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How to upgrade the Apple TV’s hard drive

Back in March, I purchased one of the original 40GB Apple TV units, and put it to use in our living room on the big screen TV. It worked fine, but 40GB was just too confining--between music and photos, I had over 40GB of data, not even counting movies or other video stuff. As a result, if I wanted access to everything from the Apple TV, I had to make sure the Mac Pro was awake to stream more content to the Apple TV. This got old fast, so I finally forced myself to upgrade the hard drive in the Apple TV today.

Overall, the process was relatively simple. I'm going to document the steps here, just in case the article I relied upon vanishes in the future. If you're going to undertake this project yourself, you'll need the following:

  • Towel: to place the top side of the Apple TV onto after you've opened it.
  • Torx screwdrivers: sizes 8 and 10, needed to open the case and release the hard drive.
  • 2.5" ATA laptop hard drive: Make sure it's not a SATA drive; I went with this 120GB Fujitsu, though I bought mine at Fry's.
  • 2.5" external drive enclosure: I bought this unit at the local PC Club store. I wanted a FireWire case, not just USB2, as I've never been impressed with USB2 speeds on OS X. Now that I'm done with the project, the Apple TV's old 40GB drive is living in the enclosure.

The rest of the process is documented below; read on and modify at your own risk!
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iPhone, therefore iTap and tap and…

Macworld logoAh, morning—time to check the overnight e-mail that came in over the iPhone. Let's get to work!

Press the iPhone's power button. Tap the screen (that's screen tap #1) and drag the unlock slider. Press the Home button to get back to the main screen from whatever app I was using last on the iPhone. Tap (#2) the Mail icon. Oops, I left the iPhone reading a message the last time I was in Mail. Tap three times (#3, #4, #5) to get back to the list of accounts.

It's on this screen where you'll notice a big change from OS X's Mail program. In OS X's Mail application, the top-level folder is the global Inbox, and then within that folder, each of your accounts is listed separately, letting you easily view all of your new e-mail at once by just selecting the top level Inbox folder. On the iPhone, however, there is no global Inbox. Instead, the main Mail screen just shows a list of your accounts. You have to open each account to see the Inbox (and Trash and any other folders associated with that account).

Read my Macworld blog entry, iPhone, therefore iTap and tap and..., for the rest of the story...



Ten future iPhone apps

Macworld logoI've lamented on the lack of third-party access to the iPhone, and now, with quite a few actual usage hours on my belt, my lament has become a plea: please, Apple, if you're not going to do some of these things yourself, let third parties provide real solutions! Exactly what am I talking about? Well, here's a list I've been building of the Top 10 Missing iPhone Apps. I think third parties could do a great job at providing some or all of these solutions. (If Apple wants to do it, that'd be great, too, but I'd really like someone to make them available, and sooner rather than later.)

So here, in increasing order of importance, are the 10 applications that I think would be a perfect fit with the iPhone and its current application suite.

Read my Macworld blog entry, Ten future iPhone apps, for the rest of the story...



An odd thing happened today…

Macworld logoAnd that odd thing is this: I'm now an iPhone owner. As of yesterday, I had no plans to be anywhere near an Apple or AT&T store today. But that all changed when Macworld asked me to stand in line, buy a phone, and then mail to the corporate office--they wanted to make sure they had several phones in hand for review next week.

iphoneI detailed my camp-out experiences in this blog entry on macworld.com, along with this afternoon update.

Shortly after that last update was published is when my day got really surprising: Macworld asked me to buy two phones, but just send one in their direction--I was to keep one and use it myself, replacing my Treo. Wow. I was quite surprised, to say the least. You see, I didn't even really want a first-generation iPhone; it's missing many things that I'm used to on the Treo. But I guess now I get to see if that's really true, and to write about just how well, or not well, the iPhone works for me. As I have time with the iPhone, my write ups--covering the good and bad of the experience--will appear on Macworld's new iPhone Central pages (and probably on macworld.com, too).

The iPhone is now activated, and it's busy synching all my content. I'll post links here to anything that winds up on Macworld, in case you're contemplating an iPhone of your own.



Apple’s disappointing iPhone message

Macworld logoOne of the biggest questions surrounding the iPhone since its January preview was whether developers outside of Apple would be able to create software that would run on the phone.

And just 18 days before the iPhone's June 29 release, Steve Jobs stood on stage at the Worldwide Developers Conference and told software makers that Apple had found an answer: a 'sweet' way to support outside iPhone development.

