9 Comments

Hack the AppleTV Without Opening It

April 3, 2007 by in Apple with 9 Comments

Fresh from AppleTVHacks.net and for the faint of heart you can now hack your AppleTV without even opening it. You need to boot the AppleTV off of an external hard drive with the full version of Mac OS X from an external USB drive.

Once booted, you can modify the Apple TV’s internal harddrive without needing to crack the case; and so you could enable SSH, Apache, or Apple Remote Desktop. You could even install 3rd party media centers, or just install some plugins.

Booting from USB requires booting the Apple TV as nromal then holding ‘menu’ and ‘-’ keys on the remote to initiate a restore boot. From there it takes a bit of timing, Turbo explains, “If I hold down menu and – from poweron until the first screen flash, I believe that it does the equivalent of cmd-opt-p-r. I only got it to boot from USB by releasing it at that point, then hitting it again just before the screen flashes on the second reset.

Now I feel kinda bad I cracked mine open [via]


  • Jerry

    Is this UneasyMac?
    At least 7 Apple stories in my RSS feed. Some others may be as well, the 7 mention Apple or Mac specifically…

  • http://www.uneasysilence.com Dan

    We are getting off the binge – It has be a REALLY bad news week.

  • http://is.derekpunsalan.com Derek

    We address both sides of the fence – Windows & OS X. There are some days when the pipe can get a little over saturated with Apple goodies but we’ll try to balance them out a little more. *Good thing I caught this comment, I was about to post something Apple-esque about the iPhone*

  • Andre

    Wow, there’s even a website fully focused on hacking the Apple TV.
    That can almost be called a business now xD

  • http://acecombine.com dov

    this wouldn’t be bad, if all the Apple products weren’t crappy..

  • Justin

    I though I was the only one who used the word “Apple-esque”…

  • emory

    lol apple-esque…
    On another note, as long as we’re talking about alternatives to mac stories, why not run a few articles on Linux? The next major Ubuntu release is out in alpha :)

  • Jerry

    So much for getting off the Apple Binge, two more Mac stories in 12 hours…

  • http://web.mac.com/ptklenk Paul Klenk

    Those who espouse Macs to be crappy usually have little or no experience with them. Thus, their opinions are totally without merit. As a paying hobby, I configure/repair/upgrade Macs and PCs. Speaking of crappy, let’s talk about Vista. And, I experienced Vista on two machines including a new laptop and a new tower. In both cases, it was incredibly slow and, in both cases it was bloated. Best news for me was that configuration and installations took time and time=money. Too bad for the clients because if they purchased a Mac, I would have left with hours to spare. Now, for the record, how many versions of Vista have been released? And, what are the associated costs while we’re on the subject?
    On the other hand, MacOS X Leopard is due for release in a few days at one cost, with one version, and no foolish OEM, and no ridiculous activation. Where’s the adware, spyware, malware, and viruses? . . . rhetorical question. Where’s the incompatibility with adjunct software. None because developers are writing code for one architecture. So, why have the Mac products jumped the market place? . . . another rhetorical question.
    Bottom line . . . until you have substantial experience in both platforms, you have no standing to make critical remarks. Best wishes!

Privacy Policy | About Us | Contact Us | Write for us