Megatheriums for Breakfast

Well, at the sake of being seen to be the total Apple fanboy (a description that a few years ago I would never have dreamed could be applied to myself), I’m going to talk about my new Apple toy – the new Apple TV. The name is a bit of a misnomer as it isn’t a TV at all, just a media device which connects to your television.

At only AU $129 it wasn’t a major expense, and I figured it would be a modest enhancement to my existing television / hi-fi system.

It has actually exceeded my expectations already, and that got me to thinking about how Apple products compare with products from other companies. I have found through personal experience that a product which looks good on paper often turns out to be a disappointment in practice. That has never happened to me with an Apple product. Rather I usually find myself surprised and delighted that the product does more, or works better, than I had hoped. Perhaps this is one reason why Apple is now (by market capitalization) the second largest company in the world? Or maybe not, there are plenty of huge companies which produce awful products (viz Microsoft).

Anyway, I ordered my Apple TV not long after it was announced, and it arrived a couple of weeks ago.

The first amazing thing is how small this thing is – it literally fits into the palm of your hand. With its tiny size and sleek blackness, it is just unnoticeable in my audio-visual set-up – a visitor would have to have it pointed out to them.

I connected a HDMI cable from the Apple TV to my television, via a switchbox (I only have one HDMI input on my television), and to my hi-fi system via an optical cable. Neither cable is supplied with the Apple TV, by the way. Plugged in the power, turned on the television, and within moments I was being asked to set up a connection to my wireless network, a matter of putting in the network password (you do password your network, don’t you?). Bingo, I was up and running and could rent a movie, or view YouTube or Flikr. A little more set up (turning on Home Sharing in iTunes on my computer and on the Apple TV) and I could play all of the media I have in iTunes on my computer – all the movies, iTunesU lectures, and digital music I own. One more bit of set-up (pointing iTunes to the photo folder I wanted to view) and I could view all of my digital photos or turn them into a slideshow.

The quality of all of this media is just great, either viewed on my (modest) digital television or played through my (equally modest) hi-fi system.

The first night my wife and I picked out a movie we’d missed at the cinema (The Men Who Stare At Goats), paid for it with a couple of clicks, and watched it through. Sure, we could probably have rented a DVD of this same movie for a couple of bucks less, but the hassle of having to go out to the video store, find the movie, drive it back home, then return it has got to add up to a few dollars of inconvenience value. The only disappointing thing is that, so far, there are a number of movies I would like to see which aren’t yet available for rent in the Australian iTunes store, but, as they say, patience is a virtue. And there are still plenty of movies available for rent which I would like to catch up with.

But the best thing about all of this is when I installed the Remote app on my iPad. It turns my iPad into the media centre of the house. With this, I can sit down in my armchair and scroll through all my media on my computer and start playing through the Apple TV. Being able to scroll through all my music albums and pick one to play instantly through my hi-fi is wonderful.

Then there’s the Internet connection. My daughter came round and mentioned a YouTube clip that our son-in-law had posted. Within a matter of moments we were viewing it full screen on our television.

So I have to confess it – I’m an Apple (TV) fanboy!

My fortnightly summary of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, And the Exploration of the Red Planet  by Steve Squyres

E-book on my iPod.

This was an interesting-enough look at the development of the Mars rovers from the point of view of one of the chief scientists involved. The structure of the book was a bit loose, though, being made up from of a variety of different sources and sets of notes which Squyres made through the long years of development and acceptance of the proposal by NASA through to the launch and successful landing of both rovers. I would have liked more about the actual day to day operation of the rovers on the surface of Mars, I think.

And the e-book is missing the fascinating photographs actually taken by the rovers – all we get is a line drawing of one of the rovers. This is one case where I think I would rather own a ‘dead-tree’ version of the book. I’m guessing that many non-fiction works are going to suffer in the same way on the iPhone/Touch – though they might be fine on the Kindle or Sony Reader.

A Sleeping Life  by Ruth Rendell

E-book on my iPod.

Another in Rendell’s series about Chief Inspector Wexford. Here the mystery revolves around the life of the victim – an unknown middle-aged woman found stabbed in Kingsbridge. The mystery is not so much about the murder but about who this woman was and what kind of a life she had been living.

While entertaining enough, I guessed the solution of the mystery when I was only about half-way through the book, which spoilt it a little for me, though I kept reading to see how it all panned out. Not Rendell’s best book, but well worth reading anyway.

Musicophilia  by Oliver Sacks

Hardcover, from the library

Sacks continues to write fascinating stuff about the human brain and the human mind. If you haven’t read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat you must!

While this work isn’t quite so varied and entertaining, it is still absorbing reading. Sacks focuses on how music seems deeply embedded into the human brain, and the various conditions which can occur when things go wrong (or right!) with these regions of the brain. His discussion of the plight of those suffering Williams-Beuren syndrome, in which a sequence of genes has been omitted on one chromosome, is absolutely fascinating and moving. Such people are, by ‘normal’ standards, intellectually severely disabled; but their ‘musical intelligence’ can be astonishing and their musical skills very striking.

Sacks also discusses in some detail how music can liberate or transform the lives of those with a variety of different neurological problems, from patients with Parkinsonism, through Tourettes sufferers, to those who have had strokes.
I have learnt a good deal both about music and about the brain from this book.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• The Great War – Breakthroughs by Harry Turtledove (Audiobook)
  (I’ve finished the previous volumes of this trilogy, but will wait until I’ve finished the whole series before reviewing it here)
• Secret Asset by Stella Rimington (E-Book)
• South by Sir Ernest Shackleton (E-Book)