It looks like Apple Core, LLC are selling a pre-built patch stick on their online store to allow you to hack your Apple TV. link: http://www.applecorellc.com/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=27
One has to question the legality of this? I mean, in order to hack your Apple TV, certain OS X system files are required to “enable” the device. I’m talking, files that are available from the Tiger operating system. I’m talking property of Apple Inc.
Now I COULD be wrong here. I mean, most of these files are easily downloadable from Apple’s own servers, by anyone from the public. The downloads are OS X and Apple TV updates which contain files that help hack an Apple TV. So is selling this software illegal? You be the judge.
I hacked a friends Apple TV not long ago, a version 1.1 It was going great for a while until it was accidentally updated by the wifey… damn.
So I spent half of Saturday hacking their v2.02 unit. it’s getting a little more complex as Apple works to prevent people from hacking them. I applied much the same technique as I did for my v2 ATV however a little more tweaking was required to get USB working correctly. (Mainly getting the right kernel and patching it with the right patches)
In the end after applying my own knowledge to the hack. I ended up using a neat little util that someone has put together to make it just really easy to enable USB.. check it out here
In my opinion, enabling the USB is the most important part of the hack. It means you can hook up a hell of a lot of hard disk to the Apple TV and not even worry about the internal drive. I like it! I have 1 Terabyte hooked up to my Apple TV, it’s just great.
It looks like another Apple TV update was made available today. There has been no reports of any noticeable changes with the exception of possibly faster menu/GUI and better YouTube viewing.
I hope to have more information on this soon..
Brandon Holland has just released Couch Surfer 0.3.
Here are some new features:
- accelerated scrolling holds up and down
- improved Bookmark support, now with support for adding current page
- history support
- back menu
- USB keyboard support for text entry dialogs.
The best part is that once Couch Surfer 0.3 is installed, USB keyboard feature is available to all other plug-in’s.
You can get the new software update from Brian’s software page here.
Since updating to ATV 2.0 and re-hacking (see, ATVfiles and NitoTV). I’ve been having a few minor issues.
The biggest issue at the moment is sometimes when using ATVfiles to navigate and play my movies, I loose the sound. A reboot of the ATV is required to get the sound working again. Strange!
If anyone has experienced something like this, let me know. In the meantime I guess I’ll go check the wiki over at http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/
Tags: appletv2.0, atvfiles
