Apple TV, the indie option

Apple TV

I’ve never particularly followed the top 40 music charts and instead was always much more interested in music from smaller labels or indies. I never approved of the top 40s sterile, radio-friendly generic sound, instead preferring the raw, edgy, unpolished sounds that hadn’t been through committee meetings, endless over-dubs and pitch correction algorithms. It’s always been easy to find indie music, but what about indie video programmes?

I have had Apple TV for several months now, initially enjoying the movie rentals and photo display capabilities. However, I have only just embraced its best feature, video podcasts.  This is exactly the indie TV that I’ve always wanted, finally I can choose the content that I want to view and watch it when I want.  A lot of the content has slick production and is in HD, so the quality is better than standard British Freeview for example.  Although video podcasts have always been available, I didn’t really want to sit down at my computer and watch video content.  By moving the viewing location to the sitting room, Apple TV makes video podcasts not only enjoyable, but for some of us, a better option than televised content.

MacBook Air Rev B – iPhone ready.

I’ve been experimenting withing living in the cloud recently, I use Google Docs to create new text or spreadsheets, I use MobileMe and GoogleMail for my contacts / e-mail / cloud disk space and I use Google Reader for my RSS feeds.  What I have enjoyed about the cloud so far is to be able to sit down at any computer and the same consistent experience is available from within Firefox.

I usually take my MacBook Pro to and from work every day, but yesterday I just left it at home.  How would I survive by only using the iMac in work?  Just fine it turns out.  I didn’t need access to any old documents, I’m still looking for a solution on how to manage those, but for e-mail and simple document writing, the cloud was great.

This means that I could use my iMac in work but what about the MacBook Pro?  I still need a laptop for travelling and visiting clients, and to make it desirable enough to take anywhere, the MBP is just a bit too heavy.  I really want the portability of a MacBook Air, but if my documents are all online then I need a connection to the net from anywhere.  I feel that Apple called their laptop the Air because it was a nod to ‘the cloud’ rather than how light it was.  However, despite the Air being a cloud-oriented computer, why did it not have the one essential component, built in 3G or HSPDA?  If Apple would allow Air buyers to use their iPhone 3G’s capability to access the net then they’d have my cash immediately.  Any other features Apple may add would be almost irrelevant, just give us communication.

Micrsft ofice

Today I installed Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, not because I need it, in fact Office is my last app of choice for creating content, but just to see what they’ve done with the first native Intel version.  During installation it asked for my private information; address, e-mail, phone number etc and at the bottom of the dialog was a link to “How is this information used?”.

Microsoft user data dialog

I tried clicking on this link but nothing happened during my first few attempts. My first reaction was ‘typical MS, nothing works’, but then I got a bit more annoyed as