iOS app developer and hacker extraordinaire Steve Troughton-Smith has managed to get iPhone and iPad apps running full screen on an Apple TV. It's not pretty, but it works, and iPad apps look pretty decent when blown up onto a larger screen.
The hack is running on a jailbroken Apple TV (using the standard Season Pass jailbreak), and uses MobileX, an alternate window manager for iOS (Springboard is the name of the one Apple uses). This lets the Apple TV, which is also running iOS, launch and run any iOS apps.
Troughton Smith's current version uses a combination of SSH, VNC and the Apple remote itself to control things, which is awkward at best. He is working to make it Apple remote-only, though.
The video shows MobileX easily coping with the Maps app, along with Facebook and (after a crash) YouTube. Clearly the little Apple box is capable of big things.
This is a neat hack, to be sure, but raises a big question: How can you control a touch-screen app without a touch screen? There is no cursor in iOS, and many gestures which are natural for touch (scrolling, zooming) are sure to be excruciating using a remote control. Clearly, the Apple TV will never officially run current App Store apps any more than the iPad can run Mac apps.
Still, this hack would be worth having just to run things like the MLB iPad app, and other video-streaming apps. Let's hope Troughton Smith releases a public version soon.
Fullscreen iPad apps on AppleTV [Steve Troughton Smith/YouTube via MacDaddy News]
