Tomorrow and more...

Maybe tomorrow we will have an Intel based Mini. Do I feel a bit fooled into buying an "old" Mac if it is released tomorrow. Most likely if it is released, it will have more connectors than the current model. Anyways, it is never the right time to buy a computer, and these days Apple products seems to be even more "vulnerable" to this statement. This new mini would be a step towards the player I want my mini to be. If there was a digital tv slot/addon for it and the current mini, now that would make the current bulky hardware needed to "have a somewhat decent" home media system. RCA connectors for my stereo speakers would be great too.

What more about tomorrow? Well, some predicts that we will see a true "movie ipod" and a movie download service within iTunes. That I don't care for so much, but also that will be a step towards furthering the world from the pc-era. I don't yet own an iPod (or any other mp3 player for that matter) as I am not convinced that this is the format for the future. HDs that contain our media, be it music, movies or images will become more and more commonplace.

One question that I began thinking about today was, when we migrate to HD based media storage solutions like the iPod and such, what happens when the device is broken and the media is lost? Who's responsibility is that? Do we have to begin backing up our media hubs? How many would like to do that? Not me, I want storage solutions that is secure, and faultfree. Quality over quantity, not the other way around that we seem to choose today, quantity over quality. Anyways, will this media hub way of thinking generate more electronical waste? Upgrade the hub every two years so that it can play the latest version of the media files that are hip within the media industry. Unrealistic, what we need is to adopt a standard on a long term view, like the CD. Is mp3 the new standard?

Mediacenter... #2

So there are products out there that do deliver some of the features I thought about, but they don't look good. I dont want a big hulk of a PC machine, I don't want anything with knobs on and I certainly don't want anything that says Microsoft. I want a sleek white small and good looking media hub addon for my mini. There is no need for knobs, except maybe for an on/off button. A good clean remote and a userfriendly interface for interacting with the the addon products.

Now listen up Steve, I want this addon for my mini:

- digital tv compatibility
- hdtv
- misc media connectors, such as scart, rca svideo aso aso...
- connectors to connect my speakers to
- and the possibility to pause programs during shows and movies, reccording them would not be so bad either.
- the possibility to add as many tvs to my household without having to buy additional digital tv decoders.

Please Steve, if you happen to read this, give us something sleek and good looking :)

Mediacenter...

I have realized something today. As I sat in my sofa listening to radio through iTunes I happened to glance over to my stereo equipment, tv, ps2, dvd player and digital tv box sitting beneath my tv eating up shelfspace. All of the above mentioned equipment except fot the PS2 could be intergrated into the mini. All the mini would need for accessing the digital tv channels that are encoded, is a slot for inserting the digital tv access card. There, a complete media system within one small piece of equipment, the Mini.

How did I come to think of this? It happened when I read an article about the Apple Intel switch in the swedish magazine Nätverk & Kommunikation. In it I read the phrase, "we are now living in the post-PC-era, an era filled with gadgets like iPods, mobile phones and PDA's" aso... When I read this I and glanced over to my shelf where the above mentioned products are located, I realized that the days are numbered for the stereo, dvd player and digital tv reciever. All of those will be merged into a product like the Mini (and let's hope that Apple is the one to give us this product). Who needs all of those products when they can be merged into one? Not me. The time of the home multimedia centre is upon us, the vision of the digital hub is being realized and the transition towards it will be with the help of corporations like Apple.

Also, the era for the home computer user, when it did matter what and which version of the OS you were running on your computer is also numbered. What we want today is ease of use and userfriendliness, and there Apple is lightyears ahead of any other OS. I suspect that the transition to Intel x86 is one of these reasons. What the ordinary user really want to do with his computer is read/send email, surf the net, online shopping, news reading, watch movies, research some interesting subject without having to switch from the tv to the computer. These features will be merged into the home media hub. I also forsee another feature, but that one I will not disclose until I've talked about it with some of my friends, or if at all.

We will also be able to move the tv and place the media hub wherever we want to with the help of WUSB (wireless usb). No more cables and instead more flexibility and movement freedom within you own media hub enviroment. Let's also hope that the WUSB media hub will be able to ditch the current "you must have a decoder for each tv for watching digital tv" way of thinking. Just buy a family license of the hub, and connect as many broadcast products you want within your home per person. The way of thinking one additional product per tv for example, is so 1980's. Embrace the licensing model amongst others, and scrap everything called "one product for each service or feature you want".

One other thing I also came to think of is that the days of regular radio broadcasts are numbered too. Who really wants to be limited to the bad selection of channels where they insist of feeding you mediocre music that you do not want to listen to? Not me, that is why Internet based radio will end the regular broadcast radio era. Here I can decide which channel to listen to, and what kind of music I'd like to hear.

The future is upon us, and it's all digital and you know know it.

Desktop Linux...

I realized something today, there will be no Linux Desktop revolution, as there is only one product ready for desktop prime time with any form of ties to the Unix world. And the product is Mac OS X.

Mac OS X is what a Linux Desktop wants to be, but I suspect will never be. Because Apple control the system design of their products, it is much easier to certify products for compatibility with Mac OS X rather than with a Linux distribution.

