Last week DynDNS released its beta support for Wide Area Bonjour and DNS Service Discovery. This means that if you own your own domain name, and you have a Custom DNS service with DynDNS, you can configure your Apple AirPort device (AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express and Time Capsule) to present itself as part of that domain, automatically updating your domain name and broadcasting configured services.

What is Wide Area Bonjour?

Wide Area Bonjour enables the same zero-config automatic service discovery functionality over the public Internet that we all enjoy on our local network (seeing our shared files, printers, scanners and so forth). If you have a MobileMe account and utilize the Back To My Mac functionality, you’re already using Wide Area Bonjour without even knowing it.

Why would we use this?

Most of us who use DynDNS use it to be able to let the IP Address that our ISP give us resolve with a friendly domain name (such as myname.homedns.org). This basic free DynDNS service works really well as long as you have a third-party router that supports DynDNS (which most of them do). Unfortunately Apple, being Apple, does not support DynDNS in its routers, leaving you to run the OS X DynDNS updater application on your computer. The downside to this is that if your computer is asleep and your home Internet connection drops and reconnects (giving you a new IP address) DynDNS does not get updated until the computer wakes up. When wanting to use Snow Leopard’s Wake On Demand feature this is a problem, so this has meant “tough luck,” requiring you to run the DynDNS Mac client on multiple machines and hope the IP updating occurs often enough. It generally works fine, with the occasional expected downtime when your home IP changes at midday if computers are sleeping.

Does it work?

This DynDNS Community post explains the current problem the DynDNS team are having. The gist is that while the Wide Area Bonjour service discovery works just fine, the domain name IP allocation will only work if your IP does not resolve a reverse name lookup. This is an issue since almost all Internet Providers that give you a dynamic IP address have a full domain name allocated already. For instance, if you do a reserve name lookup on your dynamic IP you may get a name of 123-148-53-102.dyn.ispname.com. This is a problem because of the way Apple’s Global Dynamic Hostname configuration currently works. It will only attempt to configure a name for the IP address if a name doesn’t already exist. DynDNS has queried Apple about the way this works and it appears to be non-intentional behaviour caused by a bug. Apple has indicated on the bonjour mailing list that a fix will come some time in the future, but at this stage there is no ETA. Apple will have to issue firmware updates for the Airport devices to make this work as expected.

What is working fine at the moment is Wide Area Bonjour service discovery. So if you have a static IP that does not resolve with a reverse name lookup and would like to emulate the kind of automatic service discovery functionality that you experience with Back To My Mac, you can achieve this goal with DynDNS now. DynDNS have two guides to assist with the appropriate configurations if you want to give it a try:

• Apple Wide Area Bonjour and DNS Service Discovery with Custom DNS
• Dynamic DNS Support for Apple AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, and Time Capsule

Recently, I’ve been migrating the functionality of my old Ubuntu Linux server to my wife’s old iMac. Since a big part of the reason to decommission my old Linux PC was to reduce my total power consumption, I wanted to fully utilize Snow Leopard’s Wake On Demand functionality with as many services as possible.

Wake On Demand is a relatively new feature that arrived with Snow Leopard. It allows your Mac to be put into sleep mode and then be woken up on demand when one of its services is required. This feature requires a compatible Apple AirPort Base Station (or Time Capsule) and OS X 10.6 running on the Mac. Most of the standard system services (File Sharing, Screen Sharing, Scanner & Printer Sharing etc.) will work automagically with this setup, but custom services such a my subversion and the built-in web sharing do not. However it’s not hard to make these services compatible with Wake On Demand with only a little bit of work to set it up. Here’s how I did it.

Bonjour

For the Wake On Demand functionality to work properly, any service being hosted by a Mac must be registered with Bonjour, Apple’s zero config service discovery protocol. This is how the Airport Base Station knows when its appropriate to wake up a sleeping Mac. To assist with getting a complete picture, I’d recommend downloading a great free utility called Bonjour Browser. This application will show you all the services currently being broadcast by Bonjour on your network. Any service displayed here will be automatically enabled to use Wake On Demand by your AirPort base station. Most of the server software components such as File Sharing will register with Bonjour itself, however for the ones that don’t, we need to do it on their behalf.

Luckily this is easy, as OS X comes with a command line utility called dns-sd, the DNS Service Discovery tool. This ties directly in with the Bonjour system and with it we can register services with Bonjour. Lets use subversion as our example. Subversion’s TCP port is usually 3690, so assuming you have a standard setup, we can register subversion with Bonjour with:

dns-sd -R "SVN" _svn._tcp. . 3690 pdl=application/svnserve

If we run this command manually in Terminal.app, we can quickly verify that our Bonjour broadcast was successful by using Bonjour Browser. The service will remain registered with Bonjour for as long as the dns-sd command is still running; as soon as we press Control+C to kill the command, we can see in Bonjour Browser that our service disappears.

Of course it’s not terribly useful if we need to manually run a command every time our computer reboots (even if Macs don’t need to be rebooted that often). To make the Bonjour registration occur automatically at system startup we need to launch our command using the launchd subsystem, which OS X uses for automatically starting background services. The easiest way to configure this to run automatically via launchd is by using Lingon. You can grab the latest version from Sourceforge. For more details on using Lingon see this previous article I put together, but for this task we just need to add a new User Daemon.

Run Lingon, click the New button and select User Daemons.

Fill out the dialog as follows:
Name: org.subversion.bonjour
What: dns-sd -R "SVN" _svn._tcp. . 3690 pdl=application/svnserve

Be sure to tick the “Keep it running all the time” and “Run it when it is loaded by the system” checkboxes. Click the save button and restart your Mac. If everything has been done right, you should be able to see this instance of dns-sd in Activity Monitor when viewing All Processes.

Rinse and Repeat

The process described above can also be used for any other service, such as for the Web Sharing service (port 80) or any other custom service that you’ve setup. Simply replace the references to the application protocol (ie. svn) and the applicable port number and create a new launchd item for each one. This isn’t the most ideal solution, as each new instance of dns-sd takes about 380KB of memory, however if you’re running a number of these extra services I would assume that you have at least 2GB of ram and the impact of 380KB is negligible. Each instance of dns-sd also uses a negligible amount of CPU processing time so it won’t get in the way of other processes. Of course the perfect ideal solution would be that the server software you’re running registers itself with Bonjour, but if that was the case you wouldn’t need to be reading this article.

