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Ask TUAW: Where is the new Mac mini?, turning off iPhone noises and more
Welcome to Ask TUAW, your favorite weekly question-and-answer column. Now, we can never have too many questions, so please, go to the comments of this post and ask away. To get fabulous answers, we need your fabulous questions. You can also email your questions directly to ask [at] tuaw.com, or ping us on Twitter. Now, off to the questions! Muhammad asks: Is there any way to set up a mode in my iPhone that's exactly like airplane mode but still allow phone calls to be received? When I sleep, I want everything like texts, email, push notifications, etc. to be off, but I still need to be available in case of an emergency.
Mac mini-powered car stereo hates phone books
There are many interesting, creative things you can do with a Mac mini, the over performing, underpraised hero of the Mac lineup. You can build it into your Millennium Falcon, good for shaving a parsec or two off the Kessel run; you can install Snow Leopard Server edition and use it to run your Facebook-beating social networking website; or, if you're really, really creative, you can install it in your 2001 Chevy Tahoe and use it to shred phone books. Of course, using it for phone book destruction requires that you use only certain values of the terms 'interesting' and 'creative,' values nearer the shallower end of the gene pool than when using it to control your Millennium Falcon. But still. I'm sure a Windows-based ICE system wouldn't have shredded that phone book nearly as well. Watch the video (sorry about the music) and let us know if you can think of an even better use for a Mac mini in the comments below.
Mac mini mounting madness
If you have a new Mac mini that you'd like to mount somewhere, like under a desk or entertainment center, there are two new solutions you can look at. The first, which we received in the last week from NewerTech, is the NuShelf. This mount comes in two versions. One has a single shelf for holding one Mac mini or a Time Capsule. The NuShelf Dual Mount (see photo above) is slightly deeper for holding two Mac minis, two Time Capsules or one of each. The NuShelf is made of clear PETG thermoplastic, with a circular hole in the bottom to hold the newer Mac mini "memory door." There are also two cutouts in the back to make it easy to reach the SD card slot and power button. The single shelf version is US$39.95, while the Dual Mount is slightly more expensive at $44.95. The NuShelf is predrilled for mounting and includes four screws to finish the job. Unlike some of the metal shelves that are available, NewerTech notes that the plastic NuShelf is transparent to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals.
Ask TUAW Video Edition - iPhoto Sharing
This week, Kim asks about sharing multiple iPhoto installations to a home theater Mac mini. We were glad to help her out. You'll find our answer in the video after the break. Software shown this week: iPhoto Library - retails for US$19.95 dollars Remember, you can leave us questions in the comments! The video is on the next page.
Elgato and OWC hawk upgraded Mac Mini HTPC bundles: Blu-ray burner, 12TB, TV tuner
Simmer down, son -- neither Elgato nor Other World Computing are actually shoving 12TB of hard drive space within a 2010 Mac Mini, but if you order one of their new bundles, you'll definitely end up with as much. OWC is now selling pre-pimped Mac Mini machines, complete with bolstered storage options, an internal Blu-ray burner, Elgato's EyeTV Hybrid tuner (or HD DVR), more RAM than usual and an Apple Remote. The company plans to offer both the 2.4GHz and 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo systems, and it swears up and down that the machine will arrive preconfigured and ready to rock your home theater. The addition of a Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 4-bay storage solution enables you to keep even a vast library of digital content nearby, but there's no telling how much the outfit will charge for such a luxury. Hit the source link if you're scrounging for details, but don't expect pricing or an order button just yet. Update: So, it seems that OWC isn't actually selling new Mac Minis itself, but will upgrade your own if you send it in. We'd like to take this opportunity to now recommend that OWC actually sell upgraded Mac Minis itself.
Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: Desktops
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today's bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season. Desktops don't get much love these days, what with newfangled "laptops" hogging all the spotlight, but it's still an incredibly vibrant category, full of cutthroat competition, insanely powerful computers, and superfluous LED lighting. The result is tons of hot deals, particularly if you don't mind bringing your own monitor, wrangling wires behind an entertainment center, or being chained to a desk. In return you'll get performance that simply isn't possible on a laptop, expandability should you choose take advantage of it, and so many hot deals. Follow along after the break as we show you some of our favorites.
