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Apple TV Hacked to Run iOS Apps at Full Screen

Sunday January 1, 2012 4:38 am PST by Arnold Kim
Safari running on Apple TV

Over the past few days, iOS developers Steven Troughton-Smith and TheMudKip have managed to hack the 2nd generation Apple TV to run iOS apps at full resolution. The feat was accomplished using a custom Springboard (Home Screen) written by TheMudKip on a jailbroken Apple TV. Troughton-Smith has since been making progress running iPhone and iPad apps at full resolution.

Many existing apps seem to run well on the Apple TV, which is known to be an iOS device using an A4 processor. When this generation of the Apple TV was released, we noted that Apple may have had plans to incorporate native applications all along. In fact, Jobs said that an Apple TV App Store could launch when the time is right.

This video shows the Apple TV in action, running apps under the custom springboard:


The hack isn't available publicly yet, and remains more of a proof of concept at this time. It's feasible that such a hack could be released to the public at some point to encourage Apple TV specific apps that might be designed to work with the remote interface in mind.

Readers should note that the original iPhone jailbreaks enabled native iOS apps well ahead of Apple's official App Store launch. Lights Off was the first native iOS game, released for jailbroken iPhones in August 2007. The official App Store wouldn't launch for another 10 months.
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expectdelay
18 months ago
it seems to me like apple created a 100$ "computer" that could handle many many average user's needs. they may have realized the effect of this on sales of other products and decided to delay releasing that functionality. having IOS apps run on an appleTV2 with a wireless keyboard would IMHO be a revolutionary change in the PC market.
Rating: 26 Positives
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sammich
18 months ago
Love how the Apps fill the screen without modification.
Rating: 10 Positives
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dewser35
18 months ago
Bring on the ATV apps!
Rating: 9 Positives
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chrf097
18 months ago
I still don't understand how you control it? Is he using a cursor? Are their indicators? Or do you just tap the trackpad and hope for the best? :confused:
Rating: 8 Positives
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gkarris
18 months ago



This is good for things which don't require much user interaction, like music/sound/video streaming applications, but for games and such...


So the PS3 and Wii require touchscreens for games?

:rolleyes:
Rating: 7 Positives
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Digitalclips
18 months ago
Who on earth would ever want a computer for $99 ... oh wait a minute ...
Rating: 7 Positives
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JoeSixPack
18 months ago
Nooo! I can't have my wife taking over the big screen with her Angry Birds until football season is over!

(Though the crashing sounds might be pretty cool if the come through in 5.1)
Rating: 6 Positives
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mrr
18 months ago
I want to see iApps hacked to run on MACINTOSHES !!
Rating: 5 Positives
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odedia
18 months ago
This is REALLY cool.
Rating: 5 Positives
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arn
18 months ago

this is quite obviously a fake, a slide show on a pc that comes out of standby when the keyboard is pressed. You can see that the monitor changes its resolution when the pc running the slide show comes out of standby and the monitor jumps over to the correct input (from HDMI->DVI/PC)
Am surprised this made front page news when other fakes have been made more believable than this.


It's not fake. I know the dev.

Same dev was also responsible for Siri on iPhone 4 hack (http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/29/siri-hacked-to-run-on-an-ipod-touch-and-iphone-4/).

arn
Rating: 5 Positives

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