Mac Media Centre - iTunes Remotes

Despite constant bribes the children still haven’t broken the old telly, so for now, the Mac Mini is acting solely as a server for iTunes and iPhoto. Thats just fine though, as it was mainly for music that I wanted to use it, and there isn’t much time for TV/DVDs. What I have done though is pick up a cheap Airport Express off ebay which is a great for sending music to the stereo without trailing wires.

So far, I’d been using my s700i phone with Salling Clicker to control everything, and this worked great. The only drawback is that when I’m away with my phone, Leigh is left without a remote. (There’s still VNC of course, but its not really a ‘small remote’!) . So I’ve been looking into other options available.

The Keyspan Express remote and particularly the ATI Remote Wonder, are possibilites, but when navigating iTunes without the TV & FrontRow, you really need visuals for choosing albums and playlists. What you need is basically an iPod Nano that acts as a remote. Actually, hang that, how about a 40” screen displaying Coverflow with just a Griffin PowerMate underneath?!

Next up was Coverbuddy. If you have a Sony PSP, Coverbuddy’s web interface has a special version sized for it, and it makes a nice remote. However, not only do i not have a PSP, but Coverbuddy only plays albums, not playlists. webRemote does both playlists and library, but seemed quite clunky after what I was used to on Salling Clicker. Like Coverbuddy, it also needs a web browser to work from.

Cut to the chase, it just occurred to me that Leigh had a Palm Tungsten C, and that I could use Salling Clicker with that. This meant enjoying the full graphics glory of the buillt-in iTunes Controller that I didn’t get on my Sony Erricson s700i. It worked so well, I just laughed for about an hour, punching the air like I was ‘Living on a Prayer’. Job done.

The 3 yr old Tungsten C is a maybe little bulky by todays PDA standards, but I’m sure that somewhere there is a smallish, light, supported handheld (or phone with a reasonable sized screen) thats also cheap to grab off ebay. I’d be keen to hear what device you’re using with Salling Clicker that gives you graphics.

Tags: itunes, mac, music, osx

Mac Media Centre part two - Software

FrontRow vs Others

So, now that everything is up and working, its time to find a GUI that will wrap it altogether. I could just use the default scripts in Salling Clicker to navigate between iPhoto, iTunes and DVD player using my phone, and this certainly works just fine. Lets face it though, a screen based interface is much nicer, and Frontrow is just the job. There’s the hack to get Frontrow running on macs that it isn’t meant to, and as mentioned above this works really well, but It’s a bit naughty, so lets look at the alternatives:

Tags: itunes, mac, mediacentre, osx

Mac Media Centre part one - hardware

For a few months now, I’ve been bitten by the desire for a Mac based ‘Home Media Centre’. I have all these scattered elements – music in various iTunes libraries, photos in various iPhoto libraries (We’d been using Old Faithful for downloading and keeping all the family photos), as well as DVDs and movies. I felt that I could bring these together somehow, but I also didn’t want to buy lots of new kit in order to do it. What follows is my experience in setting up a basic media thingy.

Tags: mac, osx

Keeping score

This will be the last whingey post about powerbooks, promise. Here’s where I’m at now:

Powerbook #1: Dead on arrival
Powerbook #2: Lid catch broke after 1 week, Hard Drive died after 2. Thats where I got to last time.
Powerbook #3: Dud battery.
Powerbook #4: Made of jam.

So, I’m now on #4, which while I hate to tempt fate, is looking good so far. I’ve still got a long way to go to top Michael’s record of 8 (see comment 49).

Tags: hardware, mac, powerbook, updates

There goes the "living off a powerbook" theory

There was one drawback I hadn’t considered when switching to this ‘living off a powerbook’ idea. No its not underperformance Mr Budd, its no performance. It all falls apart, when the powerbook dies on you.

Thats right friends, this one lasted just over 2 weeks before dying on me. After another excruciating 2 hours talking to Applecare (in India), I’m being refunded again. I refuse to accept a repair on such young powerbook. I need this to last me a few years, it can’t start its life like this.

Tags: hardware, mac, powerbook

The new beast

Damn that Gruber, he’s beaten me to the punch once more. Mind you, in typical Daring Fireball style, his piece is more detailed, researched and well written than anything I could’ve come up with (which is why I’m a member). So, I’m actually very pleased that he’s saved me time! Go and read that review if you want to really know about the new Powerbooks.

