Year: 2010

AppZapper 2


Appzapper 2 is my pick this week and is an uninstaller application for Mac OS X 10.6, with a number of extra features that make it well worth a look.
There are a number of other uninstallers available for OS X. I’ve been using the excellent AppCleaner on my mac for some time now, and when such a good utility is available for free why would anyone buy Appzapper at $12.95 ?
Appzapper is a lovely looking app, with a simple switch to toggle between the basic initial view to the main view.

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It not only shows all your installed applications, but has options to show only those apps that haven’t been used for a selected time period. Very handy when you’re trying to decide if you should keep an app or just zap it with the extremely satisfying sound effect. In addition to applications, Appzapper also tracks widgets, preference panes and plugins.

For me though, the great new feature in version 2 is the “My Apps…” window.

This is where you can drag apps onto the window, click the image and enter the licence info on the back. It would be great if you could import this info from a file as it can be a bit tedious to go through all your apps manually, and I did have some issues with some strange input methods for the date field, but these are minor gripes and ‘My Apps’ is an unexpected but welcome addition.

All in all it’s a great little utility.

Appzapper 2 is a free upgrade from version 1 and the Appzapper website is http://www.appzapper.com,

DigitalOutbox Episode 33

DigitalOutbox Episode 33
In this episode the team discuss Google vs China, MS Word Banned and Apple Rumours.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:45 – Google vs China
– “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure that occurred last month.
– The attack originated in China and resulted in the “theft of intellectual property from Google.”
– Attack, as confirmed by MS, was through IE (one of the vectors) and MS is working with Google and partners and developing a patch for the hole
– In light of the attack Google is making sweeping changes to its Chinese operations
– The company says that a minimal amount of user information was compromised, but has come to the alarming conclusion that the attacks were targeting the information of Chinese human rights activists
– In light of the attacks, and after attempts by the Chinese government to further restrict free speech on the web, Google has decided it will deploy a fully uncensored version of its search engine in China.
– This is a major change: since January 2006, Google has made concessions to the Chinese government and offered a censored (and highly controversial) version of its search engine at Google.cn.
– Should the Chinese government decide that an uncensored engine is illegal, then Google may cease operations in China entirely
– Huge, huge step. Massive corporate switch in strategy
– Should be applauded – too often corporations chasing the lucrative untapped chinese market have made concessions to the regime that they would never contemplate anywhere else
– Was this done, as some blogs are stating, due to google losing in China? Google says no – best quarter ever was the latest quarter
– One more thing…..Google hacked the hackers – PC in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government. Hacked 33 other companies including Adobe.
6:08 – Nexus One Support Issues
– It seems that Google / T-Mobile (America) / HTC don’t really know who is supporting the Nexus Phone.
– Google have no dedicated support line and are only offering support through a forum and via email.
– Good product but bad support = fail.
– Google have said they are now working with their partners to offer support via a number of channels.
– Early termination cost greater than cost of full hardware cost. (Google claim back as do T-Mobile…)
11:45 – GDrive but not in name
– soon upload any file type at all to Google Docs, not just the dozen or so Office formats that the service allowed as of yesterday. Video files. Images. Audio Files. Even Zip files. As long as those files are 250 MB or smaller, you’re good.
– The new feature will roll out over the next several weeks, says Google.
– Like other documents in Google docs, files can be kept private, made public or shared with a few users.
– Google Viewer can be used to view many file types, with the notable exception of video.
– Regular users have 1 GB of free storage and can purchase more for $0.25/GB.
– Enterprise customer pay higher prices, starting at $17/year for 5 GB. There are no bandwidth charges.
15:38 – MS banned from selling Word and Office
– The US courts upheld the initial judgement that MS has infringed i4i’s “Custom XML” patent in their Office suite and Monday 11th saw that start of the ban on selling the products.
– As it happens, MS has now produced a version that no longer violates the patent and so “This process will be imperceptible to the vast majority of customers”.
– MS also had to pay i4i damages of £183m.
– MS are planning to appeal further.
22:56 – Free laptops for low income families
– A new scheme to give free laptops to some 270,000 pupils from low income families has begun.
– The Home Access Scheme will follow similar eligibility criteria to those offered free school meals and will see a grant for a computer and also funding for a broadband connection for 1 year.
25:05 – OINK Admin Acquitted on fraud charge
– Alan Ellis, 26, was the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.
– He operated the site, called Oink, from his flat in Middlesbrough from 2004 until it was closed down in a police raid in October 2007.
In that time Oink facilitated the download of 21 million music files.
– At the end of the two week trial the jury returned a unanimous verdict (12 to 0). Alan Ellis is not guilty of Conspiracy to Defraud the music industry. He walked out of Teesside Crown Court a free man today, his name cleared.
– The verdict cannot be appealed and Ellis can finally put the past behind him and move on.
– So, crack on with torrenting then….
28:59 – Blippy goes live
– Social network for your spending
– Hook up your iTunes account, Amazon account, audible, godaddy, netflix, blockbuster, credit card or bank account
– Blippy will then broadcast your purchases
– People can follow you and see/comment on your purchases
– Step too far?
– It’s got lots of investors – I just don’t feel comfortable putting my accounts into this service.
35:14 – Marks and Spencer Netbook Range
– What the hey!
36:36 – Binged.it
– URL shortener
– Longer than bing?
39:38 – Tablet Rumours
– Orange exec confirms it and a built in webcam….then denies it
– Lots of 10.1 inch oled screens ordered,
– Gruber – no camera, webcam or otherwise on The Tablet
41:25 – iPhone Rumours
– oled, video chat, removable battery, twice the battery life and mobile tv
– touch sensitive back ala magic mouse – why – does that solve the game controller problem Chris mentioned?
– go figure
– Question – what would you want in os 4.0?
47:29 – Vodafone launches sat nav app
– Vodafone Navigation
– The application promises turn-by-turn navigation, with voice instructions and speed camera alerts, for any location in the UK.
– While the application is currently free, at the end of April 2010, customers can decide to keep the application for the length of their contract for just £3 a month, or choose to take it month by month for £5 a month.
– Only works with iPhone and a Vodafone SIM card
– They also sold 50,000 iPhones on first day

