Did you get one of those Apple TV boxes yet? For me, these devices were somehow in another world, until lately. Why? Obviously, I am not one of those TV addicts, and - to be honest - I spend as much time watching TV as you spend on Earth's orbit. Yes, that's right, I am not watching TV at all. After all, the future of media is online, and I fully embrace that statement. Now, back to the Apple TV hacks... what did I just said? "Hacks?" Excuse me, it should have been "Apple TV updates!"
If the Apple TV wasn't much of a deal in its early days, now it has turned into a fully featured digital media receiver, able to connect to your home network and retrieve media files from virtually anything around it, and it gets better with each software update, as we're going to see right away...
The last patch for the Apple TV is labelled 2.1, and it must be installed right from the device, but its main purpose is to help supporting "alien" technologies, such as the MobileMe online service, probably to get photo sharing support, since most of the remaining content there has no use for Apple TV owners. Even more, the Apple TV 2.1 update enables Apple Remote software compatibility, allowing its users to turn any iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote for controlling their digital media receiver.
Finally, this feature is here, and your iPhone can be turned into a remote for the Apple TV, just as I was expecting, but wouldn't dare to hope! Why am I saying this? Well, some Apple patents we passed by in the last months were giving some hints on such a feature, but Apple was as quiet as usual about it, so seeing it finally arriving with this patch is like talking about a "surprise everyone expects to happen..."
Before we go grab an iPhone 3G(if we can!), you should also be aware that Apple updated the iPhone Configuration Web Utility, for both Mac OS and Windows. Basically targeting corporate IT professionals, this software allows its users to generate, sign and distribute configuration profiles online, each of them containing security policies information, mail and Exchange accounts, and various networking settings. On the consumer side, this program delivers the certificates required for an iPhone or iPod to function on a corporate network.
This is it for now, but we'll meet again pretty soon, so if you don't want to miss a thing, be sure to subscribe to our news by email, if you forgot doing so until now. See ya...and stop thinking about Apple TV hacks, there's no such thing! ;)
