last100 » Mac

Will Apple develop MobileMe as my own personal cloud?

Daniel Langendorf — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:33:09 +0000

A lot is being made of cloud computing these days, especially in light of Microsoft’s Mesh initiative and the various online products and strategies cooked up by Google.

With the rumored changes coming to Apple’s .Mac product, could a revamped MobileMe or Me.com — whatever it is ultimately called — eventually become my personal cloud?

I hope so. My digital life needs one, whether supplied by Microsoft, Google, or Apple, it doesn’t matter.

Fact is, I’m inundated with digital devices and Web-based services and all of the information generated by these — email, IMs, SMS, text, photos, videos, mp3s, blog entries, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Amazon, FriendFeed.

I feel like the Peanuts cartoon character Pigpen, who walks around in a cloud of dust. Only my dust is digital and invisible. And honestly, I’m tired of “cleaning up” by syncing information between local hard drive(s), attached USB storage, network attached storage, and Web sites scattered all over the Internet.

MobileMe might be just what I’m looking for — if done right by Apple. And we’ll know soon enough: Apple is rumored to be addressing a revamped .Mac at the Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday

What is Dot Mac?

For the past six years, .Mac has been Apple’s $99-a-year bundle of Internet services, including email (with multiple aliases), online hosting, backup, file and photo sharing, and tools to synchronize calendars and address books. Between one and two million people subscribe to .Mac, according to industry estimates.

Problem is, the Web raced by .Mac as if Apple was driving a Ford Fiesta and it was behind the wheel of a Ferrari. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and others offer free email. Dozens of companies offer cheap online hosting for Websites and blogs. There’s Flickr for online photos, YouTube for video. There are as many as 400 companies offering online storage and backup, ranging from free to inexpensive subscriptions.

Also see: Microsoft’s “Mesh” wants to be your digital hub

Even in the eyes of the Apple faithful, .Mac has become “lame,” an “also-ran,” “a joke,” a “disappointment” (CEO Steve Jobs’ own assessment), “un-Apple”, “painfully slow,” and __________ (fill in the blank). I only use my .Mac account because of legacy email; I usually forget I even have it.

It’s time for a change.

MobileMe

Apparently change is coming. Apple sleuths from MacNN, Ars Technica, Macenstein, Macworld, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog are speculating about code in the iPhone 2.0 SDK, new domain names, patents, and the fact that Mail was “mysteriously” down this week as proof that .Mac will undergo an overhaul in June or early July.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what we don’t need is .Mac 2.0 — more of the same, only updated and improved with snazzier interfaces and templates. These won’t cut it.

As the Apple 2.0 blog from Fortune notes, “Suffice it to say that this may be Apple’s best chance to prove that it really does understand today’s World Wide Web, and that it can do for social networking, cloud computing and online services what it has done in the past for PCs, portable music players and cell phones: put the focus on the user’s experience and make complex technology seem utterly and delightfully transparent.”

In other words, give me a personal cloud.

This cloud would facilitate my digital life, providing the invisible link between home and work computers, access anywhere, and my mobile needs without me even thinking about it.

For example: I add a contact or schedule an appointment using the iPhone. Instead of going to the computer where I have my data stored to sync via a cable, MobileMe automatically syncs the date over-the-air to my MobileMe cloud. The next time I am on the home or work computer, my information is in iCal and Address Book.

Conversely, I add information on a home or work computer. I don’t need to synch it to my iPhone via iTunes. MobileMe does it automatically, so when I access the contact, appointment, or note on another computer or the iPhone, it’s there, waiting.

And with third-party applications coming, imagine what can be done between a desktop application, the iPhone, and MobileMe — if Apple makes MobileMe available for third-party use.

For example: I use the task program OmniFocus but am immensely frustrated that the items I enter on my laptop are not available on the iPhone. That is expected to change when OmniGroup offers a mobile client for OmniFocus. I can only hope that one day I will be able to sync tasks bi-directionally through MobileMe and never be tethered to the computer again.

In conclusion

The promise of MobileMe extends far beyond the over-the-air syncing to the iPhone. It will include the basics of automatic backup, faster file sharing and transfer, improved Web hosting and more advanced features of “personal streaming,” “squirting” (the sharing of XML files like an iTunes playlist between iPhone users), some sort of iLife or iWork capabilities, barcode applications.

MobileMe may become free, ad-supported like Google and others or remain a premium service offering superior technology, design, and user experience, just like other Apple products.

After all, MobileMe doesn’t need to be all-things-to-all-people like Microsoft Mesh. MobileMe can be smaller, more consumer friendly, more personal.

My own cloud.