Picks
Ian
Readability
– Cleans up cluttered pages
– Great for reading long form stories – run through readability first then store to Instapaper or Evernote

Henry
Appzapper 2
– The uninstaller that Apple forgot
– Easy to use – keeps your mac clean of old apps

Chris
Dragon Age:Origins

Mac Mini Media Centre – Setup and Essential Software

In the first part of our Mac Mini Media Centre series we looked at Hardware and Connectivity. Now that the Mac Mini is hooked up to the HDTV it’s time to configure it for Media playback and install some essential software.

The first setup issue is screen resolution. If you’ve got a 1080P HDTV then it’s a simple as plugging in your Mac Mini and you’ll get a full 1080P desktop without issue. If you’ve got a VGA inout then you shouldn’t have a problem either. If you’ve got a 720P HDTV then you may have some tweaking to do to get a full desktop display. Most 720P tv’s are actually 1388*768 panels rather than the 720P resolution of 1280*720. The Mini will pump out a 1280*768 resolution which gives you two options. Live with that resolution and you get a black border around your desktop which is ugly. Alternatively, goto System Preferences and enable overscan. This will remove the border but instead you see half the dock and lose the menubar. Although this sounds bad in actual fact you will be using software like Plex most of the time which can cope well with this scenario so it’s not an issue.

If your not happy with this scenario then a final option is to use SwithResX. With this utility you can tweak the resolutions outputted by your Mac. However care must be taken as this software is basically (my understanding so could be wrong) a hack and it’s easy to set a resolution that your TV doesn’t support, so leaving your Mini displaying a black screen. Always select a resolution via System Preferences so that you can easily use the up/down arrow keys to pick another resolution that works. If you boot and you get a black screen there is advice on the ScreenResX website – good luck!