Final Result

With everything set up correctly, you should now be able to replicate the following test:

• Put your Mac to sleep
• From another device on your network access your custom service(s)
• Rejoice with a warm fuzzy feeling as you realize your electricity bill will be lower and your carbon footprint is a smaller than it was yesterday.

I hope this has helped someone else achieve on-demand server bliss, with the peace of mind of minimal power consumption like it has for me. Do you have an even better way of doing it?

Last year I took a look at a number of Subversion clients for OS X, finally settling on Versions as my client of choice for my personal coding needs. At the time, I was running a Linux server on some old generic hardware from the days before I drank the Apple Koolaid. After deciding to upgrade my wife’s 17″ iMac with the new i5 27″ model, I realized I could ditch the old Linux hardware and get some great power savings (and hence reduced electricity bill) in the process. The first task I had was moving my SVN repository over from the Linux machine (Ubuntu 9.10) to the iMac running OS X 10.6…and this is how I did it.

All of the SVN application binaries, including the server, already come pre-installed with OS X 10.6, located in the /usr/bin/ directory, so we just have a few steps to get that running.

1. Create a system user for SVN.
2. Create a new repository to store your code in.
3. Optionally create specific SVN users for submission tracking.
4. Configure the server to run automatically at system startup.

Creating an SVN user

While you could easily run the SVN sever with the root user account, for better system security it’s always best to have a dedicated user to run a specific service such as SVN. This limits any possible vulnerabilities in the SVN software from harming the rest of your system; if an exploit is used to end up with a command line ability, the attacker can only damage files belonging to the SVN user.

1. Open System Preferences and go the Accounts page.
   
2. Add a new standard user named svn with a suitable password.
   

This user will be included in the OS X login screen when you start your computer. Since there is usually no reason for somebody to log onto the desktop with this user, it can be hidden from the login screen. You can do so by opening the Terminal application and running the following command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add svn

If you ever do want to login as the svn user to the desktop, you can click the new ‘Other’ option that appears in the login screen and manually enter the username. On the other hand, if you don’t want the ‘Other’ option at all you can also disable this by entering the following in a terminal window:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWOTHERUSERS_MANAGED -bool FALSE

You can also delete all the default directories created under the /Users/svn/ directory if you prefer a neat and tidy file system.

Creating your SVN repository

We now need to create the specific root directory for our repository and create it using the svnadmin command by launching the OS X Terminal application and entering the following commands.

sudo -u svn mkdir /Users/svn/svnroot
sudo -u svn svnadmin create /Users/svn/svnroot

You can now view the /Users/svn/svnroot directory and see that new files have been created to form the base of your new repository.

Creating SVN users (optional)

If you are working on your own code and you know without a doubt that nobody else will be accessing your repository, you can skip this step. However it doesn’t hurt to configure a dedicated user now even if it’s just for your sole use, so that code check-ins are properly attributed. To do this we first need to edit the svnserve.conf file and enable the passwd file for user authentication. An easy way from the terminal to edit a file is by using the nano text editor:

sudo -u svn nano /Users/svn/svnroot/conf/svnserve.conf

Remove the # from line 20 so it looks like this:

  ### Uncomment the line below to use the default password file.
  password-db = passwd

If using nano, press Control+X and save your changes. Next edit the passwd file:

sudo -u svn nano /Users/svn/svnroot/conf/passwd

Then add the desired usernames and passwords, in my case I’m adding the user ‘bed’ for myself:

### This file is an example password file for svnserve.
### Its format is similar to that of svnserve.conf. As shown in the
### example below it contains one section labelled [users].
### The name and password for each user follow, one account per line.
[users]
bed = beds_secret_svn_password

Scheduling the server to start automatically

OS X uses the launchd subsystem for automatically starting background services. The easiest way to configure svnserve to run automatically via launchd is by using Lingon. You can grab the latest version from Sourceforge. For more details on using Lingon see this previous article I put together, but for this task we just need to add a new User Daemon:

1. Run Lingon, click the New button and select User Daemons.
   
2. Fill out the dialog as follows:
   Name: org.subversion.svnserve
   What: /usr/bin/svnserve --inetd --root=/Users/svn/svnroot/

   

We now need to click the “Expert” button at the bottom and add the following text under the <dict> section:

<key>Sockets</key>
<dict>
  <key>Listeners</key>
  <dict>
    <key>SockFamily</key>
    <string>IPv4</string>
    <key>SockServiceName</key>
    <string>svn</string>
    <key>SockType</key>
    <string>stream</string>
  </dict>
</dict>
<key>inetdCompatibility</key>
<dict>
  <key>Wait</key>
  <false/>
</dict>
<key>Umask</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>svn</string>
<key>GroupName</key>
<string>staff</string>

So that it looks like this:

Click the save button again and then reboot your computer to give it a test by connecting to localhost or your IP address with your favorite SVN client, ie: svn://bed@localhost. Your SVN server is now ready to be used! The SVN server will only be launched when you first try and use it, so it won’t be taking up any unnecessary resources.

Migrating an existing repository

If you’re like me, and want to migrate an existing repository from another system you can do so easily by skipping the svnadmin command in step two, and just copy the repository directory from the old system to the new system. I would advise to upgrade your existing repository first to ensure that it is compatible with the version of SVN that comes with OS X (SVN version 1.6.x). Also you’ll want to ensure that the copied file’s owner becomes the new SVN user created in step one.

Here are my 21 favorite games to wait around with. The key common features for these games are that they’re quick to start playing and that you can achieve goals quickly with available playtime of as little as a minute. There are no long drawn out strategic battles, epic adventures or quests to get absorbed into.

Aztec Quest

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

My new favorite puzzler, Aztec Quest requires you to get the ball to the destination utilizing the available gadgets with some great physics based puzzles.

BeeCells

Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free

BeeCells is a simple puzzle game where you need to clear the colors by moving at least six of the same colors next to each other. After each turn, more colors appear and its a race to clear cells before they inevitably fill up.

Aurora Fient II: Arena Daemons

Website – iTunes: $4.99

Aurora Fient offers an epic level-upping RPG with multi-player (of sorts) game play, based on a simple puzzle clearing game (matching three or more of the same blocks), offering the same gameplay with different twists, power ups and great sounds and graphics. This gives you quick gameplay wins with long gameplay goals to obtain. Aurora Fient costs $4.99 and is easily worth it in my opinion.

