Something Stella and I have been talking about for a long time is cutting out cable TV. It’s expensive, and honestly, we don’t need it. With technology and some clever, here is how we are going about getting rid of the TV portion of our cable bill.
Of course, all of this is made possible by the Roku box that quietly lives in our entertainment center. While it’s not as slick or matching-with-the-rest-of-our-Apple-gear as an Apple TV, it’s not horrible looking, fits nicely in the rack and has a good feature set. It has HDMI out as you would expect. It also has digital audio, which comes in handy for the audio channels available (like SOMAFM, Pandora and others).
While I would love to have an AppleTV, the cost of media through the iTunes store makes it less than attractive. To be able to use it as iTunes for the entertainment system isn’t that attractive either since we have a Roku Soundbridge that will play damned near anything we want.
Ideally, I would like to add a new Mac Mini to this system with a Thunderbolt drive attached. That would give access to the web as normal like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and everything else we use, plus iTunes and Hulu for those shows that are still web only. With Boxee or Plex installed, a Mini would be pretty rad. It’s a pretty low priority item, so the spend can’t be justified at this time, but hopefully one day soon.
Step 1 will be adding an external antenna to see what kind of over-the-air performance we actually get. Luckily they are cheap no matter where you go. Stay tuned as I will be documenting the entire process.
As you probable already figured out from the last post, I’m now 100% Mac. Also, for those not playing the home game, there was this from the weekend.
Since I didn’t have WiFi and I wasn’t able to get any work done, I did some writing.
It all started back in 2007 when I acquired my very first Macbook. It was the first generation with the Intel processor and I liked it. Alot. It’s been one of the most reliable PCs I’ve had and is still in active use today.
Jump ahead to 2009 when I got my iMac. 20″ to be exact. It’s been my workhorse, being used to generate countless websites, blog posts, photos and hours of video. As it stands, it’s about the 3rd most reliable PC I’ve ever owned and if it lasts another 2 years I will jump to the number 2 spot.
For the record, the PC I have ever owned was one I built myself. A PII700 running all Intel internals with Samsung drives and Windows 2000. Got about 5 solid years of use out of that before I upgraded to something a little speedier.
I title this post 100% Mac Shop because I have always had a copy of Windows running somewhere. Either in VM on the iMac or Macbook, or in the shape of a laptop or netbook. Friends, I am here today to let you know that is no longer the case.
Instead of getting a mobile device running Windows (and saving a bunch of money) I decided to go mobile on the Mac. And not a Macbook Pro either. A 13″ Macbook Air. Thin, light and limited on storage. A machine that I know will take advantage of dropbox and iCloud. A machine that I will use primarily for editing text (or coding WordPress themes). A machine that has enough space to offload photos and videos from week long events. And if I run out of space, there is always FTP or dropbox. A true portable machine.
I will be using this for light photo editing. I might even attempt video editing on it as well. For video, I’m going to almost bet that it will not be the greatest for encoding, so I will save that for the iMac.
Toss in my iPhone and there you have it! I’m all Mac. Only took me 5 years to get here too!
For those of you that missed it, Google Reader was updated this week. And boy how the internet is pretty bent out of shape. I’m definitely not a fan of the changes either.
Besides the horrible look of Reader now, they removed 1 of the key features of Reader that I really liked; sharing. And by sharing I mean with other Reader users. You could follow people and have followers. It was nice and neat, all contained within Google Reader.
Sharing is there, but in the shape of one of the most requested features since Google Plus came out, via the +1 button. Instead of sharing with a few people that follow you, you can now share with the entire internet via Google Plus. Cool because that’s a feature that was sorely missing from Google Plus. But not really.
If you are a Google Reader user, you’ll get this. Instead of clicking the share button to share with your followers, you now click the +1 button to share on Google Plus. However, if you are a serial sharer, you are about to completely flood your stream with stories that you share.
I expect in about a week that Reader posts on G+ to be the same as those on Facebook that play Bejeweled Mafia Farms, constantly sharing updates and begging for guns or jewels or whatever happens. Flooding your stream with items that you might not want to see.
And how do you find items that are shared by others? Hope you have the right people in your circles so you get those bits that they shared? And when they share items that you don’t care to read, mute the posts? So much work for a system that used to work pretty well.
With this, my 17th cell phone since 2007 (look it up), I thought I would take some time to jot down a few notes. Now that I’m 5 days into it, I have a few.
The Good
The Bad
Apps
I’m not looking for suggestions or for any of you iPhone fans to jump to my rescue. I’m 5 days in with this device, and these are only my observations so far. Considering that I’m re-learning how to use a phone again, I’d say I was doing ok. Overall, I’m still super happy with the iPhone, just need to work through the things that I’m either not familiar with or require a different way to do them.
I never met Steve Jobs. Never saw him speak in person, never attended an event that he presided over. I’m not even a Apple fan boy, but am enthusiastic about their products. Up until the announcement of Steve’s passing, I was very excited about ordering my first iPhone.
This morning I’m driving into work in a car that is favored by Apple enthusiasts, listening to podcasts created by Apple enthusiasts on Apple computers thru my iPod. But, instead of being excited about ordering my first iPhone tonight, something is wrong. There is an absense in the force.
That feeling you get when something is not right, something is missing. It is strong with me today. I’ve worked in and around technology all my life, technology that was influenced or created by Steve. My first computer was an Apple IIe. I learned to program Apple basic and SuperCalc on Apple II’s in high school. 2 skills that helped me immensely through my 20′s.
Eventhough I was a Windows guy for a while, I still coveted Apple products. My first computer on my own was almost a Apple Performa. I’ve used iTunes since it was released, got my first iPod shortly after they were supported under Windows. And I’ve always used a mouse.
Steve Jobs is the reason you are reading this now. If it wasn’t for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, personal computers wouldn’t be what they are today. If you are reading this on an iPhone or Android device, you can thank Steve Jobs for that, too.
Something is missing today.
Around the internet many people have many nice things to say or share about Steve. Check out Wired.com for some nice tributes. John Gruber, the boys from Panic Software and Andy Inhatko all have nice memories and stories to read too.
Things will be different from today going forward. While I don’t doubt that Apple will continue to create fantastic devices that we will talk about, dream about and covet, they won’t be quite the same.
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