Apple’s new Apple TV runs a modified version of the Mac OS X operating system that hackers have already managed to extract and boot on an Intel-based MacBook and an external USB drive. AppleTVHacks.net, a website documenting the various Apple TV hacks, has posted photos and a video of the Apple TV system software running on a 13-inch Apple MacBook. Ars reviewed the Apple TV.
sheeesh! now you can stream content from your mac to your mac!!!!1one
Pretty much precisely what I thought….
Although I guess this will allow people to hack the AppleTV without actually owning one, or to practice on their Mac before borking their AppleTV…
TUAW has a nice overview of some of the more interesting AppleTV hacks so far ( http://www.tuaw.com/2007/03/26/apple-tv-hacks-coming-fast-and-furio… )
Includes running remote desktop and VLC among others. (I submitted this a few days ago but it wasn’t picked up for some reason)
Seems the AppleTV is emminently hackable since it’s just running a barely modified OS X 10.4.7 Should make adding other codecs and new capabilities relatively straight forward.
It’s already been done.
http://perian.org/
People have found out that the A.TV will handle plain ol’ QuickTime codecs
It all happened so fast… (the “hacking”)… you almost wonder if Apple is counting on people wanting to mod them like that.
[edit]
I cannot even believe that Apple didn’t even bother to disable the dock? You can see it start in the video.
Edited 2007-03-27 23:02
Must be a monolithic thing. As Apple gets larger it begins to make mistakes, just like Microsoft.
Yep, Apple sure didn’t make any mistakes in the 90’s when they…you know….almost went bankrupt and all.
>> Yep, Apple sure didn’t make any mistakes in the 90’s when they…you know….almost went bankrupt and all. <<
When did this happen?
I was alive then, and never saw Apple come close to bankruptcy…
This is just not true.
Seems to me more like somebody did not actually boot his MacBook using the entire Apple TV OS but rather took Apple TV’s main application (Backrow.app) and stuck it in place of where “Finder” normally is on his (otherwise regular) Tiger system and booted the MacBook.
but if the AppleTV can’t record live TV, then it’s of no use to me.
If you’re going to have “TV” in the name, you better be able to watch it.
That goes against their business model. Apple wants you to buy movies and tv shows from the iTunes store and then stream them to your tv, ideally from a mac. The article also explains quite well why recording ability would harm ease-of-use.
That may be true, but I’d be of the mind that people would expect recording as a basic feature, otherwise it’s just a glorified even just another media streamer. It’s a market that will be very competitive as time goes on, so limiting consumers in this way is a bad move in my mind.
I think the lack of codecs and abysmal selection of video content on iTunes (yep, everyone is sure going to be satisfied watching Disney movies all of the time!) are going to hurt the AppleTV far more than the lack of recording capability. Apple was…to be blunt…stupid to not support things such as DivX. Furthermore, the inability to rent content on iTunes is another real show stopper. If I “purchase” content, I want physical media that isn’t tied to one company’s products. However, if all I’m doing is renting a movie for a day or 2, it isn’t such a big deal.
And last but not least, AppleTV being tethered to a PC or Mac is downright stupid. It would be a much more compelling product if you could “purchase” or rent content while sitting on your couch.
Hopefully Apple works these issues out sooner or later. As for right now, I view the AppleTV as a crippled product and think it is worth it to shell out more for a Mac Mini, which can run VLC using the Apple Remote and play pretty much anything you throw at it.
EDIT: Advertising the AppleTV as being capable of displaying high definition and then not offering any HD content doesn’t exactly help matters either.
All in all, when viewed against the iPhone and its promise, the AppleTV looks to me like a waste of time and a disappointing launch for Apple.
Edited 2007-03-28 00:55
You can rip or capture your own.
Why would they ? It’s been superceeded by H.264. Also Apple still needs the cooperation of the movie industry, why annoy them by supporting a format popular with movie pirates. (You ripped all those DivX’s yourself right ?)
The capability is there with streaming media direct from the net but it goes counter to the design of the device : the keyword is simplify. Renting implies secure payment, authentication, etc. It would hopelessly complicate the interface and add the need for a keyboard. At that point you might as well get the mini.
You already have the pc/mac with lots of storage and the fast wireless network, why not use it ?
I don’t doubt there’s someplace in the market for the device. People will buy anything if it’s packaged properly.
That said, what’s the resolution of the movie on iTunes? I was under the impression that they’re made for streaming on the iPod, so how does that translate to a full TV screen?
