FROM BACK SEAT TO FRONT ROW
What was the Apple TV? No, seriously, we still can’t work it out
Keeping the dream alive
Got a first-gen Apple TV? Apple may have deemed it obsolete, but jailbreaking it and using Rowmote (regularrateandrhythm.com) can get you remote access with an iPhone, AirPlay control, as well as certain third-party apps which make it at least partially useful as a second-TV streamer even today. Don’t expect improved resolution or super-fast speed, though. It is what it is.
Jailbreak your first-gen Apple TV and you might even be able to run Kodi – no guarantees, mind.
Apple’s involvement in the TV game had been a long time coming. The company had dabbled with TV-adjacent devices in the past, of course, but to limited success. Whether or not you think 1993’s TV tunerequipped Macintosh TV counts (with only 10,000 sold, we’ll admit its relevance would be a stretch even if it’d been a runaway success), the justified bomb of the Apple Bandai Pippin multimedia platform, released in 1996, definitely does. It likely put a number of people within the company off non-computer hardware. Apple was a computer company, and was staying that way.