Connecting A MacBook To A Big Television = I Want Apple TV

October 22nd, 2007

AppleOver the past few days, I’ve been nerding out by hooking up the MacBook to the large-ish TV - something easily done with an HDMI cable, a MacBook-specific adapter, and an audio cable to route sound to the stereo.

The biggest discovery with this set up is the fun that is Front Row - movie trailers, digital photos, and tapping into the shared music running in iTunes on the Mac Mini. Many aspects of Front Row are designed to be watched on a large screen, sitting back in a chair, and watching the Mac goodness.

General computing tasks are rather amusing, but I’m not too keen on browsing the Internet on a huge television, as the text was prohibitively difficult to read.

Basically, this experiment is a teaser for Apple TV. I’m leaning toward that being our next purchase after Leopard, and timing would indicate that product is due for a refresh. I think what I’ll do in the meantime is organize a fun video library from our  for future deployment.

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  • > Disclosure: I own a tiny amount of Apple stock

    Which must be doing much better today :)
  • DaveD
    Disclosure - I've been long Apple since November 2004.

    Steven, doing much better today over... when? My latest Apple stock purchase was mid-March @89. It's up 93% (not counting the after hours pop) since then. Since mid-September it's up 12%. Maybe I'm being too literal, but "much better" implies it was at some point doing much worse. :-)

    I'm an avid techie and Apple fan too. (I hate the term fanboy/fanboi since it implies one can't be objective.) I've owned and toyed with my AppleTV since I pre-ordered it after MWSF last January.

    Hold off until this MWSF on your AppleTV purchase. There's three mini-trends merging:

    (1) Leopard and the underlying connectivity of everything Apple makes.

    (2) More than even iPhone, AppleTV is due for a major software update.

    (3) The near-obsolescence of the MacMini, the major limitation of no DVD on the AppleTVand the near requirement for a "thin" MacBook Pro to not have said DVD drive in it.

    You've made it this far without one Jason. At this point - provided you plan such purchases as you sound like you do - the last thing you want to do is purchase a version 1.0" hardware device a few weeks before the "version 2.0" one comes out.
  • @steven - I was thinking it was high enough when it passed $100 a share a few months ago. It's nutty right now.

    Still I don't think I'll sell until I personally feel there's a reason to - meaning I think Apple is screwing up. It hasn't happened yet, and there's still some cool stuff sure to come with leopard, and MacWorld 2008.

    @DaveD - yeah I'm definitely holding off on the Apple TV - I would imagine they might combine it with the Mac Mini or update the Apple Store for rentals or HD content early next year. And from what I understand - Leopard has Apple TV like functionality, so I'll continue to use my MacBook as a stop gap Apple TV until a new product announcement.

    That's cool that you have one right now and enjoy it. I don't know many people that have one but the ones that do, like it.
  • It's hard to believe we're coming up on almost 10 years of Apple goodness/good news/good karma now since Steve introduced the Bondi Blue iMac followed by the lollipop colored iMacs. The "dark" ages for the Mac-faithful seem like eons ago. These last 10 years have really zipped by...

    It's so great to realize that most of what we hear in the press and in blogs today is upbeat stuff like this story and no longer doom and gloom. I know it's been said before, but what a turnaround...

    I gotta get front row hooked up.
  • definitely hold off on AppleTV. From what I've heard having a mac mini hooked up to your TV is such a better experience.

    give the software some time to mature... usually 1.0s for consumer electronics devices really suck hard compared to 2.0 or 3.0

    wil shipley has a good read: http://wilshipley.com/blog/2007/10/open-systems...
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