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Apple calls the Apple TV a “hobby” because it isn’t a big seller. But for a bustling community of hackers, jailbreaking and tinkering with the set-top box is the real hobby.

The recent release of the second-generation Apple TV is revitalizing a group effort to crack open the set-top box and expand on its capabilities with third-party software. In the next month or two, the rebellious coders say they hope to open an underground app store for the device, just as hackers did for the popular iPhone before Apple opened its official App Store.

“The Apple TV has been jailbroken for less than a month, and the amount of progress that’s been made on [hacking] it so far is absolutely phenomenal,” said Scott Davilla, a programmer who is working to get the Boxee TV platform running on the Apple TV.

Apple’s original Apple TV was cracked years ago, but there was relatively low enthusiasm in modifying the device because of some nagging technical hurdles. Hacking the first Apple TV required using a “patch stick” — installing software on a bootable USB drive that broke through the set-top box’s restrictions — and not all USB flash drives booted properly. Also, interest in modding the original Apple TV waned over time:Hacking the device’s software required a Mac running an older version of the Mac OS X operating system (10.4.7), and later versions of OS X broke software used to test Apple TV apps on a desktop computer.

However, this time around, the Apple TV jailbreak community, called Awkward TV, believes that hacking Apple’s set-top box will be much more popular and energetic.This is thanks largely to the fact that the second-generation Apple TV runs iOS, the same mobile operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Hacking the device will be much easier for users: The Apple TV requires connecting with a computer by a USB cable and running existing jailbreak software to break its restrictions, just like users did with the iPhone. (In other words, the annoying patch-stick method is no more.)

And besides, hackers can’t resist the allure of modifying a $100 device into the set-top box of their dreams — a path that carries much less risk than, say, tampering with a pricier Mac Mini or a less aesthetically pleasing Windows PC.

Also, a major difference to the new Apple TV hacking scene is that many of these coders have been making apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch — so now, the community is much bigger, diverse and more experienced. A lot of the groundwork has already been laid by iOS jailbreakers, and third-party apps served through the underground app store Cydia should be compatible with the device.

“Everything is kind of coming full circle,” said Kevin Bradley, an Apple TV programmer who works under the handle [bile]. “The old Apple TV is kinda sputtering and dying because it’s a 4-year-old product. Now you have all the people who have done amazing stuff on the iPhone working with us, and it’s made our jobs for the Apple TV a thousand times easier…. I think some really amazing things could come out of this.”

Indeed, the Cydia community is already working on an interface to launch the Cydia app store directly on the Apple TV’s main menu. Also, the “grandfather” of Apple TV hacking Jim Dovey (better known by the hacker handle AlanQuatermain), is working on a software development kit for programmers to code and test special Apple TV apps.

Dovey said he’s especially excited about the potential for hacks to take advantage of AirPlay, an Apple feature that will enable iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to wirelessly stream content from audio or video apps to the Apple TV.

“I’d be very interested in the possibilities of using AirPlay video to treat an AppleTV as an attached screen in my iPhone, iPad or even Mac apps,” Dovey said.

Already, owners of the new Apple TV can hack their device to run an early version of Bradley’s software, NitoTV, a media player that promises to support every media format. That makes the Apple TV seem weak: It only plays a few iTunes-compatible formats, such as H.264-encoded MPEG-4 videos.

Bradley is also working to get some of his old Apple TV hacks working on the new system, such as an app that enables you to play Super Nintendo on the Apple TV, and an app that allows you to order a pizza.

The Awkward TV community is compiling a list of potential capabilities that could be unlocked with Apple TV hacks, such as playing Flash videos, connecting a TV tuner for recording, or hooking up a CD/DVD player for playing discs.

What are some Apple TV hacks you’d like to see once an unauthorized app store opens? Suggest and vote on ideas in the Reddit widget below, and maybe your wish will come true.

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Photo: Steven Levy/Wired.com

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Matt Richardson’s friend Lauren wanted a device to hold down the down arrow and physically scroll through Google Reader, like a sustain pedal on a piano. Matt built it for her using an old USB keyboard, wire, solder and a little DIY invention.

