Google’s Chrome OS (or Why I Hate Linux)

While this may be news to those who don’t follow tech news, Google announced yesterday that they’re developing a standalone operating system – Google Chrome OS. While a lot of details are still shrouded in mystery and speculation, the official announcement offers something of a glimpse into their intentions:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Honestly, this sounds great, especially for netbooks, which are mostly used for internet and a a few productivity tasks and not much else.

But Wired seems to disagree.

Damnit, Now I REALLY Want a Mac Mini

I love my AppleTV. Or, rather, I love the idea of my AppleTV. The idea of being able to stream movies and TV shows from some external drive buried on the far side of the house straight to the living room…awesome.

And for the most part, the AppleTV does the job. But it has it’s share of shortcomings all the same. The lack of horsepower to adequately run Boxee, for instance. Or the ridiculously fickle support for video formats (which my recent hacking has improved…somewhat). Or the fact that it has to stream through another computer that’s running iTunes, which in my house means I need two computers up and running if I want to watch something – one running iTunes and the other doing file server duty.

It’s occurred to me in the past that the Mac Mini would be the ideal solution to all of the AppleTV’s shortcomings, for a variety of reasons:

1. Local Storage – Even the lowest-spec Mac Mini has a pretty decent hard drive, and with USB drives the sky is pretty much the limit. With the drives I already have on hand, I could have over 1TB of storage without the hassle of having to stream over Wi-Fi (which would have the side benefit of letting me export shows from the TiVo at much higher quality levels).
2. Horsepower - The AppleTV runs on a 1GHz Pentium M processor and 256MB of RAM. No wonder it can be such a dog. A Mac Mini with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM would more than blow it out of the water, making apps like Boxee actually useful.
3. Native iTunes – If you want to stream over the AppleTV, the host computer has to a) be on and b) have iTunes running. With the Mac Mini, that wouldn’t be an issue. It could be managed directly, and attached storage would clear up any streaming headaches.
4. Format Support – Even with my handy Video Converter app, there’s no guarantee that anything not actually purchased off iTunes will play over the AppleTV. The Mac Mini would offer much greater flexibility in which video formats it could play. Again, fewer headaches.
5. A Keyboard – The most annoying thing about the AppleTV? When it drops wireless and you have to go back in and reenter your network password with the damn remote. This simply wouldn’t be an issue with the keyboard-supporting Mac Mini.
6. More than just Music & Video – The Mac Mini is an honest-to-goodness Mac, and as such can do a lot more than just play stuff. Think web browsing, e-mail-checking, Pandora-playing goodness.

But today, I learned about yet another reason…the new Hulu Desktop app, which packages Hulu in a pretty full-screen wrapper than you can navigate with the Apple Remote (or in my case, a Logitech Harmony acting like an Apple Remote). This in essence means the realization of what Boxee has been trying to do for the last several months – bring the awesomeness of Hulu to the TV.

It’s not that the AppleTV is bad…it’s that a Mac Mini would just be so much more…capable.

Life After Cable – 5 Months and Counting

It’s been about five months since we cancelled cable. Overall, I don’t regret the decision, but I must admit it hasn’t worked out exactly as well as I’d hoped, and I fear that, as Nolan gets older, we’ll probably have to go back to the great sucking beast that is Time Warner, if only for Nikolodeon and its ilk.

So what has worked, and what hasn’t?

The Antenna – For the most part, antenna reception has been solid. HD programming on ABC, NBC, and CBS is freakishly sharp. Fox looks mighty pretty, too, but the signal tends to break up in less-than-perfect weather. Supposedly this will be fixed when the local affiliate makes the jump to all digital broadcasts, but it can really suck, especially since most of the shows we follow happen to be on Fox (24, Fringe, Lie to Me, Bones, Terminator, Dollhouse).

The TiVo HD – Infinitely superior navigation to the craptastic Time Warner DVR. The ability to grab shows off the TiVo and archive them on the network is a huge win, but sadly some of the extra features have proven less than useful. The biggest letdown – Netflix. I think Netflix has a winning formula with its Watch Instantly setup, but there’s just not enough content there to justify then $10/month, unless you REALLY like BBC miniseries from the 80’s.

Boxee on the AppleTV – Boxee has been a mixed bag. Hulu is awesome, and watching Hulu on the big screen is even awesomer. But a few months back some of Hulu’s content providers got all pissy about what Boxee was doing and forced them to remove Hulu support. It’s back now…but the bizarre workarounds to make it possible also make it buggy beyond all belief…and basically useless.

