World of Apple

AppleInsinder reports that American retailer Target will become the second third-party retailer to sell Apple TV.

Target will join Best Buy who agreed to sell Apple TV just last month.

Those familiar with the plans report that Target will attempt to have some capacity of Apple TVs at several locations by the months end. It is also reported that Target will setup Apple TV demonstration areas, similar to those at Apple Retail Stores.

Apple has begun airing adverts advertising the Apple TV on television networks across America. The adverts began running sometime over the weekend without any word from Apple.

The advert features the film ‘School of Rock’ playing on an iMac and as the camera pans away the commentary explains how media is on both your Mac and the TV as well as the iPod.

AppleTVHacks.com has taken up some investigation into the layout of Apple’s online store page for the Apple TV. The page appears to indicate multiple Apple TV products as opposed to a single one.

On a similar note, LoopRumors reports that Apple is working on a software update that will utilise the Internet to display weather forecasts, news, and RSS feeds.

Apple TV Hacks Progress

AppleTVHacks.net has published a tutorial on how to run Mac OS X on your Apple TV unit.

Mac OS X running on an Apple TV

A video of the hack and Mac OS X running is available on Google Video.

Possible iPhone Launch Date

Several reports point towards June 11 as being the day the iPhone will be released. News.com has phoned Cingular customer services and spoke with a manager that stated that June 11 was the day.

The date coincides with the first day of WWDC 2007; which will run from June 11th to the 15th.

Files on Apple TV Hint at DVR Functions

As exploration of the Apple TV continues some users have come across a set of Automator actions that appear to point towards a future implementation of DVR functions.

Automator Actions on Apple TV

Most of the actions are bog-standard but a few hint at future DVR functions;

• New Audio Capture
• New Video Capture
• Start Capture
• Pause Capture
• Stop Capture

3D Interface for Leopard?

An Ars Technica blog post has caused a flurry of activity on the Mac web, the post claims that the Finder in Leopard will feature a 3D user interface.

The post is self-described as “wild speculation” so by no means should this be taken as even a rumour.

The article comes on the back of speculation about a new Finder for Leopard, current speculation revolves around Core Animation and how it could play a major role in re-modelling user interfaces.

As far as World of Apple has viewed Core Animation is unable to revolutionise the Finder on its own, Core Animations main purpose is to automatically animate changes in the user interface without a huge amount extra coding from the developer.

Apple Offers Podcasting Showcase

Apple has compiled a selection of podcasts aimed at users of Apple TV, Apple describes the selection as “podcasts that can make your television shine”.

On a similar note Macworld.com reports that Sony will join the iTunes Store with several television shows; ‘News Radio’, ‘Till Death’, and the original “Spiderman”, “Starsky and Hutch”, and “Charlies Angels.”

Apple TV Upgrades, Hacks

iTunes showing an Apple TV unit with an upgraded 120GB internal hard drive | Image courtesy Gizmodo.com

Apple TV has been reaching more and more consumers as the week ends. Yesterday the Apple TV’s innards were revealed for the first time and today the first person has swapped the standard hard drive for a 120GB drive.

A Somethingawful.com forum post and ever growing thread contains conversation of the first hacking of the Apple TV. The hacking at the moment consists of allowing the unit to play more than just the bog-standard video standards, such as Xvid.

The process involves inserting an Open Source plug-in known as Perian into the /Library/Quicktime directory of the Apple TV.

The Apple TV “explorers” are also discovering many things about how Apple TV operates. The unit’s run a stripped down version of OS X listed as, “Apple TV OS 10.4.7 (8N5107).” The unit’s also contain Intel Dothan processors running at 1GHz, 256MB DDR2 SDRAM, 40GB Fujitsu ATA hard drives and nVidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics processors capable of displaying a maximum resolution of 1280 x 720.

TechRestore.com has got its hands on an Apple TV and dissected it.

A peek inside Apple TV | Courtesy TechRestore.com

The dissection shows off the nVidia GPU, Intel CPU as well as the built-in wireless card.

News.com has revealed that Apple TV will be available in all 822 Best Buy stores in the U.S. starting Tuesday. The initial shipment will be 3000 units, but even this allows Best Buy to put Apple TV on sale a full two weeks before any other third party retailer.

Manuals and Support Documentation Revealed

Apple today posted online support documentation for Apple TV, as well as a download-able PDF of the manual.

Apple TV units have begun reaching the hands of consumers today, of note Apple also accompanied its earlier press release by updating the Apple TV technical specification page.

The new specs show that Apple TV can cope with the following;

Video
- H.264/Protected (content from iTunes Store), Up to 5 Mbps. Maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps
- MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps. Maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps

Photos
- JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG

Apple TV box. Image courtesy of Gizmodo.com

Gizmodo is the first site to publish unboxing photos of the Apple TV, but multiple customers are reporting that units are beginning to arrive.

Gizmodo offers a few notes about Apple TV that we didn’t already know, as well as a selection of galleries (Hardware | Menus | Unboxing)

Walt Mossberg Reviews Apple TV

Wall Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has written the first review of Apple TV.

The columnist writes, “Apple TV is tiny, just about eight inches square and an inch high, far smaller than a typical DVD player or cable or satellite box, even though it packs in a 40-gigabyte hard disk, an Intel processor and a modified version of the Mac operating system.”

Mossberg had an Apple TV unit for around 10 days, and concluded that the device was, “beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers.”

Many customers who purchased an Apple TV are reporting that their credit cards have been charged by Apple and that online tracking pages are showing “ready for shipping.”

Apple TV shipping dates were announced back in early January at MacWorld 2007, originally the unit was set to ship in February but this then slipped to “mid-March.”

[Update 20 March 2007, 08.30 GMT] – World of Apple is now receiving reports that Apple TV shipping estimates have changed from 20-March to the 29-March, we’ve had several reports of this, one specific report was from Australia.

Credit to Neil

[Update 20 March 2007, 16.30 GMT] – Apple TV units are shipping worldwide with estimated delivery dates of the 23rd March, except for Australia which is showing delayed shipments.