Ask TUAW: Outlook 2011 attachment problems, Apple TV alternatives, deleting apps and more
Welcome back to another edition of Ask TUAW. Each week this column will feature questions from readers and answers by the TUAW team. If you have questions for the following week's column, drop them in the comments, and I will do my best to get to them. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). If you're asking an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad question, be sure to note which model and version of iOS you have. For this week we've got a new batch of questions about Microsoft Outlook attachments, Apple TV alternatives, keeping an iPad, getting an iPod touch, deleting applications and more. Lee asks: I'm using Outlook 2011 on my iMac and many times when I receive attachments in emails the attachments are Winmail.dat files and I can't open them. How can I fix this? Unfortunately, those 'winmail.dat' files are created when the sender's Exchange server or Outlook for Windows client encodes the file attachment; if they've got your contact flagged in Outlook as someone who can receive 'Rich Text' messages, you'll get the Outlook PC-only winmail file. Fortunately, there is the free TNEF's Enough utility; this tool will quickly and easily decode your inbound attachments. (For those who are using Mail.app, there's also the US$29.95 LetterOpener for Mail.app, which integrates winmail.dat handling and several other Outlook-savvy tools into a Mail plugin. There's a free iPhone/iPad app, too.) You can also contact those people sending you the attachments and ask them to change the format they use when sending email to you.
TUAW's Holiday Gift Guide: Which Mac should you buy?
Welcome to the TUAW Holiday Gift Guide! We've sorted the treasure from the junk and are serving up suggestions to make your holiday gift-giving a little easier. When you're an alpha Mac geek, you can expect a common Christmas greeting from friends and relatives each and every year. It goes something like this: "My son/daughter/mom/dad/wife wants a new Mac for Christmas -- what should I get them?" When I hear this question, if I'm lucky, the person asking the question has given me some other hints. For example, a client asked me last week about a new Mac for her kids, and she gave me several criteria -- it would be nice if it was fairly inexpensive, lasted about 4 years and worked for her son, who dabbles with Adobe Creative Suite and GarageBand. My solution, in that case, was to recommend a base 21.5" iMac, which at US$1199, comes with 4GB of RAM, a 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 dual-core processor and a 500GB hard drive. That should last for more than 4 years of good service. It also has enough RAM to make Adobe CS at least slightly happy and a big enough hard drive to store a lot of songs. But often I don't get that extra information from friends or clients who are asking about which Mac to buy. For those folks, I have a set of guidelines that I update annually based on the type of recipient. To see my 2010 edition of the "Which Mac should you buy?" guide, click the Read More link below and get ready to run to the Apple Store to buy your gift.
Ed Bott's side-by-side Mac and PC experiment
ZDNet's Microsoft reporter Ed Bott is switching to a Mac. It's not forever and not in the way that you may be thinking, but for the time being he has decided to get serious about a side-by-side Mac and PC comparison he started over a year ago. Using a Mac mini and an HP Pavilion Elite desktop connected to dueling 24-inch monitors and sharing a single keyboard and mouse, he's not so much switching (wonder if he has watched the Apple "Find Out How" videos yet) but rather working towards his goal of being "comfortable enough to move between machines and use the best tools on each one with as little friction as possible." Using Synergy, open-source software that allows the use of one keyboard and mouse with both machines at once, Bott can move between them at will throughout the day. While this first installment in his "switch" is mostly about getting everything set up correctly, future discussion will include any hassles of platform switching and a comparison of the latest Office versions on each. Sure sounds like a much more complicated way of switching than the method I used with my Mom, which was to ask her to please just listen to me and buy a Mac. She's been thankful ever since.