Tags: hardware, mac, powerbook

Waiting for new powerbooks again

I did it earlier this year and now I’m doing it again. Waiting for California to wake up and announce the new powerbooks at 10am. Back in January I decided to buy Dunstan’s 17”, rather than go for the new model. The 17” is lovely (and actually thinner than the 12” or 15”), but after lugging it around SXSW, @Media and a trip to New York this year, I decided its just too much. I now use it with a 20” cinema display, and just don’t need the extra size.

Tags: hardware, mac, powerbook

MacUser 20/20 interview

Shameless plug ahoy. The latest issue of the UK’s MacUser magazine (2nd September, #18) has a double-spread interview with myself, for its ‘20/20’ series. It was all a bit of rush, so my answers aren’t the most entertaining or eloquently written, but I’m as chuffed as Jack the Biscuit to be in there! ;o)

Tags: interviews, mac

Tiger-r-r-r-r

One ‘archive and install’ later, and I’m now running on 10.4. This is just a quick post to offload the Tiger related thoughts in my head to make room for more important matters.

Tags: mac, osx, rss, tiger

FTP files from skEdit using Transmit 3

Here’s a quick tip for skEdit users who prefer Transmit 3 for their FTP needs. With Transmit 3’s new ‘Dock Send’ feature, you can send files directly from skEdit. As long as your site is set up to use Dock Send, just drag the file directly from skEdit’s file view onto Transmit’s dock icon, and it will upload it where you need it! This cuts out a few steps and makes the whole process a lot quicker.

Tags: ftp, mac, osx, software

Waiting for new Powerbooks

I want a new Powerbook, but are G5’s on their way?

Tags: hardware, mac, powerbook

Full Metal interface

The reason why I like Apple’s brushed metal window theme – in certain situations.

Tags: camino, interfaces, mac, osx, safari

Playing iPods via iTunes

My ‘working away from home’ kit consists of just 2 things. My worn but trusty G4 Powerbook and my iPod. The iPod means I can play music in the car, as well as backup work to it. I’ve been trying to find a way of playing the music on my iPod through the Powerbook, without losing the link to my G5 where the music library is kept. There are plenty of apps that enable you to copy the iPod library onto your computer (such as PodWorks) – but I just don’t have the HD space for such a task. It also seems a little overboard – why copy everything when I should be able to just playback from the iPod?

Tags: howto, ipod, itunes, mac, music, software

OmniWeb 5

For the past year I’ve been dithering between Camino, Safari and Firebird as my default browser on OSX, unable to settle with one. They’re all really good, but each one has something that niggles me or leaves me wanting. In Camino its the lack of autofill and its centered tabbed browsing. In Safari, it’s the lack of toolbar customisability, its icons and non-configurable pop-up blocking. Firebird is the one that comes damn close, but at the end of the day, its not a cocoa app, so no native form widgets and (more importantly) I can’t use the funk in the services menu like ‘subscribe in NetNewsWire’ or ‘Encode into HTML’ (Character Convertor).

Tags: browsers, mac, omniweb, reviews, software

Extending Safari

Just wanted to share with you my favourite apps for extending the capabilities of Safari – There might be one here you haven’t tried…

Safari Enhancer – Does a whole variety of tasks, but I use it to enable the debug menu (contains a spoof user agents menu), remove the metal skin (looks great in Panther!) and deactivate the cache.

Sogudi – creates search shortcuts to use in the location bar. For instance, to search for ‘skEdit’ on Versiontracker, just type ‘vt skEdit’ into the location bar. Comes with some preset searches, and the ability to add your own.

Tags: browsers, mac, osx, plugins, safari, software

IE 5 Mac notes

Some IE 5 Mac things I recently discovered:

• IE 5 Mac won’t float a bunch of
  ’s,

  ’s etc. unless you specify a width for them.
  
  
  • When I applied the Tom Gilder image replacement method to elements such as the site logo, Safari added a huge horizontal scrollbar (presumably 1000em wide). This only seemed to happen when the image was within nested divs, positioned absolutely. To get around this, all I had to was add overflow:hidden.
    Read the rest…

    Tags: bugs, internetexplorer, mac, osx