While we’re sorting out the desktop, there’s a couple of other worthwhile tweaks. I want the Mini’s desktop to be clear of any distractions. By default a Mac’s desktop will show external drive’s connected to the machine. To keep the desktop clear, open Finder, select Preferences and under the General icon ensure that all desktop items are unchecked. Speaking of the desktop, select a great background picture that will look good on the TV. Right click on the desktop and select Change Desktop Background or goto System Preferences and select Desktop & Screen Saver. You can pick a folder of pictures and have the system rotate them on a set time or when the Mac wakes up. Another great way of keeping your desktop fresh is to use DeskLickr which is free app that will connect to your Flickr profile, tag searches or a DeskLickr group and set the desktop picture. Unique and pulls up some real gems.

When your media is playing you don’t want to be interrupted or have the system kick of any scheduled tasks or software checks on the internet. Therefore, goto System Preferences and in Software Update disable Check For Updates. You should do similar for any other software that may be running – set checks to manual and every few weeks check for updates.

Another potential annoyance is Bluetooth, in particular when a device isn’t detected. In System Preferences select Bluetooth, click on Advanced and uncheck Open Bluetooth Assistant option.

With those out of the way it’s time to get some essential software installed. Remember this is primarily a media centre so I won’t be installing many of the popular Mac app’s.

For video and audio playback the key is codec’s. There are a variety of essential codec’s that should be installed to make the most of any digital content you own. Perian describes itself as the swiss army knife for Quicktime as it comes with almost all the codec’s you’ll need to make Quicktime your goto player. Perian enables support for the following:

  • File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
  • Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
  • Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
  • AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
  • Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT

While this add’s greatly to the flexibility of Quicktime it also brings a couple of issues. MKV’s take a long time to load in Quicktime as it likes to know the total length of a movie before starting. This isn’t the fault of Perian but rather Apple in how they’ve built Quicktime.

One codec issue is AC3 support. Apple doesn’t fully support AC3 and to set it up isn’t trivial. This blog post on Record and Reverie details the steps to enable AC3 support but it should be noted that this won’t work with all receivers.

Another essential codec to install is Flip4Mac Windows Media Component for QuickTime. Catchy. This enables playback wma and wmv files in QuickTime and allows you to view Windows Media Content in your browser.

Despite all the codec’s we’ve installed, sometimes QuickTime just doesn’t cut it. That’s where VLC Media Player steps in. This is an open source multimedia viewer, streamer and convertor. To be honest I only ever use it for playback and then you look at the features that’s not a surprise. The only drawback is the shortage of developers which has stopped the development of a 64 bit version.

iTunes is a great app for music playback but Spotify is a great companion. Spotify allows you to stream music for free from a large music library. With collaborative playlists it makes for a great music client.

The majority of internet video content is encoded in Flash so installing the latest version of Flash is also required. One word of warning if your new to Macs. Flash on the Macs is inferior compared to the Windows version. It’s pretty CPU intensive and likes to use up a lot of RAM. This was the case when it was owned by Macromedia and the Adobe purchase hasn’t made much difference. You should also get the latest Silverlight plugin from Microsoft as there is a growing amount of web video that requires Silverlight.

The final two app’s (for the moment) are Xmarks and SuperDuper!. I use Xmarks to sync bookmarks amongst all my browsers and it makes sense to make those bookmarks available on the Mini. I use Sync Profiles in Xmarks to make the bookmarks bar unique to the Mini and also keep some bookmarks exclusively for Work and vice versa. SuperDuper! is my backup tool of choice and it’s easy to backup the Mini to the Drobo so that I have a full disk image backup in case I need to restore. The image is actually pretty small as all of the media is stored on the Drobo and there are very few app’s stored on the Mini.