Toobz

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Toobz is a simple pipe game where you try to get the water to the edge. While the graphics are plain, the game play can be addictive and good fun.

Geared

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Geared presents you with gears you need to layout in the allowed spaces to make the required preset gears rotate.

Flood-It!

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Make the screen one color by flooding the pixels with colors in the least number of moves. The flood always starts in the top left and floods all matching colors.

Pocketball

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

One or more balls will drop from the top, leaving you to guide them to the correct bucket with ropes attached to pegs.

Gravity Sling

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Send the astronaut back to the space shuttle by flinging him around planets.

TanZen

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

TanZen is very peaceful and relaxing, aligning up triangles into the silhouetted shape.

TimeLoop

iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

In TimeLoop you need to perform multiple actions at once, but you only have one guy. So you need to go back in time to help do all the necessary parts.

Tiki Towers

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Build bridges and towers by assembling bamboo sticks, so your monkeys can get to where they want to go.

Toople & Topple 2+Plus

Website – iTunes Topple 2+Plus: Free – iTunes Topple 1: Free

Stack different shaped blocks and see how high you can go. Topple 2+Plus enables online leaderboards and profiles. Both are now free.

KittyPuzzle

Website – iTunes: $1.99
KittyPuzzle is a simple tile sliding game, but with gorgeous kitten pictures to reward you at the end. You can also use your own photos.

Peggle

Website – iTunes: $1.99

Peggle shouldn’t need an introduction, a cross between pinball and color clearing games it is one of the most addictive games ever.

Zen Bound

Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free

Relax and paint objects by covering them with rope. Utilizing the accelerometer and touch screen perfectly, this is one of the best original games for the iPhone.

Zentomino

Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free
Zentomino is the same concept as TanZen, filling the silhouette but with pentomino pieces instead of triangles.

Orba

Website – iTunes: $1.99 – iTunes: Free

Orba is a color clearing game, where each game does go on for a while, but is the type of game that can be put down, saves your position and can be instantly picked up to resume clearing to end with the highest score. Simple and addictive.

Totemo

Website – iTunes: 99 cents

Clear the screen by matching various configurations of totems.

Vortex

Website – iTunes: Free

Get the spaceship back to earth by strategically placing black holes, planets or various gadgets to assist.

Polyhedra

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Fill up the screen by making shapes as big as you can in the available area, without letting them be touched by the critters while growing and using the accelerometer to change the direction of gravity to your advantage.

Minesweeper Classic

Website – iTunes: 99 cents – iTunes: Free

Figure out where the mines are in the field, in a perfect translation of the Windows classic game.

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“Audio Scrobbling,” as defined by Last.fm, is the act of submitting to a central database the details of what songs you’ve been listening to (what album, by who and when you listened). Scrobbling to Last.fm is the main reason I use the service these days, especially since it made the internet radio part of it a paid subscription only service for Australia. I think that being able to easily track and visualise my listening history and share that with friends is a great example of the social internet revolution.

There are a number of ways to have your music scrobbled to Last.fm from your Mac. Which one you chose depends on which fits into your music workflow the best.

First, a few words regarding iPod scrobbling. While many of the clients will scrobble what you’ve played on your iPod/iPhone (once you’ve synced your device), Last.fm does not accept scrobbles with a date-time in the past if more recent tracks have already been scrobbled. This means it’s generally not possible to listen to tracks on your device, listen to tracks on your computer and scrobble them, then sync your device and expect the songs previously listened to on the device to then scrobble too. ScrobblePod is the only tool I’ve tried that successfully handles this.

So, without further ado, here are 12 ways to scrobble your music listening habits to Last.fm.

The Official Client

Fully featured, the official client focuses on the Internet radio part of Last.fm, but does scrobble songs played through iTunes as well as picking up what you have listened to on your iPod. If you often use Last.fm for Internet radio, this make the most sense. It will attempt to scrobble iPod tracks played. This official client is free.

Standalone Players

The following apps are standalone players, they do not control iTunes and iTunes does not need to be running. They can, however, access your existing iTunes library.

SweetFM

SweetFM is a full Last.fm client which can stream radio as well as scrobble what iTunes is playing. However, you can’t control iTunes with it. iPod scrobbling is not supported. SweetFM is an open-sourced project.

Deck

The Deck is a standalone full album player that lets you queue up complete albums and play them in the order you want. The tracks it plays will then be scrobbled. iPod scrobbling is not supported. Deck costs $20, with a trial version available that will randomly pause playing.

Songbird

Songbird is a full, open-source iTunes replacement that contains a downloadable Last.fm module (this will be downloaded for you when you first start the application). This module will scrobble as well as enable the Internet radio functionality of Last.fm. For a complete review of Songbird see TheAppleBlog’s comprehensive review. Surprisingly, iPod scrobbling is not supported.

Spotify

Spotify is a cloud-based music service, where you make your music available to yourself anywhere you are. It requires an online account, which might not be available in your country (its not in Australia or the U.S.). iPod scrobbling is not supported.

iTunes Controllers

These applications serve primarily as remote controllers for iTunes, offering alternative ways to play your music, while offering scrobbling functionality as an added bonus.

Synergy

Synergy presents buttons in the menubar to let you always control iTunes and will scrobble them too. iPod scrobbling is not supported. Synergy costs 5 Euros, but a free trial is available.

CoverSutra

CoverSutra is an iTunes HUD based controller that can scrobble for you. iPod scrobbling is not supported. It costs $20 with a free trial available.

CoverStream

Another iTunes helper app, this gives you the ‘Cover Flow’ view as a popup HUD window while scrobbling to Last.fm. iPod scrobbling is not supported. CoverStream costs 15 Euros, and a free trial is available.

Bowtie

Bowtie is a slim remote that offers many visual themes and utilizes lots of keyboard shortcuts, while also scrobbling to Last.fm. iPod scrobbling is not supported. Bowtie is free.

iTunes Scrobblers

These applications do just one thing, they sit in the background, scrobble whats playing in iTunes and nothing else.

iScrobbler

A nice dedicated scrobbler thats small and fast. iPod scrobbling can be turned on and off, and you can specify a specific playlist to use too. It attempts to solve the iPod sync issue by giving an option (enabled by default) to queue submissions if an iPod is mounted, but this just doesn’t work for me. iScrobbler is free.

