Appletell

I do not own a PS3, but I am betting some of you do or will after Christmas. If you have not dropped the cash on an Apple TV yet and are looking for a way to stream media from your Mac to your TV, you can do so via the PS3 with MediaLink from Nullriver.

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This holiday season, there will be a lot of Nintendo Wiis under the Christmas trees. If you want to turn your new Wii into a media center, download Wii Transfer from Riverfold software ($19).

With Wii Transfer, you can share your movies, music, and pictures directly to your Nintendo Wii using the Internet Channel. Copy Miis from your Wii back to your Mac and save them as images. Browse iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums on your television. Convert your movies to formats the Wii understands, either streaming directly from your Mac or for playback in the Wii’s Photo Channel. Wii Transfer can even manage saved game backups copied to an SD card.

Media sharing works by running a small web server inside Wii Transfer. To connect to your movies, music, and pictures, you need to use the Internet Channel on your Wii and enter a URL provided by the software. If you purchased your Wii before July of 2007, the Internet Channel is free to you. If not you will need to pay $5 on the Wii shopping channel to obtain it.

Product [Wii Transfer]

• How to get your Mac to talk to your PS3
• Gamefly offering pre-Thanksgiving discounts on select games
• Japanese Import: Hori Classic Controller for Wii

Here’s a wonderful bit of nostalgia: Steve Jobs (wearing a tux!) introducing the original Mac in 1984. Boasting a 68000 processor that “eats 8088s for breakfast” and two serial ports, the original Mac also had a 3-1/4” disc drive, all for the low, low price of $2,495.

What’s really fun is hearing Steve boast about the graphics of the 9” screen, which really was revolutionary for the time not only for the sharpness, but also for the WYSIWYG interface. Those of you who grew up with the GUI interface may not realize that what you saw on your screen back then was often very different from what came out in your printer. If you were word processing, for example, bold text might be indicated on the screen by being in a different color than the rest of the text, and italics would be highlighted.

But as we get ready for a new generation of laptops, one of which will probably have more processing power than 100 original Macs combined, let’s sit back and drink in what used to be the most cutting edge computer that (a lot of) money could buy.

Video after the break.

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Guy Kawasaki, the original Apple Evangelist, columnist for Macworld and current tech entrepreneur has some simple advice for Apple on the iPhone: open up the development process.

His point is that Apple doesn’t need to exert a huge amount of control over the iPhone app market. The best way to excite developers and users is to have a wide-open market for software, he said.

For those of you two young to remember, Kawasaki was, for many early Mac users, the voice of Apple enthusiasm, sincerely speaking about the greatness of their products and the ways in which they could be used. The recent brouhaha over Apple’s reasoning for disallowing iPhone apps has lead some to call for the return of a public face for the company, who could explain their reasoning, rather than simply issuing authoritarian press releases (or, in true Apple style, simply refusing to comment on the issue altogether).

But the tone of the Macworld piece is much more of a “catching up with an old friend”-ish one: Kawasaki is not (apparently) planning on returning to Apple soon, and is happily working behind the scenes with several tech companies, including one that makes news aggregation even simpler than RSS. As a bonus, Macworld has republished two of his old articles, one lightheartedly comparing the Quadra 800 to a ride in an F-15, and an oddly prescient one about why the Newton should be more like a cell phone.

Read [Macworld]

• Who’s On Crack in tech: 11.21.08 edition
• iTunes 8.0.2 hits the streets
• How to get your Mac to talk to your PS3

Recently, Net4Mac released a social networking application designed for users of the iPhone and iPod touch. Net4Mac is a social networking community created exclusively for Mac users. In order to use Net4Mac’s mobile application, you have to create an account at the Net4Mac.com website. You’ll have to be on a Mac computer to complete this process.

You can download Net4Mac’s social networking application by logging onto the AppStore on iTunes. The pricing is very reasonable at $1.99. Initially, it was $4.99, but users complained, so the price was lowered. According to the e-mail I received from Net4Mac, the upgrades will always be free.

Once you have created your account, you’ll now be able to access Net4Mac on your iPhone or iPod touch. Net4Mac allows mobile users to read their messages, send messages, and browse user profiles. More goodies are in store for Net4Mac, and we’ll see them being released in future updates.

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Gamers, like all people, tend to be nostalgic for their youth. We wax poetic about Galaga, our first time blowing up the vector graphic Death Star, and almost all of Myst (except the ending…no one liked the ending of Myst).

However, just because a game is old doesn’t make it a classic, and the Topless Robot pop culture blog has compiled a list of The 10 Lamest PC Adventure Games of All Time, several of which were ported to the Mac.

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While we were all busy updating our iPhones and iPod Touches to the iPhone firmware 2.0.2 on Monday, Apple seeded OS X 10.5.5 build 9F17 to developers.

According to AppleInsider, this build brings five new updates, pushing the grand total of code fixes to 120.

Problems addressed include issues with iCal, Back to My Mac, Mail Syncing, and CoreAnimation.

This update is reported to have no known issues. This was also the case with the last update, build 9F15. So, it seems that Apple is tying up loose ends and preparing to release the update to us all. You can expect the release of Mac OS X 10.5.5 to happen in the next few weeks.

Via [AppleInsider]

• Mac OS X 10.5.6 targeted for Friday?
• How to get your Mac to talk to your PS3
• How to get your Mac to talk to your Wii

A number of years back (or even more recently), you might have heard of XBMC (XBox Media Center). XBMC was a way for XBox owners to mod their units into a fully capable media center. That project has continued to progress, and has moved on since its XBox roots. While XBMC is still available, there is an interesting offshoot based on it’s code called Boxee and it’s making its way to a Mac near you soon.

Why soon? Well, that’s because Boxee is still in Alpha, so there are still some wrinkles to iron out here. But that’s not to say it’s not already shaping up to be an awesome application. More on the program, and how you can participate in the alpha testing, after the break.

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More and more people are switching to the Mac these days. I, myself, am a “Windows refugee” who came over to the Mac camp in 2006. I am very happy with my decision to do so, as the Mac is so much more intuitive, easy to use, and secure than Windows.

The learning curve is certainly minimal, especially for tech savvy folks. In fact, I’ve found that the most common problem switchers have is that they overthink the issue—generally, solving problems and performing everyday tasks on the Mac is far more intuitive than the average Windows user is used to.

For those of you who are thinking of making the switch, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal has put together a nice “switcher’s guide” on his All Things Digital blog. You’ll probably find that switching to the Mac is a lot easier than you may have thought.

Via [All Things Digital]

• Obama is a Mac user
• How to get your Mac to talk to your PS3
• How to get your Mac to talk to your Wii

If you are thinking about signing up for .Mac in anticipation of the release of MobileMe, don’t be too trigger happy and shell out your $99 to Apple just yet. Instead, check out some of these third party vendors for much better deals on Apple’s revamped online application suite. Amazon is probably the best deal because they offer free shipping, saving you up to $22 on the package.
These .Mac retail boxes will still work to activate MobileMe accounts even after .Mac has been discontinued, but if you hurry, you’ll be able to get your coveted @mac.com e-mail address while you still can.

UPDATE: Macworld seems to have removed Amazon’s listing from its site. To see Amazon’s listing for .Mac as well as customer reviews, click here.

Regardless, it seems as though you can get a slightly better deal from CompuDirect.

Via [Macworld]

• Apple launches new iPhone Your Life site
• How to get your Mac to talk to your PS3
• Who’s On Crack in tech: 11.21.08 edition