It’s surprising we don’t see foot pedals more often in mainstream desktop computing. They’re a natural, well-established interface: besides analog tech like pianos, drums, bikes or a spinning wheel, think of cars, table saws and electric guitars.

If you’re curious, there are plenty of commercial USB foot pedals available, mostly targeted for disabled users or industry-specific uses. For example, they’re extremely popular in professional digital voice transcription, often coming bundled with transcription or dictation software. These usually have three controls: play/pause (center), rewind (left) and fast-forward (right).

Musicians, too, continue to experiment with foot pedals: we’ve written about AirTurn’s Bluetooth sheet-music turner for iPad, with a special eye towards its potential for disabled users.

Other USB foot pedals are extraordinarily versatile and programmable. But because they aren’t a universal accessory marketed to mainstream users like a mouse or keyboard, all foot pedals tend to be expensive and often highly tailored to individual users’ needs.

Building a foot pedal yourself using a keyboard’s guts is one way to solve this problem. But I can’t help but wonder what a determined hacker could put together with an Arduino board, a weekend and a little imagination.

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Mont Blanc makes unbelievably gorgeous pens, but they also make terrific ink, high-quality points and smart refill technology. The pens cost hundreds of dollars; the refills, about $12. You can cut down a Mont Blanc refill with an exacto-knife and reap all its benefits inside an inexpensive Pilot G2.

Instructables user Kingant posted this hack almost a year ago (“Save $200 in 2 minutes and have the worlds best writing pen“), but it’s still one of my favorites. I show it to everyone who asks me to recommend a high-end pen.

The G2 is already a terrific gel pen, but do its refills have “a silicon plug insert to prevent air bubbles”? Are they “hand-inspected under a microscope” and made to submit to “a writing test to ensure it has perfect writing properties,” including whether they can “write up to 10,000 meters”?

Yes, much of this is manuscript gadget-speak designed to justify the pens’ exorbitant cost. There’s still no cheap hack to let either the Mont Blanc or the Pilot G2 run apps or record audio. And if you use this hack, you won’t have that beautiful Mont Blanc exterior proclaiming to the world how much better your writing instrument is than theirs.

But as Kingant points out, if you use a G2 with a clear case, you’ll be able to see the Mont Blanc label on the refill inside. For less than $15 and a few minutes of your time, that is not bad at all.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The new Apple TV could be Steve Jobs’ best sleight-of-hand trick yet.

During his modest introduction of the device, Jobs called the Apple TV “one more hobby.” But a closer look at the code and the hardware powering the Apple TV reveals that there’s a lot more going on under the hood than the CEO shared.

Interestingly, Jobs didn’t mention that Apple TV runs iOS, the same operating system running on its flagship product, the iPhone, and some other big hits the iPod Touch and iPad. And there’s more, too: The Apple TV’s software might already be jailbroken, and some hidden software should eventually allow you to share the Apple TV’s media with other iOS devices.

These secret ingredients could be the recipe Apple needs to shake up the television industry. For years, Apple executives have labeled the set-top box a “hobby” product because of its mild success compared to blockbuster sellers like the iPhone and iPod. Now that Apple TV has been revamped into a streaming rental service with an arsenal of stealth features, maybe Apple has a chance to change the TV business if not today, perhaps later.

“The most importanthint ofApple’s real ambitions in the living room come fromAirPlay, whichputs iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes theTVjust an outputdevice for theAppleecosystem,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, in a recent e-mail statement. “ExpectAppleto gradually push more and morein that direction, but as of this moment in 2010,Applehas not yet made asignificant play for control of theTV.”

Here, we round up the juicy tidbits we’ve heard about Apple’s mysterious new set-top box.

iOS and third-party app support

There’s more than enough evidence proving that the Apple TV runs iOS. Dispelling any doubts, Apple recently posted a build of iOS 4.1 specifically for the Apple TV.

This piece of information about iOS is important because of a new feature called AirPlay, which streams media from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. When Jobs demonstrated AirPlay, he only showed the feature working with an iPad’s built-in video player, photos app and music library. Now that we know Apple TV runs iOS, it’s likely that third-party apps such as MLB at Bat or ABC Player will be able stream media to the set-top box, too.