So that’s the Mini setup. Almost. The next post will detail some specific setup options that I’ve chosen to do to help share iTunes libraries amongst machines and also make the most of the energy saving features on the Mac as I don’t want to run the Mini 24/7. Once that optional post is out of the way I’ll take you through the setup and usage of Plex and that’s when the real fun begins.

DigitalOutbox Episode 32

DigitalOutbox Episode 32
In this episode the team discuss Nexus, Apple Tablet and some CES discussion.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
2:21 – London Datastore
– More than 200 data sets detailing life in London are to be put online by the capital’s governing body.
– Opens on Jan 29th
– Information about planning decisions, crime rates, abandoned vehicles, house prices, road accidents and many other metrics will form the London datastore.
– Those who come up with the most innovative ways to harness the data could get a substantial grant to help them bring their idea to life.
– 4iP, Channel 4’s Innovation for the Public Fund, said it would back the best ideas with a £200,000 cash pot.
– Data list – http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/data-packages-launch
5:13 – Project Canvas Approved
– Internet access for the TV via set top box
– BBC Trust has given the go-ahead for the corporation to push on
– The consortium of six firms is now looking for “expressions of interest” for other partners to join the platform
– Project Canvas now includes the BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4 and Talk Talk. Sky is likely to vocally object to the Trust’s apparent approval – its press office was unavailable at press time.
– “By seamlessly converging broadband and broadcast content, Project Canvas can help secure the future of free-to-air broadcasting and create an open platform that gives online services a route to the TV set.
6:57 – Videogames Bigger Than Film
– More money was spent on video games than on films – including both trips to the cinema and films on DVD – figures compiled for The Daily Telegraph indicate.
– In the twelve months to the end of September 2009, £1.73 billion was spent on video games, according to the data company GFK Chart-Track.
– According to the UK Film Council exactly £1 billion was spent at the British box office during the same period, with a further £198 million spent on film titles released on DVD and Blu-ray
– Only television – including DVDs of television shows, along with the cost of the license and satellite subscriptions – and music are bigger forms of entertainment.
– Industry figures show there the number of games consoles being used in Britain has shot up from 13.5 million in 2008 ago to well over 25 million earlier this year, with enough consoles for nine out of every ten households in the country to have one.
9:32 – Orange to launch HD Calls
– Orange will begin trials of the new and improved, 3G-facilitated service early in the new year
– fully roll it out along with a “range of handsets” before the end of the year.
10:27 – Nexus One
– Jan 5th launch
– http://gizmodo.com/5436673/rumor-nexus-one-will-be-530-unlocked-180-with-t+mobile
– 3.7-inch OLED display, HVGA (480 x 800) — deep contrast. 1GHz Snapdragon
– Trackball with multi-color notification LED
– Ah, so those contact points enable inline remotes and mics. Inline noise cancellation: two mics, front and back, which enables nose suppression. Custom engraving on the lower bezel!
– Live wallpaper – looks pretty junky to be honest
– Voice – any text box – demo – spoken english, server based translation to text – it worked! Voice looked amazing, as do all voice demo’s
– Google Earth demo
– www.google.com/phone – buy Nexus 1 plus other devices ‘soon’ – was this really the big announcement?
– Nexus One unlocked and without service: $529. Buy it with service from T-Mobile for $179.
– Will be shipping to UK from today + Singapore & Hong Kong
– On Vodafone in the UK in a ‘few short weeks’
20:03 – Apple Tablet
– Apple has reportedly scheduled a media event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on Wednesday Jan. 27, 2010, for a major product announcement.
– Selected app developers asked to make sure their app’s work…full screen
– 10″ screen is seemingly the size but lots of sites reporting 7″ too
– APple have owned iSlate domain since 2006/7 – iSlate?
– Is it tablet or high res iPhone?
– 5MP camera’s also rumoured
24:08 – Microsoft at CES
– Power cut – classy start
– Lame introduction – Crazy Steve Balmer ain’t no Steve Jobs
– Xbox – first up and sales looking good
– Bing – good year, growing market share – can’t argue
– Car – growing market
– Zune doing well, Windows Mobile – more next month
– Windows 7 – fastest selling OS in history, 94% satisfcation rating, 300M pc’s shipped, 4 million windows applications – there’s an app for that
– Some of the laptops looked…interesting
