I’ve had a whole lot of emails from people asking me about AppleTV 2 support for ATVLoader and the BDK. As the notes at the top of those two product pages mention, the currently released versions are incompatible with Apple TV 2.0. In addition, the BDK requires Tiger, and will not run on Leopard out of the box.
For ATV Loader v2.0, I’m planning on updating the infrastructure such that more types of appliances can be installed. I’ll also be defining a proper package format such that developers can provide tailored installations for their products. There may be a new plugin site, I’m not sure of that yet, since other people have to be involved. But I’m certainly leaning that way at the moment.
Version 2 of the BDK will rely on Xcode 3.1 because it will use the same multi-platform support framework that the iPhone SDK uses. The Test Harness will be rewritten to be similar to the iPhone Simulator in execution, so there will be three platform-specific versions installed: one each for Leopard, AppleTV 1.1, and AppleTV 2.0. You will be able to choose a platform to build & test against from your Xcode windows as with the iPhone. Currently Xcode 3.1 is in beta, so this won’t be officially released until that comes out of beta. I would expect this to happen around July 11th, at which point I’ll be making sure everything I’ve got right now is compatible, and then going into a testing phase leading up to a release in early August. I’ll be using this myself, so it should get some good stress testing by then.
Stay tuned for more information.
I’ve just been informed that a section on ATV Loader is going to be broadcast as part of The Lab with Leo on G4 TechTV next week. The show in question will be on TechTV in Canada on Tuesday August 7th at 6pm EST, and will also be broadcast on the HowTo Channel in Australia (although I don’t know the exact date/time for that, sorry).
I’m not sure when the air date is in the US — I would guess that it would air on the same schedule as the Canadian version; if anyone can confirm that, please post a comment. Same goes for the Australian times for the HowTo Channel, and anywhere else that rebroadcasts the program elsewhere.
Version 1.0.6 is now available for download, both from the link below and from your Apple TV. This version includes a French localization by GoldstarQC, German by therealkerni, and Spanish by dordoka. It also adds indications of updated plugins in the plugin list, which will look like this:
For plugin authors, the implementation works by checking the FRApplianceName and CFBundleName values in your bundle (the former is the localized CFBundleName, btw). If neither of those match the title or the ’short name’ under which you’ve registered your plugin at plugins.awkwardtv.org, then you can add a new key to your Info.plist, like so:
<key>ATVPluginShortName</key>
<string>myshortname</name>
The short name is the value which appears after the ?recordID= bit in the URL for your plugin page at the plugins site.
Yeah, I needed to do that to make it work for loader, which is ‘ATV Loader’ out here, but ‘AwkwardTV’ inside the plugin. Let’s hear it for forward-thinking!1 
And of course, the manual installer is located at the usual place:
Download version 1.0.6
Okay, so the plugin did not in fact handle redirects correctly, it just happened to be the case that my Mint download counter redirection URL didn’t cause problems during testing, but everything else actually did, including the one just added to the XML feed used by ATV Loader.
sigh…
So, here we have version 1.0.5.
Pray, people. Pray.
Download it here
And so, scant hours later, after fiddling with a bug in the ‘update-self’ routines, we have version 1.0.4. This version fixes that bug (earlier releases will not set the privileges on the built-in SetupHelper tool properly, meaning it’ll fail to install what it downloads).
I’ve also added a custom User-Agent to the HTTP headers used by the appliance when downloading items. If you want to track the number of hits you get from it, the new value is:
"Mozilla/5.0 (AppleTV; U; Intel Mac OS X; ATVLoader)"
Just filtering on ATVLoader would probably do the trick, though.
The download link and installation method, as ever, remain the same.
Download it here
The download link and installation method remain the same.
Download it here
Since there appeared to be an issue with the download — some people reported it working, some reported it didn’t. Then it seemed that the installer package included wasn’t actually the 1.0.1 version. So, since I’d recently received a Dutch localization from macTijn of AwkwardTV, I decided I’d just put together a new installer. This one also has the About information updated with release notes and the date of release.
The download linke and installation method remains the same.
Download it here
I’ve just posted a minor update to the ATV Loader appliance plugin, which implements the AppleTV Main Menu fix from the previous post.
The download link and installation method remains the same.
Download it here
Well, the ATV Loader has been out for a couple of days now, and appears to be in good shape. As such, I think this is a good time to issue a call for translators.
If you would like to take on the task, please email me — I’m ‘alan’ at this domain. Alternatively contact me via IRC in the AwkwardTV channel. Translators will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis, but if someone else later says they can do better, well, they’ll get a chance too.
I look forward to hearing from you all soon.
It’s been a long time in the making, but finally it’s here. The ATV Loader is born!
So far it has its own page, a download containing an installer to do the fiddly bits of installation via SSH on the AppleTV, and lots of pictures.
If you’re as excited as I am (or even if you’re, you know, not), go and look at the full details here.