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AppleCare proves to be well worth the money!

Posted by Evan at 10:00 am

About 2 weeks ago to my horror I heard a horrible clicking noise coming from my 17″ MacBook Pro even though it was sitting next to my chair closed and was supposed to be sleeping. I heard the fan kick on and heard the clicking noise, picked it up and the screen was black and wouldn’t come on. I held down the power button to force shut it down, waited a second and started it back up. It wouldn’t boot… from anything… CD, hard drive and none of the standard startup key combinations would do anything. I had one of two things a dead hard drive or a dead logic board I thought.

I called up AppleCare and after they walked me through many of the steps I had just tried again for good measure they made me an appointment at my local Apple Store so they could have a look and, if need be, send it in for repairs. I show up at the store a couple of days later, give them my laptop so they can have a look and eventually the guy tells me that he’s going to order a new hard drive and logic board for me and send it in for repairs and that I should have it back within a week. Much to my surprise I find out that I wont have to drive an hour back to Indianapolis to pick it up either because they now ship repaired products directly back to the customer!

Six days later the FedEx guy shows up and I have a very carefully packaged 17″ MacBook Pro that has been cleaned very thoroughly and more importantly works like a brand new computer. The best part about all of this is the fact that were it not for AppleCare these repairs would have costed me nearly $1300 for parts alone!!! With AppleCare it was completely covered.

Using your iPhone as a remote control for iTunes

Posted by Evan at 3:58 pm

I’ve been working on setting up a work bench and trying to get things organized in the garage. I got a Blu-Ray player for Christmas and our small all-in-one home theater setup was no longer being used, so I decided to put it to use out in the garage, thinking it would be a great system that could probably produce enough volume to be heard over most of my power tools. I got it setup, ran all of the speaker wires and got things looking as organized as possible, speakers mounted to the walls and all and now there was the question of getting my music to the receiver so I could listen to it. This is where things got interesting.

Extending the network reach

We’ve got a large wireless network setup at the house currently but the signal wasn’t quite strong enough to reach to the back end of the garage, so I took one of the Airport Expresses I had lying around and plugged it in out by the receiver and a 2nd Airport Express towards the front of the garage to bridge the gap between my router and the one hooked up near the receiver. I set the “bridge” AE to extend my existing wireless network and the receiver’s AE to join my existing network and enabled AirTunes. I had a nice strong signal so I used an 1/8″ stereo to stereo RCA cable it hooked it from the receiver’s AE to the AUX input on the back of the receiver and was able to setup iTunes to play my music from my MacPro through my receiver in the garage, which was cool enough but I wanted a way to be able to change songs from the garage without going inside to interact with iTunes, and then it hit me.

The iTunes Remote Control

If you’re fortunate enough to have an iPhone you have access to one of the most amazing apps created for the device. It’s called Remote and it’s probably the best example of a sleeper app I’ve ever seen. I had downloaded it (it’s free) from the App Store but never really had a use for it until now. With Remote you’re able to connect to your iTunes library (as well as your Apple TV) and control the playback of songs. What’s amazing is that is also gives you a wonderful artwork view, ability to control AirTunes speakers, search your iTunes library, edit playlists and more. So instantly I had this amazingly powerful remote that allowed me to access and playback music sitting inside on my computer and hear it outside in the garage through my receiver and the sound quality was excellent.

The other bonus is that I now have wi-fi access out in the garage should the need ever come up

Announcing The Lost Mystery Podcast with Anton and Evan!

Posted by Evan at 3:22 pm

It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time, and today I’m happy to announce The Lost Mystery Podcast with Anton and Evan! My cousin Anton and I have created this podcast to serve those who are just getting onto the LOST bandwagon. Those who have been LOST-a-holics have had many podcasts to help feed their addiction to LOST-related content, but until now there hasn’t been much out there for those who are just now starting to watch the show.

We’re going back to the very beginning of season 1 of LOST and making our way through to the very end of the series. While I myself have been addicted to LOST since the beginning, Anton has just started watching the show and is getting more hooked by the day. So far it’s his unspoiled views that have made the podcast so entertaining to recent and long-time LOST viewers alike.

So, check out our website, subscribe to the show and let us know what you think!

Watch Netflix movies on Apple TV

Posted by Evan at 9:48 pm

My wife recently purchased an Apple TV for me as a birthday present. I was very excited as I’ve wanted one since they released the 2.0 update which no longer required that you have a computer connected to it in order to watch/buy/rent movies from iTunes.

Since then I’ve converted my entire DVD collection to my computer for instant access on the Apple TV, purchased more than a few movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store and have spent far more time than I expected browsing YouTube videos. But there’s something missing…

I’ve been a Netflix user for several years now. A year or so ago they announced the ability to watch many of their library videos directly on their website instantly, which was huge. The cost of the membership seemed instantly more worthwhile. The only downside is it’s windows only (due to DRM issues) and while I don’t mind setting up a Windows partition on my Mac Pro I’d prefer to not have to reboot my computer to take advantage of this great feature. So this got me thinking, will we ever see the ability to watch Netflix movies directly from the Apple TV?

The Roku set-top box (and soon the XBox 360, if you have an XBox LIVE Gold membership) offers this ability right now, but that’s the ONLY ability it has. No online store for buying movies, no access to movies on your computer, nothing. I would love to have the ability to browse and play the titles Netflix has available for online streaming directly from my Apple TV. This would not only bring incredible value to my Netflix membership but (I think) would also dramatically increase the appeal of the Apple TV.

Netflix has announced that their online streaming service will be available to Mac users before the end of the year; could this mean the ability to watch Netflix movies on the Apple TV isn’t far behind? Oh please let it be so!

A whole lotta shakin’ goin on!

Posted by Evan at 9:18 am

Hello everyone! Been quite some time since I wrote last and there’s been a lot going on the last month. All of our projects around the house from my last post have been completed other than the privacy fence and the floor in the kitchen.

The kitchen remodel was a huge success, I’ll be getting some final photos here soon but we’re so excited with the change. Our entire house is now remodeled and every room is exactly the way we want it. The office is by far my favorite improvement. As you can see from the photo on the right it’s a wonderfully warm and inviting yet contemporary room. I haven’t worked in the living room with my notebook once since the room has been finished, I love being in here. The new office was even featured on Unplggd.com!

Work has been fantastic. I had a staggeringly huge first quarter and I’m amazed that I even made it through. Agee Design has been a huge adventure and I’ve grown so much through the experience. I’m so thankful to have a career that I love so much and to be able to work with so many wonderful people. I’m hoping to take a couple of big steps in the next year or so, but I’ll wait and see how things go. More on that later.

Kristen and I are planning a vacation to Sault Ste. Marie Michigan in early June and I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be another road trip like our trip last summer to Niagara Falls and Alenxandria Bay New York. I’m really looking forward to getting away for a bit and recouping a little.