– Software – Blio, e-book reader, Office demo – snore, Bing maps again, Recording 4 HD streams – demo, Media everywhere – nice demo of media on tv, comp, phone, xbox – Microsoft Mediaroom – demo’d and talked about IPTV so many times – still not taking off
– Slate pc’s – ugggghhhhhhh – would Steve have said slate if the Apple rumours weren’t so rabid?
– Touch demo on slate fails 🙂
– Xbox – Mass Effect 2 – Jan, Splinter Cell Conviction – Feb, Spring – Mod War 2 expansion packs exclusively first on Xbox, Fable 3, Crackdown 2, Alan Wake – physiological action thriller – episodic with more episodes on Xbox Live, Halo Reach – demo not streamed due to intellectual property – Fall 2010, multiplayer demo in Spring
– Game Room – Personal Arcade, games in original cabinets, 30 original arcade classics from Spring, invite friends to custom arcade and let them try your collection, 1000 games coming!
– Natal – coming this year, holiday 2010, works with current 360, uses 10-15% of 360’s processing power
35:18 – Sony at CES
– 3D TV’s a go-go – top end come with two glasses and transmitter
– Using SD in camera’s!
– BDP-S770 – 3D blu-ray player, wi-fi, netflix and a free iphone app controller
– Sony Dash – 7inch, $199 running Chumby OS, not portable
– 24.5 inch OLED…getting bigger
– PS3 will play 3D movies through 3D Bravias
– PS3
– Heavy Rain – Feb 26th
– God of War III – March in Japan
– No mention of GT5!
40:54 – Skype goes HD
– 720p from Windows
– HD Camera’s coming
– Directly form TV’s – LG and Panasonic
42:21 – Boxee
– Plays everything the normal Boxee software does
– Under $200
– Powered by the Tegra 2 (T20) — a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU
– NVIDIA Graphicsthat can play 1080p video from locally stored content and stream HD content
– Utilizes Adobe Flash 10.1, meaning HD and web content should play back smoother and require fewer resources
– RF remote (so you can hide the box behind a cabinet)
– 802.11n
– No hard drive, no IR
– Remote looks great with chatpad on the back – I want for my Mac Mini
– Boxee Beta software now available to download – http://blog.boxee.tv/2010/01/07/boxee-beta-goes-public-download-now/
44:29 – Kindle DX On Sale Worldwide
– On sale on 100 countries
– $489, ships Jan 19th
– Includes wireless deal, get content wirelessly wherever you are
45:03 – Chrome OS Netbook Specs
– According to IBTimes, the Google netbook will house an Nvidia Tegra platform with an ARM CPU. If the rumors hold up, it will also have a 10.1″ multi-touch screen that supports HD, come with a 64GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, and other standards like Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, a webcam, and so on. Not surprisingly, the netbook will run Chrome OS and come pre-installed with a suite of Google Apps.
– The rumors also indicate that the netbook will be available by holiday season 2010 for a subsidized price of under $300, which is impressive for the type of hardware they’re talking about. It would sold directly from Google’s website, and they may partner with a network operator to sell it as a bundled 3G plan. – If previous experience is anything to go by, the data-bundle costs will no doubt be pretty crippling – especially for a device that is online only. Does the device need all the power to simply run web applications…
46:11 – iMac Woes Continue
– Resolves graphic card flicker
– The 27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update applies to the graphics firmware on ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards to address issues that may cause image corruption or the display to flicker.
– If your screen remains black after applying the updater or if you continue to experience image corruption or display flickering after successfully completing this update, contact AppleCare or an Apple Authorized Service Provider
– So not only does Cupertino seem to be blaming ATI for the issue, it’s not actually promising to necessarily fix anything with this update, either
– Couple of days after the firmware release, the flickering still continues for many – OUCH!
47:42 – Unreal 3 Engine on the iPhone
– It’s using a modified Unreal Tournament level previously shown off at GDC. A virtual thumbstick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, while tracking your thumb in the lower right corner of the screen controls the camera. Just tap the screen to shoot. Mark said this is a tech test bed and they’re experimenting with several different control schemes including ones with tilt.
– OpenGL2 only so 3GS or 3rd gen iPod touch
48:03 – AppStore – 3 Billion Downloads
– From 2-3 billion downloads in 3 months, 1 week
– Wowsers
48:22 – Apple Store Madness
– Apple stores don’t have “no smoking” signs. Legally they need them but they “ruin the design of the store”, so for every apple store in the UK they pay £50 a day to keep their windows sign free