Mac has Blu-ray envy in Microsoft ad
Are Macs envious of Windows 7's ability to play Blu-ray discs? Microsoft seems to think so, as seen in this stop-motion web video highlighting a Windows 7 laptop computer and a jealous MacBook. The MacBook is blown away by the PC's ability to play a Blu-ray disc of Avatar, saying "it feels like we're really in it," and thoroughly enjoying the experience of such a life-like movie. After watching the video, one might think that Apple users cannot watch high-definition movies on their computers, but this is not exactly true. Apple has avoided supporting Blu-ray so far. Apple instead offers 720p movie downloads as it tries to move us away from using any physical media. I can understand wanting Blu-ray for a home theater set-up -- I have a separate Blu-ray player hooked up to my 47" TV myself -- but I don't really see the need for it when flying on an airplane. A small laptop screen isn't really the format that Blu-ray movies are made for. Would I like to see Apple support Blu-ray? Absolutely. A friend who uses a Mac mini as his entire home entertainment system says, "It's perfect, except for the fact that I cannot rent or watch Blu-ray discs". Until the day physical media no longer exists, there will definitely be a market for Blu-ray players, especially for use at home -- even if Microsoft has recently joined Apple in downplaying the future of Blu-ray. Click "Read More" to check out the video.
Mac Pro server config added to product lineup
Shortly after announcing the end of the Xserve, Apple has added Mac Pro server configuration in its place. The new machine features a single 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Xeon 'Nehalem' processor, 8GB (4 x 2GB) of DDR3 ECC SDRAM, a pair of 1TB (7200RPM) hard drives, one 18x SuperDrive and ATI's Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 video memory. The whole kit-and-kaboodle is served up with an unlimited-client license of Mac OS X Server. Pricing starts at US$2,999 and ships in a few weeks. Despite EOL'ing the Xserve, Apple still has two server machines available; the new Mac Pro and the mini server. Check your wallet and make your choice. Just remember, changing hard drives in the Mac Pro is a heck of a lot easier, if you've got the room to stash it. [via Engadget]
Mac mini prices drop outside the US
Reghardware is reporting that Apple has dropped the international price on Mac mini from £649 to £599 for the base model. In fact, Apple implemented a £50 price reduction across the board in the UK. Those paying in Euros also benefit, as that same model (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) dropped from 809 € to 709 €. Additionally, the 2.66GHz Snow Leopard Server mini also dropped 150 € in price to 999 € (from 1149 €). Mini prices remained unchanged in Canada, the U.S. and and Australia. GigaOM suggests the drop could be a response to the Mac's recent loss of worldwide market share. That's certainly possible. In any case, the diminutive mini just became more attractive for a number of shoppers. If you've been eying one, now is the time to buy. [Via GigaOM]
Apple quietly cuts Mac mini prices in non-US markets
If your answer to the question "how would you change Apple's Mac mini" was to give it a lower price, rejoice, for Apple has listened to your sage advice. Unamerican markets around the world are waking up to the news that the mini desktop computer has shrunken in price -- by €100 in Europe and by £50 in the UK -- but the same can't be said about Apple's home turf, with the US starting price remaining stagnant at $699. This is probably in response to the dollar's continuing decline relative to other currencies, and the quiet nature of this pricing alteration leads us to suspect that it won't, sadly, be jumping to the good old USA any time soon. C'est la vie. [Thanks, Andre]
MacMiniColo will host your Mac Mini server for just $10/month for 6 months
Colocation facilities are typically stuffed full of various rack-mounted servers running all manner of websites and other tasks with fat pipe connections to internet backbones. One company, MacMiniColo, offers colocation services and is dedicated to hosting Mac mini servers. Long before Apple introduced the dedicated Mac mini server a year ago, MacMiniColo has been setting up all flavors of the headless Mac for customers. The Mini makes an excellent server thanks to its compact dimensions, low power consumption, good reliability and reasonable power. Servers don't generally need a lot of inputs and outputs, just a fast ethernet connection -- and the Mini server comes with a gigabit port. MacMiniColo currently has a promotional deal available that expires tonight, at 12 AM Pacific Time (so if you want to take advantage of the offer, head to MacMiniColo's site now). You can get six months of colocation service for your Mini for just US$10 a month with 200 GB per month of bandwidth. After the first six months, pricing reverts to one of the regular plans that start at $35 per month. That should be enough time to try it out and see if the company can meet your needs. TUAW's Steve Sande used MacMiniColo for some time. You can either send in your existing Mini to the data center in Las Vegas or have MacMiniColo provide one for your needs.