Audioscrobbler

Audioscrobbler is a fork of the official Last.fm client, released by an ex Last.fm employee. This contains just the iTunes scrobbling parts of the official client. It does not yet handle iPods at all. Audioscrobbler is free.

ScrobblePod

ScrobblePod is my scrobbler of choice. It has a tiny memory and CPU footprint and stays out of the way. Most importantly it only ever scrobbles after my iPhone has finished syncing with iTunes. This means it cleanly handles all combinations of listening on the device or computer in any order. ScrobblePod is free.

Which scrobbler is your favorite?

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I’ve had a rant building up for a few weeks. A rant about developer’s treatment at the hands of the App Store submission procedure. However unlike many rants on the topic, mine is not directed towards Apple. It is directed towards the iPhone developers who complain about the poor, unfair treatment they get, carrying their bleeding hearts in their palms while claiming Apple is bludgeoning the life out of them.

Two recent news headlines, seemingly separate, are intrinsically tied together and the synergy of them have made my eyes dislocated from the continued rolling they involuntarily perform.

The first headline, Facebook Developer Turns Back on iPhone relates how another high-profile developer has thrown their hands up in disgust over how Apple’s closed system runs against their principles. A direct quote from Joe Hewitt, developer of the popular Facebook application can be found on TechCrunch, and is most relevant. I will come back to this later:

I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process.

The second headline is Apple’s App Store Approval Process Now Includes an Automated Layer. The quick version is that Apple is now using an automated tool to determine if the Apps that developers submit to the App Store are using any Private API calls.

These two headlines are actually the same story, a fact that was made quite apparent by a popular direct iPhone-to-iPhone messaging App called Ping!. On Ping!’s Facebook Page, the developer announced that the much-anticipated version 1.2 of Ping! has been rejected by Apple:

Bad news is Ping! 1.2 has been rejected by Apple on Nov 14 due to a software library we used, developed by the Facebook company. This library is used by many apps including Ping! and the iPhone Facebook app itself. Unfortunately the most recent version of this library has violated some of Apple’s guidelines and  has caused hundreds of apps to get rejected including Ping! 1.2.

So let’s get this straight. Ping! and hundreds of apps have been rejected because they used a popular development framework, a framework which used Private APIs. A framework, which was created by Joe Hewitt initially for use with the Facebook application and then made available to third-party developers.

Lets be clear about this; Joe Hewitt used Private APIs in his public framework, well-known to be against the rules of the App Store, and then acts all indigent when Apple slaps his framework down. Rather than disclosing his error, rather than saying “oops sorry about that,” he would rather ride the trendy wave of ‘blame Apple control policy’ and cite ‘philosophical differences.’ I rather wonder if these philosophical differences would still be present if his framework hadn’t been caught in this automated tool. If it were just other people’s frameworks that were caught, would he still have quit for ideological reasons?

Now I don’t mean to pick solely on Mr Hewitt, and maybe I’m being too harsh. But he is just the latest example in a blogosphere that increasingly seems to love taking the loud minority and say “Look! Here’s proof that the end is nigh!” Come on, the end isn’t nigh, it’s not even on the horizon. Out of the thousands of App Developers that exist, we’ve had a dozen, maybe two dozen make a public fuss and quit. Big deal! This is the real world; businesses start, some succeed and some can’t hack the brutal reality. Those just make excuses and quit. Just like everywhere else in the business world.

To summarize the full story that I see, it goes something like this:

• Apple publishes the rules for making iPhone Apps, including publishing and documenting the specific APIs which developers are allowed to use.
• Some developers ignore these rules and make use of Private APIs. Some Apps get through the cracks in the newly functioning App Store review procedures.
• Apple starts to crack down on private API usage. Developers who get rejected due to Private API use cry foul “Why are WE rejected but THOSE apps are allowed?” This was a fair question.
• In response Apple says “They shouldn’t have been allowed, we are working on a way to fill up the cracks in the system”
• Apple then goes ahead and fill the cracks with an automated (and thus unbiased) system to test of private API usage.
• Developers then cry foul, “It’s not fair, you’re a bully, it’s too hard.”

Cry me a river….

Before I get off my soap box, I’d like to add that there are times and places for Private API use. As a professional software developer working on proprietary custom embedded solutions on Windows Mobile devices for specific customers, I freely admit to using Private API calls at times. Sometimes its necessary to get a specific job done. The difference is scope and control. Our clients deploy the software under our care and guidance, with specific OS and hardware requirements. If they change devices or operating systems, we know about it well in advance and can prepare for it accordingly. Our clients don’t just upgrade the OS and expect everything to work.

The consumer market is a completely different kettle of fish, customers upgrade willy-nilly  and expect things to just work, especially things related to Apple products. Private APIs are private for a reason, because they can not be relied upon to behave from one OS release to the next. This means that applications will break and the consumers, you and me, lose out.

In the brutal competition of any market place, and indeed the world in general, the strong will survive and the weak will perish. The App Store is no different and I’m constantly dumb-founded as to why some people expect it to be so.

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Recently, Elgato released EyeTV for the iPhone (AppStore Link). At a cost of $4.99, its marketing blurb offers the following functionality:

With the EyeTV app, you can watch, record, and enjoy live and recorded TV on your iPhone or iPod touch. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your iPhone:

• Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required)
• Watch your EyeTV recordings
• Browse the comprehensive Program Guide
• Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later
• View and edit your recording schedules

How Does it Measure Up?

Now that we know the promises, how does the functionality work in practise and does it live up to the hype? To set the picture accurately; my set up is a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 2GB of RAM and two Elgato Digital USB Tuner sticks. This is hooked up to an Airport Express, which extends my existing wireless connection from another room. Between myself and my wife, we have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2nd Gen, so I will be testing EyeTV on all three looking for differences.

Setting Up and Preparing

After downloading the EyeTV app from iTunes and installing onto my three iDevices, I had to update EyeTV to version 3.2 on my Mac mini by simply checking for updates. Once updated, switching on iPhone streaming was a simple option in the preferences.

There is also functionality for using Elgato’s servers to allow connecting to your EyeTV device from outside your wireless network called “My EyeTV.” This works in a similar manner to Apple’s “Back To My Mac” functionality of MobileMe and requires UPnP support between your EyeTV host and your router. Because I have an AirPort Express extended network, UPnP didn’t work — but I was able to manually configure a port forwarding rule in my router on port 2170 to make the service work.

