[MW Forums]

The Macworld Podcast returns, new host in tow, just as Apple starts to rev up for the fall with a series of product releases, both actual and theoretical. more

[JeffDM]

I just want to make a clarification. The speaker lamented the loss of a Firewire 400 port on the 24" iMac and suggested a hub was necessary to make up for the loss of that port. That's not really true, although that is one option. Another option is to use other devices that have a pass-through. Another option is to take a simple cable that converts a FW800 port to a FW400 port, which should be cheaper than a Firewire hub. Many, if not all FW800 drives feature a FW400 port which should be down-stream compatible with FW400 devices.

[Chris Breen]

Right you are. My mouth worked faster than my brain. Thanks for the clarification!

[d00d]

Chris, be honest. How often do you use Text to Speech to talk to yourself? It's a couple hours a day, isn't it?

[Chris Breen]

[sniff] It's so lonely, so very lonely down here in the basement. Is it so wrong to desire a little artificial companionship? [/sniff]

[Peter Cohen]

I'm right there with ya, bro. And if it's wrong, I don't wanna be right.

[shadownight]

I'm happy to see Cyrus has been more than adequately replaced... I trust that Chris will be an excellent host. Nice show by the way; Jason Snell's insight is about the only reasonable one across the Internet /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif I also enjoyed the FM transmitter segment with Diana... quite funny. I actually got my iTrip by sending in an audio comment some months back. The quality isn't amazing, but I'm still very satisfied, especially since I go it for free! So I'm confident you'll do a great job, Chris.

[kellie]

I agree -- I enjoyed the podcast very much. That Diana has quite a 'tude, though...
I use an FM transmitter because I don't own a car, but I do rent one occasionally. It's nice to have a portable option that works in every car I may end up in.

[usersince1985]

Apple makes gorgeous monitors. How hard would it be for Apple build a 1080p-compatible 30-inch monitor with two DVI inputs, two HDMI inputs, a pair of ATSC tuners, a pair of NTSC tuners, 2 old composite inputs, 2 S-Video inputs, stereo out (in digital and analog formats), 1 gigabit ethernet port, and WiFi, cablecard(s), and a remote that controlled the whole beast, selecting whichever inputs you wanted, and make them full screen or picture-in-picture. I think that such a device would become the monitor and TV of choice for Mac aficionados. It would create a focal point for making the Mac mini into an add-on set to box that provides full Tivo-like capability, along with being the media server for the household.
Then think about how this would tie into iTunes Video store including rentable Video-on-Demand downloads.