Apple announced a new Airport Extreme earlier this week, and iFixit has already torn it apart. The good news? It's a hacker's dream.

Instead of opting for a new, custom case for the new router, Apple has opted to just reuse the case of its Time Capsule—just with the hard drive and connectors ripped out. That means there's a gaping 3.5 inch drive-shaped void on the inside, just waiting to be filled.

The iFixit teardown reveals that the SATA/power connectors required to use a drive are absent on the device they ripped apart. But no matter: if you feel so inclined, you could use the USB port and wire a bus-powered 2.5 inch hard drive around inside the case, as 9to5mac points out. Voila, a Time Capsule on a budget. Kinda. [iFixit]

Apple hasn’t opened up its Apple TV device to all third-party developers yet, but instead just added apps from a few high-profile partners to the platform. But that didn’t stop two avid Plex fans, who were able to bring the media center software to Apple TV, thanks to a clever hack. And the best thing: There’s no jailbreaking involved, meaning that Plex users won’t void their warranty or brick their device.

The hack, dubbed PlexConnect, uses Apple’s own movie trailers app as a kind of trojan horse to bring Plex to the Apple TV. Users simply have to fiddle with their Apple TV’s network settings to route traffic through a computer running a python script that swaps Apple’s movie trailer data with data from a Plex media server.

Users are reporting that Plexconnect isn’t just working for local content, but also for some internet media channels, including a few live streams.

Plexconnect is admittedly a workaround, and Apple can presumably put an end to this through an Apple TV firmware update. But it once again goes to show that Plex is getting a lot of support from a dedicated community, which has allowed the startup to iterate at a rapid pace and expand to a wide range of platforms.