Picks
Ian
Unison 2
– newsgroup app for mac
– looks amazing

Chris
Beautiful People
– The 5000 people who were kicked off of beautifulpeople.com for getting too fat over Christmas!
– To you I say… WAHHHHHHHHHH!

Mac Mini Media Centre – Hardware and Connectivity

Wanting to use a Mac as a Media Centre/HTPC? Then this is the guide for you. In the first of a series of posts we’ll describe how to hook up a Mac Mini to an HDTV. Future posts will show how to get the best out of the Mini, the utilities that we recommend and the great playback software available on the Mac but this post will concentrate on hardware and connectivity to your HDTV. We’ll also test some different methods to control the Mac Mini and some great software to get media onto your mac. The first question you may be asking – why a mac?

There are now a variety of technologies and hardware that will act as a media centre for your HDTV. If your a gamer then the Xbox 360, PS3 or the Wii can all act as good media centre machines. However you are limited to the codecs they support and navigating your own content via the software on the consoles which isn’t always the best. Another option is to use a fairly cheap Windows box as an HTPC. Asus and Acer do some cracking Windows machines for £200-£300 and Windows 7 is a great O/S for media playback, but for me it still doesn’t match OS X when it comes to features and stability.

Which Mac?
The natural choice for Mac fans is the Apple TV. This is a device which connects to your HDTV and allows for playback of your own media, rent/buy of HD films and TV via iTunes and a few other nice media features like streaming music, photo’s from other devices etc. However the Apple TV is £223 for a device which has wi-fi and a 160HD. Not ideal as agin it doesn’t support many codecs, although you can flash the Apple TV to install Boxee or other codecs. That leaves the Mac Mini.

This is a fully featured PC that currently (Jan 2010) comes with a 2.26GHz processor, 2GB of Ram and 160GB hard drive. Coupled with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card means it’s a great machine for playback of all music and video comeback up to 1080p. One other important feature – it’s tiny and most importantly for me is it’s silent. Drawbacks? Lack of Blu-Ray is disappointing when so many Windows machines come with that option and the price isn’t cheap. In the UK they are currently starting at £510. Not the cheapest but with a little bit of effort I think it’s one of the best options for a HTPC.

Video Connections
So you’ve bought the Mini – how do you connect it to your HDTV?

The Mini has two graphics ports – a mini DVI port and a mini DisplayPort. Apple has standardised on Mini DisplayPort in most of it’s recent hardware so it’s no surprise that the Mini is supplied with a Mini-DisplayPort to DVI adaptor. To connect your Mini to your HDTV you have the following options:

  • DVI to DVI cable – plug into DVI port on HDTV
  • DVI to HDMI cable – plug into HDMI port on HDTV
  • DVI to VGA cable – plug into VGA port on your HDTV
  • Mini-Displayport to HDMI adapter + HDMI cable – connect to HDMI port on your HDTV

Plenty of options and that’s obviously not all as the Mini-DVI port is there and can be used instead.

Audio Connections
That covers video but what about audio? None of the above cables will carry audio from the Mini-DisplayPort – thats what the Audio Out port is for.

