Order Pizza on Your AppleTV

Unlike the iPod, the AppleTV certainly hasn't been the marketing success that Apple hoped for but hackers sure love it. From the day that the AppleTV shipped, hackers have dissected the diminutive media player and found ways to add cool and innovative features like playing new video formats, upgrading the hard drive and turning one into a fully working Mac OS X computer.

One modification enables you to order pizza directly from the AppleTV with just the remote control, perfect for the lazy college student that wants to order pizza without taking time to boot up their laptop computer.

What can a hacked AppleTV do?
Play various video formats in addition to Mp4
Order pizza
Make Skype calls
Use a web browser
Run a full version of Mac OS X
Use a keyboard and mouse
Use an external hard drive
Enable file server and web server

Getting started with Hacking an AppleTV
The first hacks for the AppleTV involved a bit of surgery and exposure to AppleTV innards. The hard drive had to be removed, mounted into a USB hard drive enclosure and special software loaded from a Macintosh before re-installation back into the AppleTV. But the process has been refined to a no-screwdriver-required method. The Patchstick Method involves installing software on a USB flash drive and plugging it into the AppleTV's USB port which Apple reserves for repairs. When the AppleTV boots up, the thumb drive automatically loads the software needed to connect remotely to the media player and install other modifications.

Why do hackers love the AppleTV?
Apple's media player is the perfect piece of computer hardware. First, it's smaller than even a Mac Mini, uses low power, is quiet and is relatively inexpensive compared to other media center computers. Additionally, the AppleTV has the right video connectors to hook to a new HD TV and a remote control. Underneath the hood, the AppleTV is really a single board computer with a relatively powerful processor running an interface program Back Row. Hackers only needed to enable the parts of Mac OS X that Apple had hidden and then they had a full computer to load whatever software that they wanted. Once one of the media players has been modified to run an unrestricted copy of Mac OS X, the AppleTV becomes the least expensive Macintosh available coming in at nearly half the price of a Mac Mini.

This probably voids the warranty
Apple will make little effort to make sure that future software updates to the AppleTV do not break any modifications, so owners of modified AppleTVs may not be able to take advantage of new features and bug fixes provided by Apple. But then again, there's always a new hack out. Check out AppleTVhacks for an ongoing list of hacks, modifications and How-To's.