Entries Tagged 'mac' ↓

This is a guide that, if followed, will unchain your Apple TV from its cruel iTunes tether, turning it into the useful living room conduit of music, video and web-based content it should have been all along via the media center software Boxee. Boxee can be installed fairly easily via the ATV's USB port to bring Hulu and Comedy Central streaming, playback of any video or music file anywhere on your network in virtually any file type imagineable, and a bevy of internet A/V sources like Flickr, Last.fm, NPR and BBC podcasts and tons of others—all upping the usefulness and fun of Apple's notoriously underachieving box by a factor of 10, easily. If you have an ATV, Boxee is a must-install, and it's 100% free. Let's get started.

The stock Apple TV has never been able to decide what it's supposed to do. Is it a device to store all your videos? Its built-in hard drive would suggest yes, but the fact that everything needs to be piped through iTunes makes this a hassle if you store your videos in any other way. And why are we downloading and storing anyway? Streaming is the way things are headed, and for streaming, Apple TV doesn't make a ton of sense, especially when a box a quarter its size and a less than half its price can bring Netflix's massive library into your living room with zero download delays and zero added cost, soon in HD, even.

Aside from adding the golden goose of Hulu streaming, Boxee's other main advantage is freeing your Apple TV from its direct connection with your iTunes library. No longer will it be necessary to convert all of your video files into iTunes compatible formats to get them to your TV—Boxee will let your Apple TV read just about any video codec you can throw at it (full list of codecs here) from any computer or network-attached storage device on your network, or read files off the Apple TV's own hard disk—all while leaving the default OS untouched and 100% functional. So let's do this.

What You'll Need:
• Apple TV with software version 2.0 or higher
• A USB flash drive 512MB or larger
• ATV USB Creator [download: 1.0.b7 version - Mac only, for now]
• An invite into Boxee's semi-public alpha (use this link especially for Giz readers to jump the line a bit)

Prepare Your USB Drive
Just like the iPhone, the Apple TV is basically an OS X computer (running a 1GHz Intel processor), so Boxee installs just like a regular desktop app in the Applications folder, which is hidden normally. Why Apple hasn't opened up the Apple TV to third party developers is anyone's guess, but thankfully, with a prepared USB stick it's all pretty painless.

1. After unpacking the ATV USB Creator application, start it up with the USB flash drive you intend to use mounted. Select "ATV-Patchstic" as your installation option and "Boxee for Mac" as the installation type. At the bottom, select the BSD location of your flash disk. You can find this with System Profiler under the USB section (probably a good idea to unmount any other USB drives so you don't accidentally wipe them).

2. Click "Create Using ->" and your USB stick will be formatted and loaded up with the appropriate software.

3. Power off your Apple TV (by unplugging it), drop your USB patchstick into the ATV's USB slot, and plug it back in. You'll see Tux and a bunch of code streaming on your screen as the software installs.

4. When it's done, remove the USB stick and restart the ATV.

Download Boxee via the Boxee Launcher
5. The USB patchstick installs a launcher that can then pull down the latest version of Boxee from the web. The first thing you'll want to do, then, to ensure you have the latest version, is update the launcher itself. Go to the new option "Boxee" in the ATV menu, choose "Update" and then update the Launcher.

6. Now, go to the new Boxee menu and choose "Update" -> "Boxee alpha..." to pull down and install Boxee itself. Once it installs, select "Boxee" from the new menu "Boxee/XBMC" menu to start it up.

Configure Boxee
7. Enter the user account you registered on boxee.tv (via our invite link above). Boxee also adds some nifty social networking features—if you have any buddies also using it, you can see what they've recently watched, added to their collections, or recommended to you via Boxee's home screen.

8. First thing you'll want to do once you're in is make sure Boxee displays perfectly on your screen. Settings are accessible by pressing "left" on the ATV remote at any time, so go to "Settings - Appearance - Video Calibration..." to set overscan and sizing options.

Add Your Sources
Right now, under the "Videos" menu, you can browse and stream the complete offerings from Hulu, Comedy Central, Revision3, and a ton of other web video sources. But Boxee really shines when it can play your media files from anywhere on your network.