Unfortunately, if you're thinking that Apple really addressed third-party development in Steve Jobs's keynote, you'd be wrong. While many people—including myself—have clamored for support for widgets and applications, Monday's announcement actually did nothing at all to address either issue. Instead, it told developers that since Safari on the iPhone is a full-fledged web browser, they can use Ajax and CSS to make nice, pretty Web-based applications.

Read my Macworld blog entry, Apple's disappointing iPhone message, for the rest of the story...



Vacuous Vista versioning

Macworld logoWhile thinking about the upcoming release of 10.5, aka Leopard, I realized that Apple has yet one more advantage over Microsoft: simpler choices for the consumer who is contemplating an OS purchase. I compared Vista and OS X versions in this May Editor's Notes writeup on Macworld. As a friend noted, it's almost like Microsoft is making it hard to purchase Vista, given the differing versions one must choose between.



Why context matters

I receive a lot of junk mail, most of which is captured by various levels of filters. But sometimes, some messages make it through the traps, such as this one which came in last night:

I would like to buy advertising on your web page:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=2051.

The ad would be for an airport parking web site and consist of a couple of lines of text with links to the parking site. I can pay $35 for the ad via PayPal, or send you a check. Would you be interested?

Yes, that's right -- this person would love to run an advert for his airport parking lot website right in the middle of our forum thread titled "Stranded at the Airport," which opens this way:

I am having no luck setting up my original Airport and WaveLAN silver card on my W.Steet 266. I am using the drivers I got with the card on the OWC site...

It seems this particular spambot's context parser is incredibly basic (if (site or post) contains word 'airport,' then send advert request message). But really, I'm not complainaing about the parser at all: it gave me a little chuckle before I pressed the Junk button!



When updates overlap

On Thursday of this week, we had two interesting software update announcements:

  1. Microsoft released an update to Vista that fixes a problem with Apple's iPod corrupting when ejected.
  2. Apple released the Boot Camp 1.2 beta, which adds support for Microsoft Vista (among other new improvements).

So on the same day, Microsoft patched their OS to prevent Apple's iPods from corrupting on disconnect, and Apple released an update to enable its customers to use Microsoft's Vista on Intel-powered Macs.

I just found it somewhat humorous that both Microsoft and Apple released patches to fix issues with the other's products on the same day...and I'm thrilled that it happened, as it shows that companies realize how important it is for our hardware and software to play well with others. (My own Vista upgrade is in the mail, so I'll see how well the updated Boot Camp works in the near future.)



Random header images for WordPress

I've finally migrated my family's site over to the latest version of WordPress, and installed pretty much the same batch of plug-ins and widgets as I use here. However, I wanted something else, too--a randomly-selected image for the header of the site that changes each time the page is loaded, as seen in these four sample pictures:

montage

(The header images are just sections I've snipped out of photos we've taken, with an artsy Photoshop filter of some sort applied.)

I searched the web, and there are a few plug-ins that offer this ability, but they came either too feature-rich, or required some additional JavaScript to work properly. I wanted the most simple, basic, and functional header image rotation solution I could find...so I wrote my own, which required all of two lines of code. I'm posting it here so that (a) I remember how I did it, and (b) in case anyone else wants a simple solution, they'll be able to find it with some help from Google (our family's site is access restricted, so posting it there wouldn't do much good...and it would confuse my relatives, who are used to only seeing pictures of our kids there!)
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My first WordPress plug-in: custom registration

Over the last couple of evenings, I created my first-ever WordPress plug-in, which I wrote to make it easier to customize the WordPress registration (and login) screen. As distributed, the stock version of WordPress uses a really not-very-nice registration screen--it features the WordPress logo (embedded in a background image), and links back to the WordPress site. If you wish to modify the login screen, you have to change some files in the WordPress core--and that means that every time you update, you have to remember to redo those customizations. Far from ideal...

So I took some time to read about creating WordPress plug-ins, then studied up on the available hooks to see if what I wanted to do was possible. The good news is that, as of WordPress 2.1, it was possible--and quite simple (even for my very-limited PHP skills).

After a few error-filled attempts, I wound up with a working plug-in that creates a nicely-customized registration screen, all without changing any core WordPress code--you can see the results on the registration page. (This is roughly what it looked like under WordPress 2.0, but I created that page by modifying the core WordPress files.)

If anyone wants this plug-in, feel free to grab it (36KB download)--there are some basic instructions in the customreg.php file, but I wouldn't describe it as heavily documented. Also, I'm not sure how well it works with the default login screen, as I use the King Login sidebar widget for login in the sidebar. What I'd really like to do is figure out how to display the registration form with the header, sidebar, and footer--but after some basic investigation, I think that project is beyond my skills. So for now, this is officially good enough.