Not a lot of people managed to get their hands on an Apple TV to review, but the folks at PC Mag did, and the verdict? It’s good – really good, especially if streaming media is your thing. That’s not to say that the device doesn’t have issues that Apple really could address if they wanted to, but it’s better in person than a lot of the feature roundups have proclaimed, and it was streamlined and polished enough to earn the Editor’s Choice award from PC Mag and a total of 4/5 stars.

Of it’s highlight features, it looks dead simple to set up and get running, is controllable from a variety of remote control apps (and comes with its own,) streams video and music and photos from a computer on the same network, and brings the thunder with Web video, including YouTube, Netflix Instant, and tons of rent-able TV shows and content from partner networks. If you have another iOS device like an iPad or iPhone, it can even stream what you have there to your television.

That’s all great, but it also doesn’t change the fact that the Apple TV doesn’t have a hard drive, can’t connect directly to storage, and all of your media consumption using the device will be rental and temporary in nature; you can’t keep anything on your Apple TV. But if the bulk of your streaming video is Netflix and Web video, you just can’t go wrong with this tiny little $99 box.

That is, at least until Roku’s new offerings come out for half the price, and then the Boxee Box hits the market for twice the price. Apple’s new gadget will be interestingly positioned both feature and price-wise, but we’ll have to see if it can go the distance.

[ PC Mag :: Apple TV (2010) Rating and Review ]

I’ve so far managed to avoid the lure of Minecraft, mostly because I, like the guys at Penny Arcade, know that if I get in too deep, it’s all over and I may never come out alive.

Like this fine gentleman, doing something that I imagine would take more time, energy, and effort than could possibly really be worth it, but is doing something so remarkably and ridiculously awesome that it defies words and explanations. He’s building, block by block, a larger than 1:1 scale USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D in Minecraft (which as Star Trek: The Next Generation dorks like me know, is the largest Enterprise from the canon.)

It’s freaking huge, it’s amazing, and that’s just in game – he’s not even finished with it yet. He’s planning on finishing the scale Enterprise, decking out the inside so you can travel through it, and making it as close to an actual model of the ship as possible.

No jokes about “going boldly where no one has gone before,” please – this guy qualifies for the “epic” title.

[ Rock Paper Shotgun :: Mine It So: Enterprise-D In Minecraft ]

PC Mag has put together a pretty epic list of free Mac applications that should forever answer the question “I have a Mac now, what should I install on it?”

I’ve actually seen the question a number of times from first-time Mac owners, and usually it’s the Apple haters that come out of the woodwork with suggestions like “Windows” and “PhotoShop because that’s all it can do,” and so on – well, with this hefty list of over 70 different apps – all of which are free – you can customize your Mac to work the way you work, keep it safe and protected from the few pieces of malware out there that are targeting you, and have some fun on your brand new Mac at the same time!

Some of the more notable inclusions are apps like DropBox for backups and taking your files with you wherever you go, LastPass to keep your passwords safe, Launchy to make finding and launching your most often-used apps easier, TweetDeck to stay up with your friends, and more.

[ PC Mag :: Best Free Mac Software 2010 ]

When Apple announced Ping at the beginning of the month as a new music-centric social network that’s part of iTunes, the first major complaint was that the service only supported music in the iTunes Music Store, and you couldn’t like or comment on music you already had in your music library – essentially making Ping only good for suggesting music people should buy, or music that you’ve already bought.

Now, with the most recent update to Ping, you can like or post about music in your iTunes Library, as long as it’s also for sale on iTunes (that doesn’t mean you have to have bought it from iTunes though!)

The new and deeper Ping is part of the latest update to iTunes 10, version 10.0.1. Give it a shot! If you want to follow me on Ping, you can find my profile here (iTunes required for link!)

If you were as thrilled as I was to learn about the upcoming Bioshock “prequel/sequel/game set in the same universe at a different place and time” title Bioshock: Infinite, then these 10 minutes of ridiculously engrossing gameplay from the upcoming title should thrill you. I seriously watched and had no idea t hat 10 minutes had passed. That’s how good even the gameplay seems to be.

I know, a number of people in the YouTube comments and on the board where I first found the video claim the game seems to be somewhat on rails and pretty heavily scripted, but honestly I don’t think so – the events seem to flow together, and it seems like the player is in control more often than not, especially in combat scenes and making decisions on when to move from place to place.

Still, sit back and enjoy this taste of what the game will look like when it eventually comes out in 2012. Need to embiggen? Head over to YouTube for high-quality, screen-filling goodness.

Interested in the new Android-powered Galaxy Tab? Of course you are, who isn’t? The iPad is a great device, but more competition in the marketplace makes every product better – Apple products included. Some people have been heralding the Galaxy Tab as the second coming, essentially, and Samsung’s marketing hasn’t helped matters much. Don’t get me wrong, of the flood of Android tablets hitting the market, the Galaxy Tab is probably one of the best – if not THE best – to make it to broad production, but it’s not quite ready to take on the iPad on its own turf just yet, and DVice understands why.

The trouble with the Galaxy Tab isn’t so much the hardware – I can overlook some of the things they dislike about it; even the egregious error of putting better hardware in your mobile phone than you’re putting into your tablet (especially when Samsung has admitted the Galaxy Tab will be much more expensive than the iPad,) but the reason problem here is the same problem the T-Mobile G1 faced in the early days of Android: apps.

