Up until recently I was using an XBOX360 along with a media center PC which was driving my big ass plasma. I had in the past used a chipped old style XBOX but wanted a solution that output HD and the old xbox wasnt up to the job.

The 360 was HiDef as I needed but I was forced to go ‘around the world for a shortcut’ in order to get DivX movies to play (using Runtimes excellent Transcode 360 ). The music player side of things was atrocious as well, with huge delays scrolling through long lists of songs. I had to have the Media Center PC on all the time (which along with my other always-on servers hit my ‘leccy bills quite hard) Also for a Home Theater solution it sucked the big one as it was quite noisy. Scrub that it was very noisy, sounding some times like it was about to take off.

I’d been reading a lot of Rails blogs and forums, which are inhabited by lots of Mac lovers, considering it their box of choice for development. I like the aesthetics behind Mac software, simple unbloated UI, clean design etc. I looked at the specs for the Mac Mini which had just gone Core Duo as standard. Niiice! Optical Digital Audio out and DVI out for great AV goodness. And silent as a whisper….

Hmmmm, I wanted one.

So I saved up and got one. Got it out of the box about 5 days after ordering it. Beautiful form factor and you gotta hand it to Apple, their styling is second to none. I got it hooked up with a USB keyboard and mouse and connected it up.

I was impressed.

Pros

• Frontrow as an idea is brilliant, Like turning your Plasma TV into a giant HiDef video Ipod.
• The dinky little remote
• Superb picture
• Whisper quiet
• The dinky little remote
• Shuffle songs within seconds from start-up
• Very little heat output (hence the quietude)
• No need for another computer to stream from
• Did i mention the dinky little remote

all was well in my world Then the problems started.

• The external power supply blew up. I got a replacement after about 9 days (nice taste gone)
• The desktop crashes occasionally.
• iPhoto crashed after importing quite a few photos (still occasionally crashes)
• IPhoto pulls all your images into the library without regard for their folders. If you’re gonna import all your library, plan to have a lot of time to re-org your library
• I have been unable to get AC3 codec working properly. It renders some audio okay, but some AC3 encoded files will not play in Quicktime. It seems totally unable to output Digital Surround.
• As my audio output is digital I can’t turn down the volume with the remote. I know digital passthrough is the cause, but it could at least be clever enough to turn the ITunes / Quicktime volume down even if the main output is 100%
• It wakes itself up from sleep when it shouldn’t. Not a big problem as it seems to draw very little power.
• Wireless network turns off after a while, I have been forced to connect via ethernet cable to a wired/wireless access point.
• Wired Network, has problems, trying to use it freezes UI sometimes.
• Frontrow Judders on playback over network. This shouldn’t be an issue, as a movie copies down from the network in about 6 minutes so the network obviously has enough bandwidth to stream the movie.
• I’ve realised I don’t like the Mac UI. I’ve seen too many limitations. You cannot cut and paste files. Now that’s just stupid! I realise I may not be getting to grips with all elements of the UI as I only occasionally go into the full desktop for admin purposes, but I’m not at all impressed. It seems the UI is useful if you are okay with changing the way you work with and use the computer to suit it. Also Gnome is as simple but more beautiful in my opinion.

Note: Most if not all of these symptoms occurred before i added any other software or codecs.

All in all, it’s not the experience that I was hoping for. Ah well, my hunger has been sated and I’ve got the Mac thing outta my system. Purely for the use I intend it for, an unobtrusive HTPC its great but I couldn’t only have a Mac as my desktop.

Edit: a recent firmware update seems to have fixed the waking up from sleep issue and eased the dropping of network drives. I’ve found workarounds for some issues but the whole point of the Mac is ease of use.

Buzz Outloud

Very well produced show covering a lot of Techy news. By well produced, I mean that the audio levels aren’t all over the place. Some Podcasts are atrocious at getting audio levels right. Presenters move away from mics and talk in a whisper, forcing you to turn the volume way up, then Boom! they move back to the mic and start shouting, bursting your eardrums. Good selection of news (its from CNETs stable) and funny banter.

Gamespot

This show gets a load of real gaming geeks into a room and they chat like crazy for an hour about all games.

Engadget

The editors of Engadget, peter Ryojas and Ryan Block are extermely well clued into the gadget biz. They can sometimes take themselves alittle seriously but do make a lot of very valid points and it’s always worth tuning into if you loves your Audio players, phones, PVR’s and nerd stuff.

Ruby On Rails

Great way to get into the minds of Rails programmers on how they handles real world problems.

Mark Kermodes Film Reviews

Recorded for Simon Mayos show on BBC Radio 4 (or 2??) Good in depth talk about weeks releases. He does go up his own bum at times but worth listening to.

Just in case anybody in the world hasn’t started using Googles Personalised Home yet.

Do it!

Now.

It will transform your online life (and waste numerous hours into the bargain)

Basically the idea is that it takes RSS feeds (potted info on updates to sites that support it, with links) and displays them all on a single page. You still have your Google search bar in the middel of the page, but also you can see what has been updated on your favorite sites.

There are also widgets which can be added to display weather, record ToDo lists etc.

Given that it pulls data from a lot of sites at the same time, you would be forgiven for thinking it would be slow, but as Google caches the data for your page, the whole thing is as responsive as good ol’ Google always is.

I cannot recommend it strongly enough.