You can setup virtually any Mac as a home theater media center, all you need is the right tools. Yes, that means your MacBook Pro, MacBook, Mac Mini, iMac, even Mac Pro, can all turn into a media center, and it’s a lot easier than you might think.

For the purpose of this article, we are going to assume you have an HDTV that supports HDMI input, and, preferably a Mac that supports HDMI output with audio (for Mac’s that don’t support direct HDMI output with audio, read on anyway there is a solution for you too). When you are finished with this article, you will be able to have a complete Mac Media Center hooked up to your TV, creating an awesome home theater, and you’ll be able to control the whole thing wirelessly from your couch.

Setting up a Mac Media Center

Here’s what you’ll need to setup a media center with your Mac:

• HDTV that accepts HDMI input
• Mac that supports video/audio output (newer Mac models that support full HDMI highly recommended, the New Mac Mini is perfect)
• HDMI cable (and/or other appropriate cables if your Mac doesn’t support direct HDMI out)
• Apple Remote Control
• Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple Wireless Mouse – these are optional but highly recommended if you want to browse the web and play games on your media center
• Plex – Plex is arguably the best media center software solution and runs right on top of Mac OS X as an application. It’s got a beautiful interface, vast media support, and is free to download. What’s not to love?

Step 1) Get the proper Video Output Adapters

So first things first, get your cable situation squared away. Newer Mac’s support full HDMI out with audio and video carried over the same cable, but on many models you’ll still need an adapter. For instance, my MacBook Pro 2010 model only needs a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter and a standard HDMI cable, because it supports full HDMI output. The new 2010 Mac Mini supports direct HDMI output with no additional cables at all, so you’d only need an HDMI cable.

Your cable requirements are going to vary from machine to machine, so determine which output adapter is needed for your Mac.

Step 2) Download and Install Plex Media Center Software

Plex is really great media center software that runs right on top of Mac OS X.

Features of Plex Media Server include:

• Easily catalogue, organize, and access all of your media files: movies, music, pictures, etc, directly within Plex
• Automatically download movie, TV show, and album artwork, episode information, IMDB ratings, and more
• Plays HD video content nearly flawlessly
• Plug-in video support for Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, MTV, Vimeo, and more
• Diverse codec support for various video and audio file types
• Interface is completely skinable allowing you to change the appearance to another theme that fits your setup, TV, or preferences
• Subtitle support for foreign language movies
• Shoutcast stream support and awesome visualizers for music
• Weather updates for whatever regions you specify (it will automatically detect one by default)
• RSS feeds support
• Works with the Apple Remote, Wireless Keyboard, or Wireless Mouse
• Support for hardware accelerated H.264 video playback on Nvidia 9400M, GT320M, GT330M chipsets

As you can see Plex is full featured, and that’s exactly why we’re using it for our Mac Media Center. If there is an app that is easier to use and as full featured as Plex, I haven’t found it yet. Setting it up is an absolute breeze.

How to setup Plex:

• Download the latest version of Plex
• Drag the app to your Applications folder
• Launch Plex
• Let it sync with your Apple Remote (it may want to install 3rd party drivers as a bug fix, no problem)
• Using your keyboard (or Apple Remote), navigate and select your Video source destination (directory, hard drive, whatever)
• Watch movies, TV shows, play music, whatever

Yes, it’s that easy, seriously. Plex will automatically pull your music library from iTunes too, so there’s practically no setup.

Here’s a screenshot of the media browser interface:

Step 3) Connect your Mac Media Center to your TV

This step is pretty straight forward, you just need to be sure you have the proper cables. For for the sake of this tutorial we’ll pretend we have a new 2010 Mac Mini, all this machine requires is an HDMI cable to connect from the Mini to an HDMI port on your TV.

Step 4) Enjoy your Mac Media Center!

Once you have Plex running and your Mac connected to the TV, that’s all you have to do! Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy your media center. You can also further customize Plex by downloading additional plugins, you can access these directly through the Plex application.

So that’s it. Now for some Questions and Answers…

How do I browse the web or play games on my Mac media center?

Just quit out of Plex and launch Safari or a game. Once your Mac is connected to your TV, the TV is basically a large external monitor for the Mac, so you can treat it as such and play virtually any game, browse the web, or anything else you’d otherwise use a Mac for.

Why just focus the media center on newer Macs with HDMI out?

The reason we recommend newer Mac’s that support full HDMI video/audio exporting is just ease of setup. In fact, you can setup the exact same media center on a Mac that doesn’t support full HDMI output, you’ll just need additional items. What can be done with just an HDMI cable on newer Mac’s requires additional cables to perform the same task on an older Mac; for example, an older Mac might need a mini-DVI to DVI adapter, than a DVI to HDMI adapter, plus the HDMI cable, plus an additional AUX cable to output audio. The exact requirements will depend on your Mac model but it’s not complicated as long as you know what you need. In other words, if you have an older Mac, don’t get discouraged, just get the right adapters and the rest of this guide works the same for your media center too!

My Mac doesn’t export HDMI, what can I do?

If your Mac doesn’t support direct HDMI output, you can use a DVI to HDMI adapter to still output to HDMI, just remember that you will need an additional cable to carry the audio signal from your audio output jack to audio input on the TV, since DVI does not transmit audio.

Additional Mac Media Center resources

• Mac Mini Media Center – a guide exclusively for setting up a media center on your Mac Mini, complete with remote torrents support and a webserver
• Rip DVD’s on your Mac – what media center is complete without media to watch? Rip your DVD’s and watch them from your Mac hard drive

Some pictures of the pictures in this article are from Flickr, others are screenshots from Plex. If you have any questions, feel free to chime in or email us!