Bloom County's Banana Jr 6000 lives on as a fantastic case mod
If you're too young to remember it, the Banana Jr 6000 was a thing of beauty that appeared in the comic strip Bloom County, which used to run in these things we called newspapers. (You can find out more about newspapers on Wikipedia and by asking your older relatives.) To this day, Bloom County still cracks me up, and I can quote you more of those strips word for word than is probably healthy. Anyway, Bloom County featured a character/computer called the Banana Jr 6000. I loved him so. He made his grand debut just about the time that I got interested in the machines made by another fruit-named computer company. He was a clever little television worshipper who taught me that Dan Rather was a god, tequila hallucinations are to be avoided, and poor translations are hilarious. Eventually he strolled off into the sunset, and I always wondered how things went for him after that. At one point he was threatened with having his memory chips put into programmable toaster ovens, but thankfully that never came to pass. Instead, John from the RetroMacCast took his love of Bloom County and some free time and built his own Banana Jr 6000. It is a glorious thing to behold. He posted a few progress shots on his Ning blog, and getting to see it take shape is fun to watch. Get a good look at the gallery for the finished product and see if that last photo doesn't remind you of something. This is the sort of case mod that I love most. It's done with such care and attention to detail. It helps that it includes something I love (like that Millennium Falcon/Mac mini case mod from back in the day), but really, anyone who puts this sort of time and effort in deserves all the accolades they can get. I adore this case mod, and I love even more that it can actually be used with current software since there's a mini inside. I give this one four Basselopes. Thanks to exiledsurfer for the tip!
Hang with the 2010 Mac mini racks from Macessity
The new Mac minis are sleek and lovely, but there are times when you simply want to get them out of the way. For example, if you're running a mini server farm, you'd like to get many minis into a small space. How do you do that? A rack mount. What if you'd like to mount a mini under a desk, but still want to have easy access to the ports on the back? Macessity has announced the answer to these storage questions with a new line of products for the 2010 Mac minis. The MX4-V2 is a rack tray (above) that holds up to four Mac minis so you can "rack 'em and stack 'em" in any standard equipment rack. The $79.99 tray has special holes for cable management and comes with the necessary mounting screws (don't laugh -- you can never find mounting hardware when you need it). For those who just want to hide a mini under a desk, there are two Macessity solutions: the $49.99 Mi360, which tucks your mini away in a protective compartment that rotates a full 360 degrees. It also has a theft deterrence locking tab so you can keep your mini from disappearing. If you want a four-port USB hub with your mini mount, you can get the $54.99 MiClassic (below) and add a $19.99 swivel bracket for convenience. Macessity also makes racks and mounts for the original Mac minis as well, as well as desktop mounts for minis old and new that let you put your mini under a monitor.
Brabus iBusiness luxury sedan puts an iPad at every seat, a Magic Mouse at every hide-covered armrest
When it comes to being ushered along to your destination at a high rate of speed within a cocoon of luxury, it's hard to go wrong with the Mercedes S Class. However, if this $90,000 (and way, way up) sedan isn't special enough for you, teutonic tuner Brabus is happy to make some... improvements. The company bumps the power up to 750hp, good for a top speed of 211mph whilst also providing a wealth of iDevices to those being coddled inside. There's an iPad (with keyboard) at each of the rear seats, an entertainment system built into the back of both headrests powered by a 64GB iPod Touch, and a 15.2-inch display that swivels down from the ceiling to expose the output from a tunk-mounted Mac Mini. Even for the most ardent of Mac lovers it's a bit too much, but if it weren't it wouldn't be a Brabus. The cost? Nobody's saying, but don't expect this very special kind of excess to come cheap.
