Tech Shout!

Ever since the iPhone was launched there really hasn’t been any interesting news from Apple. Apple TV Hacks crew gas recently come up with a software patch that allows for external storage devices to be hooked up using the USB port to the Apple TV set top box.

Many of you might remember that one of the major hacks that everybody had been waiting for was the one that allowed the connection of an external hard drive to the AppleTV’s USB port. And, this happens to be the very same one!

Apple’s shiny Apple TV set top box is already bestowed with a 40GB internal hard drive that can store up to 50 hours of video, 9000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.

Besides the 40GB Apple TV mode, the company recently announced a more expsive and of course more spacious version which packs in a 160GB HDD that is enough to store up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.

Now, coming back to the newly released patch; well this one’s for version 1.0 of Apple TV software, so if you have been using version 1.1, you’re out of luck. Although, the Apple TV Hacks team is interested in knowing if someone finds a way to break this barrier so that everyone can partake in the merry making process!

According to the Apple TV Hacks team, in order to have the patch successfully applied, you need an SSH-enabled Apple TV, an Intel-Mac or an Intel-based *nix Mac (this is needed to run the script to patch the kernel on the Apple TV remotely), an installed version of Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger, an original, unmodified copy of the ‘mach_kernel.prelink’ file from the Apple TV and an external USB drive formatted using Journaled HFS+.

The Apple TV Hacks team also insists on a backup of the Apple TV content, before actually running the script.