Soon, thanks to the tireless efforts of the iPhone Dev Team, you will be able to install apps on your AppleTV. An upcoming Jailbreak tool, called Shatter, has already been used to unlock the new Apple TV's firmware.

Shatter was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch shortly after its launch, and thanks to its iOS roots, the AppleTV is also susceptible to its power. The hack was carried out on the firmware restore download that has just been posted by Apple. This file, which contains the entire OS of the Apple TV, is an IPSW file, the file-extension for iPhone and iPad OS files.

So what's inside? According to the Dev Team member Will Strafach, "the new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS." This, he says, means that existing AppleTV hacks (or "frappliances") may already work. Frappliances are the plug-ins that add functionality to the original AppleTV. Also, all of the iOS software frameworks are present, which could allow hacks to enable video-conferencing, for example (if you could figure out how to hook up a camera) or even let you install the iPad Hulu app.

I suspect that Apple will add apps to the AppleTV in the form of channels, just like the Netflix "channel" that is there already. A jailbroken AppleTV, though, could theoretically run anything that will run on the iPhone or iPad. A final word from Strafach: "The most interesting thing about the new AppleTV OS is that all binaries are marked iPad-compatible. I do wonder what Apple is planning...."

SHAttered iPod touch 4G (and Apple TV) [Dev Team Blog]

@willstraf [Twitter]

Illustration: Charlie Sorrel

See Also:

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.