iTunes 8 was released to the world today, and included in its myriad upgrades and changes -- but not even mentioned by Sir Steve in his presentation, sadly -- is a new visualizer that looks suspiciously familiar to yours truly. At any rate, for those of you out there who enjoy staring at swirling globes of light, dancing ribbons and gaseous nebulae all waltzing together in loving harmony to your music of choice, I thought I'd let you know how to get the most out of iTunes Visualizer. Plus, I'll let you in on the Super Secret Undocumented option! Whee, you're special! When...

This past weekend I achieved a minor milestone: all my DVDs — every film from Airplane to Young Frankenstein and every television episode from "Absolutely Fabulous" to "Strangers With Candy" — have been ripped from their silver disc prisons and enshrined on a 1 terabyte hard drive, using up precisely 706,153,332,736 bytes of data storage. I can now use my Logitech Harmony One universal remote to access the Apple tv and scan through every film or tv episode and watch them in Dolby 5.1 surround sound (for those encoded as such) on my 42" high definition television. I can also stream...

It's been a few weeks so I thought I'd let you know how things are progressing and what I've learned in this process so far. Ripping over 300 DVDs consisting of both films and television show episodes takes a 1-for-1 rip-to-program length amount of time on my Mac mini. That means that a 2-hour film takes about 2 hours to get from disc to drive, and then I need to add it to iTunes and annotate the entry so it ends up being sorted correctly (more on that later) so this isn't at all like ripping your CD collection, which flies...

When I moved from Windows to Mac (and I'm one of those cited in the study that blames Vista for that switch) one of my worries was about finding a good mouse. I know, sounds silly, but having checked around for suitable Apple-friendly input objects, I found that Windows had a lot more choices than Mac did. After some trial and error, and the purchase of not one, not two, but five different mice, I think I've finally found the right combination of ergonomics, button choices, attractiveness, and non-buggy operation. Before I jump to my conclusion, I'll provide the path that...

Some time ago, I decided that it was dumb and a waste of space to keep my library of around 300 DVDs in their plastic boxes stacked on shelves inside two rather large cabinets. So I purchased a Sony 400-disc DVD jukebox, transferred all the silver discs into it and discarded all the boxes and booklets, leaving me with a simple way to manage, sort and view my movies and TV shows on DVDs. Then I went Mac. The Apple platform is more suitable to digital media storage than Windows. It just is. Believe me, I tried it both ways and...

I am an early adopter, when I can afford it. As such, I have experienced my own personal disappointments when a format or platform I selected under-performs in the market and is judged a failure by every measurement except quality, because I think I usually judge these things rationally and after a good deal of research about which is the better option. Those of us with big digital monitors for our home entertainment centers, AKA the living room TV, know that there are two competing platforms to replace DVDs for high-def video on a little silver disk. They both offer similar...

Now that I've traded in my dirty old Windows box for a shiny matte silver Macbook Pro, I've become one of those sycophantic Apple cultists dredging the rumors sites for every drop of hardware and software news I can swallow. With MacWorld 2008 coming up in two weeks and Uncle Steve giving one of his patent-pending "One more thing" keynote speeches to kick off the event, I've come up with the following list of potential product updates, upgrades and introductions for Apple. (more...)...

Microsoft announced XBOX 360 pricing at the German Games Conference in Leipzig and, true to form, they're going to make things hazy and indistinct, especially for wary parents who have to figure it all out without the benefit of their less technically challenged offspring. Initially, XBOX 360 will be available in two configurations; for $299.99, you get a scaled down, barebones XBOX with one wired controller and no hard drive and that's about it. If you're willing to spend an extra $100.00, you'll get an XBOX 360 with a wireless controller, a 20GB hard drive, a remote control to use the...

If you want to get in on a little of that hot Google stock action and work for a company that provides benefits like yoga, fitness training and free massages, they're currently looking for two gourmet chefs to fill the stomachs of their 4,100 employees every day for free. Google has been without a chef since May, when Charlie Ayers quit to start his own chain of restaurants. Since they've yet to find anyone, they decided to send out a press release and hold a Hell's Kitchen-like contest where prospective chefs will go to the Mountain View headquarters and prepare meals...

Someone over at Wal-Mart opened their big mouth and spilled some beans (maybe) about the price of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360. According to TotalVideoGames.com, the high-end mini supercomputer entertainment hub-to-be will retail for $299.99 in North America, which is about what everyone was guessing. Games will also be more expensive for the unit, with top end titles demanding $59.99. Microsoft has made no official announcement, and Sony has likewise kept mum on the price of PlayStation 3, other then to repeatedly anounce that anyone who's thinking about picking one up next year should get used to sticker shock now. ...