Advanced options allow you to require a passcode to connecting a device and the option to automatically convert recordings into a format suitable for streaming at a later time. While Live TV does not need to be prepared, recorded content does.

You can however, also prepare recordings manually, on a case-by-case basis.

After starting the iPhone app and entering my “My EyeTV” details, I get the option of connecting via Wi-Fi (on the bottom) and via “My EyeTV” (on top). When connected to my local wireless, the “My EyeTV” connection did not work (of course you wouldn’t want to do this, but the software doesn’t detect this in any way).

Selecting the local Wi-Fi option connects quickly and presents the app’s main menu.

Watching Live TV

Selecting LiveTV gives a list of channels and what is currently showing.

Clicking on the green icon on the right displays the upcoming programs on that channel.

I can then select the current show to get a summary and an option to “Watch Now.”

This process then takes about 20 seconds of processing and streaming before I get picture and sound, which is smooth and crisp and just as one would expect.

Tapping on the screen brings up the controls which allow pausing, rewinding 30 seconds (and jumping back to the live stream), a volume control and resizing between widescreen (just like in the iPod app).

Pressing the ‘gear’ icon displayed in the top right of the channel listing presents a bandwidth/quality settings screen to enable you to tweak the size of the stream. This worked well and allows you to find the right setting for your moment. The lowest setting is about equal to the early days of You Tube while the highest setting is flawless.

Watching Recordings

Pressing the recordings menu gives you a sub menu to narrow down searching for an existing recording.

Selecting an option (such as Library) gives a list of individual recordings.

While there is no way to search directly for a recording, you can sort the list by a number of means.

Unlike live TV, when watching a recording you get full track scrubbing navigation, not just ‘back 30 seconds.’

The quality of recordings is not configurable like LiveTV is, it depends on the quality options you selected for ‘preparing recordings’ on your Mac. Cellular quality is very low and like You Tube, but if you’re on wireless (or on a jailbroken phone with 3G Un-Restrictor) you get full quality.

Schedules

Schedules let you see what upcoming recordings you have scheduled.

All you can do here is browse and remove an item from the schedule.

Guide

The Guide gives you access to the full electronic TV guide available in your Mac’s EyeTV software, this is exactly the same as when browsing the guide for Live TV, except instead of an option to “Watch Now,” the button is “Record,” which will add the show to your recording schedule.

The Verdict

There is no noticeable speed differences with performance between the iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2nd Gen or the iPhone 3GS. The bottleneck here is available bandwidth and the speed of the host computer. Generally, the functionality works as advertised, however there are some limitations to be aware of, and some version 1.0 bugs that need to be squashed.

• Live streaming does not work on 3G, requires Wi-Fi — thanks AT&T, for affecting my functionality in Australia. However, on a jailbroken phone, I was able to successfully use 3G Unrestrictor to fool EyeTV into thinking it was on Wi-Fi, thus allowing it to work. This worked at a much higher quality than I expected and was also very smooth. Well worth the $2.99 it costs for 3G Unrestrictor.
• Streaming only supports one device at a time. Connecting with my iPhone and watching a live TV stream, then connecting with my iPod touch works, but when actually selecting a channel to view on the iPod touch, it drops the stream for the iPhone. This is probably fair enough as one stream is pretty CPU intensive as it is.
• When both recording a show and streaming live TV, I had two instances of the host application crash, requiring a full EyeTV restart to allow connections again.
• When testing across the Internet while on my work’s wireless, or on 3G, I found my iPhone’s EyeTV app constantly crashing whenever it tried to connect. This seemed to be an issue with the EyeConnect helper software on my Mac mini, which needed to be restarted by turning EyeTV sharing off and on again in my Mac mini.
• When stopping a live or recorded stream, the CPU usage on the host computer often stays high for 5-10 minutes. It looks like its continuing to stream data out and didn’t get the ‘stop’ message from the iPhone. This does seem to eventually time out and really isn’t a big problem unless the CPU usage causes you a problem.
• It would be a nice option to be able to ‘prepare’ a recording for the iPhone remotely.

Once Elgato gets a software update out for both ends of the solution (iPhone and OS X) to fix the crash bugs and bring stability to the software, this will be absolutely great. Until then, it’s a bit of hit and miss, it may work fine or it may need someone to be at your computer to restart software before it works, which defeats the purpose. Elgato is working hard on its forums to replicate user’s issues and make this stable, so its a bright future ahead.

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Hot on the heels of the release of VMWare Fusion 3, the folks at Parallels have released Parallels Desktop 5, matching the features of VMWare Fusion 3 and adding some new ones to boot. You can get a quick overview of the newest features in the Parallels press release.

Parallels Desktop 5 costs $79.99 for the full package, or $49.99 to upgrade from either Parallels Desktop 3 or 4. Parallels is also offering a free upgrade key for those who bought Parallels 4 after Oct. 1. This is also valid for Parallels 4 purchases up until Dec. 31. Customers must retrieve this before Jan. 15, 2010.

Besides the obvious two features, fully supporting Snow Leopard and Windows 7, some of the awesome new features are best shown in screenshots.

Finally we have the Aero interface! This works in all view modes, not just full screen.

When in fullscreen mode, you can now configure a HotCorner to easily switch back to the OS X side with just your mouse.

The new Crystal View is a modified Coherence view, hiding all icons in the Dock and the OS X Parallels menu bar, moving access to menu items and a newly created folder icon in the Dock containing all your windows shortcuts.

The new MacLook feature automatically installs a custom Windows Theme (similar to those offered by products such as StarDocks’ Window Blinds) giving all your windows applications an OS X look and feel.

If you combine MacLook with Coherence View or Crystal View, the lines between native OS and virtual OS become even more blurred.

More importantly than all of that, its super fast. For me, it’s much much faster than VMWare Fusion 3. For the last few months, I’ve been in the closed beta program for Parallels 5, and the lack of communication and new builds had made us a bit weary. Sure enough, yesterday it released version 5 with none of the testers having a clue, and there are some new features we’d never seen (such as MacLook, multi-gesture support and Crystal view).

