Apple TV Hacks

Published on:

The Apple TV has been out in the wild for only a few days, and it's hackathon madness already! From Apple TV Hacks and pretty much any Mac news sources I see one can:
- upgrade the hard drive (that one was obvious, and the meager 40GB borders to the insult when the fattest iPod sports a 80GB HD, what was Apple thinking?)
- enable SSH and AFP
- enable Apple Remote Desktop and VNC
- run Apache (opens the possibility to administer the beast through the web), Firefox or iTunes and VLC
- convert Xvix/WMV/Divx for Apple TV playback
- rip DVDs

And whatnot!?! I wonder if you could use an Apple TV as a NAT router (think of a nice mix of Apple TV + Mac mini, this thing would just be missing an iPod dock connector and a DVD player/recorder).

What's funny is that, for decades, Apple has been known for producing machines that can't be hacked and customized at will. I'm amazed at how willing people are to void their guarantee to tinker with an appliance that's designed to be, well, non-customizable. I hope marketing is watching this very carefully at Cupertino.