Juiced
Apple's second generation Apple TV has been jail broken, although the brains behind the break has admitted there is a ‘long way to go' before putting apps on the device's memory.
Softpedia reported ‘Musclenerd' has managed to jail break Apple TV with ‘SHAtter' but he admitted via Twitter: "Not quite sure how to run apps yet!"
The iPhone Def team blog reportedly read: "It's confirmed...SHAtter can trick Apple's new AppleTV 2G into restoring to a pre-jailbroken IPSW from PwnageTool too! Literally the only UI application on the ATV is Lowtide.app, but now the window is open for jailbroken apps of all varieties."
A teardown of the new gadget has revealed it is capable of running apps, although it is currently not known how Apple will make the idea work for TV.
Raven Zachary, president of Small Society that builds iOS apps for big brands, told Forbes: "It's going to happen; everything is there technologically to make it possible. We're still in the early phase of apple evangelizing the iPad, perhaps it makes sense for Apple to delay for focus purposes."
The Apple TV's insides are pretty similar to the new iPod touch's with the addition of an HDMI output port among others needed for a living room device.
ifixit.com discovered a Samsung K9LCG08U1M 8GB NAND Flash chip inside which it supposes is to cache shows while they are being streamed but the 8GB of storage could have more potential for storing music and apps.
The site also found that the A4 processor package is the same as the one inside the iPad and fourth generation iPod Touch, although different from the iPhone 4 processor. The box also comes with 256MB RAM, which is believed to be a relief to app developers who reportedly had feared Apple TV would have less memory than the iPad and latest iPod touch.
The spec would suggest Apple TV should therefore be able to run apps available for the company's other iOS devices, but it is faced with the problem of how to adapt them for TV.
Zachary told Forbes: "The types of apps you would see are going to be very different, centred around entertainment and media consumption rather than quick information consumption."
He suggest that Apple could introduce a touch sensitive pad like a trackpad it sells for Macs to allow users to control apps on their TV screen, in the absence of a giant touch screen.