I've been using Gnome for several years as my primary desktop, and today when I booted up my Linux 64bit PC, I realized how far in terms of userfriendliness, compatibility and sheer user enjoyment the Mac is than any other PC desktop os out there.

But, as a server operating system Linux is much more further ahead in the game than Apple's Mac OS X. I've been trying to learn Mac OS X server operating system (yes, I do have access to a Xserve G5, lucky me ;) ), but I still can make a Linux based server installation and have it ready for prime time faster than with Mac OS X. Of course the the years of experience with Linux is what matters here, but this knowledge should also help me when I set up a Mac OS X based server. Nevertheless, I feel much more at home in a Linux server than in OSX server. Why is that? Maybe working on the graphical level in a server is too confusing for someone that is used to text based management. Only time will tell how well I will be able to manage OS X.

Security...

I was thinking about now that the first publicly publicised worm Leap/A has hit the Mac, can we trust in the security of MacOSX? I mean, there are most likely many vulnerabilities in the MacOSX.

I know that MacOSX is based on BSD and the motto of some BSD's are security by default, but how good is the security within BSD now when it has been adapted towards a more userfriendly enviroment.

I myself switched from Gentoo Linux 2005.1 when I bought a Mac Mini. My reasons were

1. Silence.
2. Security, an opinion now somewhat a bit shattered.
3. No spyware (yet, well none that I know of).
4. No antivirus software needed to bog down the system (yet).
5. Deskspace.
   

Questions that remain for me now are:

1. How well can and will Apple respond to more security threats and bugs?
2. How fast will Apple patch those potential security threats identified?

My trust in the MacOSX have now been somewhat shattered, and I sincerely hope that Apple can assure us users that are concerend about possible security threats, that Apple will respond faster than MS and hopefully faster than Linux based distributions regarding updates and patches.

Uninstalling...

Are you a Windows user? Familiar with the Control Panel applet called "Add/Remove Programs"? Well, as userfriendly as MacOSX is, I was amazed at that there is no Uninstall Applications in System Preferences. A modern operating system should have this option. I figured it out that you mainly have to just drag the application you wish to uninstall to the trash bin and empty that. However, there may be files still eating away at your diskspace even though you uninstall an application this way. But knowing Apple, they've thought about userfriendlyness and that means drag to trash, empty trash and forget about the application.

If you wish to read more about howto delete apps read this information. I found an application called Appzapper which acts as an uninstaller. Easy to use too, just drag the application you wish to uninstall onto the Appzapper window, and it will uninstall your application. Which way would I choose? I will use the Apple way, drag to trash, empty and forget about the application.

Multisession...

One thing I've discovered is that one should not expect to be able to read any PC created multisession CD/DVDs. Now, this is one of the most serious flaws I've come across so far. One would think that a company as Apple, as media geared they are, would in their own system be able to supply interoperability between different platforms regarding media such as CD and DVDs. On a Linux based system, there are far more possibilities for interoperability with other kinds of filesystems such as UDF multisession and UDF in general.

One would hope that in future Mac OS operatingsystems the interoperability to read media and filesystems from other systems will be better. Take note Apple of this, and provide us PC switchers with better options regarding these issues.

PDF...

PDF, a true valuable document type indeed. Today I would have had to print a lot of documents, but as I don't have a printer (who needs a printer anyway these days), I opted for the PDF solution. Printing to a file in Mac OS X is easy, just select "File - Print..." and click the PDF button. Select "Save As PDF..." to save your document as a PDF file. Easy and neat.

But, the document pool grew large and not easy to handle when there where a lot of single PDF files. I needed to merge these documents into a single PDF document. I decided to do a search at Versiontracker, and it reavealed a true freeware gem. The application goes by the name of PDFLab. It's all you need for merging your PDF documents without having to buy something called Adobe Acrobat ;)

This great application will indeed be added to my list of musthave apps for my system. Kudos go to the author of the application.

Games galore...

First of all, don't expect to play World Of Warcraft on the Mini. But there are a lot of other non-resource hungry games out there. Some are commercial and some are free.

First one is Blizzards StarCraft. You most likely have heard of StarCraft before, or even played it. Well, SC is available for the Mac, and will run fine on MacOSX. But, if you already own SC, check the CD jewelcase if it reads PowerPC compatible. If it doesn't then you are out of luck. You need to most likely buy a new version for your Mac if you would like to play Starcraft. I am one of the unfortunate ones, I own the older version of Starcraft which is PC only. I've been in contact with Blizzard, asking them if I can trade my old copy for a Mac compatible, but I seriously doubt that I will be allowed to do so.

The second game I enjoy playin on the my Mini is a freeware Tetris clone called Quinn. A great game indeed. I doubt the game Tetris need much of an introduction, and neither does Quinn. But if you have never heard of Tetris, then it is a block-falling-puzzle-game. Great to play, fun and at higher levels darn right difficult.

My third choice so far, is Sudoku over at Miniclip.com. A great mindbender for you to try out.

I will dig deeper into games on the Mac that you can play on a Mini. But for now I suggest you download Quinn and go for a Tetris puzzle.