More Apple updates

Apple has just updated both their MacMini and Safari to the latest additions this week. The new MacMini looks sleek while Safari 5 provides us with some great new features to help surf and ingest the web.

First, the MacMini is a great way to start with the switch to Mac, because it’s the whole Mac experience in just a little box. Most people already have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so all they have to add is the MacMini to open themselves to the Mac World. With options up to 8 Gig of ram, it can be quite the performer too. The best way to upgrade or buy and Mac is to buy it stripped down with the smallest hard drive and least amount of Ram from Apple, and then head over to MacSales.com and buy a new, larger hard drive and more ram, for much less than what Apple will sell it. It’s usually simple to pop out the old stuff and pop in the new stuff. Speaking of that, the new MacMini makes changing out the memory a snap. A large rubberized pad that it sits on can be easily removed to expose the insides of the computer to change out things like the memory. What a great idea!

Another great way to use a MacMini is turn it into an HTPC, or Home Theater Personal Computer. Put all your DVD’s onto a small external drive and put all the discs and cases down in the basement (Plex and the MacMini can do for your DVD’s what iTunes did to your CD’s). Just plug it into your TV, so your TV is the monitor, and watch live TV, DVD’s, and TV shows, all from your computer, in HD, live, and without commercials. Simple to use software like Plex and Elgato make all this a reality, and many people cancel their cable/satellite service once they make the move. Check out AppleMediaCenter.com to read more about it.

The upgrade to Safari 5 is free, and even though it has lots of new features, the best one, in my opinion, is the Reader feature. I read the Drudgereport, and lots of other news websites to get my news. I don’t have time to watch the old media at 6:30 in the evenings — it’s filled with agendas I disagree with and commercials I can’t stand, like pharmacueutical companies and car companies. The reader function recognizes a webpage that has a news story or some other text on it and then hides all the junk advertizers, flashing icons, and multiple page breaks with ads in them. Half the news stories on the internet are so hard to read because it’s almost impossible to find the actual story from all the junk. Try the reader function, it’s awesome! Picture one is the normal article if you are reading the story on windows. The second picture is with the Reader enabled. (click them to make them bigger)