Streaming television is a growing market that features industry giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Sony vying for a place right in your living room. But all the hype has left you stumped: the Apple TV has come out and you're wondering if you should change plans on purchasing a brand new Mac Mini with a cheaper, more dedicated Apple TV.

Well, it's really about what you think is right for you. Cost aside, the Apple TV and the Mac Mini are not in the same product category. The Apple TV is an appliance, while the Mac Mini is a compact computer. The compact and sleek Apple TV box shovels video from your computer to your television, while the slightly larger Mac Mini can run a full instance of Mac OS X, allowing you to view movie content encoded in DivX, XviD and VIDEO_TS.

The Apple TV can play anything an iPod can, though it does not fully support 5.1 surround sound. A Mac Mini has 20 GB more of hard drive space, 256 MB more of system memory, three more USB ports, a Firewire port, and room for a decent DVD-writer. The Apple TV does have NVidia-powered video compared to the Mini's Intel integrated feature, and does sport the 802.11n wireless connectivity, making streaming large files smoother.

Aside from all the technical specifications, you might also want to consider that the Apple TV is pretty easy to use. A user-friendly GUI menu and intuitive interface can get you streaming television in no-time. But some people have discovered that the HD capability of the Apple TV is slightly so-so, having problems keeping up the proper frame rate while streaming HD TV in some cases. The Mac Mini, being a computer, requires maintenance, though it is more useful in other things such as serving as a backup file storage.

An Apple TV or a Mac Mini? It's a tough one, but you could probably do with either. On a personal note, you couldn't go wrong with a Mac Mini, if you can afford it.

A couple of days ago, we learned that Office 2008 for Mac will be shipped during the second half of 2007. While there is still no mention of pricing whatsoever, details regarding the new application are beginning to trickle. We've given you a rundown of some of its features the last time around and this time, we'd like to show you how they actually look.

By the way, the one above is for PowerPoint 2008. The ones below, from left to right, are Ledger Sheets, Publishing Layout View, My Day, and Document Parts.

    

While people are rallying around with pitchforks and flaming torches to take part in the unending console wars, it's time to take a step back and view things differently. The gaming industry is aggressive and sometimes even rabid - there's no secret there. But gaming aside, another campaign being fought is that of the next-gen media format: the digital download.

The "movie download" industry has actually already started for quite some time now. You've got companies like Cinemanow and Movielink that are pretty well-established and successful already. New in the game would be the services provided by Starz's "Vongo" and Amazon's "Unbox".

Of course, this whole service wouldn't be just as booming without the specialized setup methods and software needed to download the content. What you need in your living room is a set top box to which content can be quickly transferred and is easily accessed by the user.

Cue in Sony, Microsoft, and Apple. Cue in props: PS3, Xbox 360, and Apple TV. Three new players in the game and it looks like it's going to be one fierce battle to be reckoned with.

Helm's Deep hasn't seen a battle this intense. Just before you pick up your pitchforks once again, click on the "Full Article" link below to see the 411.

MicrosoftÂ?s Macintosh Business Unit unveiled details about Office 2008 productivity tools for Mac, which will ship in the second half of 2007. Office 2008 for Mac, which runs natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based machines, shares some technologies with Office 2007 for Windows. The productivity suite provides compatibility between different versions and will use the Office Open XML Formats for saving and opening files in either platform.

Other Office 2008 for Mac features include:

• Publishing Layout View for creating layout-rich documents in Word
• Ledger Sheets that enables Excel to handle financial management tasks including budgets, invoices, and registers without making complex formulas
• My Day for tracking daily priorities and tasks regardless if application without launching OfficeÂ?s Entourage personal information manager

Price of Office 2008 for Mac will be revealed by Microsoft later.

 

There are two wonderful phrases in the English language that we'd like to point you to right now. One of them is "Free stuff!" The other is "For a good cause!" This article gets to talk about them both with an application called xPad.

After a less-than-seemly business fiasco with a company that was thinking of buying his app, Garrett Murray got the rights to distribute his app back, and guess what? It's now open-source and free!

xPad is a full-fledged replacement application for Notepad, TextEdit and Stickies on the OS X. Using the app, you can also categorize your files as well as rename and delete multiple files quickly and efficiently. Heck, you can even transfer multiple files directly from the xPad interface to a different portion of your computer with a drag-and-drop action. That's simplicity right there! Oh, and did we mention auto-saving?!

Now, the main reason Garrett's actually doing this isn't for the money. He was trying to sell the app so he could donate the proceeds to The National MS Society (Multiple Sclerosis, not Microsoft). He asks that everyone who was thinking of sending him donations would send them to the charity he's trying to support instead.

For us, that means we're not going to host the file. Give his site a look-see, try the app on your Apple computer, and get some adsense revenue up for him so he can send those proceeds to The National MS Society as well.

This is weird but this thought had been bugging me for days: Why Apple haven't joined the console war? Or even the serious gaming industry for that matter? Sure Mac is not as popular around here as Windows but it provides serious competition. We all know how Microsoft got started, anyway. Nintendo and Sony were slugging it out and then Microsoft thought, "why not join in the fun?"