I understand what you’re saying about the business model, but call it “iVideo”, or something. There will be people out there, who don’t know, and will think this thing is a TiVo like player. Unless recording TV is a 2.0 release, which makes more sense.
They have the ability to get the jump on Win MCE. Why do they not think recording television is worth it? No compatible TV cards?
Why do they not think recording television is worth it?
That’s a very large can of worms — especially when the legality of doing that is changing so rapidly.
The last thing Apple (or any other company) needs is to bet the farm on something that may be made illegal tommorow by a group of senators in Washington wanting to censor more of the Internet to come across as “family-friendly.”
Ok, but to not compete with Tivo and/or MCE? Both of those store videos, and both can be made (with little effort) to stream to other devices, from my understanding.
And both of those could be out of business tommorow if the law changes.
Apple doesn’t need to compete with them to do good business.
You can rip or capture your own.
Sticking the DVD in the DVD Player seems far easier to me than ripping it and then syncing it to the AppleTV. I expect a product I buy to make life easier, not more difficult and time consuming.
Why would they ? It’s been superceeded by H.264. Also Apple still needs the cooperation of the movie industry, why annoy them by supporting a format popular with movie pirates. (You ripped all those DivX’s yourself right ?)
Nope, I didn’t rip them myself, they are video that I made and I own the copyright to, and I really don’t see the need, besides the AppleTV, to re-encode them when my Mac Mini plays them all just fine using VLC or Quicktime+Plugins.
The capability is there with streaming media direct from the net but it goes counter to the design of the device : the keyword is simplify. Renting implies secure payment, authentication, etc. It would hopelessly complicate the interface and add the need for a keyboard. At that point you might as well get the mini.
Ummm, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this all required when purchasing content on iTunes. If the device is already tethered to your PC/Mac, then you can use the same keyboard and mouse connected to said PC/Mac to rent said content from iTunes and sync to said AppleTV, no? All they need to do is lower the price of the content and have it available for 48 hours after you first play it. Why you would need a keyboard to rent iTunes content but not need one to purchase iTunes content is beyond me… Could you explain your logic?
You already have the pc/mac with lots of storage and the fast wireless network, why not use it ?
Or you could have the option to do either…Nowhere in my comment did I say not allow syncing to the AppleTV from a PC/Mac. I’m saying add an option to also “purchase”/rent media directly from the AppleTV, much like the PS3, XBox 360, TiVO and…well…every AppleTV competitor can do.
You can rip or capture your own.
Sticking the DVD in the DVD Player seems far easier to me than ripping it and then syncing it to the AppleTV. I expect a product I buy to make life easier, not more difficult and time consuming.
Rip once, Play anywhere… ;P
One thing I’d like to know (and is keeping me from being as interested as I could be over the device,) is what kind of support there is for subtitles\closed captioning on the Apple TV? As it is now I can always use a downloaded .srt when I rip movies, but somehow I don’t think Apple has even begun to consider this aspect of things…
–bornagainpenguin
Edited 2007-03-29 01:48
Apple was…to be blunt…stupid to not support things such as DivX.
Why would they ? It’s been superceeded by H.264. Also Apple still needs the cooperation of the movie industry, why annoy them by supporting a format popular with movie pirates. (You ripped all those DivX’s yourself right ?)
Then why does xvid content looks better?
A captured hdtv episode of Torchwood in xvid looks much better than the mac world keynote in h264 the filesize is about the same, the xvid resolution is higher and the image quality is better.
Edited 2007-03-30 13:21
I didn’t expect it to record. I don’t want it to either for that matter because my cable box is a better dvr/pvr than my computer ever will be.
What COULD happen though if Apple would ever license their technology is pvr’s could be made to add the AppleTV sync feature like Tivo is adding for Amazon’s movie d/loads. But because Apple is still not budging in that department it’s a matter of a short time before WMA/WMV kicks their butt in this department. Apple already is losing in the movie arena based on sheer numbers alone they have a much smaller selection than Movielink for example.
Two reasons that don’t count for me as a customer
1. I don’t care about their business model at all, I just want to record TV, like I have done years ago!
2. “ease of use” is never a good reason to not include some feature completely distinct to the rest of the system. First, apple are among the first I would expect to be able deliver a good user interface for it! Second, there is always the possibility of a default “feature off”, if it would be really _that_ confusing.
It’s nice that the machine is open for hackers, as this enables the paying customers to get the best out of their hardware! Perhaps even recording
Then buy a recorder.
Why is it that people expect that products have to have all features that anyone could think of having and that they are targeted at you?