Add an SMB Share
This can be a network attached storage drive (you've read our guide for getting the best NAS setup, right?) or simply a shared folder on a Mac or PC on your network (to share a folder in OS X, enable File Sharing in your Sharing settings, enable SMB shares under "Options" and add your media folder. Boxee will then auto detect your shares.

9. In Boxee's Settings menu, select "Media Sources and Applications -> Network Sources" and choose "Add New Source." Select your share in the menu that comes up and mark it wither Video, Music or Photos. Boxee will now monitor this folder and add any TV shows and movies it recognizes (complete with cover art, episode descriptions, and the like) to the main videos menu (Boxee's full of little surprises like this). It won't catch everything though, so you can always access your added folders manually by choosing "Sources" under the main Video menu.

Access Apple TV via SSH For Copying Media Files
Aside from streaming from SMB shares, Boxee can also of course play files stored locally in its own file system. You can connect to the Apple TV via SSH/SFTP for copying files directly over your network and accessing your Apple TV's main file system.

10. In an FTP program like Transmit or Cyberduck (but using SFTP), connect to appletv.local with the username and password both set to "frontrow" - this will log you in to your Apple TV's file system, which has a structure exactly like OS X's. You can also connect via SSH from the terminal if you prefer the geekier side.

11. In the folder /Users/frontrow you will find folders labeled Movies, Music and Pictures. Any media added to these folders will be automatically recognized and playable after copying.

Torrent RSS
Yeah, Boxee can also download Torrents. It comes with a listing of public domain movie and TV Torrents under the "Public Torrents" source, but you can also have your Apple TV download whatever Torrents you want.

12. To add a Torrent to Boxee's download manager, simply copy the .torrent file to the Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/Torrents folder using the SFTP technique above and it will immediately begin downloading. Awesome.

Uninstalling All Traces of Boxee
Should you want to wipe your machine totally clean of any Boxee related tinkering, it's easy. Fire up a Terminal and type in the following commands, each on their own line:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Boxee.app/
sudo rm -rf /Applications/XBMC.app/
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/XBMCLauncher.frappliance/
rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application\ Support/BOXEE/
rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application\ Support/XBMC/

What's Next For Boxee
Boxee is on the move. Over the course of three alphas I've used (I can't believe this is alpha software) over only the last month or so, this thing has improved by incredible bounds—interface is getting better, weirdness and inconsistencies getting less common, all good signs.

Eventually, Boxee wants to be in set top boxes and on every platform (Windows is coming before the end of the year)—since it supports practically every audio and video codec known, it's aiming to be the Firefox of multi-platform connected AV setups, featuring plug-ins and add-ons of its own. It doesn't support DRM of any kind, so don't hold your breath for Boxee to be picked up by any of the majors. Fine with me.

Feature wise, Netflix streaming (yessss) and ABC.com are first on the Boxee folks' list.

Boxee's an open source app, so its forums are a lively place to ask for help and suggest more features to the main developers, who hang out there often. If you run into any bumps, that's the place.

I’m not a morning person. The moment my iPhone’s terrible “alarm” rings, I curse the day. There’s only one reason why I make it to the office, or anywhere besides my bed. Music.

It fuels my life. And those of my friends. We exchange music every day - our drop boxes are working overtime. The Hypemachine, a secret new music service, and some specific friends on Twitter supply us with inspiration for new songs and albums. There’s only one downside.., my iTunes collection is a mess.

In comes TuneUp

Actually, my iTunes collection was a mess. Ever since I’ve discovered TuneUp, I can browse my collection Cover Flow style without being agitated by the lack of covers.

TuneUp is a management tool that let’s you clean dirty tracks (like the ones that have the artists’s name in the song title), find missing cover art, receive upcoming concert alerts, and enjoy music videos.

The PC version is available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English, so most of your European folks can use the service in your native language. People from Holland, Scandinavia, and Eastern European countries must remain patient for a while.