Given that, I couldn't help it but look at one of Apple's strongest product now: the iPod. Well, in case you've been living under gigantic stereo for some time now, the iPod comes in with a few simple games like Breakout, Parachute and Solitaire. Those certainly are not PSP and DS toppling games but that would be a good place to start.

I admit that I'm not familiar with most Mac games (Diablo Forever!) but a quick glance at its latest system MAC OS X (OpenGL and various Core technologies) and you'll know that there is a strong technological foundation. Proof of this is the recently announced Project Alky from Falling Leaf Systems that promises to bring high quality Windows games to Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

Without a doubt, Apple has the financial and technological capacity to enter into this arena. The big question now is, what are they waiting for?

Andre Vrignaud, otherwise known to the net as Ozymandias, pulled a Nostradamus of his own recently with his predictions for 2007. Being a Microsoft spokesperson though, you'll have to admit that some of his predictions are somewhat pointed, even if they do happen to be very logical.

We'll tread lightly here with one of the somewhat obvious Microsoft-favored predictions as an example:

By the end of 2007, total lifetime unit sell-through of home consoles will be led by the Xbox 360, followed by NintendoÂ?s Wii, with the Playstation 3 third. This order will also be true of units sold-through solely in 2007 (ie, not lifetime sales).

There's enough evidence to make that prediction viable, though we'd have to say the Wii is catching up far quicker than anyone expected. Since the total number of PS3 units created does happen to be far less than the total number of Xbox 360 or Wii units sold, Sony is the obvious dark horse for a 2007 sell-through victory.

Here are the rest of his predictions. Take a good note of his PSP-related predictions, as our own Chris L. made a fearless forecast similar to Ozy's. As for everything else, just remember that this is all speculation rather than fact, though you're quite free to put in your own two cents on the predictions he's given.

The original PSP (with memory stick) will be discontinued, and replaced by a new model with an integrated hard drive. The new model will enable connectivity to the Playstation store via internet connection, and allow you to purchase and download both emulated PS1 and native PSP games directly. Over time (meaning not in 2007), it will also allow you to purchase music and movies from the Sony store.

The future will have... ROBOTS! More of Ozymandias' insights and predictions after the jump.

Whoever came up with the idea for iPod and the Mac-Window hybrid ought to get a Christmas bonus the size of Rhode Island! Gene Munster, an analyst at Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray says Apple's Mac sales could reach 9 million in 2007. Okay, that's still a distant third to PC pushers HP and Dell. But ain't no chump change, either.

Munster credits the iPod for converting more consumers into Apple People "halo effect". If this halo effect keeps going on, the iPod may soon be canonized by the Vatican. The other thing going for Apple is its new line of Intel-powered Macs. Munster says Apple's Boot Camp software - the killer app that run Microsoft's Windows on the Mac - isn't hurting sales of its notebooks and desktops.

If the 9 million units (which is admittedly only guesswork based on market trends) fails to impress you, let us show you some very cold, very hard facts. Apple's fourth-quarter sales for its Mac line is already at 1.61 million. That's 1.61 million Macs sold within three months. If you're the stocks-betting type, we say put your money where Munster's mouth is - it's almost as sure as a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Even hardcore Apple fans aren't too thrilled with the iTV. And that's for a bunch of good reasons. The set-top-box is supposed to allow users to download movies (for a fee, of course) and watch them in "near-DVD quality". It's not really a revolutionary device, but Apple thinks that enabling content to be streamed from any Mac OS- or Microsoft Windows-run computer to a television is something worth spending US$ 300 for. Even if Steve Jobs hypes it up, the iTV isn't really going to get the same reception the iPod's gotten.

But what if Apple licenses TiVo's technology and uses it with the new iTV? Now, THAT would be something that just might interest us all!

But before you get all giddy, we'd have to remind you that this is a wild rumor posted at PVRblog. There's no firm evidence whatsoever, not just yet. But if you think about it, it's not an impossibility. In addition to the supposed Apple-TiVo partnership, iTV supposed to "officially" be called the Mac Media Capsule. With such a craptacular name, that Tivo deal should materialize and soon!

Apple will enlighten us when Macworld kicks off on January 9, 2007.

Universal Music Group is hoping to strike a deal with Apple wherein the music company will seek a royalty fee for every iPod sold. That's yesterday's news alright, so the question is would Apple jump at the prospect of giving Universal a piece of the iPod  financial windfall?

ITWire's Stan Beer's opinion: Not likely. We know full well that iPod is the MP3 market leader and Zune is, well, let's just say a new fish who got lost in the iPod sea. Having said that, it's highly unlikely that Apple would see the benefit of sharing the company wealth to Universal.

Universal got Microsoft to sign the deal because it seriously thinks that in doing so, it would succeed in driving "a wedge between the music industry and Apple".  We're not discounting the possibility that it will work, but Microsoft has to successfully get a significant market share in the legal music download department. The way things are, it's going to be an uphill climb for Microsoft and Zune.

We tend to agree with Beer when he said this: "The clear message for Doug Morris and Universal is that their best bet of getting a piece of the action on iPod sales is to buy some Apple shares."