This is a standard 3.5mm audio out port which also doubles as a digital out with the right connector. Search on Amazon or online for Mini Toslink to Toslink and you’ll find adaptors similar to the one pictured. Plug this into the Audio Out and you will now be able to hook the Mini up to an Optical in on your amplifier or TV via an Optical cable. This option allows for 5.1 sound to be delivered from the Mini. Note that to get 5.1 sound you must select 5.1 in each application. By default the sound will be output in digital, but digital stereo only. Taking DVD Player for example, goto Preferences and Disc Setup. make sure that Audio Output is set to Digital Out – Built In Output and check Disable Dolby Dynamic Range Compression. See screen below for example.

Later topics will cover the optimum audio settings for media playback software like Plex and Boxee. If you don’t have an optical in then you can make do with a 3.5mm to dual RCA (sometime called dual composite) cable which will give you stereo sound.

Input Devices
The Mac Mini is sold as a BYODKM machine – Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse. Catchy, not! The display has been covered above. As for keyboards and mice, you can plug any USB keyboard and mouse into your Mini which isn’t ideal for a Media Centre device. Ultimately the Mini won’t need a keyboard and mouse day to day but for setting up, they are essential. I was lucky in that I had a spare Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse which once paired with the Mini has worked a treat. As already mentioned, for short term use any old USB keyboard/mouse will do. Another alternative is to set up the Mac Mini via screen sharing from another Mac. Easy to do as long as the Mac is already up and running.

Logitech do a few keyboards that work wirelessly and also include a touchpad but models that have been recommended elsewhere and are bluetooth include the diNovo Edge which looks gorgeous but should do at £139, the diNovo Mini which is a smaller keyboard and touchpad combo but still pricey at £119 and something you may overlook – the MediaBoard Pro for PS3 at £50. While it’s a bit bigger and less sexy than the other keyboards, it includes a touchpad and is far more reasonably priced. Note that these keyboards are built for Windows PC’s, not for Macs, so some keys are missing like command for example. I should also mention that Apple’s new wireless keyboard is tiny, gorgeous and would be ideal if only it had a trackpad as well. Maybe this year Apple?

Another option is to use an all-in-one remote like the Logitech Harmony range. The advantage with the Harmony range is that it will work with all your A/V equipment and also with your Mac Mini and it comes with profile support for some of the software you use on the Mac, like Plex.

Finally, if you use an iPhone then there are a few app’s that allow you to have total control of your Mini – this will be covered later in the series.

Network, USB, Firewire and Tuners
While the latest Mini comes with wireless N support I’ve chosen to hook mine up via ethernet. Despite the improvements over the years I’ve found ethernet far more reliable, less prone to variation which is important when streaming and it’s far easier to do Wake On Lan (WOL) with ethernet than via wireless. The final connection for me was to plugin my newly acquired Drobo via the Firewire 800 port on the Mini.

One last piece of hardware which many will consider is a TV tuner. Elgato’s EyeTV range has long been considered the best solution for Mac owners. I’m sticking with my Sky HD box for now, mainly for the live sport but over time I can see me using the sky box less and less so I may revisit this at some point in the future.

Boot Time
With the hardware sorted and your Mac Mini connected it’s time to boot, configure and install some software but that’s for a future post.

Dterm

One of the great things about Mac OS X from the Geek perspective, is the Terminal.app.  It’s a simple Command Line Interface that exposes the Unix like operating system underpinning the glorious eye candy which Apple are more famous for.

Your mac works perfectly well without you knowing a gnats dropping about the terminal, and Mac users unfamiliar with  *nix are often a little overawed when they first encounter it.  But many of the more technical users love the terminal and the things they can d that aren’t available to the uninitiated.

If you are a die-hard terminal lover, then you really need to download dterm from decimus.net. It’s very simply a context sensitive terminal window with the working directory set to your current window. It appears when you press a hotkey.

For a developer using a version control system like git, using Dterm this is a huge boost to productivity.