Developers at the ZuneBoards forum have managed to hack the Zune HD so they can run applications native on the device, previously the only way to run apps on the HD was through the XNA framework which has a lot of restrictions so  it will be interesting to see what applications get developed via this hack. I am happy with the Zune HD and am not to keen on hacking it but if some interesting apps come out maybe I will. The developers said:

While the XNA game development platform aims to provide a framework that makes game development accessible to the masses, on the Zune this translates to no 3D, no Internet access, and a performance penalty of around an order of magnitude – all when the hardware is right there. That’s about to change. Through the work of myself as well as Netrix, Nurta, and the rest of the ZuneBoards Development Front, all Zune models, including the Zune HD, have been hacked. The first true hack available for the Zune, this makes it possible to, for the first time, run applications directly on top of the Zune firmware, with full access to everything XNA withheld before. The limitations of XNA are now no limitations at all

More details in the Zuneboards forum, I am looking forward to seeing how developers get on with it

via Zunethoughts

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