Device Convergence Please.

I think the recent talk of iOS and OS X convergence is interesting. I think is also misses the point a bit. I don’t want a single converged OS, but I do want converged devices.

I find the idea of a single device which can run iOS and OS X appealing. A device which I can carry with me, then dock to use for basic computing taks such as word processing and perhaps software development.

This is not a new idea, Motorola did this with the Atrix. However, the Atrix did not offer me iOS and OS X… it only offered Andriod and Ubuntu which don’t appeal to me.

I think, my ideal combination would offer the following.

Combined Storage

If I had OS X and iOS on a single device; I would want a single storage pool for both systems. I would expect iTunes on OSX and iOS to share the same files / database.

Keep iOS file system free.

While I want the same databases (eg, photo library, iTunes library) I don’t want a file system. I want to keep file management outside of the UI.

All the power of OS X.

I would like OS X to offer the complete UNIX enviroment and to be able to run my regular apps*. I want to be able to dock my iPhone, do some work in Coda 2, then undock it to watch a movie on the train.

A light touch.

iOS and OS X are both best of breed. Even when on a single device they have to remain themselves. I want both, not a horrible mixture. Keeping OS X just when docked is fine by me.

Published: 23 February 2014 | Categories: Opinion , Apple Permalink

Media Center 2014.

I recently moved house and as part of the move we decided to take a reset on our TV and media setup. This posts documents where we are going with the system and some of the things which we have come across along the way.

What we need.

In a nutshell we needed 5 things out of our new media setup:

HD Satellite TV with record & export: We don’t get great DTT TV reception here, and we have multiple satellite outlets in the wall. So satellite seems the way to go, with the ability to record, pause and export shows as an essential.

iTunes Library playback & streaming: Between us both we have about 750gb of media in our iTunes libraries. The new system will have to be able to serve these libraries (to iPads etc) and allow playback on the main TV in the lounge. As an added complexity, much of our content is DRMed so we need to use Apple software to play it back. (bah)

Bluray playback: I have a growing bluray collection. I have exported the main films, but occasionally I like being able to watch the extras included on the disks. So the ability to playback blurays is important, it does not have to be easy though.

Flexible F1 & Football: The F1 was pretty boring last year, but if it gets interesting again we want to be able to watch it. My partner also likes the football so the ability to watch it, without a long commitment is important to us.

Oh yeah, Backups: The last part of the puzzle is a sensible backup system. Right now, only my most important data is backed up via dropbox. My media library has been living on a couple of different drives, but its been practically homeless.

So thats what we need. Here’s my approach so far.

The hardware.

I already had a USB Satellite TV tuner (an eyeTV Sat), and a USB bluray drive. I also have a 2008 500gb Time Capsule. We’re also running on 35mb/sec Fibre broadband with no usage cap.

I did look at what combination of boxes I would need to get everything I wanted. There were a few YouView boxes which could do most of our needs, but they were pretty pricey (£200-300) and didn’t solve the iTunes problem.

I did research using a Raspberry Pi as an XMBC frontend with an iTunes server for the Apple TV…. but that looked like a very complex setup and by the time i brought a large enough external drive and made a suitable case it would be another £150-200 on top of the YouView box.

So, in the end, we went with another Mac Mini; a really fast one.

I found a fast i7 Quad Core model going for a good price on gumtree as an unwanted present. It already has a 1Tb drive and 16Gb of RAM in it, so our immediate needs are met. Nicely, there is an easy upgrade path to fit a 2nd drive too, so when the time comes, we can fill it with another 1-2tb of storage.

I decided waiting for the next gen Mac Mini would not be worth it. I don’t need a big screen, so an iMac was also out of the running.

Software

On the software side, each need has a slightly different software solution.

Satellite TV: The eyeTV software works really well, I can get all the HD channels and I can pause and record TV. A nice feature is being able to edit and export recordings into iOS friendly formats directly into iTunes.

ITunes & iTunes Remote: iTunes holds all the media and it can stream it to the Apple TV and the iPad , etc. We can also use the iOS devices as a remote control for the TV.

MakeMKV, Handbrake, VLC: MakeMKV can stream blurays to VLC for playback, or extract them for conversion with handbrake. Works for DVD’s too.

