Here's the plan: take an old Mac mini, blow the dust off it, and repurpose it as a media centre. In particular, I wanted it to:

• Watch and record Freeview channels
• Watch shows on BBC iPlayer
• Play downloaded videos

Here's how I got on.

"VirtualAcorn are delighted to announce that as part of our beta product testing scheme a limited number of VirtualRPC-AdjustSA products suitable for use on G4 and G5 PowerPC Apple Macintosh computers are now available."
 
http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/products/vrpcadsamac.htm

Honestly, did you really think you could get rid of my marathon programming threads that easily? And myspace? Eewwww. Podcasts, on the other hand...

New features

But in all seriousness, our transformation into an Apple fanbois wet dream was due to our latest feature, the site themes feature thing, from which you can select from a selection of different themes with which to alter the site more to your liking. So far we've got the standard TIB and AcornArcade themes, as well as the Apple one, and a simple RISC OS one. More themes will be arriving as soon as we can get the sword away from Rich and chain him back down behind his keyboard.
 
There's also a new script we're playing with to allow RSS updates of forum posts. Either using a regular RSS reader, or setting up an RSS "account" in Thunderbird (etc.) pointing here:
https://i.iconbar.com/forums/rss-rss20.php
...you'll be able to see when new messages have been written. It's like that list down the side of the main site, but even more divorced from the forum itself! You can change the rss20 bit to rss09, rss10 or atom03 for other flavours of feed.
 
Links:
Site themes feature thing
Forum RSS feed

Hello, and welcome to the new new look iConbar. Since we're all Mac users now (even Rich!), we thought it was about time that we ditched RISC OS properly and changed the focus of the site to cover all things Apple. No more will I be posting marathon threads in the Playpen about games that no-one is interested in and that I'll never complete, for I've found a new hobby of making podcasts, directing fan films on YouTube, and chatting on my myspace. And no, you're not invited. It's strictly Mac users only.
 
Go Apple. It's just so much better.

The latest RISC OS chat brought to you in glorious cut-n-paste-o-vision.
 
In this week's episode:

• Whatever happened to VA for Mac?
• Should developers join forces?
• A7000 puts you on hold
• Acorn Computers admit their past

While everybody in the media was gushing over the newly announced iPhone, Greenpeace thought it would be a good idea to remind the world that Apple products don't come in green (not even the green iPod Nano):

The Macworld conference is in full swing in San Francisco. Yesterday Steve Jobs made his keynote address to announce the new iPhone, but not even a slide about a greener apple. We are there at Macworld to spread the word for a green apple but also online with our own green keynote address.

Steve Jobs has just completed his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo show in San Francisco, where he had something rather special to show us...
 
Say hello to the iPhone. It's gorgeous.

Like many readers of The Icon Bar, I started off computing with a BBC Micro. In 1991, I upgraded to an Acorn A3000, which was great because unlike Windows 3.0, you could print to a dot matrix printer and the printout would be just as it appeared on the screen. Then in 1994 I got a Risc PC, shortly after taking up the freelance role of Business Editor of Acorn User which I did for just over a year.