Now that Maciverse.com author Dan is the proud owner of a Macbook Air (MBA for short), he’s also been going without his favorite DVDs. We’ll overlook the fact that he also owns a large HDTV and pretend he would really prefer to watch his movies outside in the shade on a beautiful spring day. Not only does the MBA suffer from not having a DVD drive, it also doesn’t have a lot of space for a movie collection. But don’t let that stop your fun.
For about the same price (depending on the model) as the MBA Superdrive, you can buy a slingbox. This lovely little device connects to your normal Cable/DVD/DVR output and to your network and lets you watch whatever is playing over your network with its SlingPlayer software. Depending on the brand of DVD/DVR/Cable Box, you can even control it from your computer as if you were pointing the remote at it. It can even be connected to an Apple TV. However, it doesn’t have wireless networking capabilities and that might be a drawback if your wireless router is on the other side of the house (or on a different floor). Also, once your movie is over, you will have to get up from your shady spot, go to the DVD player and put in another DVD just as if you were watching in your living room. So it doesn’t give you any type of media library (unless you connect it to your DVR or Apple TV). But all in all, a Slingbox is a very simple way to keep watching on your super slim Macbook Air. We’ll have a few more recipes for turning Dan’s MBA into a movie machine in future articles.
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We’ve discussed in previous articles about how we wanted a little more from AppleTV and mentioned how to create a more powerful media center. One item that adds some additional enjoyment to your media center is the Nintendo Wii.
We also mentioned ways to sync up your wiimote to your Mac and use it as a mouse. If you combine these two ideas and add in an HDTV you get one impressive media center that you can control with point and click technology. Lets face it, although bigger, the wiimote is just a lot more impressive than the mac remotes.
While the Macmini is the cheapest Mac you can buy to sync up to your HDTV, any Apple notebook would work great for this situation. I personally hooked up my Macbook Air to my HDTV using the microDV to VGA converter that came with it.
You may need to find a converter from the miniDV or microDV video out from your Mac to what ever video inputs your HDTV receives. I know many will HDTVs have either a VGA in or a DV connector. The Macbook Air comes with converters for both.
After you connect your computer to the TV with the cable and correct converters, just tune your television into that video input and power up your mac.
While you don’t have to actually connect your Wii to your TV, be sure to place the IR Sensor bar is above your TV and connected to your Nintendo Wii. The next steps include connected your Wii to your Mac.
To do this you’ll need to download Darwiinremote. Its a free application still in beta that allows you to use your bluetooth technology on your Mac to connect the wiiremote to the computer. After downloading the file to your Mac connected to your HDTV, launch darwiinremote and follow these steps:
- Be sure that Bluetooth on your Mac is turned on and in discovery mode.
- Click the Find Wiimote button
- The system will prompt you to click the 1 & 2 buttons on your wiimote, click them simultaneously.
- Darwiinremote should find your Wiimote and sync it to your mac.
- Click the IR Sensor Button
- Power up your Wii so that the IR bar receives power.
- Select Mouse Mode On on Darwiinremote
- Minimize Darwiinremote
You should now be able to point your wiimote around the HDTV and the pointer on your Mac will follow your movements. Click the home button to pull up front row and start accessing your media content. Download movies to rent through iTunes or stick in a DVD and enjoy it on your HDTV.
You can customize the various button functions on your wiimote through the preferences on darwiinremote to differen’t mouse clicks, or keyboard shortcuts.
One great advantage of your MacWiiTV is that you can still enjoy all the functionality that you get from a normal Mac computer in addition to custom mouse controls using the Wiimote. If you want to browse the web you can pull up Safari and use a bluetooth keyboard to help navigate to different websites or pull up the onscreen keyboard.
- Click the apple icon on the menu bar
- Select System Preferences
- Select International
- Click The Input Menu Tab
- Select Keyboard Viewer
- Click the Flag on the Menu Bar
- Click Show Keyboard viewer
- Click the maximize button to increase the size of the keyboard.
