In case you’ve been living in a cave for several months, you will have heard about the Apple TV, Apple’s new device which connects your iTunes library to your TV and allows you to play your iTunes content in your living room.

It turns out that the Apple TV box is actually a low-powered computer in a small box. Powered by an Intel Pentium M processor, the unit actually runs Mac OS X (albeit a version with some components removed).

Because of the fact that the Apple TV is just a computer, it has proved quite easy to hack new features into it. We’ve seen people getting SSH remote login to their Apple TV and subsequently launching proper OS X applications on the machine, including VLC to play extra media formats and even run the online game World of Warcraft.

The point I’m getting to is, there is a thriving hacker community around the new device.

Obviously, Apple can’t publicly condone people hacking additional functionality into their Apple TV, but the question I want to know is, do Apple mind people doing this? I can’t believe they wouldn’t have realised people would try, but it does seem surprisingly easy to do.

They could have taken a heavy-handed approach, and implemented a solution to lock the hardware so it would only execute Apple-approved code. It’s something that Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to do in the Xbox, and have largely succeeded with in the Xbox 360. Microsoft’s strategy here though is different. Microsoft make a loss on the hardware and have to make their profit on the games. If people started using Xboxes as cheap hardware and using them, for example, as Linux-based servers, Microsoft could be losing a lot of money.

Apple don’t have that same issue. At the present, the business model with the Apple TV is iTunes and getting people to purchase content from the iTS specifically for their television. They probably don’t have the same kind of issue with making a loss on the hardware either, as I imagine they can at least break even on the Apple TV hardware cost bearing in mind the low cost of components of a similar spec.

Still, it’s perfectly possible with a bit of effort to use the Apple TV as a dirt cheap Mac (even the Mac mini isn’t in the same price range as some of the cheapest PCs).

I’d be absolutely fascinated to know what Apple’s real views on people hacking the Apple TV are. If any of our readers have interesting theories about Apple’s thoughts on this issue, why not share them in the comments?