On top of that, Boxee itself has been growing increasingly slow and buggy. I suspect the AppleTV’s modest hardware just isn’t up to the task of running it properly. Setting up a Mac Mini as a home theater PC (HTPC) would probably be the better option, but it would also be a $600 option, so no.

Rather that continue fighting with Boxee, I recently used the excellent ATV USB creator software to create a USB patchstick and, through various fiddling, managed to install Perian, thereby allowing me to play non-iTunes video directly through the slick AppleTV interface. The result? I can now play back shows ported off the TiVo or obtained by other means right through the AppleTV. 

The Network – Granted, I built my network from what I had on hand, but I really hate the tedium of futzing with a hybrid Mac/Linux network. If I had my druthers (and $1300), I’d get a straight-up MacBook for day-to-day computing. This would free up the MacBook Pro for server and dedicated photo/video editing duty. It’d also make it feasible to connect the external drives – and printers – directly, rather than rely on less-than-reliable network sharing (iTunes, for example, “forgets” where videos are whenever the drives disconnect, and iPhoto still can’t find its library).

Continuing in the “if money were no object” vein, I would also invest in a new Airport Extreme base station. The newer models support dual-band Wi-Fi, which would allow the computers and AppleTV to stream stuff at 802.11n speeds but still accomodate 802.11g-based devices like iPhones and my work PC. That would also let me move the existing Airport Extreme downstairs where I could hook it up to the TiVo and transfer DVR-ed shows in something almost resembling a timely manner.

Overall, I still dig the antenna, the AppleTV, and the whole “not paying an ridiculous monthly fees for cable” aspect of this enterprise, but we’ll see how well that holds up as we move into the television wasteland that it summer network programming…

Demodernization

Wow. Fuel prices are getting so high that farmers are devolving to pre-industrialized methods.

High Gas Prices Drive Farmer to Switch to Mules

MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny Raymond trained them and also modified the tractor rake so the mules could pull it.T.R. Raymond says the mules are slower than a petroleum-powered tractor, but there are benefits.

“This fuel’s so high, you can’t afford it,” he said. “We can feed these mules cheaper than we can buy fuel. That’s the truth.”

And Danny Raymond says he just likes using the mules around the farm.

“We’ve been using them quite a bit,” he said.

Brother Robert Raymond added, “It’s the way of the future.”

O Glorious Day!

I’ve been waiting nearly eight years, but today, Taco Bueno opened its first store in Austin!

Taco Bueno and a Macworld Keynote in one day…this is probably the best Tuesday I have ever had.

You Know What’s Cool?

CES, that’s what. From the South Hall to a panel on sci-fi’s influence on technology to dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in the Venetian (P-something) to a nightcap at the Wynn, Day 1 was a whirlwind.

A few highlights.

Holy crap! A life-size Bumblebee!

This! Is! Blu-Ray!

The ultimate panel. The panelists were Dean Kagen (inventor of the Segway), Lucy Lawless (of Xena and Battlestar Galactica fame), Neal Stephenson (wrote Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, et al), and Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal’s tech columnist and one of the most influential guys in the industry). Absolutely fantastic. The highlights were Lucy calling her fellow panelists “chickenshits”, Mossberg calling Kagen a “chickenshit”, and Mossberg’s quip, when talking about technology being used for evil, that “I think it can be a lot more subtle than Armageddon”.

CES-ta

Last January, I had the privilege of attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The experience was beyond description. For anyone interested in technology and its role in people’s lives, there is no better event to attend. The entire show takes up a whopping 1.7 million square feet of floor space, and nearly every inch of it is filled with HDTVs, digital cameras, computers, projectors, and bleeding edge technology that’s only just now on the horizon.

Last year, I was just a participant. This year, I’m leading the charge, organizing the agency’s presence at the show. It promises to be an eventful CES on a number of fronts. BMW will have a track – yes, a track – set up in the convention center parking lot. HD-DVD will be reeling from Warner Bros’ announcement that it is going Blu-Ray exclusive. WiMAX and Wireless USB will make incremental steps forward, and everyone will be scrambling to convince the press, analysts, and retail representatives that they have the answer to Apple’s iPhone.

Check back often for pictures and thoughts.