They are not making a personal complaint. They are making a business and marketing point: their issue is that the Apple business model of forcing people to obtain content from the iStore, by disabling features that every other competitor has on similar boxes in the same space, is getting in the way of offering the customer what he wants.
Their point is, probably the market is not in media extenders, probably the market is in extended function recorders which are also media extenders, but probably Apple’s fixation on its lock-in business model is stopping them either see this, or meet the need.
We will see if they are right. But to reply ‘get over it’ to such a point is not an answer. You have to make some argument that they are wrong about the market, which they may be. After all, people might have made a similar point about the iPod, and been wrong about that market.
Ease of use is also not an argument. Any more than marketing VCRs that were play only would have been a strategy justified by ease of use. You have to show that the ease of use tradeoff is the one the market wants.
If “I don’t care about their business model at all” isn’t personal I don’t know what is.
I don’t agree. MCE hasn’t been a huge succes outside geeks and in Europe it’s hard to get working with anything but analog TV without using 3rd party apps.
From a European perspective, the recording market is probable very different from the American.
Getting PVRs from cable or sat companies aren’t that normal, and many people have HDD recorders instead.
But the HDD recorder business is not a business where you get rich, and one of the three ‘market leaders’ in Europe (Pioneer) even considered getting out of it.
Many people on forums like this seem to want the AppleTV to record and play DVDs, but I don’t see Apple as a viable competitor to Pioneer, Sony, Denon et al who actually know about making DVD players – Apple can’t even make a DVD player for Mac OS X that’s remotely good.
On the recording side, analog is on it’s way out in many countries. Sat providers in Europe only accept their own STBs, so I can’t see how Apple can make AppleTV record from them digitally.
DVB-T and DVB-C aren’t just DVB-T and DVB-C and many countries and cable providers use different standards for subtitles, EPG and so on.
And then there’s HDTV with all it’s DRM. Do you really think you’ll be allowed to record much in the future? HDCP is there for a reason.
Edited 2007-03-28 09:16
I never said it is targeted at me and I also never would buy such device, or a recorder.
There were two reasons given why this feature is missing, and both of them aren’t reasonable from the customer’s point of view. If the reason would be “it’s too hard” or “it would make the device more expensive”, these would be reasons acceptable.
It connects to a TV and allows you to watch content from you computer on a TV
It’s a media extender and not an HTPC – get over it.
Ok, then it sounds like a crippled and overpriced HTPC to me, genius.
get over it…uhh, how about, “Blow Me.”
Apple couldn’t care less about recording TV or even in the TV itself except as a display device. What Apple is hoping for is to create another content delivery system altogether!
They are hoping the lightening strikes twice, like the market created by “podcasting” for audio they want to see one created for video. Looks like their chances of doing so are pretty good actually. The biggest obstacle will be the inability to directly stream content from the internet or Apple’s iTunes store in the device itself.
A smaller but more real concern is the question of whether DIY Media producers will be able to create enough content for people to watch, but it’s far too early to know the answer to that quite yet IMHO. So far I’ve been finding a wealth of riches, even if the quality isn’t as consistent as I’d like using the Democracy Player (http://www.getdemocracy.com) to grab the exact same streams Apple is hoping people download from their iTunes portal….
I get to enjoy great cooking shows like the Hippy Gourmet (http://hippygourmet.blip.tv) and see “news” shows like Diggnation (http://revision3.com/diggnation) and Tech shows like Lab Rats (http://www.labrats.tv) and RocketBoom (http://www.rocketboom.com) which had a great story on the world solar challenge not too long ago!
There are also serials like Siren (http://www.teameffortfilms.com/Siren) and a chance to see great new and original cartoons on Channel Frederator! (http://www.channelfrederator.com) All things that can now be seen directly on my TV once I get an Apple TV box….
And keep in mind I’ve been looking into these streams for only a week or two, I’m sure there’s plenty more out there I haven’t seen yet that I’ll be just as enthusiastic about in a few weeks or so. What I like about the Apple TV is buying one will save me the effort of having to copy over a bunch of files the next time I visit my folks and want to share it with the rest of the family. Besides, the last thing I want to hear at my age is comments from my Mom about still playing video games at my age or fretful mutterings from my Dad about whether or not hooking up a game console will hurt his new 50 inch plasma….
–bornagainpenguin
You guys are funny. No, my point is that it just looks a bit “hackish.” Like something I would do on a project with a tight deadline.
After reading the Ars review, I think it will be interesting to see if someone manages to get plain vanilla OS X booting on the AppleTV. A $300 Mac sounds good to me, even if it’s “only” powered by a Pentium M.