When VMWare Fusion 3 was released, I downloaded the trial and was impressed at how easy it was to migrate a copy of my Parallels Windows 7 VM over to Fusion. I wasn’t as impressed, however, at the sluggish performance of VMWare Fusion 3 when the VM loaded up. Running MS Access 2007 and Visual Studio windows became lethargic. The same operations under Parallels 5 just flew along with no issues. It’s important to note that I had the same basic VM configuration across both (1.5GB RAM, 1 CPU allocated), using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition. Your mileage may vary, as this was most certainly not a scientific comparison study.

Parallels has also published a video of Parallels Desktop 5 in action.

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When Apple first allowed in-app purchases for third-party apps on the iPhone platform it was restricted to paid apps only, even if the app was only 99 cents. Today, Apple informed all registered iPhone developers that it was now allowing free apps to contain in-app purchases.

While this does open the door to potential ‘bait and switch’ apps (its free, but then you have to pay to make it useful), the advantages completely outweigh the potential for bait and switch. Developers have been asking since the beginning to make true ‘trial versions’ available that can be upgraded without the consumer losing data. If app developers embrace this it will put a complete end to the argument that Crackulous exists, not for piracy, but to enable users to ‘trial’ software.

What is not clear yet is that if Apple will allow ‘time limited’ demos or not — giving the full features for 30 days or so and then locking it out with an upgrade. Another question is how this change will affect the top “Paid” and “Free” app lists. Time will answer these questions, but I think this is definitely a good move on Apple’s part and continues to strengthen its App Store’s lead in the industry.

The email sent to developers is below:

In App Purchase is being rapidly adopted by developers in their paid apps. Now you can use In App Purchase in your free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services.

You can also simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses In App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app. Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.

Visit the App Store Resource Center for more details about how you can add In App Purchases to your free apps.

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Here in Australia, the supermarket chain Woolworths has been freshening its look (and rebranding in some states from Safeway to Woolworths) over the last year, which includes a nice modern looking new logo. This new logo, which Woolworth have stated is a stylised “W” was submitted to IP Australia (the Australian Agency who looks after trademarks) for trademark registration in August last year. Apple has now objected to this trademark application.

On the face of it, this seems silly, but from a distance the two logo shapes are not dissimilar and Apple is not being ridiculous in this situation. While Woolworths has traditionally been a grocery supermarket chain (the largest in Australia and New Zealand), it is constantly expanding its range and increasingly selling and advertising electronic goods.

While it’s unlikely to start selling fully fledged computers in the near future, it already sells mobile phone packages & cards. Its not hard to imagine them selling small digital music players or smartphones. This is likely to bring them into a similar product space as Apple and thus it brings the situation into trademark territory. The sticking point is that Woolworth’s trademark application attempts to broadly mark any product Woolworth wants to sell in the future — which could be anything.

Its important to note that at this stage Apple has not taken any legal action. It is simply disputing Woolworth’s trademark application, which is a normal and necessary procedure within Australia’s trademark laws. Unlike copyright laws, to keep a trademark a company must make all efforts to pro-actively protect it. If a company does not protect its trademark and a likeness is then used by someone else for a long enough time, it is likely to lose it completely. Even if IP Australia ignores Apple’s dispute, Apple is now on record for protecting its trademark.

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NewsGator released todayNetNewsWire 3.2 for OS X. At the end of July, NewsGator announced the ending of its news feed subscription service and released a beta version of NetNewsWire 3.2 with Google Reader synchronization.

The way NewsGator handled the ending of its service and migration to Google Reader left a lot to be desired. After sending out an email advising people to immediately switch to the beta, it received many complaints due to the numerous bugs and the large embedded ad in the bottom left of the window.

The ad was removed for remaining betas — until today, when it was brought back at half the previous size. To remove the ad you must purchase a license for $10. I’m not sure if this is a special introductory price or not, but for me $10 is a great deal and buying a license was a no-brainer.

As well as many bug fixes and speed optimizations, the official release restores the much-loved Clippings functionality that was missing from the initial beta. On the OS X platform there are now a few options brewing for native Google Reader support, providing healthy competition in this area, from which we all benefit.

Also released today was the long-awaited NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhoneOS. In a similar manner to its desktop brother, there are now two versions of NetNewsWire for the handheld devices. The free version (iTunes link) remains available with full functionality but now contains ads. To remove the ads, NetNewsWire Premium (iTunes link) can be purchased. This premium version is available for an introductory price of $1.99 until October, at which point it will go up to $4.99.

As well as the obvious synchronization with Google Reader, version 2 contains Twitter and Instapaper integration. This is a complete rewrite of the application; it contains a new UI and is much faster than version 1.0. It does require iPhone OS 3.0, but I wonder who’s still on 2.2 these days? The ability to forward an article by email without leaving the app is great and I wish all apps would be updated to do that (I’m looking at you, Byline).

The biggest missing feature, which is a deal-breaker for me, is being able to set an article’s status as unread. In the FAQ, they recommend using the ‘star’ function to flag the article instead of a ‘mark as unread’ function, but that doesn’t suit my workflow. While I’m impressed with the improvements, until I can set articles back to unread I need to stick with Byline for my Google Reader syncing. I think Byline is still faster, too. But as I said before, competition is a good thing.

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There are few iPhone games that I will immediately buy. Most of the ones I do, however, are the classic games I played as a teenager.

The iPhone/iPod touch is more than powerful enough to handle these games and it seems that there are many people like me who are keen to experience these classics again. So, here’s a roundup of modern ports of classic games. Only official ports of classic games are detailed here — clones and the like do exist but I had to draw a line in the sand. I’ve also included links to Wikipedia for those interested in the history of the games.

Classic Arcaders

The Video Arcade is where mainstream gaming began, and there are plenty of original ports from this era to re-live your youth shoving coins into cabinets. I’d still like to see BubbleBobble make an appearance here to completely satisfy my urges.

