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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

AppleTV Update Wipes Boxee, Other 3rd Party Hacks

appletv-231.png

Apple released an Apple TV update Tuesday evening that, not surprisingly, removes third-party add-ons, such as the popular media center application Boxee.

Apple TV users who are willing to hack their device to extend its functionality are likely to be savvy enough to have disabled auto-update on their machines, but it’s also likely some may wake to an unpleasant surprise on Wednesday morning.

The Apple TV support page had not been updated at press time with fixes and improvements in software version 2.3.1. Readers are invited to let us know in comments what amazements, if any, come with the update.

Via AppleTV Junkie

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

4 comments

    I hope they finally make HDMI work properly. Oh and the rendering bugs during music playback. I mean, I’d be happy with zero new features but some of these more embarrassing bugs fixed after 2 years!

    With HDMI on my Apple TV, after a few cycles of shutting the tv on and off (over the course of a few days) the apple tv stops synchronizing with HDMI properly. Apple TV is the only device out of 7 HDMI devices I own to have this problem.

    In music playback, seemingly randomly, I suddenly get strange mirrored artifacts above the song/artist text as if part of the image didn’t get erased/moved when the display “flips.” Plus flickering and a complete lack of animation at times.

    To counter all my complaining though, I have to say, Apple TV’s really changed my life. I love it, my wife loves it, and my daughter loves it (especially with playlist support, can anyone guess how much she loves watching sesame street podcasts for hours while playing with her toys? Thank you apple for finally adding playlist support everywhere!)

    It’s a great device but it really needs a little classic apple spitshine applied in some areas.

    this update, as previous ones, removes the added entries for boxee in the menu. repatch-sticking the atv brings all the good back.

    This isn’t as upsetting as it would have been with Hulu still on Boxee. That was mostly what I used Boxee for. Would be nice if everyone got along and let me watch streaming video where I want, when I want.

    I was ready to add boxee in ATV, last night Feb 25, I started by upgrading the ATV for last time and turn off the auto update. But that wasn’t a smart move, because the new version 2.3.1 didn’t read my USB stick to add Boxee. I am waiting patiently,until Boxee patch out for 2.3.1.
    If you anyone have idea please post link.

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