Professionally Mat Lu teaches and writes philosophy; unprofessionally, he writes about the Mac and related technology. He is one of those half-mythical iPod halo switchers, having come to the fairer platform after purchasing a first generation iPod. Technologically speaking, in addition to Apple gear, he maintains an avid interest in console and computer gaming as well as high-definition home theater. Philosophically speaking, he is a Thomistic Aristotelian in everything that matters.
For this Ask TUAW we'll be considering questions about the Apple TV, MobileMe from addresses, Blu-ray on the Mac, automatically converting video formats, SIMBL plugin problems and more.
As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
We've been expecting something interesting to happen to the Apple TV, but with nary a peep out of Cupertino it seems that atv-bootloader creator Scott Davilla has been busy. We've posted about Boxee before: it's a media center application based on XBMC with a social networking spin. Previously it was limited to Intel Macs running Leopard (and Ubuntu Linux), but it's now been ported to Tiger. That means that it's compatible with the Apple TV, which runs a modified version of Mac OS X 10.4.
So what does this mean? Simply that you can now install the Tiger versions of Boxee or XBMC (for Mac) on your Apple TV. First you use need to use Davilla's handy atvusb-creator on your Mac to convert a USB flash drive into a patchstick. Then you just need to plug it into your Apple TV, wait for the patch process to complete, and install either Boxee or XBMC from within the plugin. In the end you get an Apple TV with all the extra functions of XBMC or Boxee including much broader codec support, the social networking features, etc.
The atvusb-creator is a free download from Google Code for Intel Macs. To use Boxee, however, you'll need to request an account at their site.
Mac games publisher Aspyr has thrown the switch on their online game store GameAgent. Somewhat similar to Valve's Steam, GameAgent allows buying and downloading games for your Mac. They seem to be starting slow with only Call of Duty 4 ($54.99) and a trivia / SAT prep game called futureU ($39.99) available at this time. But other classic Mac games like Stubbs the Zombie appear to be coming soon at $19.99.
GameAgent also offers an Extended Download Service for an additional fee of $4.99. Basically, what this does is give you the right to re-download the game anytime within two years. So, if you have a hard drive crash and no back-up, you can download again.
One downside is that the game is locked to your computer, so you can only play them on the machine they were downloaded on. If you want to re-download the games on a new computer, you must purchase the EDS service when you buy the game. Even then, a given serial number can only be activated three times.
Information Appliance Associates has released a new version of PocketMac for iPhone. Long a mainstay of BlackBerry / Mac integration, the new PocketMac allows iPhone users to sync their contacts and calendar info to Entourage, Lotus Notes or Meeting Maker. It works by using iCal and Address Book as a go-between, syncing Entourage, etc. with each of them. The actual iPhone syncing is via the standard iCal / Address Book channels, but PocketMac ensures than any changes made on the iPhone migrate back to Entourage, etc.
In addition, PocketMac will back up the iPhone's call log and SMS messages to your Mac. It sounds a little round-about (using iCal and Address Book as middlemen) but if your company is wedded to Entourage, Lotus Notes, or Meeting Maker it could be very handy.
Eye-Fi has announced that their eponymous SD memory card with built-in WiFi is getting faster and adding MobileMe support. The Eye-Fi allows you to automatically upload photos from your SD card compatible camera to your Mac or a variety of online services like Flickr, SmugMug, and now MobileMe. The update will be available on October 5 and is also backwards compatible to existing Eye-Fi cards with upgrade fees. Other additions include Eye-Fi's own web gallery, geotagging support (via a similar mechanism to the original iPhone), and Wayport / open hotspot support, each for additional annual fees.
The Eye-Fi cards come in three flavors: Home, Share, and Explore. Home ($79.99) is limited to uploads on your home WiFi network to your home computer; Share ($99.99) allows broader WiFi access and uploading to web galleries; Explore ($129.99) also adds geotagging.
After canning Seinfeld, Microsoft is now starting stage two (planned all along, they say) of their campaign with a new series of I'm a PC ads by the Crispin, Porter + Bogusky ad agency. As is clear from the John Hodgman look-alike at the start of the ads, they're supposed to be a direct response to Apple's Get a Mac campaign that's been running since 2006.
It almost goes without saying that it's rather sad for one of the richest companies in the world to stoop to this level of reaction. But I think one of things that's interesting here is the difference between the central motifs of the respective ad campaigns. What Get a Mac suggests is that your Mac is your kinda cool, but laid-back and easy-going friend that'll help you get things done. In other words, your Mac is your friend, not who you yourself are.
On the other hand, the I'm a PC ads say exactly that: you (the user) are a PC. Who the heck would want to be that? What they're trying to maintain is that PC users are unfairly being stereotyped as besuited, boring, glasses-wearing losers. But with the repeated exclamation "I'm a PC," the ads actually suggest a kind of Borg-like insistence that I as a user have to be assimilated into my computer.
In short, Microsoft and its ad agency still don't get it. We Mac-heads don't see ourselves as all being Justin Long (or, heaven forbid, wanting to be Justin Long). I can proudly say I'm not a Mac, and I'm not really planning to become one either. Or to put it another way: I use a Mac in no small part because I don't want to be a computer (Mac or PC).
SmileOnMyMac has released a major update to PDFpen, their PDF editing software which we examined at a while back. PDFpen allows you to edit PDFs to fill out forms (e.g. scans of existing forms), mark-up documents, etc. The biggest new feature for version 4 is the inclusion of basic OCR functionality that will turn a scanned document into editable text. In addition there is support for new file formats including importing Microsoft Word documents.
PDFpen comes in two versions, a basic version for editing PDFs and a pro version that also allows you to create editable forms (i.e. forms that can be filled out by users with a PDF reader like Acrobat or Preview). PDFpen is $49.95 (or $99.95 for the pro version). Upgrades for to version 4 from previous version are $25. Demos for both standard and pro are available for download.
Following the newly updated Remote application from Apple, there's now a new remote application (iTunes Link) that allows you to control your XBMC Media Center with the iPhone. Obviously to use it you'll have to have a computer (or Xbox) running XBMC, which is available in versions for Xbox, Mac, Linux, and Windows. Features include:
Play, queue and shuffle the media on XBMC
View cover art for albums, TV Shows and movies
View artist and album reviews and information
'Standard' remote mode. Control XBMC with standard remote buttons
I have seen reports that it will work with the Mac-only XBMC fork Plex (though perhaps without images). It basically looks like it does for XBMC what Apple's Remote app does for the Apple TV.
Reuters is reporting that AT&T is planning to capitalize on their iPhone exclusivity in the US and link it with their broadband and video service U-verse. Eventually this could allow U-verse subscribers to listen to their iPhone voicemail on their TVs or download shows from their DVRs to their iPhones. And taking a page from Apple, they're also talking about a remote control application for the iPhone to control the DVR, etc.
I think this sounds like an interesting value-added addition for AT&T customers. The main problem is that U-verse just isn't that widely available. Would you switch to U-verse to get this kind of iPhone integration?
This time in Ask TUAW we'll be looking at questions about using a Mac as a DVR over FireWire, using Photo Booth with an external hard drive, saving messages on MobileMe, opening Google searches in a Safari tab, and more.
As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
Need a quick way to rename a file or folder in Finder? Instead of click-wait-click, just click once and hit Return (Enter). The name will highlight and be ready to edit.
For this 
Mac games publisher Aspyr has thrown the switch on their online game store 
Information Appliance Associates has released a new version of 
SmileOnMyMac has released a major update to 
Following the 
Reuters is 
This time in 
_thumbnail.jpg "Take a stroll down memory lane")