Still in beta, we have 50 invites

TuneUp for Mac is still in private beta, meaning it made my Mac crash once and it loads very slowly. But still, my collection looks way better now. So grab yourself one of those Next Web invites to try it our yourself. Send an email to thenextweb@tuneupmedia.com, the first 50 will be invited to the TuneUp Mac or Windows Beta.

The normal program is free for 500 songs/50 album art cleans, and $19.95 for unlimited (Gold version).

I recently set up a Mac mini in my living room to act as a media server. Instead of trying to update separate music libraries every time I added songs to my collection, I was just adding the music to the Mac mini’s iTunes library and streaming it my laptop. That worked fine until I tried to sync my iPhone. For obvious (copyright) reasons you cannot sync an iPhone to a shared library.

I wanted access to my music on both machines, but I did not want to share my Macbook Air’s library because the laptop would have to be on with iTunes running for the Mac mini to have the music. At this point, I had to choose between running separate libraries and updating them independently or figure out a way to run one library that updated whenever I added music from either machine. I chose the latter of the two options.
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I used iChat for a while and, although it’s a great program and has the ability to be used with most of the major chat interfaces, I got frustrated with the lack of built in customizable features very quickly. I never took the time to download a new client or find a way to add features to iChat itself, but the other day I was reading a forum that mentioned Chax.

Chax is a freeware application that puts iChat on steriods without the added rage. The install is simple and clean and adds a new tab in the preferences window of iChat entitled “Chax.”

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When we first heard about EFiX—a simple USB dongle that'll let you magically install Leopard on your PC—it sounded too fantastic to be true. Well, I used it to turn my gaming PC into a Mac Pro over the weekend, and I'm somewhat amazed to say this, but it works perfectly.

I grabbed all the updates straight from Apple—including 10.5.5 last night, so you don't have to wait for a hacked patch like you would running a typical Hackintosh—installed a whole bunch of software and have been using it for several days. It runs beautifully, just like a real Mac Pro.

The Process
There are, of course, rules you have to adhere to, as there tends to be when using black magic. The major one with EFiX, and its only real "catch," is that you have to use the supported hardware, not a very long list indeed. But outside of the Gigabyte motherboard requirement (reportedly some Asus boards using a P45 chipset also work), it's actually fairly generic. I just happened to have everything on the list.

If you've got the hardware, the whole process is simple, so that even if you've never cracked your desktop before, you could still get this done with a quick search online for the requisite know-how. I plugged the EFiX dongle into a USB header on my motherboard—not, as you might have assumed, to a USB port on the outside. That's really it for getting your hands dirty, though. I restarted my computer, selected EFiX as the boot device—it was listed under hard drives, actually—and was greeted with a drive selector. After selecting the Leopard disc, it started installing without a hitch.

Okay, there was a slight hitch. My video card, an Nvidia 8800GT, isn't supported by the firmware EFiX ships with. EFiX already has the update on the site, but its updater is only coded for 32-bit Windows. If, like me, you run Vista 64-bit, you will have to install Vista 32-bit on the drive you intend to put Leopard on, just to update the stupid firmware.

After I did that, everything was peachy. The only slight inconsistency is that my 8800GT shows up as a 256MB card, when it's actually a 512MB card, and my 1066MHz RAM is only running at 800MHz apparently. But that's sorta trivial.

The Numbers
Here are some benchmarks compared to some numbers Adam over at Lifehacker ran for his Hacktinosh vs. a MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. Obviously, my hardware is newer—a 3GHz E8400 Wolfdale Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM (running at the slower 800MHz, rather than 1066MHz) and an Nvidia 8800 GT (with the OS only recognizing half of the memory). The total guts of my computer cost just under $800 when I put it together in May, hard drive included. (Mac Pros start at $2,300.)

Day to Day
One thing to keep in mind is that EFiX has to interlope every time you want to boot to Leopard, so a cold boot takes at least two minutes, between booting to EFiX, picking Leopard, then loading it up. And when you go into Windows, EFiX will show up as an attached USB drive. These aren't dealbreakers—once you're up, performance is great. Overall, the experience is really incredible for how smooth and seamless it is. Updates, installing software, everything is just like a real Mac. The best way to put it is this: I've got a Mac Pro now.

