If I have one complaint about my aluminum MacBook (and I think I might literally have only one complaint), it’s that I don’t have an elegant method for hooking the machine up to my HDTV. As part of the 99.997 percent of the population who don’t own an AppleTV, this means I don’t have any way to watch the video in my living room. The laptop’s Mini DisplayPort is an absurdly new standard, and that means it plays well with virtually nothing. I could buy an MDP to DVI cable from Apple, then use a DVI-to-HDMI cable to provide video and an additional TOSLink cable to deliver audio, but that sounds like a poor way to spend a Sunday evening. It would be nice just to have one cable to do everything.
Well. This frustration should soon be gone. According to MacYourself, an MDP-to-HDMI cable will be arriving in late January from Monoprice.com, the leading source for really cheap cables on the Internet. It looks like a separate audio cable will still be necessary (though no one is really sure), but I’m still a big proponent of the direct to HDMI solution, especially because it should support HDCP protection for watching iTunes HD downloads on an external screen.
I’ll buy one on day one. Who’s with me?
Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete’s particular Apple avocations are both around design–interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!
