[MW Forums]

No sooner than Apple TVs start arriving on retail shelves did intrepid users start taking them apart. Dan Frakes rounds up the many Apple TV hacks that have begun appearing on the Web in the week since Apple TV's debut. more

[NeoX]

Really cool stuff. Sounds like it is basically a slimmed down intel based Mac. One thing I noticed is that nobody mentioned whether or not the 256MB RAM is upgradeable?
I really hope Apple doesn't lock out the hacks the same way Sony does with the PSP. I wish Sony would at least come up with some way for homebrew for legitimate purposes and figure out a way to block people from running UMD iso's from a memory card.
I have a feeling that Apple will somewhat ignore this, but you never know.

[alterbentzion]

I assume the DRM-compliant chips are meant to provide Vista compatibility. (Vista ignores A/V hardware that isn't DRM-compliant.)

[Dan Frakes]

Except that the Apple TV isn't running Vista /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif (And Vista can't stop iTunes from streaming or syncing with an Apple TV.)
To be fair, it could be that the DRM features of the audio chip will never be used; they just happened to be an extra feature on the chip Apple chose to use for other reasons.

[JScott]

I only hope Apple is paying attention here and seeing that users want more than what they are offering.

[Machound]

I hope for the opposite... that Apple is asleep at the wheel and is blindly ignorant of what's going on at SomethingAwful and around the web. I'm afraid Apple may clamp down if this initiative becomes perceived as an unwanted (by Apple) "cheaper" Mac Mini.
Personally, I think that's a false impression. Most of those who are buying AppleTVs in order to hack in customized OS X versions aren't bread-and-butter Mac buyers. If anything they're XBMC (X-Box Media Center) switchers... at least that appears to be the case so far. Some of them are rabidly anti-Apple. Hopefully some of these folks will become the next generation of Mac faithful, or at least more Apple-tolerant than they have been in the past.
So far it's been a complete PR coup. I hope Apple 'tolerates' this success, to the chagrin of Microsoft, Sony and others.

[mretondo]

I heard that you should sync using Ethernet 100BASE-T (100Mbps) instead of 802.11n (~180Mbps). 802.11n is faster so why would I want to sync using Ehernet?

[flybynight]

So, if you can run the AppleTV software on a MacBook, does that mean that you could also run it on a Mini? Could you hack a Mini to become an AppleTV.. like, say if you had one lying around that you were going to use as a media center anyway? This could be the best of both worlds - you could use the AppleTV software on the Mini most of the time when you wanted an easy experience (like the one article commented about his wife using it) - and then use the Mini to easily play other, non-supported media.
It wouldn't have HDMI, but it would have DVI and an optical output.

[d00d]

Depending upon environment (noise), a slower wired medium is faster in practice than a faster wireless medium.

[imdylbert]

This would be brilliant even if it would be mildly annoying to have to reboot to use the dvd playing capabilities (I'm assuming that as it is, the apple tv OS will not play dvds from the drive of the mac mini). The next thing i think apple should do is offer a version of the apple tv with the dvd drive in it. essentially a mac mini running the tv os but with built in dvd drive support. Not having either of these devices at the moment does make it difficult for me to intelligently speculate on the capabilities in this regard, but i think it poses intriguing possibilities.

[Machound]

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So, if you can run the AppleTV software on a MacBook, does that mean that you could also run it on a Mini? Could you hack a Mini to become an AppleTV..

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Huh? Why not just run Front Row on your Mini? That certainly works great for our family and lots of other people. It's a lot less trouble than what you're talking about doing. You have access to the full assortment of codecs available under MacOS X with a Mini... though not all of them via Front Row or iTunes. I certainly wish Front Row would work to play our HDV home videos, but unfortunately it won't -- not even with Apple's $20 MPEG2 Quicktime codec. (Anybody listening out there???) Fortunately VLC works somewhat ok for that purpose, notwithstanding some annoying HDV playback bugs in VLC.
The point of running AppleTV software on a MacBook is for debugging & hacking purposes. It really doesn't add anything to the end-user's MacBook experience, from what I've read, but it does yield certain insights to the unofficial code writer.

[nmpike]

If they can get regular OS X to run on it, I will get one... it's the intel based mini I always wanted, at half the price!

[Machound]

Now you're going to scare the Apple execs. Sssshhhh! (Or were you just kidding?)
If you think about it you'll realize this is no substitute for a Mac Mini. What are you going to use for your display? Add in the cost of an HDTV and you've just spent your way to an iMac or MacPro.
I have a feeling we're going to be seeing an improved Mini out soon. Do you really think a 1 GHz Dothan core is really a substitute for a Core2Duo or whatever Apple has up its sleeve for the next Mini? What about the lowly 40 GB drive? What about the absence of Firewire? What about USB -- even assuming hackers can get USB to work all the way through a boot cycle and afterward. What about Bluetooth? What about the ability to run other OSes under Parallels and Boot Camp?
I'm not saying there aren't some computing tasks that could work well on a hacked AppleTV. It could make a great little kiosk computer. But this is not going to be a "Mini at half the price," as you say.

[Luis_Alejandro]

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I only hope Apple is paying attention here and seeing that users want more than what they are offering.

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I think they are "paying attention" but not in the direction you cited.
Most users want content and Apple, I think, is fighting the worst of the nightmares!
Studios are far more hard to arrange because they know the [bad] experience of the labels.
I think that Apple is trying to get a large footprint in homes in almost no time, so to be able to get good deals.
If Apple sells a couple of million AppleTVs before the end of the year... studios will come!