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TUAW TV Live this afternoon at 5 PM EDT: The Apple TV episode
When last week's episode of TUAW TV Live was being streamed, my Apple TV had just been delivered and I hadn't been able to do more than shoot a quick unboxing video. After a week, I've had an opportunity to put the new Apple TV through its paces and find what I like and dislike about the new unit. This afternoon, join me for a special Apple TV edition of TUAW TV Live. I'll show you the device, how it connects to the world, and give you a detailed tour of the Lowtide user interface. I'll also demonstrate the use of Apple's free Remote app in controlling the Apple TV, and then we'll open the chat room to discussion of the device. It all starts at 5 PM EDT today here at TUAW. Show up a few minutes early either here at TUAW.com, or visit the Ustream link below to watch -- either way, you'll be treated to a live video stream and a chat tool. If you can't make it to the live show, all of the TUAW TV Live episodes are archived on our Ustream page so you can view them at your leisure.
Apple TV Lowtide (Front Row) running on iPod touch
It's been Apple TV-palooza here at TUAW today. Shortly after discovering that the Apple TV iOS firmware could be downloaded and unpacked, we took our first peek under the hood and saw just how similar the new Apple TV, with its Lowtide software, was to previous Apple TV releases. Soon after, we discovered that the Lowtide application was built with multi-device support, including the iPad, in its list of supported hardware. Now, developer Dustin Howett has managed to port Lowtide to an iPod touch and run it under iOS 4.1. You can see him running the Apple TV Lowtide software in this video. It's really amazing to see just how compatible the diverse systems are.
More on Apple TV: Playback services may extend to iPad
Could Lowtide be targeted towards playback on the iPad? That's what indications in the application's Info.plist property list seem to hint at. As TUAW continues to explore the new Apple TV iOS disk image, all kinds of interesting hints keep bubbling out. The property list in question lists two entries for its UIDeviceFamily property. UIDeviceFamily = ( 3, 2 ); In human terms, those numbers refer to both Apple TV (the 3 device family) and the iPad (the 2 device family). As you might guess, the 1 device family includes the iPhone and iPod touch. These device families generally group related physical form factors. All iPods and iPhones use a similar 320x480 base geometry, even though units with new Retina displays physically enhance the addressability of that screen size with more pixels per point. Click the Read More link to see more about what we've found in the disk image.
Apple TV under the hood: first look
As TUAW posted earlier, the iOS 4.1 firmware distribution for Apple TV has just gone live on Apple's Phobos web server. TUAW downloaded a copy and used the dev-team's decrypt keys to peek under the hood. Here's what we found about the "Mojave" Apple TV distribution. First, as expected, there's no SpringBoard.app in Core Services. SpringBoard is the application that runs your iPhone's home screen, letting you launch applications by touching them. Instead, Apple TV seems to run Lowtide, an application responsible for all user interactions, which is derived from the previous Front Row application. Lowtide handles media playback, rentals, DRM management (Fair Play, of course), and other basic services.
