![]() The Touchpad app allows your iOS device to become a wireless keyboard and trackpad. Paired with the mini, these apps let you control its interface much as you would with a real wireless keyboard and trackpad. TouchPad turn your iOS device into a virtual keyboard and trackpad. One of a variety of apps can turn your iOS device into both a wireless keyboard and trackpad. If these devices still seem too bulky, you may instead choose to use your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as a controller. Twelve South’s MagicWand turns two input devices into one. When placed snugly together, the two input devices become one unit, which can be used on your lap. MagicWand, a rounded half-cylinder (not shown in the image below-it’s under the cylindrical top edge of the keyboard and trackpad) that accommodates the battery ends of these Apple wireless devices. If you’re handy in the workshop, you can probably cobble together a controller tray, but for $30, Twelve South provides the more elegant Magic Trackpad (also $69) into a single unit. What makes such controls even more acceptable is something that allows you to gang together an A better option is Bluetooth input devices-keyboards, mice, and trackpads. You can, of course, control some media applications with the $19 Apple Remote, but it doesn’t allow you to manage the Mac’s entire interface. We can manipulate AV receivers, disc players, high-definition TVs, and game consoles without shifting our keisters from the couch, but when we think of controlling a computer we all-too-often turn to a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad.īefore these were commonly available in wireless form, incorporating a computer into a media cabinet screamed “kludge!” It forced you off the couch and to the floor where you’d tap away on tethered input devices to locate the media you wanted. ![]() While a computer can be a terrific media player, one element has traditionally stood in the way of every media rack bearing something like the Mac mini: Convenient control. You can find such drives for around $30 that are every bit as good as Apple’s $79 However, external USB removable media drives are inexpensive and they operate just like an internal drive-allowing you to play movies and install disc-based software. If you still depend on DVDs and CDs then you may be annoyed that there’s no slot in the front of the mini for your discs. What the mini doesn’t have-and hasn’t had for a couple of iterations-is a removable media drive. And it supports digital audio in and out. It carries a gigabit ethernet port, for when wireless isn’t fast enough. The mini has an IR receiver and comes with Apple’s remote, so it can be controlled from the couch. It includes four USB 3 ports for plugging in additional storage devices and media peripherals. Unlike most of today’s Macs it still retains a FireWire 800 port (though it also has a Thunderbolt port). It includes an SDXC card slot for directly accessing the pictures stored on a camera’s memory card. It sports an HDMI port, which allows you to jack the computer directly into your TV or HDMI-compatible AV receiver. Today’s Mac mini offers other advantages as a media server. I chose to save that $200 because the base-model’s processor is fast enough for a media server, and because, while storage is important for this kind of use, an external hard drive offers more space for less money. ![]() For another $200 you can purchase a Mac mini with a i7 processor and a 1TB hard drive. That mini includes a 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, and the Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset built into the motherboard. I chose the $599 base-model Mac mini for my media experiment, largely based on its price and performance. ![]() But is it the perfect solution for those anxious to cut the media cord? I spent a month with one to find out. ![]() Small, not obscenely expensive, and capable of accessing media locally as well as online, the Mac mini has a lot going for it. ![]()
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