Connect360 - iLife Meets XBox 360
January 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I knew you could connect a Windows Media Center PC to your XBox 360 to extend the available content, but my primary machine at home is a Mac running OS X. This means all the fun media (movies, music, and pictures) is all on there. So after a bit of searching I turned up the absolutely amazing Connect360 by Nullriver Software.
So how exactly does it work and what does it do?
The iTunes integration allows you to browse and play your iTunes music by song, artist, album, genre or playlist. As expected, this allows support for listening to your iTunes songs while playing a game. It even updates your iTunes play count and play date for songs played on your Xbox 360.
In addition, Connect360 supports streaming of live Internet radio broadcasts by simply addind any station to a playlist
As for iPhoto, you can view your photo library, browse by photo album or watch a slideshow.
Any movies in your movie folder become available for viewing in full screen.
Connect360 supports the following formats:
MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and Apple Lossless for Music. For Photos, Connect360 supports: JPEG, RAW, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF. For video streaming, currently only WMV+WMA, AVI (DIVX/XVID), H.264 and MPEG4 files are supported (in MP4 and MOV containers).
On top of all this sweetness, it also does “automagic transcoding”. With this feature, it can do on-the-fly automatic transcoding of many formats so that you can enjoy even more content on you Xbox 360.
As for setup, you drop a new control panel on your Mac and this Connect360 software will automatically detect your Xbox 360 and in turn your 360 will automatically detect your Mac and the media made available to it.
The demo is free, and the full version is merely $20, so if you have this setup, try it out, you won’t be sorry.
Tags: aac, avi, connect360, divx, h.264, iLife, mac, media center, media center pc, media pc, microsoft, mp3, music, osx, pictures, video, xbox, xvid
Uno - A Prettier, Unified OSX
August 20, 2006 | 1 Comment
Without a doubt I think Mac OS X is by far the most modern and attractive looking OS in existence. Seeing it side by side with Windows XP every day shows how far ahead it was. Imagine my surprise upon discovering Uno’s ability to make it even better.
Uno applies skins across many of the OSX applications, allowing you to replace the brushed metal look with more of the iTunes/iLife look. Matt has often complained about the brushed metal look, I have always been indifferent. Until now. Wow. Safari, iChat, Finder and more all have new life breathed into them by just simply replacing the brushed metal with gradients.
Install this application, you won’t be sorry.
Tags: apple, application, brushed metal, finder, gradient, ichat, iLife, itunes, macintosh, os x, osx, safari, skin, skinning, uno
Apple Ads Justifiably Harsh on PCs
May 22, 2006 | 6 Comments
Apple recently began running a fantastic ad campaign that seriously harshes on PCs. The series of ads shows two guys personifying the two platforms. The MacOS guy is clearly cooler and more interesting while the dorky guy plays up the all business angle of PCs. All 6 ads are really funny and touch on issues like networking, viruses, software availability, restarting, iLife, and good press. Basically the Mac is shown as coming out ahead on all of these things.
Sure it’s marketing, but I think they pretty much hit the nail on the head. How can PC-centric environments continue to be justified?
Tags: advertisement, advertising, apple, iLife, mac, macintosh, networking, pc, restarting, software availability, viruses, windows