I was thinking the same thing…
It would be a little underpowered as compared to a Mac Mini, but I’m sure one of the hackers will figure out how to upgrade the processor in one of these.
Yep – it sounds as if the hard drive is easily-upgradeable to a 7200rpm laptop drive, I would guess they used off-the-shelf RAM as well.
I don’t think a P-M would be *that* sluggish, should be at least on-par with the fastest of the G4s.
Wow OSX runs on an Apple! That is incredible!
We can see that Apple Kooality shine through – as said on ARS, there are iPods with bigger hard drives… and where in blazes does one even GET 1ghz Celeron M’s anymore? Lemme guess, they got a deal on a bunch of intels left overs they couldn’t sell to ANYONE else? I always find it amazing how with their obsession with small and quiet, they nueter the capabilities on their machines back a generation or two from the ‘mainstream’ – hell, my three year old Dish reciever has a 80 gig drive in it… probably a more powerful processor too since it’s running DishLINUX.
Of course, dimes to dollars that sucker’s got a 1.5ghz Pentium M being underclocked in it – lord knows they did that often enough in the G3 and G4 iBooks, underclocking so they could run without a heat sink or fan, instead putting the chips under insulating foam to trap the heat IN.
Still, the hacking the software to boot ‘elsewhere’ does raise some interesting possibilities… I’m wondering how long it will be before the OSx86 folks start playing with running OSX and the AppleTV software on MiniITX devices like the Via C7. Both the Jetway and VIA mainboards have TV out (componant, S-V and Composite) so it shouldn’t be THAT big a stretch… I’d be willing to bet that for $100 more you could build a MiniATX with eight times the storage and double the RAM.
Let’s see… C7 miniITX mainboard w/cpu $140, 512 megs PC3200 $35, 320 gig SATA hdd $80, MiniITX ‘book’ case w/PICO inverter – $120… so yeah, $375 using off the shelf parts for double the RAM and eight times the disk space.
Hmm… That hardware + Linux + MythTV + Democracy Player opens up some interesting possibilities. Especially since being miniITX you could install it in anything you like – home, car, boat… AND use it for ‘other stuff’ besides a crappy streaming video player.
Still no video capture though, for that you’d probably have to up to microATX.
Edited 2007-03-28 05:10
You could do that, but if you do I hope the C7s are better than the C3s. I had a 533MHz 6000 and it wasn’t even comparable to a celeron at the same clock speed. The only advantage of the board was the size. You can almost always buy parts and build something yourself for cheaper than you can buy it whole, but only if your time is worthless.
>> You could do that, but if you do I hope the C7s
>> are better than the C3s. I had a 533MHz 6000 and it
>> wasn’t even comparable to a celeron at the same
>> clock speed.
True, but that wasn’t entirely my point. I just chose off the shelf parts at RETAIL price, and was able to come close to if not exceed most of their specifications.
Apple is an OEM builder, they have NO excuse to not be able to offer something better for that price point on the hardware side… but that has been the case of their entire product line for ages. I’m often amazed at how with things like the iMac they’ll go for a bleeding edge cpu, then connect hardware to it that’s a generation or two BEHIND the ‘norm’ for a desktop system. We’re talking about the company that thought the ATI Rage LT was bleeding edge desktop technology in 2002, and who still offers combo drives standard on most of their product line.
Of course, if you were willing to throw form factor out the window, you could knock a 120 bucks off my estimate easy and get a 2.5ghz processor in the process.
To be honest, if they made a mid-tower with the same processor as the mini, a gig of RAM, a PCI Express x16 slot with standard desktop optical and hard drives for the same price point as the mini, I’d be on it like a crack whore on a five dollar bill as the typical ‘machine for grandma or the art *** cousin’. Lord knows you can get the parts to build said configuration for two thirds that, and if you swap the 2.13 core duo for the roughly equal performing 2.8ghz Pentium D 820, you can make it for half the cost of the mini.
It’s funny though, as I’ve seen a lot of reviews saying the 1ghz C7 has trouble playing h264 or Mpeg4 at 720 or even 1080i as anything more than a screensaver – which I never encountered until I realized these people are either running in linux without accellerated drivers, or aren’t smart enough under windows to switch the device renderer to get overlay support… specifically because they trust players like WMP 11 or DivX player to actually handle it… While in ‘Media Player Classic’ I just go Options > Playback > Output, choose “Overlay Mixer” and boom, both formats play smooth as silk.
