Father got an iMac and mother a MacBook before Christmas. Not sure who had most fun with then though, Moreno during the unpacking, me setting them all up, or parents playing with them.

They already have a Mac mini and a PowerBook, and yesterday ordered a 1TB Time Machine and a 160GB AppleTV so father is going to be busy setting up his network, moving and tagging his content and basically calling on me for remote support no doubt!!! I even set them up with a Twitter account ….. pretty cool parents eh???

So what you think? I have just got back from a night out with Sands and downloaded the update while we were out. I like the functionality but not sure about the overall UI? I really liked the old UI and I sort of feel that the ‘box’ on the main screen has ‘beta’ written all over it.

What your views?

Happy New Year. Hope you saved some money ready for MacWorld Expo? What do you reckon they will be tempting us with this year:

• Sub Notebook
• 2nd Generation iPhone
• New Apple Cinema Displays
• Upgraded AppleTV

Personally I can never figure out what is a which list and what is informed analysis when reading all the predictions, and I am known to get things pretty spectacularly wrong most years.

I have just set up a AppleTV in Sands room, connected to her 32″ Samsung flatscreen HDTV.

I have written before about why I don’t need a AppleTV so this is a bit of a turnaround. Our set up remains as previously explained but having now ripped all our DVD’s to hard drive in AppleTV format it sort of made sense to test out the AppleTV.

Of course that meant getting the 160GB one as I have no desire to stream film content over the network when I want to watch it – wireless or ethernet!

After a couple of months ‘tinkering’ I have finally sorted out my network, and one huge benefit is that I do not need an AppleTV.

My network is all ethernet based. I connect to the internet via a modem, which in turn is connected via cable to an AirPort Extreme. This is turn is connected via cable to the Lindy 8 Port Gigabit Switch. Connected to the switch via cable I have:

• a Mac mini
• an iMac
• a PowerBook
• a Windows PC
• 2 AirPort Express’s

Whilst it doesn’t look like Wayne will be picking up an AppleTV anytime soon, he has come up with an interesting thought regards codecs……

I was somewhat dismissive about getting an AppleTV when they were first announced, and I have to confess to saying that my main ‘issue’ was the fact that they only seemed to work with iTunes content.

Well that may still be the case – but I have just realised that with eyeTV it is just a case of exporting the recording to iPod (simply click the relevant icon) and this exports the recording to iTunes (TV Shows) and in addition to adding it to the iPod (which I knew all about) of course it will sync it with an AppleTV.

Ever since the initial hype of the keynote it seems to me that there have been more negatives that positives over the AppleTV. It is of little interest to me from a selfish view point as it was never really something I was going to consider, but from a “fans” perspective it is interesting to note.

AppleTV’s Specs: Not That Impressive: “