Television. Idiot Box. TV. Attention whore electronic box that lives in most of our living rooms. And I never watch it.
Why have cable
A few years ago I decided not to waste money by having a land line phone and a cell phone at the same time. It was forward thinking when I did it, and now it’s all the rage. I mean really, how many of you have land line telephone service from your local telco? I do mean phone service, not a line that is there for your DSL connection. If you are younger than me, I’m going to say none of you. If you are older, I would say there is a higher chance, but not by much.
Looking again to save a few bucks, I’m thinking about turning off the television part of my Fios service. Honestly I only watch a few shows and seems like a waste to be paying Verizon $45 a month for 8 hours of programming. Then I saw this (via) and realized I wasn’t the only one.
But I have a really nice setup. 45″ HD TV. Full Dolby Surround (with 100w 12″ sub to rattle the walls). To keep that from going to waste, I’m seriously thinking about getting an Apple TV. I’ll buy the shows I want (in HD no less, or whatever the iTunes version of it is) and watch them when I want. I already have a pretty good DVD player for movies and I’m very comfortable using Handbrake for, um, any other programming I might come across, that I want to watch on the big screen.
Plus there is Hulu for when I want to watch Burn Notice, Carrier (which I highly recommend) or anything else that might strike my fancy.
Then, if I still need to be entertained, I can always cruise through Viddler, Vimeo and even YouTube. The way I see it, I don’t need cable.
Has anyone else thought about canceling your cable TV? Or have you actually canceled it? Let us know.
There are a couple of new switchers in our midsts, so, like Josh did for me last year, I shall do the same. A list of apps that, I think, are a must have for the Mac.
Starting with not an app. An external hard drive for Time Machine. You need to backup as often as possible. Might I recommend any of the Western Digital MyBook external drives. Shoot for the dual-interface model if you can (Firewire and USB). Firewire is better on the Mac. And Faster. And, you can boot to it.
If you want a backup solution other than Time Machine, I would recommend SuperDuper. $30 and worth every penny.
We will begin with the free apps.
Before you do anything else, get a copy of Quicksilver (free) and install it. If you used the ‘run’ box in Windows (or many keyboard shortcuts), you will use this all the time. After it is installed, go into System Preference –> Spotlight and uncheck menu keyboard shortcut at the bottom. Then, whenever you press cmd-space, Quicksilver will come up and be ready.
For video, you will need Flip4Mac and Perian. Download and install both of them and you will be able to play any video you come across. Another good one to have is the VLC Player. This app plays everything, but I only use it to play the odd video files that quicktime won’t (high def .mkv files in particular). And, if you are one that likes to rip your DVD’s to your machine, Handbrake is the only way to go.