How much RAM does iPhone 4 have? According to confirmed reports by MacRumors, iPhone 4 has 512MB of RAM which is twice the amount of memory in both the iPhone 3GS and iPad at 256MB. MacRumors goes on to suggest this is why the upcoming iMovie app will only run on iPhone 4 and not on past iPhone’s or even the iPad.

This is interesting to know because now iPhone 4 has the same A4 processor as the iPad, but twice as much memory and a significantly higher quality screen. Will the amount of memory on the devices effect how well they run iOS 4? We already know that older iPhone models will not get all the features of the new OS. And will iPad get a significant upgrade sometime this year to a retina display and more memory?

There’s nothing that kills productivity more than distractions, and while it’s hard to minimize some, there’s tools available to help prevent some digital distractions. Social networking sites, email, Twitter, Google News, there’s endless things that can distract your focus and waste your time if you don’t stop them.

SelfControl is a utility that aids in just that, using an adjustable predetermined amount of time, it blocks access to all outgoing and incoming mail servers and also lets you modify a list of websites to block. Have a deadline and can’t pull away from Facebook? No problem, set the website in SelfControl and set the timer.

Once SelfControl is started, it can’t be undone (even if you delete the application or restart!) so you are forced to do the task at hand. A bit extreme perhaps, but sometimes extreme distraction requires extreme intervention… check it out if you think this would benefit your workflow.

Developer home
Download SelfControl now

Even with SelfControls restrictions, I prefer it to the Freedom tool, which prevents distractions by disconnecting you from the Internet. Many people do work that requires them to be online, but they just need to thin out the distraction herd, and SelfControl does this.

Something I never really paid much attention to was the software side of my displays contrast, something that you can change by using simple keyboard shortcuts:

Decrease display contrast: Command+Option+Control+,
Increase display contrast: Command+Option+Control+.

The default is set to the lowest level of contrast, and increases will generally wash out screen colors. The ability to change your displays contrast is actually part of the Universal Access utility in Mac OS X and is intended to aid those who are visually impaired in seeing things on the screen.

The screenshot below shows the Chrome browser looking at OS X Daily on the highest contrast:

Did you know that anyone can build an extension for Safari? It is no problem, anyone can do it and it’s actually easier than you might think.
Read more »

Did you know that you can quickly see all the hidden files in a directory from any Mac Save window? Just hit Command+Shift+. (yes, the period key, Command+Shift+Period) and you will toggle the display of hidden files in any Mac OS X save dialogue box. This is really useful for saving and seeing things like .htaccess files in Mac OS X. If you hit the keystroke again you will toggle the hidden files to be invisible again.

If you want a more permanent solution so that you can always see the files, check out our article to show hidden files on Mac OS, which offers a command to always see the hidden files even within the Finder.

You probably already know that AT&T has sold out all of it’s pre-orders for release date iPhone 4 deliveries, and now Apple has too. You can still pre-order iPhone 4 but the ship date displays ‘by July 2nd’ ‘by July 14th’ on Apple’s online store, meaning your only chance of getting iPhone 4 on release date is waiting in the lines that are sure to come.

The demand for iPhone 4 is truly remarkable, customers trying to get their hands on the device caused both AT&T and Apple’s Online Store to crash yesterday, and long lines formed worldwide even just for placing pre-orders.

You can get more information about iPhone 4 including availability, stores carrying the device, prices for the phone and data plans, and possible AT&T upgrades at the links below:
iPhone 4 Availability
iPhone 4 Price Guide
iPhone Upgrade Eligibility

Your Mac runs a series of maintenance scripts on it’s own to clear out various cache and log files. To see when the scripts were last run, type the following at the command line:
ls -la /var/log/*.out
You will then see something like this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 283124 16 Jun 02:15 /var/log/daily.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1143 1 Jun 05:37 /var/log/monthly.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2420 13 Jun 02:15 /var/log/weekly.out

If the scripts haven’t been run in a while and you feel like manually executing them, type the following:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
or you can specify just a single script to run:
sudo periodic weekly

Generally it’s unlikely you’ll need to run these scripts on your own.

If you didn’t get your iPhone 4 pre-order in successfully today, it looks like you’ll have to wait a while for delivery. Reports circulating around the web indicate that AT&T iPhone 4 pre-orders have all sold out for anyone wanting to get the phone on release date. This isn’t too surprising considering the hype the device has received, iPhone 4 availability was expected to not meet the enormous demand.

According to AT&T, the pre-order date for iPhone 4 was the busiest sales day in their history (as if the AT&T online store breaking wasn’t an already clear indicator of that):

“Because of the incredible interest in iPhone 4, today was the busiest online sales day in AT&T history. As of Tuesday afternoon, customers who preorder iPhone 4 moving forward will receive their device on June 25 or later, depending on when the order is placed. We’ll email customers with confirmation once their order is placed, and again when it ships. In addition, we will have devices available on a first-come, first-serve basis in our stores beginning on June 24.”

The above quote was provided by AT&T to Engadget and confirms the sell out. AT&T mentions that there will be devices available on a ‘first-come, first-serve basis’ on June 24, so expect some pretty serious lines for people hoping to nab one of the hot devices.

Fire up those Software Updates because Mac OS X 10.6.4 is ready for download. Addressing numerous bug and security fixes, it is a recommended download for all Mac users.

It looks like if you haven’t upgraded to Safari 5 yet, this software update handles that for you. The update comes in at a whopping 639.1 MB on my MacBook Pro 2010 model which makes for a pretty hefty download, but on another Mac right next to me the download is about 300MB, so the download size clearly varies from machine to machine and fixes that are relevant to the hardware.

Here’s what Apple says about the update:

The 10.6.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It includes Safari 5 and general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that:

You can read more at Apple.com