mac mini advice please

What you do must do is connect the mac mini to the TV and then use this to browse and download. You can use a separate laptop and using the share screen function of your Mac Mini you will see the the screen of the Mac Mini. Then others can watch TV whilst you are using the Mac Mini. You can then use the iTouch as a remote. This is exactly what I do. I use a Benchmark USB DAC which is pretty good. FYI if you browse and download on your iTouch then it will be just downloaded to that device.

I hope that answers your question

Hi Prawne.

You are perhaps a tad confused with how it all works so I will run it down.

The mini will make an excellent source for you music. It is practically silient. However have you considered storage? You won't get a lot of music on the mini so drives will be in the living space as well, and they are never quiet.

I recommend the following.
Purchase an AppleTV. This is a stripped out apple mac running OSX 10.4 It has digital optical out like the mac mini.

The mini would then live some where else with drives attached. This would be the server for the appletv. The appletv connects to your TV and to your dac. But if you have an ipod touch you don't need the TV on. If the TV is on you can use the supplied remote to control the appletv to fetch music from your mac mini in the other room.

If you alread have a storage solution such as another computer or a NAS then buy all means use the mac mini. This can connect to the tv ether via DVI to HDMI if your tv has it or a standard PC cable using the supplied adaptor.

Again you do not need the TV on, you can use your ipod touch to control the mini to play music from your server.

As for surfing the web. Well thats best left to a lap top. There is nothing more odd than someone squinting at a TV set whilst try to surf, and the ipod touch is OK for brief surfing but its a bit crap long term. That being said all you would do is launch the remote app on it to play music then simply launch the broser to surf, then go back to the remote to change tunes etc.

Post back if I have confused you totally.

First of all, the Mac Mini is likely to be revamped at the end of March (the Mac Pro is also likely to be revamped) as a 'Mac Nano'. Watch out for any Mac press events that time.

So far the remote device is limited to controlling iTunes. There are AppStore applications that will allow your iPod Touch to connect screen-wise with your Mac.

I would also recommend checking out Internet radio and Last.fm - which will provide excellent listening pleasure while helping you on your voyage of discovering new music.

Andrew Randle

The biggest buzz about the new mini is it will have a lower powered atom processor. So perhaps nothing to much to wait up for?

Thanks everyone for the responses so far.
A couple more questions - does anyone know what the differences may be with the relaunched mac mini/nano - is it likely to be worth waiting for?
Garyi - good point re surfing on the tv. So if I used a separate (windows) laptop, can I use the share screen functionality to stream the music (e.g. myspace/youtube) to the mini so that I can listen through the hifi whilst watching on the (windows) laptop?
Yes, storage will be an issue - the nas looks to be an elegant solution.
Davidr - your set up sounds ideal. And if I surf using share screen on the laptop, I can download onto the mini (or nas) - is that right?
Thanks

Um, Yes you can in terms of sending audio files. That being said it will not sync with your laptop.

Again I would recomend the apple tv which has native support for you tube or you can hack it with XBMC to play all sorts including BBC Iplayer

Sorry garyi, being really thick, i think.
So the apple tv does not surf the web as such but does support youtube and could potentially be hacked to do myspace etc). I can however use a laptop to to surf, but I would need a mac mini too to send music from there to the apple tv.
so in summary, i would need an apple tv, a mac mini an external DAC and an i-touch (i have an external hard drive which I could add to the mac mini to give even more storage capacity). Does that all sound right?
Where is the voting on beresford dac vs lavry? Have you compared? Thanks

Prawne - yes you can surf using screen share. I recommend two external drives. If for the data and one for Time machine back up. To give you an idea I have some 750 albums on just under 300 gigs using Apple lossless (a must in my opinion).It is an excellent set up and I can take some selected playlists with me on my iPod Nano or iPhone. I used to have a CDSII now I just use this and my trusty 52 and 135's and I have never enjoyed music more as I can sit and just pick tracks from my listening position. Most excellent!

I am genuinely struggling to see the point in surfing via screen share. It would be amusing to explain why?

Garyi I am amused by your struggling to understand that if I have a plasma screen attached to my mini mac and my family are watching a TV program, I cannot use the mini mac to browse and download, but if I use screen sharing to browse from my laptop I can download something for me to watch later on the plasma screen. Thus I do not have to stream or transfer any files. It is the simplest way to do this.

There is no need to be patronising, especially as such an attitude usually reveals a need to be superior. If you do not understand just say so. It may be possible that someone has a different and relevant point of view.

Perhaps I am missing something, in which case please do enlighten me, but keep your superiority complex to yourself. Unless of course English is not your native tongue and you meant interesting instead of amusing.

Yes OK David calm down.

Screen sharing in order to surf the web makes little sense as basically you are looking at a computer in order to do it.

However your later explantion of downloading makes perfect sense and is indeed what I do in order to use torrents. This assumes you want the mini to be a server for this task.

Correct.

Having a bad day.

I would seriously recommend PLEX to anyone using an intel mac, its just an amazing media server.