DaringFireball blogger John Gruber confirmed that an AirPlay button is showing up in the MLB at Bat app, and he adds that apps using the built-in media controller will be able to integrate AirPlay.

Long story short, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media from some third-party apps straight to your Apple TV with an AirPlay button. AirPlay is shaping up to be Apple’s secret weapon to reshape home entertainment.

In addition to AirPlay, the fact that Apple TV is running iOS means that — in principle, at least — it may someday be able to run applications from the iTunes App Store. For now, that capability is not included in Apple TV, but the underlying operating system certainly supports it, so Apple might open a TV App Store in a future software update.

Jailbreaking hacks

Third-party app support will probably be limited for the Apple TV, but that’s where the jailbreakers come in. In the same way that we’re able to override restrictions on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with a jailbreak, we should be able to run unauthorized apps on the Apple TV — something Jobs would never advertise, of course.

In fact, hackers already have a head start, because a tool called Shatter, which was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch, already works with the Apple TV, according to the iPhone Dev Team. That means we should be expecting hackers to code some unauthorized apps soon to unlock additional capabilities such as video-conferencing via your Apple TV.

On top of that, existing hacks for the old Apple TV should work, too.Dev Team memberWill Strafach explained thatthe new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS, meaning “frappliances,” plug-ins that add functionality to the old Apple TV, should work as well.

‘Lowtide’ app

The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun, a popular iOS programmer, took a close look at the Apple TV’s software and discovered that it runs an application called “Lowtide” the software containing the set-top box’s media interface.

Sadun dug deeper and found lines of code that suggest that Lowtide might eventually be extended to other iOS devices. In other words, you should be able to share media from the Apple TV to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, whereas originally we thought we’d only be able to do the converse with AirPlay. This functionality would be comparable to a Slingbox or an EyeTV.

Lowtide isn’t readily available for Apple’s iOS mobile devices yet, but iOS developerDustin Howett has already managed to load Lowtide on an iPod touch running iOS 4.1, demonstrated in the video above. He recommended against doing it yourself, though, unless you plan on reformatting your iPhone on a regular basis just to turn it back into a phone.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

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Sometimes hailed as the poor man’s iPhone, the iPod Touch has been a popular device for Apple geeks craving the iOS experience sans the hefty monthly fees. However, a new accessory promises to give the Touch the whole she-bang without the contract.

The Peel, a protective case packed with a SIM card, dock connector and battery, is designed to expand the iPod Touch into a device capable of placing phone calls and sending text messages. Chinese company Yoison Technology developed the gadget, and U.S. company GoSolar announced this month is has signed an agreement to bring the Peel to the states.

“As soon as they arrive, we’ll begin distributing demonstration models to retail buyers across the country,” said GoSolarUSA CEO Tyson Rohde, in a statement. “The amount of interest in this product that we’ve received from distributors has been staggering.”

GoSolar did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but its website suggests that the iPod Touch must be hacked (i.e. jailbroken) in order for it to operate as a phone. And any iOS user is familiar with the fact that Apple regularly wipes out jailbreak hacks with every new iOS update. So in short, as cool as this solution sounds, it sounds less practical than simply using the iPod Touch as a VOIP web phone with third-party apps available through the App Store.

GoSolar did not list a price for the Peel. However, Yoison was selling the gadget for $388 RMB in China, or around $57.

Via IDG News

Photo: Yolson Technology

Source:wired.com

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If you’re searching for a way to wreak havoc on an ex-lover or a rotten business partner, look no further than the video above. The 8-minute tutorial walks you through the steps to hack an iPad to run Windows 95.

That’s just wrong.

We’ve seen people hack iPhones and Windows Mobile phones to run the Android OS, which could prove useful. But if you’re even thinking about installing Windows 95 (not even XP) on an iPad, you’re just twisted. Demented. Messed up. Hellbent on revenge. And a nerd.

At least it’s not Vista, though.

Source:wired.com

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Timur Civan is a director of photography for movies, and a photographer. He’s also a tinkerer, and he got his hands on an old Wollensak 35mm F5.0 Cine-Velostigmat, a hand cranked movie-camera lens from 1908. You see it above, wedded to his Canon 5D MkII. But where did it come from?