F1 and Football: we are looking at getting sports via a monthly Go ticket. Its not cheap, but it is cheaper than the satellite package for the same content and its a one month subscription so if the F1 gets boring we can cancel it.

Backups: The Mac mini pretends to be a time capsule for the MacBooks in the flat. It then in turn does a Time Machine backup of the media to the time capsule. The Time Capsule is a little small, so the media backup is selective. I don’t bother backing up what I have on iCloud as I can always redownload it. This provides enough coverage for our needs and results in a 3x backup of my most important files (on dropbox, on the mac mini and on the time capsule)

First Impressions

The system has been pretty impressive so far, the Mac Mini is very capable and has happily chewed through 50+ DVDs and a stack of blurays. Watching a Bluray is a little fiddly, but it works.

The iPad / iPhone remote app is rather brilliant. Being able to select what to watch on the sofa and then have it playback on the TV is really awesome. We have also used the iTunes home sharing quite extensively. We have an Apple TV somewhere in our moving boxes, and when i get some free time i’m planning on setting it up on the TV to give us TV on one channel, and Media / iTunes on the other.

Performance is mostly flawless, when pushing it hard by simultaneously converting videos with handbrake, exporting TV shows into iTunes and extracting a DVD its not buttery smooth but it does work. When running full tilt its not super quiet, but it is quiet enough.

Wrap Up.

I’m really happy with how the latest stab at a media centre has worked out. It has all the capability I care about, wrapped in a energy efficient and reasonably simple package. I would prefer for the software side to be more elegant, but the combination of the Apple TV and Mac mini covers all the bases without much pain.

I also plan on building on the setup with a bunch of side projects. I’m just starting to explore some basic home automation (lighting control, energy and temperature monitoring) with a view to possibly building myself a Panic inspired dashboard.

Ultimately, I think the new media centre has made my new lounge a better place to be. Its got some flaws, but it’s a marked improvement on the clunky locked down hard to read Skybox and the homeless iTunes libraries of the past.

Published: 15 February 2014 | Categories: , Apple Permalink

Mac Pro (2013) vrs a stack of Mac Minis (2012)

After being previewed at WWDC I was pretty excited to see what the all new Mac Pro could do. In many ways I was impressed, in a few ways I was a little disappointed.

You see, the new Mac Pro makes a big bet on GPU compute being the future. With two powerful workstation GPUs and only a single CPU socket the Mac Pro is not the CPU monster it use to be.

So this got me thinking, how many Mac Minis would you need to equal or improve on a Mac Pro for CPU performance? What would it cost?

It turns out, it would only take a pair 2012 Quad Core Mac Minis to provide more CPU performance than the entry level Mac Pro.

It would cost about £1360 and would save you around £1139. Two Mac Minis would offer a 1.63x performance improvement over what the Mac Pro offers measured on CPU grunt alone.

At the high end the improvement is more impressive.

The 12 core top spec Mac Pro (with just the upgraded CPU) turns in a Geekbench score of 32912 and costs £5699. For £5430 or so you could purchase 8 Mac Minis for a combined Geekbench score of 94880, a 2.8x performance improvement. If you wanted to match the CPU performance you could net a saving of around £3662 by only purchasing three Mac Minis and still come out on top for CPU performance.

Thats a serious saving and performance improvement if scaling out suits your needs.

Of course, the two approaches are not comparable for day to day use. The Mac Pro gives you a single workstation which is pretty simple to use, while the Mac Minis would give you two or more machines you would have to coordinate introducing complexity. But for some problems the performance benefit and price benefit would be substantial.

For example, if you had a constant stream of videos (say a stack of blu-rays) and wanted to convert them all into formats suitable for the iPad and iPhone then the divide and conquer approach would probably be faster and cheaper. While the time for a single blu-ray conversion would be slower, the fact two or more conversions can happen in parallel would mean the total throughput would be greater.

I think the new Mac Pro is a very cool, capable little box, I do wish they had gone further with the CPU options but it should be fun to see how the bet on GPU computer works out. Perhaps they will offer a configuration with a single GPU and a pair of CPUs, who knows.

This article is a little tongue in cheek, but it does highlight the advantage of scaling out rather than up. Mac Minis are not a cheap way to buy CPU grunt, i’m sure with some effort getting the the right machines it could be even cheaper.

Published: 15 January 2014 | Categories: Opinion , Mac Permalink