Crazy Things To Do With Your Apple TV: Part I

It seems there is a preponderance of Apple TV hack ideas out there, and more coming every day. I read today on AutoBlog and TUAW that the Apple TV is by far the most hacked Apple device to date. And it only shipped a couple weeks ago. I'm not going to do any how-to's or step-by-steps, my jury's still out on whether or not I would even consider marring my precious little Apple TV (gack!), but when I read these posts about what people are doing with them, I have to admit some of them are quite creative. Makes me smile when I see people thinking outside the box. And then I smack my forehead for not thinking of it first. I'm going to post links to blogs that have particularly creative uses of the Apple TV over the next little while, and we'll see where it goes. Here's a great idea:

John Neff over at Autoblog posits a great potential use of the Apple TV. In your car! Provided you have the wherewithal to hack your car's video input to accept the output of the Apple TV (which shouldn't be too over the top), you could conceivably keep everything synced from your iTunes on a machine in the house, assuming your wireless network reaches the garage. The other cool thing he mentions is that with the mini-remote that the Apple TV is controlled by, you don't have to worry about mouse and keyboard, as many "hack your car" types have had to deal with when installing a Mac Mini in their cars. Neff urges any car-maker to step up and make Stevie J an offer he can't refuse, but warns against asking Apple for exclusivity. "You just want to be the first to offer the technology of the AppleTV in the cars you sell." Pretty good idea.

One snag I see is that no one knows how well the Apple TV will perform when it's really hot out (what's is rated up to?) or for that matter really cold. Would you have to bring the Apple TV in the house every day, adding to the little pile of things you have to lug with you everywhere you go? Some of these car-hackers like to install things like the Apple TV actually behind the dash, and again I say, it is a computer after all, I mean my iPod gets really screwy when it gets too cold, if you permanently install the Apple TV in your car... I'm just not sure it's going to work with extreme exposure, and once it's "behind the dash" good luck dueling procrastination on that one. "Aw I'll rip out the dash tomorrow morning, honey, before the trip, so the kids can watch sponge-bob in the car on the way to grandma's house." Good times.

Check out our coverage of the Apple TV (video) from Mac World 2007.