Lion is currently distributed among tight developer circles as a Mac App Store download, though the final shipping version will undoubtedly be available as a retail purchase as well. Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is touted as a hybrid OS which borrows best-of-breed features from the former Mac OS X iterations, and key elements that make up the iPad version of Apple’s iOS.Ī more touch-oriented OS than all those before it, Lion adds tons of input options that heavily rely on the Multi-Touch trackpad found on Apple’s MacBooks, and the Magic Trackpad itself, for desktop systems.īundled in the shipping version of Lion this summer will also be the Server version of the OS, which will present itself as an option during the initial setup process. Front Row stops at OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but it is also available in OS X 10.4 (Tiger), and OS X 10.5 (Leopard). The NEC Front Row site also typically works on the web browsers of all major manufacturers smart televisions. Simply search for 'NEC On the Run' (no quotes needed) to locate the app on each device. By doing away with Java runtime, a large number of potential vulnerabilities will not be listed in Apple’s semestral Security Updates.įor example, Security Update 001-2011 might contain fixes for emerging Java flaws that will apply to Leopard and Snow Leopard, but not for Lion.įinally, Lion drops Front Row, the media center emulator built inside Mac OS X since 2005. The NEC offers apps for all the popular OTT devices, such as Apple TV, iPhone/iPad, Amazon Fire, Android TV (and all Android devices) and Roku. Lion will also ship without a pre-installed Java runtime, which would enable the OS to execute 100% pure Java apps. This is not the case with Lion, as it completely drops support for Rosetta and, implicitly, code compiled for the PowerPC architecture. While Snow Leopard also shipped without Rosetta, users could easily install the tool themselves and run PowerPC applications afterwards. One of those is Rosetta, the dynamic translator that enables PowerPC applications to run on Intel hardware. Has Apple answered all your needs with the Apple TV? Do you have an HTPC running Windows in your living room instead? Let me know what you think.Mac OS X 10.7, the latest version of Apple’s desktop operating system dubbed Lion, has dropped support for several elements that help make up the OS X experience today. It just seems nuts to me that you'd have what is arguably an almost perfect media center or home theater PC - the Mac mini - and you'd offer no software to enable that functionality. The latter case can make a big difference if you're on a metered Internet service, as many of us are.Īnd if the mood strikes you to play games, you can't do that on a streaming media box, while it's trivial with a Mac (add Steam's "Big Picture" feature and you're cruising). What's more, you're not streaming content over your Wi-Fi network or, if you're using iTunes in the Cloud, over the Internet. Meanwhile a Mac equipped as a media center allows you to access any streaming content from the Internet that will run on your Mac, rather than only the streaming content that is available through one of the apps that runs on the Apple TV. That limitation is gone with a Mac acting as a media center. While you can stream Amazon Prime video content from an iOS device to an Apple TV using AirPlay, there's no native Amazon Prime app for the Apple TV. They're only as good as the apps they work with, or the apps that are built in.Īpple TV is a good case in point. As Steve Jobs once said, "Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." Apple TV isn't all thatĪpple TV, Roku and Chromecast all have their place at the home theater table, but none of them have quite the same flexibility as a Mac equipped with media center abilities. There's the open-source app XBMC, for example, or Plex, a commercial app that was once based on the XBMC core, and MediaCentral from Equinux.Īll of these have their place, but installation and setup isn't trivial. Since Front Row is no longer available, Mac owners interested in using their computer as a media center have a few third-party options. You also have to have a seamless and easy way of accessing the content on the Mac, and that's the domain of media center software. With the ready availability of Macs that can connect, and cheaper-than-ever HDTVs, it's a bit nuts for Apple to leave the Mac out of the Home Theater PC (HTPC) equation.īut setting up a Mac as a media center is more than just plugging it in to a TV. It introduced the Launchpad and was originally only. Not just Mac minis, but Retina MacBook Pros and even the mighty Mac Pro can manage HDTV connections natively iMacs and other MacBooks can hook up trivially using a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter. This version dropped support for the x86 userland and architecture and removed Rosetta and Front Row. More Macs than ever before include HDMI cables to connect to flat-panel HDTVs.
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