apple tv

Hacking was a term originally coined at MIT to descrive such classic pranks as emptying the deans office and reassembling it -- complete with rug -- in the middle of the frozen Charles River. (That illegal software thing is more properly called "cracking.") Hacking Apple TV is an entirely legal activity that makes it truly useful, starting with a bigger hard drive -- child's play for anyone reading this. A blog by the fine folks at makezine.com offer a fully illustrated tutorial called "Violating my Apple TV warranty in 4 easy steps."

Legal yes, warranty-voiding, yes, but seriously, dude. If you can find your way around a ribbon cable, you can do this. You should do this.

If you want to get really serious about hacking, like adding other applications (start with Firefox for browsing, Joost for free TV, and Quartz for added performance), the fine folks at the Tutorial Ninjas blog will happily help you out. Not child's play for everyone...but definitely a breeze for anyone who can use a command line in OS X.

This is just the very, very beginning of what's available from Apple TV hacks, with many more coming I'm sure. One of many blogs to keep up with Apple TV Hacks is (naturally enough) Apple TV Hacks. Another good one is AwkwardTV.

Note that ALL of these are blogs. When I tell people that virtually all of my time online NOT in The COW forums is at blogs, this kind of information is one of gazillions of reasons why. Blogs are where you'll find the best information breaking fastest -- one of gazillions of reasons why I'm so happy to see blogs at The COW.

Okay, final example of brilliant hacks presented via blogs, this time the Hack A Day blog. Decide in advance what you want to be drinking when you visit this page, because when you play the movie, you're going to laugh so hard that you'll eject said liquid through your nose. Appropriately enough, this hack is the robotic beer launching refrigerator. The movie takes a while to get interesting, but the accuracy tests will blow you away. THIS, friends, is a useful hack!

PS. re: MIT: you can get MIT's ENTIRE CURRICULUM, both undergrad and graduate, onine for free. It's the whole magilla: required reading lists, examples of student work, some (not all) classroom lectures, and more. Here's my pass/fail grading: the curriculum is awesome, but because MIT FAILS by only offering lectures in Real Media, you should PASS on those. But the curriculum is way cool.

CNN reports that Apple has started charging credit cards for the shipment of Apple TVs. They continue, "Analysts say it's likely to sell well initially." Wow. You think so? The same analysts believe that Apple has taken pre-orders for more than 100,000 units, and, well, since I read it on the internet, it must be true.

Blog pioneer (he was doing it 10 years before blogging had a name) Dave Winer reports that one of his readers says he got a notice from Apple that his has actually been shipped. I got Dave's link from NewTeeVee, who quotes Dina Kaplan of Blip.TV: “The impact of Apple TV is going to be pretty big.” You think?

I'm not mocking Apple TV, just the analysts. And not even all the analysts. Jonathan Hoopes is an analyst for ThinkEquity, and has been bullish on Apple for a long time. (He rates Apple a buy, with a target of $120/share. You can look it up.) He sent a letter to his clients with a slightly more articulate take on the potential impact of Apple TV:

"In addition to sharing digital content within the home, we believe investors should understand the value of the various potential business models that Apple TV could enable.

As a digital media content delivery vehicle positioned in users' living rooms, we think the AppleTV/iTunes combination could become as disruptive to legacy video purchase-and-consumption behavior as the iPod/iTunes combination has been to the traditional music business model."

Ah, disruption! Now we're talking.

Jeremy Horwitz adds another dimension to the picture:

Apple has quietly added an “Export to Apple TV” feature capable of creating high-definition videos viewable on the Apple TV accessory. Unlike Export to iPod, which currently creates sub-DVD-quality 640 by 480 videos,

Export to Apple TV creates not only full DVD-quality 720 by 404 videos, but also 1280 by 720 videos.

He's done a little experimenting with this, and observes that a 90-minute movie weighs in at about 3 gigs. That sounds about right, but it also sounds a little heavy for Apple TV's initial offering of a 20-gig hard drive. (Oops.)

Still, check this out: the video from Jeremy's experiments so far only plays back in iTunes! It seems to herald HD delivery through iTunes. I don't think our boy Hoopes was even aware of this when he wrote in the article linked above that Apple TV is poised to blow Netflix clear out of the water, and is a step away from torching TiVo too.

That said, Apple is quick to admit that the average iPod user has bought 20 tracks from the iTunes music store. Which suggests to me that the stunning majority of iPod users have bought nothing from iTMS.

So this is one area that Hoopes is clearly flat-out wrong. iTunes isn't disrupting the music industry's basic business model. I don't think it ever will. Disrupted the portable music player industry that iPod was so late to join? Absolutely.

Is it going too far to say that iPods have taken off because you don't need to buy anything from iTMS to get a dandy experience? iTunes is awesome software for ripping your entirely legally purchased CDs and elegantly getting them on your iPod.

Unlike the iPod, Apple TV will require payment to view content on a big screen. Apple can't include DVD ripping tools in its official software so you're going to be limited to viewing content purchased from the iTunes store.

That's Jason O'Grady, one of the hardest of the hardcore Mac users ever. Like Hoopes, I think he lets some of his arguments take him off course, but I think he's zeroed in on this: Apple TV takes off when I can use it for my media.

Anyway, we're about to find out, ain't we?

One of the favorite games of Mac Kremlinologists is looking under the hood of new releases to find "hidden" text strings for hints of what's coming. Monday's release of QuickTime 7.1 hints at a whopper: Apple TV could be doubling as a game hub.

What Apple has not yet said, but is quite apparent from Monday's iTunes release, is that Apple TV will also sport some rudimentary gaming capabilities. "Are you sure you want to sync games? All existing games on the Apple TV," reads a localized string file hidden in the software. Another reads, "Some of the games in your iTunes library were not copied to the Apple TV [...] because they cannot be played on this Apple TV."

 

In total, iTunes 7.1 includes a little over a dozen text strings relating to game management on the new Apple device. In addition to syncing, the strings offer user prompts for various other operations such as removing games, preventing unauthorized games from making the sync, and warning users when their Apple TV can no longer accept new games due to a lack of space.

 

Note that this is still a long way from becoming a full-bore gaming console a la the Wii, et. al. Instead, it looks like a way to sync your iTunes games with your Apple TV.

Wait, iTunes games? Apparently so. On the one hand, this suggests something pretty lightweight, not nearly as intense as a console experience. On the other hand, two developments shed still more light on this.

In an interview with Wired, the former general manager of Xbox's online download component now works for a gaming company in a role that includes porting games to new platforms:

It will be about taking the stable of franchises and games out of PopCap's studio and adapting, customizing it for different platforms -- adding multiplayer, new play modes, HD, customizing the user interface and display for Zune, ipod, Apple TV, Nintendo DS, PSP.

 

And how's this from Apple Insider?

Students at the Savannah College of Art and Design reported today receiving an e-mail from a recruiter working directly for Apple, Inc., who appears to be actively tracking down skilled graphics designers among those enrolled in the school's Fine Arts programs. Those hired for the summer program would be tasked with creating "consistent, high quality 3D and 2D art for games," the message said.