Brabus's iBusiness is a Mercedes-Benz S600 tricked out Apple style
We've seen the iPad implemented both at school and at work, but in your car? That's the idea behind the iBusiness, a Mercedes-Benz S600 that's been tricked out with Apple gear aplenty by Brabus. Get this -- you can see the two iPads and keyboards in the back seats, but there's also a Mac mini in the back and a 64gb iPod touch as well. The display above is a 15.2" TFT display, and all of the gear connects to the Internet via a high speed 3G system. The iPads can also control the car's multimedia system, navigation systems, and the built-in telephone system. And it's all built into a car that goes from 0 to 62 in 4.0 seconds, with a top speed of 211 miles per hour. Brabus has tricked out those interiors, too -- there's leather everywhere, power-operated curtains, wood trim, color-changing interior lighting, LED running lights outside, and anodized aluminum pedals under the sport steering wheel. Yowza. Brabus doesn't give a price for this made-to-order monster, but the car itself (without any options) starts around $150k, so the entire package runs into the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" range. What a set of wheels, though. [via Electronista]
How would you change Apple's HDMI-equipped Mac mini?
Apple's newest Mac mini is a distinct and welcome departure from the comparatively bulky white Mac mini of yesteryear, and while we appreciate the unibody construction, inbuilt SD card reader and HDMI port, asking $700 and up for a headless PC without tons of oomph is still asking a lot. We're curious to know if your new Mac mini has been treating you well (as an HTPC or otherwise), and moreover, we want to know how you'd change things even further if given the key to Cupertino's design labs. Would you have added a Blu-ray option? Maybe an OTA TV tuner? Thrown any other ports on the rear? Beefed up the GPU a little? Trimmed things down for a cheaper entry-level model? Go on and vent in comments below -- hugs are free and limitless.
Flash 10.1 updated: hardware acceleration now available on newer Macs
Adobe has released an update for its Flash player that, for the first time, enables hardware decoding of Flash video on certain models of Macs. With this update, supported Macs can leverage the power of their Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in decoding H.264 content "wrapped" in a Flash layer. The end result for Mac users: substantially reduced CPU load when running Flash content, better Flash performance, and possibly better battery life for portable Macs. Adobe released Flash 10.1 in June with hardware acceleration for Windows. It's only now that the feature is available on OS X in a non-beta release despite Apple opening the hardware acceleration APIs for certain models of GPUs several months ago, way back in April. Even now, this release only supports hardware acceleration on Macs made in the last couple of years -- although in fairness, that's more Apple's fault than Adobe's. The list below, sourced from Flash's engineers and with clarification from us, shows which models of Mac will be able to take advantage of Flash's new hardware acceleration feature: - MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009. In other words, MacBooks with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M or higher; Intel's integrated GPUs aren't supported. - Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009, which have the same GPU situation as the MacBook; earlier Mac Minis had the unsupported Intel GMA 950 GPU. - MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008 -- note that this only means the unibody MacBook Pros. The 17" late 2008 MacBook Pro with the old-style non-unibody enclosure has an unsupported NVIDIA 8600M GT GPU. - iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009; again, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M or higher GPU. Absent from Adobe's list are the MacBook Air and the Mac Pro. MacBook Airs with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU should be able to run hardware-accelerated Flash, as that model of GPU supports the feature. The Mac Pro is a much odder omission -- sadly, none of its GPUs are listed in Apple's technical notes concerning its hardware acceleration framework -- but as powerful as the Mac Pro already is, a lack of hardware-accelerated Flash doesn't hurt it as much as other models. Hardware-accelerated Flash won't be coming to Macs that came out earlier than those listed above, but only because Apple hasn't opened the APIs for those Macs' GPUs. The integrated Intel chipsets of earlier MacBooks, Mac Minis, and the first model of MacBook Air probably couldn't handle the load anyway, but it's disappointing that my Early 2008 MacBook Pro's GPU isn't allowed to do the heavy lifting, either. Let us know how the update goes for you, and, if you have one of the supported Macs, whether you're seeing better Flash performance now. [Via Mac Rumors]
