TuckBodi's Profile

I got one of those $1999 TAM's and for a few years it was a great "toy." I can't really say I used it too much as a work machine for the reasons already stated, but man, did it get the looks when I had people over. Sadly it was used less and less through the years but I kept it setup in my home built entertainment center and booted it up every now and then to show it to people. Recently though, that has changed. I originally moved it to my entertainment center in the hopes of someday using it to control my (4) Pioneer CD changers which had serial inputs. Digital music put a kibosh on that and I then tried coming up with ways of accessing my digital music. Not having OS X on it made it way too difficult. Then a combination of things changed this. 1) I had an AppleTV hooked up to a flat screen to play videos and music. Cool but not ideal as I wanted better control over my music, from anywhere in the house (which was hard wired and had wireless). 2) Apple upgraded the ATV with AirTunes. Now I could send out music simultaneously to different parts of the house through the ATV, AirPort Expresses and through my media servers (Mac mini) own speakers. Still really only one single point of control though. 3) Stumbled on a cool little program/web interface called Signal, which ran on the server alongside iTunes AND had a web interface (originally for the iPhone - think Remote app on the iPhone but can do more). 4) Since these were only web pages on the Signal server I made a dupe set and modified them to fit on the TAM's 800x600 screen. 5) iCab, which miraculously was still being maintained for OS9, just had enough JavaScript ummff to display the Signal pages, AND it had a Kiosk mode so it could do it in full screen. 6) I also made screens for other computers throughout the house so I can access my music anywhere. 7) And of course, Apple came out with the click iPhone Remote app which I can use on my iPhone anywhere within my wireless area. First time I used this setup in front of anybody else was a party. I had AirTunes streaming my music and cover art to my 46" Sammy in my living room, had the same cover art and music being displayed on my beautiful TAM next to it (exact same look as the Remote app) and I was walking around changing music on my iPhone. People were blown away and I'm happy to say my TAM has new life in it!