Civan got a call from his friend, known mysteriously only as “a Russian lens technician”:

He found in a box of random parts, hidden inside anther lens this gem. A circa 1908 (possibly earlier) 35mm lens. Still functioning, mostly brass, and not nearly as much dust or fungus as one would think after sitting in a box for over a hundred years. This lens is a piece of motion picture history, and at this point rare beyond words. So I say to him, “Wow… what do you have in mind?” he smiles, and says, (in the thickest Russian accent you can imagine) “I can make this fit EF you know…”

The results are astonishing. This century-old hunk of glass and brass makes a great picture. There’s vignetting at the edges, a softness and a lack of biting contrast. There’s also a color-shift in the non-black-and-white images. In short, the lens adds all the tweaks you might do in post-processing to Holga-fy your pictures. Civan is planning on shooting some footage with the lens, too, which is its purpose after all, and promises to share the results on the Cinema 5D forums, where he posted his photographs.

But aside from the great pictures, and the wonderful story of the mysterious Russian, we can learn something from this tale. Camera-tech comes and goes, but photography is really just about light. That’s why you should buy the best lenses you can afford. They will probably last longer than you.

102 year old lens on a 5DmkII [Cinema 5D forums]

Source:wired.com

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Mikey Wally is serious about bikes. He’s also serious about gadgets, and he snapped this shot of an amazing but rather dangerous-looking iPad-powered bike stereo at June’s Subway Series Ride in Los Angles

The iPad handlebar mount, seen here on a BMX, appears to be as sturdy as the bike itself. It looks like nothing more than a sign-holder from a conference-center, with rubber strips slid in to offer a little protection against the rattling steel (take a peek at the full-sized picture, though, and you’ll see it is custom-built). It also shows just how perfect a ten-inch screen is for in-bike entertainment. Sure, here it’s just using iTunes to feed the stereo, but maps, movies and anything else would work great on the big (ish) screen.

So how serious is Mikey about his bicycles? First, he lives in LA and doesn’t use a car. Second, according to his Flickr profile, last summer he rode from New York to LA. That’s as bad-ass as the 40 Glocc track playing on the bike stereo.

BMX bike-stereo [Mikey Wally / Flickr]

My June Subway Series Ride Photos [Mikey Wally]

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Apple TV image from Apple.com

There have been two mysteries about the new Apple TV. 1) Was it still running the old Apple TV’s “Back Row” version of OS X? 2) Just how small is its new pared-down hard drive? Mystery #1 has been solved: just like the iPhone and iPad, Apple TV is now running iOS 4.

This is important for two reasons:

1. Right now, there are no apps (and no app marketplace) for Apple TV. Now we know there could be — and not on some imagined next-generation device, but this one, in the not-too-distant future.
2. The new Apple TV could be amenable to the same jailbreaking techniques that have worked on the iPhone and iPad — so even if Apple doesn’t start a TV app store, someone could start their own if they’re willing to live on the wild side.

Both of these consequences, though, are still a teensy bit dependent on the answer to that other mystery. Until we get a teardown, nobody’s sure exactly how much storage the new Apple TV is packing. There might not be room enough to store a whole bunch of apps, even if you could sideload them through that teensy micro-USB port.

I’ll let Chris Foresman at Ars Technica explain how we know Apple TV is running iOS:

Apple stores configuration information about how various iOS devices can communicate with other devices over its dock connector in a file called USBDeviceConfiguration.plist. Entries in this file have revealed early evidence of new iPhone and iPod models, and an entry labelled “iProd” later turned out to be the first iPad.

An entry in iOS 3.2 was referred to as iProd2,1, and we suspected that it was likely an early prototype of a next-gen iPad. However, an updated configuration file in iOS 4.2b1 reveals the same numeric product ID is attached to an entry for AppleTV2,1, referring to the second major hardware revision of the Apple TV. This presents solid evidence that the new Apple TV is running iOS proper, instead of the other customized version of Mac OS X used for the previous onethat should save Apple from duplicated development effort.