Space Invaders

Release Year: 1978
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Super Breakout

Release Year: 1978
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $1.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Centipede

Release Year: 1980
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Missile Command

Release Year: 1980
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

PAC-MAN

Release Year: 1980
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $5.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Ms. PAC-MAN

Release Year: 1981
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $5.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Galaga

Release Year: 1981
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Frogger

Release Year: 1981
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $1.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Dig Dug

Release Year: 1982
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Pole Position

Release Year: 1982
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $2.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Q*Bert

Release Year: 1982
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $1.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Space Ace

Release Year: 1984
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Time Crisis

Release Year: 1995
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $5.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Alpine Racer

Release Year: 1995
Original Platform: Arcade
Price: $1.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Adventures

The classic point and click adventure games let you guide your character around a scene, interacting with computer characters and objects by either entering text or clicking on action words. Sierra and Lucas Arts were the kings of this genre until the 3D graphics revolution when they seemed to die out. Myst took a different take on the genre while InfoGames was one of the original companies where text adventures all started (Frotz is an open source interpretor of text adventure games and includes the M.I.T version of Zork).

Zork (available in Frotz)

Release Year: 1977
Original Platform: DEC PDP-10
Price: Free
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Mystery House

Release Year: 1980
Original Platform: Apple II
Price: $5.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Secret of Monkey Island

Release Year: 1990
Original Platform: Atari ST, Macintosh and PC
Price: $7.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Simon The Sorcerer

Release Year: 1993
Original Platform: PC
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Myst

Release Year: 1993
Original Platform: Mac
Price: $5.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Flight of the Amazon Queen

Release Year: 1995
Original Platform: Amiga, PC
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Shooters

The memories of borrowing my school’s greyscale brief-case sized 386 for the weekend to play the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D are still with me. It started a new era of gaming can now be fondly relived on the iPhone. Duke Nukem 3D is another old favorite, athough ID was clearly the leader.

Wolf 3D

Release Year: 1992
Original Platform: PC
Price: $1.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Duke Nukem 3D

Release Year: 1996
Original Platform: PC
Price: $2.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Platformers

While the original jump’n'run platformer Super Mario Bros isn’t available (yet?), Sega’s main competition Sonic The Hedgehog is, as well as other classic variations of platform games (including hack’n'slash platformers like Golden Axe).

Golden Axe

Release Year: 1989
Original Platform: Arcade Consoles (Sega System 16)
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Rick Dangerous

Release Year: 1989
Original Platforms: Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, DOS
Price: $1.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Sonic the Hedgehog

Release Year: 1991
Original Platform: Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
Price: $5.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Streets of Rage

Release Year: 1991
Original Platform: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Flashback

Release Year: 1992
Original Platform: Amiga
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Super Methane Bros

Release Year: 1993
Original Platform: Amiga
Price: $0.99
Links: Webpage, iTunes

Strategy / Simulation

Sim City and Civilisation are two of the most well known and loved strategy simulation games and of course they make a showing in this list. Personally I’d love to see the old Bullfrog Amiga classics PowerMonger and Populous appear on the App Store too.

Archon

Release Year: 1983
Original Platform: Atari
Price: $2.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Sim City

Release Year: 1988
Original Platforms: Amiga, Mac
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Civilization

Release Year: 1991
Original Platform: PC
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Puzzlers and Others

From the original puzzle game Tetris, to early classics like Bomberman.

Rogue

Release Year: Early 1980s
Original Platform: UNIX
Price: Free
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Bomberman

Release Year: 1983
Original Platform: MSX, NEC PC-8801, NEC PC-6001, Sharp MZ-700, FM-7, ZX Spectrum
Price: $7.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Tetris

Release Year: 1984
Original Platform: PC
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Boulderdash

Release Year: 1984
Original Platform: Atari 400/800, Apple II, MSX, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, ColecoVision
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Crystal Quest

Release Year: 1987
Original Platform: Apple Mac
Price: $0.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Pinball Dreams

Release Year: 1992
Original Platform: Amiga
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Pinball Fantasies

Release Year: 1992
Original Platform: Amiga
Price: $6.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Worms

Release Year: 1994
Original Platform: Amiga
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

Vay

Release Year: 1994
Original Platform: Sega CD
Price: $4.99
Links: Wikipedia, Webpage, iTunes

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Smart Playlists in iTunes have always been a powerful way to create specific playlists to meet your needs, from creating a rotating fresh playlist for syncing to an iDevice to creating a specific playlist for a party. Being able to say “give me my music that hasn’t been played in the last month, that is of at least 320kbps and is rated 5 stars” is pretty sweet.

In iTunes 8 and earlier you could create all of these multiple rules and have them applied with a ‘match operator,’ which could be ALL (all rules have to match for a track to be included) or ANY (if any of the single rules apply the track will be included).

iTunes 9 has quietly and substantially expanded the level of complexity that you can create in these rules by allowing you to create nested rules. This lets you build up substantial logic with multiple ANY and ALL match operators being applied.

Lets look at a simple example.

Here I have four individual rules:

• Not played in the last week
• Bitrate is higher than 150kbps
• Was added to my iTunes library this year
• Is Music (not a podcast, or video)

Previously this had to be an ALL or ANY. But now the rule comes down to one and four and (two or three). So it will give me all music that hasn’t been played in the last week, and has either been added this year or is higher than 150kbps.

The example above is simple but reflects the power that can be obtain from single level nesting. But wait, there’s just one more thing. Actually, there’s more than one; you can have up to five levels of nesting.

The possible combinations of logic available here are liable to do one’s head in — but I’d be interested in seeing what complex rules are being used by our readers. Let us know how you use Smart Playlists.

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We previously discussed Grand Central Dispatch, but the essence is that the operating system’s kernel is the only entity that knows all of the processes that are running on the system, so it’s in the best position to determine how to run tasks concurrently. Developers no longer have to guess as to the most efficient number of threads to spawn, or make assumptions about the available computing resources.

While Grand Central Dispatch is a boon for Snow Leopard and OS X developers, it doesn’t help the rest of the computer world, and certainly doesn’t contain enough of an advantage to convince developers who don’t already develop for OS X to start. However by open-sourcing the Grand Central Dispatch APIs, Apple is most likely hoping that other operating systems like Linux may pick up the technology. This encourages the wider adoption of the technology, which makes it stronger for all parties. It’s a win-win scenario.

One just has to look at the success of WebKit, the underlying foundation of the Safari web browser that was adopted by Google to drive its Chrome browser. Apple is clearly seeing the advantages of open source — and even if it didn’t mean to (Apple didn’t open-source WebKit as it originated from the open source kHTML), it’s reaping the benefits of the open source community’s constant code improvements.

