Santa Won’t Be Delivering An Apple TV 3 Jailbreak This Christmas [Jailbreak]

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"Siri, where's my jailbroken Apple TV?"

If there’s anything more illusive than the iPhone 5 jailbreak, it’s the third-gen Apple TV jailbreak. While real progress is being made on cracking Apple’s latest smartphone, hackers are having a harder time jailbreaking everyone’s favorite living room hockey puck.

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Many prefer to jailbreak the Apple TV in order to install third-party apps and enhancements that Apple doesn’t support out of the box, like access to live ESPN broadcasts. A company called FireCore makes a piece of software called aTV Flash that is used to gain access to additional services and features once an Apple TV is jailbroken. A free tool called Seas0nPass is used to jailbreak the Apple TV with a desktop computer, while aTV Flash is a $30 download.

Today the folks at FireCore published a blog post called “State of the ATV3:”

As you may recall we were very optimistic about the ATV3 when it originally launched back in March, and while this optimism remains unchanged it’s clear things have not progressed as quickly as anyone would have liked. The biggest hurdle that has yet to be overcome is also the most essential – the jailbreak. While we tend to think of ourselves as pretty resourceful, the security related expertise that is required in order to release a jailbreak for iOS based devices like the ATV is just not in our wheelhouse, and we’re simply left to encourage the capable few as best we can. No one is more anxious than us to get the ATV3 opened up to 3rd party apps, but due to the reasons mentioned above we’re not able to provide any kind of release timeline right now.

The “expertise” required to crack the latest Apple TV is indeed great. Kevin Bradley (known by his followers as “nitoTV“) has been spearheading the Apple TV jailbreak scene in recent years. At JailbreakCon back in September, Bradley assured us that he was working to create a jailbreak, but he’s still very much in the early stages of trying to find usable exploits.

Today Bradley told Cult of Mac that the status hasn’t really changed. “There is no Apple TV 3 jailbreak,” said Bradley. “Nothing even close.”

The third-gen Apple TV was released 8 months ago, and it would make sense for Apple to update it again at a possible event in early 2013. That’s pure speculation, but it’s worth considering the shelf life of the current Apple TV before a jailbreak is brought into the equation. Demand for a jailbroken Apple TV is so high that the second-gen model (the latest Apple TV that actually can be jailbroken) is selling for up to a $160 premium online.

Source: FireCore

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