So if Apple TV is running iOS now, why not announce it and invite people to start making apps for it? Wouldn’t that get everyone more excited about the relaunch of Apple TV? I could think of two reasons why they wouldn’t:

1. There’s no natural interface to run existing iOS apps on Apple TV: no touchscreens TVs, definitely no multitouch, no accelerometers, no camera, etc. Until one or more of those things change, or somebody writes some nifty code to make a remote control do the same thing, you can’t port apps over. If that changes, it’s off to the races.
2. The App Store is already fragmented; not all apps work on every device, or even the same device running different versions of iOS. Throwing Apple TV in the mix, with a bunch of TV-specific applications that might or might not work terribly well on the iPad or iPhone, just makes the store more confusing. And Apple’s trying to make its TV products, especially, as simple as possible.

Confirmed: ‘iProd 2′ is the new Apple TV (TUAW)

Source:wired.com

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Limor Fried’s MintyBoost project is a great example of DIY and commercial tech working together. Take an Altoids tin, a couple of AA batteries, and some very smart hackery, and you’ve got a lightweight USB charger that you can use to charge/run your handheld iWhatever, or almost any other phone, camera, or small device that can take a charge off USB power.

Reverse engineering Apple’s secret charging methods from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Clive Thompson profiled Fried and her company Adafruit Industries as part of a 2008 feature in Wired on “open source hardware.” The idea is that hackers like Fried can use what they find out about consumer devices to make and sell their own products, but also to produce DIY kits and share information with others who then build their own projects.

As a case study in the value of sharing this information, consider Rob Scott. Before he took his son on a week-long bike trip, he used Fried’s schematic to hack together what turns out to be a really striking-looking solar charger for his son’s iPod.

It’s always nice to see what the maker community is doing to accessorize their retail gadgets; the results aren’t always super-polished, but they generally solve real problems in important use cases that don’t get addressed by manufacturers, either because they’re too unusual or they can’t be easily solved by more plugs, more peripherals, more complex devices that cost a lot of money. And in turn, we all find out a little bit more about how these magical devices get put together and how they work.

See Also:

• DIY Graphing Calculator Is Built From Open Source Hardware
• Why Arduino Is a Hit With Hardware Hackers
• Beautifully Hypnotic Video Details Canon Macro Lens Hack
• Hacker Stuffs MiFi Inside iPad, Ruins it in the Process

Source:wired.com

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Comedian Louis CK says we might not take our technological marvels for granted if we spent “some time where we’re walking around with a donkey with pots clanging on the sides.” I say, why can’t we have both?

That’s the premise behind industrial designer Cornelius Comanns’s Bufalino personal transport vehicle/camper. It’s a Piaggio Ape (pronounced “op-ay”) three-wheeler tricked out with storage, a bed, a sink, and a mini-kitchen with a range, water tank, and refrigerator.

These pictures are all computer generated, but considering it’s Comanns’s bachelor’s thesis, it’s impressive all the same. As Cliff Kuang writes at Co.Design, it’s “Perfect for the Dust Bowl 2.0!” All we need now is for someone to build it.

Image by Cornelius Comanns, via Designboom.

Source:wired.com

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IOS4 will let you use a Bluetooth keyboard to type on your iPhone or iPod Touch and control various other functions. I’m writing this post on a latest-gen iPod Touch with an Apple Wireless Keyboard and it works great: The brightness buttons, volume and iTunes keys all do what you’d expect. This is a headline feature of the new iOS, shown off by Apple right there on the about pages.

What you may be surprised to learn is that the iPhone will also work when forced into the iPad Keyboard Dock, as tested by internationally-beloved technology pundit Andy Ihnatko. Once squeezed onto the dock connector, you get all the same functionality as you would with a Bluetooth keyboard, with the added danger of busting your iPhone due to the tight fit (the slimmer iPod Touch should work a lot better).

You might remember that you can also hook up a keyboard to the iPad via the USB camera connection kit. I can’t test this as mine is still on back-order, but Ihnatko tried it out an the answer is a big “no”. The iPhone flashes up its non-compatible accessory warning. Ah well.

I can’t say typing long-form text on the tiny screen is any fun, but it would certainly be better than typing long-form text on the iPhone’s screen. Even so, Apple’s minuscule Bluetooth keyboard is still large when compared to the iPhone. Perhaps this will kick-start the market in foldable, rollable keyboard accessories?

The iPad Keyboard Dock works with the iPhone 3GS! [CWOB]

Source:wired.com

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