Illustration credit: PigPen from Snoopy.com

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How-to: Stream media from a Mac to PlayStation 3

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:13:34 +0000

Apple and Sony are fierce competitors, but that hasn’t stopped the PlayStation 3 playing nicely with Mac OSX computers. Thanks to some great third-party software, and Sony’s decision to add support for the UPnP AV standard, the PS3 has, in some ways, become a better solution than Apple’s own offering to the problem of streaming content – audio, video and photos – from a Mac to the TV. Here’s our quick guide to creating a Mac-supported PS3 media center.

Step One: Turning the Mac into a PS3-friendly media server

Assuming that your Mac is already on the same local network as your PlayStation 3, the first thing you’ll need to do is install a UPnP AV-compliant media server. In fact, this will need to be done for all of the Macs that you want to share media from.

UPnP (Universal Plug ‘n Play) AV is a standard overseen by the Digital Living Network Alliance, a consortium backed by big name consumer electronics, computer and mobile device manufacturers such as HP, Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung, that enables ‘DLNA compliant’ devices to easily discover and share media on the same home network. Typically, devices either act as a server, meaning that they can stream media to any DLNA certified device, or as a client, in which case they can auto-detect UPnP-servers on the network to browse and stream media from them. For our purposes, the Mac will act as server and the PS3 as client.

Nullriver Software’s MediaLink

Until fairly recently, Mac owners were left with only one UPnP AV server solution: Elgato’s EyeConnect (see below). However, that all changed earlier this year when Nullriver, creators of the popular Mac/XBox Connect 360 software, decided to apply their media server expertise to the PS3 problem. The resulting MediaLink software ($20) has quickly established itself as the best solution for streaming media from a Mac OSX computer to the PlayStation3.

As you’d expect, MediaLink offers complete iLife 08 integration, so that photos in your iPhoto library show up in the PS3’s photo menu. Likewise, iTunes music also appears in the PS3’s music menu. And if you’re running the latest version of Mac OSX (Leopard) you’ll see thumbnail previews for photos and album cover art for music appear as you browse through your Mac’s media collection on the PlayStation.

For videos (or any other media stored outside of iLife) you have the option to designate any Mac folder (or folders) as being accessible on the PS3 via MediaLink. A good place to start is the Mac’s default ‘Movie’ folder. In terms of video files, MediaLink can share and/or stream all of the PS3’s currently supported formats, including MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, AVI, DivX and Xvid. In our testing over several months, DivX and almost all Xvid videos streamed flawlessly over an 802.11g WiFi network, as did most MPEG4-based video podcasts. Other MPEG4 and H.264 files needed specific settings when being encoded (not the fault of MediaLink but rather the PS3’s current firmware limitations — see step two below). As well as streaming, files can alternatively be copied onto the PS3’s internal hard drive.

The only real fault we could find with MediaLink is that on occasions the software, which runs in the background via a dedicated system preference and menu bar item, needed to be restarted. A little bit annoying if your Mac is in a room far away from your PS3!

Update: since installing the latest version of MediaLink, the need to restart has been eradicated.

Elgato’s EyeConnect

Unlike MediaLink, EyeConnect ($49.95) from Elgato isn’t a dedicated PS3 solution but rather a generic UPnP AV server for the Mac. Therefore, PS3 support isn’t as polished as it might be, and is in fact at times pretty buggy. The company openly admits as much, advising prospective customers to “try the EyeConnect 1.5 trial with their PS3, before deciding if it works well enough for them to purchase.” However, for those looking for a UPnP AV server for the Mac that can talk to more than just a PS3, EyeConnect may be your only option.

One other caveat when using either MediaLink or EyeConnect: DRMed content bought from the iTunes Store won’t play on the PS3 as Apple doesn’t license its FairPlay copyprotection technology to third-parties

Step Two: Preparing PS3-friendly video

As already mentioned, most DivX and Xvid files that you’re likely to have lying around can play just fine on the PS3. As do most podcasts subscribed to through iTunes. However, if you want to rip your own DVDs for streaming to the PS3, you’ll need to use specific codec settings for the most reliable results.

Luckily, the open source Handbrake software (our choice for creating iPod compatible DVDs rips) has its own PS3 preset. Open Hanbrake and point it to your DVD’s ‘VIDEO TS’ folder, and select PS3 from the right-hand sidebar, then you should be good to go. Note: some DVDs are encrypted, so you may have to use a program like MacTheRipper to copy an unencrypted version of the DVD onto your Mac’s hard drive first. And that’s pretty much it :-)

What’s your experience of Mac and PS3 goodness? Leave your own tips in the comments.

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