Ultimately, Grand Central Dispatch consists of three components, each of which are now open for public consumption, improvement and adoption:

1. In the user-space side is the newly open-sourced libdispatch. This contains the APIs that developers call to schedule blocks of code into queues.
2. xnu is the kernel that runs OS X, originally developed for NEXTSTEP before Apple took NeXT and Steve Jobs back. xnu stands for “X is Not Unix” and has been open-sourced from the start because it included code from FreeBSD.
3. llvm is a relatively new “Low Level Virtual Machine” compiler technology that is ultimately designed to replace gcc which generally compiles much Unix software. While not technically required for Grand Central Dispatch, it supports a key requirement: blocks. Blocks are an extension to the C programming language that make it trivial to define portions of code that can easy be scheduled and run concurrently.

With all three components of Grand Central Dispatch now available for the open source community, it is an even more exciting prospect. Finally we can really capitalize on our multicore computers. The next 12 months will be interesting.

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They’ve also added some new core functionality and optimized the backend. To me, this feels like more than a 0.01 update. With every update of Sequel Pro, the open-source project continues to close the gap between itself and commercial competitors such as Querious.

New Features

Sequel Pro now includes full SSH tunnel support built into the connection manager (which has also got a UI facelift).

There is a new Relations screen that lets you view and edit foreign keys for a table.

Enhancements

By far one of my favorite new enhancements is the ability to filter the database’s table list. When the list gets larger than the displayed area, a filter box appears at the top, enabling you to quickly find the one you’re looking for. I’ve been using this a lot already.

When running custom queries, the results used to be presented in a static table. Now you can sort the results on the fly by clicking the column titles. Even better, for supported queries you can edit the results directly.

Browser-like table history navigation has been added, allowing you to go back to previous table views, which is great for flicking back and forth.

Significant Update

There are also plenty of smaller enhancements. Another favorite is the ability to select a record (either in the content view or after running a custom query) and then select “Copy As INSERT Statement”. This is so handy, I don’t know why it wasn’t there before. There are plenty of small changes like this, and almost every part of the application has had numerous bugs fixed.

In addition to all the new features, enhancements and fixes, this release is significantly snappier, and very noticeably so. The memory overhead is also greatly reduced. The developers have done some serious optimizing, and the results have paid off. See the full release notes for Sequel Pro 0.96 for a complete list of changes since 0.95.

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It is, however, possible to customize your Apple TV with unauthorized third party software (much like a jailbreak for iPhones/iPod touches) to transform it into a fantastic cheap media player (with certain limitations).

Suitable For Your Needs?

Now I have a Mac mini downstairs connected to my HDTV with EyeTV USB tuners and I think this is the ideal setup. However, upstairs in my bedroom I have an old SD TV that was paired up with an old HP laptop running windows with XBMC. The HP’s lack of stability finally became too frustrating, so after researching my options, I spent AU$330 (~US$276) on an Apple TV box and put XBMC on it.

My SD TV has component plugs so Apple TV works fine with it, and I’ve not had one hiccup while streaming .avi files from my file server over my wireless network. Its important to note, however, that some 720p HD playback can be a bit jerky, due to XBMC not having hardware acceleration support — but if you’re like me and wouldn’t want to watch 720p downscaled this doesn’t matter. I’ve finally got a totally stable (and completely silent) wireless TV streamer upstairs that I can control with my iPhone.

Here’s a complete guide on how to load XBMC and Boxee on to your Apple TV to make it much more useful.

Required Tools

*A USB Memory stick with at least 512MB that can be formatted.
*A PowerPC or Intel Mac. The procedure can also be done from a windows box, but since this is TheAppleBlog, this guide is exclusive to Macs.
*An AppleTV device with firmware version 2.3 (the most current at the time of this writing).

Preparing

Head over to http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/ and download the OSX version of the atvusb-creator. This will let you boot your Apple TV from the USB stick and install the required patches to your device.

First, you should remove all USB drives from your computer as a safety precaution to prevent accidentally picking the wrong USB device to create your patchstick. Insert your empty USB stick and run atvusb-creator.app:

The default options as above are suitable for most, so you can go ahead and click the “Create Using ->” button (assuming your usb pathstick is the only usb drive connected as recommended). This will partition and format the patchstick and then copy all the required files to it. With this done, it’s time to go to your Apple TV.

Patching Apple TV

Unplug the power cable from your Apple TV and put the USB stick in the port at the back.

Plug your Apple TV back in and watch the custom Linux OS do its work. This will take a few minutes and you will see lots of lines of text:

When you see the text “Please unplug your Apple TV to reboot/reset the device” you can unplug your USB stick and reset. When it boots up again, you will now see a slightly altered menu:

You now have both XBMC and Boxee installed on your Apple TV — however its best to update your system to the latest releases. From the new XBMC/Boxee menu on the left, go into the “Updates” menu on the right. Then select the Launcher 3.1 download:

This will be a quick download and update process. You should then also turn off Apple TV’s ability to automatically update itself. This is to prevent any new updates from Apple breaking your ability to use XBMC or Boxee. This can be done in the “Settings” menu by toggling the “ATV OS Update Enabled” option to “No”:

You can then download the latest stable release of XBMC and/or Boxee in the newly renamed “Downloads” menu. The standard Apple TV Remote works fine in both XBMC and Boxee. There are also a number of iPhone/iPod touch apps that let you control these directly.

Running the Latest Bleeding Edge XBMC

If you’re brave (or some may say foolish), you can also run the latest nightly builds of XBMC. To do this you’ll need to telnet into your Apple TV and set a preference via the command line to make this option appear in Launcher’s Downloads menu. From a command line tool (such as Terminal that comes with OSX) type:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local

When prompted for a password, enter frontrow and then type:

defaults write com.teamxbmc.xbmclauncher XBMCAdditionalDownloadPlistURLs -array http://www.sshcs.com/xbmc/Info.asp

This will then enable the option in Launcher to download a latest nightly build of XBMC:

Restoring to Factory Settings

If you want to restore your Apple TV to its vanilla settings, simply follow these steps. From a command line tool type:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local

When prompted for a password, enter frontrow and then type:

sudo rm -rf /Applications/{Boxee,XBMC}.app/
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/XBMCLauncher.frappliance/
rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/{BOXEE,XBMC}/
sudo reboot

It’s a shame Apple doesn’t seem interested in unlocking the power of their home media device themselves, but at least doing it on your own isn’t as difficult as you might expect.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace
• Connected Consumer Market Overview, Q2 2010