I occasionally feel like Windows is running just a smidge more slowly, but benchmarks compared to before I installed EFiX don't support that creeping feeling, so I chalk it up to paranoia.

Is the dongle worth $170? That's a personal question. Do you wanna go through the usually more complicated—but free—Hackintosh process? Perhaps the best way to look at it is this: If you've already got the supported hardware, it's like buying a Mac for $170, since you can still have your trusty PC just a restart away on the same machine. Also, even as simplified as it is, you still need to know what you're doing. There's no official tech support, though there is a very active forum that provides helpful answers to queries.

Unfortunately, if you're in the US, getting a hold of this finely crafted piece of sorcery is trickier. It's sold in Europe, but the company doesn't have distribution in the US yet. They're selling units on eBay for now. So far in our dealings with the company we haven't had any reason to think they're scamming anyone, but it's understandable if you wanna approach this with caution. [EFiX]

Pete Kazanjy / Team Fusion:
Safer, Stronger, and More Seamless: VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2 Now Available  —  The VMware Fusion team is proud to announce VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 2.  —  This latest public beta, a free download, builds on VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, adding the Unity 2.0 suite of Mac-Windows integration features …

(Let me preface this post with a warning that tweaking unpublished settings can break your system and applications.)

While I am a fan of the Terminal, sometimes remembering (or Googling for) the proper “defaults write ...” undocumented setting to tweak a feature on a new build or a friend’s machine gets a bit annoying (mostly due to my increasingly old age…Hey! You, kids! Get off my lawn!). If you ever wanted the opportunity to really muck things up across your system and installed applications, then head on over to the “Secret” BlackTree page (yes, the makers of the awesomeness that is QuickSilver) and grab a copy of their preference pane.

Truth be told, I actually needed to change out the text on the login window on my Mac (for work) and did not remember the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file or key for it and just happened to come across the Secrets update today. I was impressed at the extent of its database of settings for all sorts of apps and the fact that it figured out which apps I had installed (so it only showed relevant settings options).

An example of the non-deadly, application-usefulness of Secrets comes from its Twitterrific preferences pane:

which provides access to some of the tweaks you can make that are published by the author but not available in the actual application preferences.

You can see feedback from others in the discussion group, tinker with the source code on your own and even submit your own l33t secrets to BlackTree.

If you know of any cool, hidden preferences or have feedback on Secrets that TAB readers should know, definitely drop a note in the comments.

I wrote about this a while back on my blog, hackaddict, but it was such a popular post I thought I’d give it a revisit. A lot of people buy used Macs, and they often run into the problem of not knowing the admin password, so here is a way to get around not knowing the admin password on Macs.

To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:

1. Reboot
2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
   • mount -uw /
   • rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
   • shutdown -h now
4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!

Not up to the messier parts of building a Hackintosh? EFiX is a USB dongle that promises to take care of all of that for you, automagically on any PC. Pop it into the port and you can install OS X straight from the DVD "without having to worry about patches, replacing files and anything like that." Update: There's a video demo of this black magic here.

If you're thinking it sounds too good to be true and that the site looks a little scuammy, you should know that it took a lot of time to craft this voodoo stick and required the developers to thwart "various problems, including sabotage." After six months of testing, it's due on June 23. Our advice? Let someone else be the guinea pig. Hey guinea pigs, if you buy this, let us know how it goes! [EFiX via Insanely Mac via Hack a Day]

The idea behind AppleCore LLCs aTV Flash Drive is that users can reflash their Apple TV and add all sorts of cool and useful functionality without having to waste time scrounging around the internet looking for hacks. According to the product website, all you need to do is install the drive and it will do the rest—without voiding your warranty. But what sort of features will it add?

Key Features: - Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more) - Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them - Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files - Browse the web with a Safari based web browser - Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com - Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers - View local weather forecasts - View RSS Feeds - Enable SSH access - All original Apple TV features remain intact - And much, much more...