Of course, if you built it as a BeOS box around BeCR, you could probably do all of this with a ATI All in Wonder card and a K6/2-450. (which used to be my old SV DVR until I got Dish Network)
——— back on topic ———
Software wise though, I can understand where a lot of their decisions come from, even if I disagree with it… they don’t want to make it a DVR because that would put them up against TIVO and the cable companies. They don’t want to make it a full blown OSX box (despite it’s being exactly that) because it would cut into the sales of the mini and iMacs. They don’t want to make it play DVD’s because then it would be competing with DVD players. They don’t want to make it able to record anything it has because then the movie industry would get it’s panties in a twist, even though there are hundreds of DVD movie burners on the market.
It’s typical Apple, tons of compromises because they don’t have the balls to actually go up against competition in established markets, so they try to find a niche and pray people pay attention, or worse, hope that people DON’T pay attention so they can prey on the ignorance of the average consumer.
Edited 2007-03-28 22:13
“Why would they ? It’s been superceeded by H.264. Also Apple still needs the cooperation of the movie industry, why annoy them by supporting a format popular with movie pirates. (You ripped all those DivX’s yourself right ?)”
yes. mine are back-ups so that my 3 year old doesn’t trash the original when sticking her favorite movie in the player plus I don’t have to sit there and wait for the stupid warning messages to go away and skip past the trailers (many of which don’t let you skip now) then select play on the menu etc…
I for one get sick and tired of people assuming what you are. I agree with you’re H.264 comment though, just the other part was a non-sequitor and besides that, there aren’t as many easy to use and cheap apps for H264 conversion as there are Divx.
“While there are going to be some inherent limitations as far as system memory and processing speed go, it’s plausible that a method may be found in the upcoming months to allow a user to convert their Apple TV into a much more capable HTPC solution on par with Microsoft’s Media Center product or perhaps even MythTV.”
Says it all really. From the Ars Review. A method may be found to make the thing halfway competitive. May.
Another interesting snippet is:
“As said previously, the Apple TV is nothing more than an Intel-based computer running last-generation hardware. Obviously Apple has gone to lengths to make it appear as if the device has a very limited set of input (IR remote) and output (HDMI/component, optical & composite audio) options, but as we’ve seen over the past few days, there are efforts underway to remedy that.”
What more do you need to know? Maybe why they gave it a 7 rating?
I had a really good read on this, very detail, and very useful information.
Thanks.
http://www.zuneconverter.net
even with the risk of being modded down, this just looks like another overhyped apple product.
Personally i would rather built one of these:
http://linuxmce.com/
Has got all the video/TV/Music/Multimedia experience you want out of the box plus some home-automation (control lights, climate, security/web cameras etc) thrown in, with a very nice user interface and easy to set up. I especially like the feature were your media content will automatically follow you round the house if you have a bluetooth device like a mobile phone.
Since it’s running an OS on that harddrive, I can’t swap it out and put in something bigger, something capable of holding all the DVDs I’ve ripped.
I’ll be waiting for the next gen, then.
How can this copying be done? Is there an application like Ghost or better a free one like HDClone for the Mac?
Well, I did find some instructions, but they are multi step and involve buying some software, etc and it’s a bit more involved than what I’d like to do.*
I was hoping that the software would be on a nice bit of flash memory.
—
*not that I won’t think about it, but by the time I get the software bought and the new drive … I might as well get a mac-mini and turn it into a PVR.
That makes more sense.
The iHome:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=9356
Now I know the photos were universally declared to be hoaxes, but I find it really interesting how much the “hoax” resembles the real thing. I also wonder just how long Apple’s been refining and polishing the Apple TV, assuming these photos were of an actual in testing product that simply got delayed and pushed back until the present release.
In any case, while it’s certainly interesting to speculate back and forth on the future of converting the Apple TV to become a fully fledged Macintosh computer, I’m more interested in the possibilities raised by the ability to run the Apple TV software in a MacBook much like many of the multimedia Laptops are doing with the Windows Media Center shell….
–bornagainpenguin
Does the AppleTV support Visualizations like the ones that come with iTunes? I could see that being a killer feature for parties at college campuses!
According to the Ars Technica article it appears there is some visualization, but the screensaver is considered to be more interesting than the music visualizations, so I tend to think it must have been really low quality….
Of course given the way Apple made the firmware update to their iPods enabling them to have the same album previews as their iTunes product, I wouldn’t be surprised if they added support for this later down the line by including some nice visuals with the inevitable updates.
–bornagainpenguin (noting with humor that the Firefox spellchecker does not recognize the terms “iPod” or iTunes, or even “spellchecker” for that matter…)