Comments on: Your Screen. On A Screen. On Screen!

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:45:06 +0000

“…but the Cinema Display is just a tiny bit nicer.”

Yes.

Just a tiny bit.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:01:07 +0000

FuturDreamz: Airfoil pulls the screen when it first connects, and updates it when you change sources. We’re not updating at any other time, because sending updates causes the Apple TV display to whoosh out in a rather distracting way, but any time it connects, it should get the latest desktop.

Rob L.: KenJohnson has the location. There are lots of nice icon files in there, but you’re looking for com.apple.* files.

Nick C: To be sure, Apple themselves should send info when sending a radio stream with iTunes. They also should kill the progress bar, but they don’t, yet anyway. As far as a special case for iTunes goes, yes and no. Yes, iTunes is popular, but you don’t need Airfoil if you’re using iTunes (unless you’re using Airfoil Speakers too). Anyhow, as I noted, this is 3.1, it’s not “the last version of Airfoil ever”. We’ll see what happens in the future.

As for not supporting internet radio, it’s also a matter of priorities. Internet radio isn’t going to be as popular as TV and movies on this device. Hopefully they’ll get to improving it, but don’t read too much into how things are on day 1 (or even day 1, Take Two).

Arthur: We actually went back and forth on this – the desktop definitely looked nicer than the static iMac, Mini, or tower, and personally, I recognize machines from their desktop backgrounds. We had to make a call, and we did – ultimately, it’s not really something worth too much debate 8).

By: Arthur

Arthur — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:49:04 +0000

Neat, but I’m not convinced that replacing a screenless icon improves usability. I have a mini and an iMac and it’s much easier to identify them from their icons rather than the desktops.

By: Nick C

Nick C — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:57:17 +0000

The main thing that frustrates me with using AppleTV to stream from iTunes is that if I am playing an internet radio station, like Radio Paradise, that pushes track info out as part of its stream, the AppleTV screen does not show this information. So I have to go to my Mac in another room to find out what great track it is that is playing, which should be unnecessary. I take the point about every application being different, but surely a special-case for iTunes would be worthwhile? Apart from anything else, it would add value to using Airfoil to stream from iTunes rather than simply using the built-in AirTunes functionality, which doesn’t provide track data from internet radio streams.

Incidentally I believe this is because Apple is not keen on people using AppleTV for internet radio because it is a way of getting unlimited content for free. Otherwise I can’t really understand why they haven’t supported internet radio better, or better still implemented the Internet Radio tuner feature from iTunes on AppleTV. Personally I think this is a shame, as additional functionality of this type would surely help to sell AppleTV, and most people listen to radio when they are doing something else so not in a position to watch purchasable video anyway. /rant

By: KenJohnson

KenJohnson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:56:09 +0000

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources

As it’s a bundle, you’ll need to Ctrl click and select View Package Contents.

By: Rob L.

Rob L. — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:31:08 +0000

So, about this:

In Leopard, Apple has shipped beautiful icons that represent all the recent models of Mac capable of running Mac OS X 10.5. From Mac Pros and Minis to the new MacBook Air, there’s an icon for each sitting on your system.

Pardon me if it’s a dumb question, but where on the system might I find these beautiful icons? I might just want to change my hard drive icon to the appropriate one, if I could only locate it :)

By: FuturDreamz

FuturDreamz — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:10:45 +0000

I’ve set my desktop to rotate through my collection every minute. will it acknowledge that change?

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:28:50 +0000

Matt P., Tres: As noted on in a comment another post, we could grab metadata, but don't currently. As Blueberry correctly notes, getting that metadata is a bit messy, as there are many apps in use with Airfoil. For the 3.1, we settled on a standard image and text to send. For the future, we'll consider slurping from other apps. Grover: Front Row on the Mac Mini has no capacity for receiving audio, I'm afraid. You can do it with Airfoil Speakers though, and once launched, you wouldn't need to drop out of Front Row. Open up Airfoil Speakers, and go to the Preferences. Turn on the Start at Login pref and turn off the Float pref, then close the window. Now, Airfoil Speakers will always be running (unless you expressly quit it), and the Mac Mini will always be ready to receive audio. It will not receive any visuals, though this is something that could change in a future Airfoil Speakers update.

By: Tres

Tres — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:26:57 +0000

Brilliant. Yet another reason I will be purchasing Airfoil as soon as I get my Apple TV. I do have to ask, though, if you can grab the “live” desktop and send it through Airfoil, could you also add an option to send the current album art (if using iTunes as the source)? Great work, guys.

By: Blueberry

Blueberry — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:52:28 +0000

Matt P: Metadata from iTunes is possible, but the trouble is that AirFoil is for streaming audio from any application not just iTunes, and so if they did that they would need to write code to extract meta data from each and every application that could conceivably be used with it for such a thing to work well, and they’d have to maintain that in to the future too. Very messy sounding.