The addition of the Wiimote to your new home media center adds some unique ways to interact with your television without the need for a mouse and keyboard. Additionally it allows you to take full advantage of your Mac media center and still use the complete features of OS X while sitting on your couch.
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I had a co-worker who talked about the “great hard drive crash of 98″, in which his computer drive failed and he lost tons of data. Even worse, he was in the middle of school and most of his projects were on the drive. Could disaster have been prevented? It’s possible.
Modern hard drives ship with SMART, or Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. SMART is like the check-engine light for your hard drive. The idea is to warn you that the drive may fail soon so you can take steps to backup your data and avoid your own personal “great hard drive crash of 98″. One drawback is, most operating systems are weak on reporting of this information, kind of like putting the check engine light in the trunk. But us Mac users have help thanks to SMARTReporter.
SMARTReporter is free software that monitors the SMART status of your drive and can alert you if there is a problem. Unfortunately, some drives crash too quickly and spectacularly for the SMART system to do any good. But if your drive is dying a slow death, SMARTReporter will be able to help.
Although we mentioned all the articles that reviewed the Macbook Air shortly after its original release date, the amazing design was too much for us to pass up and we had to get our hands on one our-self.
After securing the funds in our budget, we ventured out and picked up our own version of the $1799 Macbook Air
UN-BOXING THE AIR
When the store clerk brought me the Macbook Air box I was amazed. I had grown so accustom to larger boxes for notebook computers that it didn’t hit me that the Air really does fit into a manila envelope…
Like all Apple products, the box was well organized and everything included with the Macbook Air fit in nice and securely.After pulling the notebook out of the box I compared its size to my wife’s cell phone.
At its thinnest point, the Macbook Air is actually thinner than the Samsung cell phone. Despite all this, the Air still includes a full keyboard and 13inch monitor.
Well done Apple engineers!
SETUP
After powering up the laptop I started moving through the setup process that comes with all new macs. I decided that I wanted to try out the migration assistant and see how the system would work over the network.
After linking the Macbook Air to my iMac I realized that doing this with a wireless connection wasn’t a usable approach.
It took almost an hour for the system to just calculate how big everything was going to be for me to move my iMac settings to my Macbook Air.
When it finally calculated this it showed me it would take at least 6 hours just to move over all my applications. It would take me less time to download the same applications from the Internet and install them again.
The complete migration was registering at almost 14 hours. I didn’t want to let the new notebook sit around and wait to get my hands on the system.
The rest of the setup process was quick and simple. My first few touches with the Macbook Air have been great. I’m still amazed that the notebook is really this thin and this light.
I’ll follow up with some additional details about the Macbook Air’s performance and functionality in future posts.
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Apple recently unveiled a software update to Apple TV, calling it Apple TV Take Two. Remember the joke that Microsoft would get it right at version 3 (whatever “right” meant)? Whether that will be true of the Apple TV or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, we can build our own Apple TV Take 3 today with the following recipe.
- Mac Mini
- HDTV (Preferably one with DVI Inputs)
- Elgato Systems Eye TV www.elgato.com
- Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
- External Hard Drive (Optional - But Recommended)
I think you’ll find that the above setup, while more expensive than just an Apple TV, it’s really what people where hoping for when the Apple TV was announced. While the Apple TV is a nice hardware channel to iTunes and its content, the above system is more of a real media center. Not only do you get iTunes, but also Eye TV turns your Mini into a Tivo-like super device for your cable/dish and over the air HD signals. Add to that a mini can play DVD’s you can begin to see the extra value the above recipe brings to the table. By replacing the Apple TV with a Mac Mini, you are able to increase your channel count to not only iTunes, but iTunes, cable/dish, over the air HD signals, your own DVD’s, and all the video content that is available on the web. Much of that content you would be able to store on the Mini or an external drive for later viewing pleasure, or convert it for your iPod/iPhone. Don’t forget though, a Mini can also do everything else a normal can do, and it’s all connected to that big HDTV.
Again, I admit it’s a bit more expensive, but isn’t that what economic stimulous packages are for?
