I’ve long dreamed of setting up a Mac based media center. So during the past few days I’ve been testing out some solutions to this little problem. There are the obvious ones, like the AppleTV, and then some more complicated mixtures of hardware and applications.
My goal is to sync or stream all of my digital media (music, TV shows, movies, pictures etc) to a large SDTV (standard definition television) in the family room.
1) AppleTV
The AppleTV is an amazing little box. It’ll sync or stream nearly all of your media from any computer that can run iTunes. There’s also some nifty plugins to extend its functionality. On paper it looks perfect, but in practice it caries a number of limitations.
- Initial cost
- File type limitations (think DIVX etc)
- Limited configurability/tweaking
- No support for SDTVs
These limitations are somewhat superficial, I could solve most of them by hacking and having a bigger wallet. At this time, however, the AppleTV just isn’t a viable option.
The world is full habits and quirks, and over time people come to accept all that quirkiness. A lot of the time it seems that acceptance evolves into some sort of dependence. Soon we find ourselves addicted to the way things work. This can be observed in everyday life, but if you’re looking for some proof right now take a look at the reaction to the “New Facebook”. It sounds like a great number of people absolutely hate it. But what is it that people hate?
In 2003 Apple introduced new wired and wireless keyboards that were ascetically pleasing and very functional. The white-acrylic models were a treat to type on, but did have their share of flaws. Given that, and the fact that after four years the design was aging, a change seemed to be in order. This call was answered with the aluminum keyboard we observe today, and I’d like to tell you about my experience with it.
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