middle explaining the source is not available.
How much space is there for installing apps?
Like anyone can even know that
If you really want full control and open source, why not just get a cheap NetTop ? I just got a barebones dual core Atom 330 (looks like 4 threads) with NVidia ION GPU for $159 at NewEgg. It have DVI out, HDMI out, SATA, expandable memory, USB2.0, 802.11n (miniPCIe), etc. Fully configurable and very compact. If you get an AppleTV, you aren't going to get storage or tune / record capability (which you can do with a cheap USB tuner on a nettop).
What next, RealMedia and VQF support?
There's basically zero legal sources for DivX files, so why would Apple support that old format? H.264/AAC is the standard and has been for a few years already.
Even Handbrake dropped DivX support, for crying out loud.
I see what you did there! You said he should have bought the white-walled tires, instead of the plain black ones if he wanted to have the +1 Ego boost.
Why? Is he going to cruise the miracle mile?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Blizzard released some things in DivX. There may have been others.
-]Phreak Out[-
Technically there's tradeoff between meeting more obscure customer demand vs. safety issues. If a business refuses to serve the steak bloody rare, then they piss off the steak geeks and lose potential revenue. Yet if the business allows undercooked meat, they lose the safety net of well-done meat that protects their customers from e-coli and the resulting bad press and lawsuits.
The food safety engineer understands food and also understands there's no right answer to the question of allowing bloody rare steak; the company gives up one thing to get another thing. What it really boils down to is what side of the tradeoff he's on and what balancing of the food equation best serves the needs of the target audience.
The food geek only understand food; he doesn't understand the concept of tradeoff. He screams and howls that the steak is unfairly being crippled and that he's not getting it his way and his freedoms are getting infringed upon by "the man" because it's easier to understand the concept of the "man" than an equation that must be balanced on both sides to produce the best results for the target audience, which in the case of Burger King and their lawyers doesn't happen to be him.
Why would I want to hack on a platform specifically designed not to be hacked?
Because it's specifically designed not to be hacked. Duh. "Hacking" a device that's designed to be "hacked" isn't hacking. Adding a second hard drive or a new video card to your PC isn't hacking. Putting together a HeathKit isn't hacking. Installing Linux on a Windows box isn't hacking.
Turning a $10 transistor radio into a guitar fuzzbox is hacking. Using a Lunar lander for a return trip to earth, or putting a square peg in a round hole to keep people alive in it on the way, now THAT'S hacking at its finest.
Free Martian Whores!
Sure, but that doesn't mean I can't be critical of what I see as a growing trend.
I posted one comment, and this thread has exploded. Outside of it I've posted maybe two.
Except that Apple's pushing this exact same behavior with all of their other iOS devices while pushing ones like the iPad as a general purpose computing device. And at the same time, so many other manufacturers and OS vendors are happily following along behind them. And yeah, I can opt to not buy it. But that doesn't mean I should be forced to sit quiet while the market is flooded by locked down devices that displace and shrink the market for open hardware.
So when I ripped a good portion of my DVD collection to Xvid awhile back, that was illegal? I sure as hell don't think so.
The SHAtter exploit was used on an iPod touch to decrypt the AppleTV firmware. The AppleTV device has not yet been exploited - although it is likely susceptible to the same exploit. Once hackers get their hands on the device, they can try to use the exploit, then try to run jailbroken firmware on it. At this point, without knowing details of the SHAtter exploit, it's unclear to me whether/not that particular piece of code comes into play during a normal firmware update (since we don't know how the mini-USB port can be used yet - presumably "normal" code updates are done via wifi/Ethernet).