The Mac Blog

The countdown until someone hacked the new appleTV didn't even get started before folks began cracking open the sleek enclosure and documenting ways to enhance the capabilities of the home entertainment hub.

Engadget has two posts about hacking the appleTV; one article details how to upgrade the hard drive, while another article explains how to upgrade the video playback capabilities by upgrading the device's built-in Mac OS X installation of quicktime with a new playback coder-decoder (CODEC).

These two articles point to the amazing potential of these inexpensive set-top computers; buy one from the Apple Store today.

Well, only several days behind schedule, the much-anticipated appleTV starting shipping. Users are just now getting their hands on the diminutive little boxes, and the initial reviews are range from glowing to generally very positive.

Walt Mossberg , from the Wall Street Journal put together a short video review of the appleTV, which is available here:

If you were waiting for the perfect machine to get to add to your home, this has got to be it. Apple announced the MacBook today, which is the long anticipated successor to the highly successful iBook line. You'll get an Intel Duo Core CPU with plenty of options and a great software bundle to match.

Here are the specs:

• 1.83GHz or 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor
• 512MB to 2GB memory
• 60GB to 120GB hard drive
• Built-in Wired Networking (including Gigabit Ethernet)
• Built-in Airport Wireless networking (industry standard and fully compatible with coffee shops, airports, etc).
• Built-in Bluetooth for wireless keyboards, mice and syncing your cell phone

To fully appreciate the convenience of having an inexpensive laptop in your home, be sure to check out either the Airport Extreme or the Express base station. If you travel a lot or have all of your music on iTunes, you may want to consider the Express version. It's easy to take with you on road trips or you can put it next to your home stereo so you can stream music to it.

You've got an iPod on your PC and you've heard all about iLife, where your photos, music, home movies, calendars and more work together seamlessly. Unfortunately, your job is still stuck on Windows and you need to run something that doesn't run on the Mac (even though Microsoft Office runs great on a Mac and works perfectly with Office files created on Windows computers), so you still need a PC.

Luckily, buying a new Mac is like buying two computers in one.

Here's how:

1) The Mac works well on a network with Windows computers. Since most networks use open standards for communication, each computer speaks a common language to each other. If you already have a home network at home, plugging in your new Mac and getting on line is a breeze.

2) Apple recently released BootCamp, which allows new Macs built with Intel processors to boot into either the Mac or Windows operating system. You can use BootCamp to set up your Mac to do the boring stuff with Windows, then reboot to Mac OS X for the stuff you'd rather be doing.

Soon, I'll post an article on setting this up for yourself. Until then, get a Mac!