Advertisement

Four things you might not have expected to find on Apple TV

Erica Sadun
Senior Writer
Updated ·1 min read

Apple TV is proving to be a hacker's delight, a kind of subMini with a complete (if variant) OS X operating system, wireless networking, and many other useful features. It also has a lot of legacy associated with it. Here are a few things you can find on Apple TV that you might not have expected:

  • Internet Explorer favorites. Dating back to 2003, you can find a list of Apple-related sites in /Users/frontrow/Library/Preferences/Explorer

  • Perl. Apple TV ships with a full 5.8.6 Perl installation for your scripting pleasure.

  • Screen capture. You'll find the utility screencapture in /usr/sbin. It works perfectly, allowing you to snap pictures from your Apple TV and store them in the frontrow account. e.g. /usr/sbin/screencapture -tjpeg ~/applelogo.jpg

  • Sounds. All your standard sounds (Basso, Frog, Pop, Sosumi, etc) are located in /System/Library/Sounds. If you so hack your system, you can play them in VLC or QuickTime Player and they sound exactly the way you expect. However you have to bring over a copy of System Preferences if you want to assign them to your non-existent Apple TV alerts.