There’s simply no wealth of apps for tablet versions of Android, and Google itself has acknowledged that Android simply wasn’t designed to run optimally on tablets and larger displays. That doesn’t mean it won’t be, and that doesn’t mean there won’t be apps, but it does mean that right now you can’t even do the old iPad trick of downloading an iPhone app and blowing it up to 200x to fill your iPad’s screen.

Unfortunately, until Google can get a version of Android that supports tablet devices out (which we’re hearing will come in Android 2.5 or 3.0, codenamed “Gingerbread,”) or app developers step up to the plate and start developing tablet apps for Android (which a number of developers, even Electronic Arts, has said they want to and are committed to Android, but hesitate to for lack of a coherent payment and storefront platform,) Android tablets will largely be Web-surfing and e-mail-checking tools for Apple haters and people who really just want an alternative to the iPad for ideological reasons, not technological ones.

A side question though: whither ChromeOS in this new age of tablets (and potentially the post-netbook era?)

[ DVice :: 5 Reasons Why Samsung's Galaxy Tab is Not an iPad Killer ]

(image courtesy of Lifehacker)

There are so many set-top boxes out there and every cable or satellite company offers their own DVR (Digital Video Recorder), so you may ask why you should bother rolling your own DVR for any reason. Frankly, other than the ability to have complete control over what you watch, when you watch it, and what you save from your TV and how long you keep it (all of which excellent reasons to roll your own DVR,) it’s an opportunity to build the best DVR for you and get your hands a little dirty, instead of just trusting your cable company to give you something good – which is inevitably going to prove out to be misplaced trust.

So that DIY DVR is going to wind up being essentially a HTPC (Home Theater PC), not just a DVR, most likely, but to get your TV stream to hit the PC so you can record your favorite shows when you’re at work or out of the house, you’ll want to pick the best TV tuner for the job. That’s where Lifehacker comes in, with this excellent glossary of terms you’ll need if you’re going to understand all of the features of the TV tuners you’ll see on the market, and some pointers on exactly what your TV tuner will allow you to do and what it won’t allow you to do.

Best of all, the article rounds out with some good old fashioned hardware suggestions so you can get your DIY HTPC or DVR off the ground when you start to build it.

[ Lifehacker :: How to Pick the Right TV Tuner for Your DIY DVR ]

The folks at PC Mag have an exclusive unboxing slideshow from one of this year’s most anticipated HDTV and home theater products, the Boxee Box! I personally have been anticipating the Boxee Box from D-Link and Boxee for a while now, since the Boxee software is probably some of the most robust set-top box applications I’ve seen, and while you can install it on a custom built HTPC, the Boxee Box brings it to you in a lovely and convenient package.

Now, the folks behind the Boxee Box stopped by PC Mag headquarters in New York to show off the product, which is now available for preorder at Amazon, so grab yours now.

If you need more convincing, head over to PC Mag, where I snagged the image above, and tons more photos of the Boxee Box, it’s unique remote with the qwerty keyboard on the back, and all of the connnectors on the back of the box. If you need more convincing, check out this video of me playing with the Boxee Box at CES 2010 back in January:

Now, head over and check out the unboxing exclusive!

[ PC Mag :: Boxee Box Unboxing Exclusive ]

Internet Explorer 9 just came out today, and the fine folks at PC Mag have taken it for a test drive and churned out a hands-on review of Microsoft’s latest volley into the browser wars. I would do the same, but unfortunately at the office I’m chained to Windows XP, so I’ll have to wait for later when I get back to my Vista PC, since only folks running Windows Vista or Windows 7 will be able to run Internet Explorer 9.

So far, early impressions of the IE9 beta are favorable, noting its support for pinning Web sites like apps to the taskbar in Windows 7, the clean and minimized interface, and its highly improved speed, catching up with other browsers like Chrome and the Firefox 4 beta. IE 9 also lays in HTML5 functionality, and while it’s still one of the least standards-compliant browsers and still mis-renders a number of sites, it represents a good step forward for Microsoft, who’s looking to improve Internet Explorer’s image.

Head over to PC Mag to see tons of screenshots from the new browser, and read more about what’s hot and what’s not in the beta!

[ PC Mag :: Review - Internet Explorer 9 Beta ]

I think most people have a love-hate relationship with iTunes. If you’re using it on a Mac, it’s probably love-love, but on Windows there’s a lot more hate. It’s no secret that even though iTunes on the Mac is speedy, elegant, and works really well, iTunes in Windows is generally slow, bulky, loaded with bloat and services that really don’t need to run in the background sucking down system resources, and sluggish to use.

Still, if you have an iPod or an iPhone and a Windows PC, iTunes can be a necessary evil in many cases, especially when it comes to downloading updates and apps, not just managing your music. So what if you want iTunes on your Windows PC but you don’t want the fluff that Apple packages it with? Lifehacker has the answer for you, thanks to ZDNet, where there’s a how-to guide on installing iTunes with only the components you really need to make the app work for you.

Also included in the walkthrough are the components you’ll need for the model of iPod or iPhone you might have, and what you can leave out if you’re not doing certain things with your home network, for example. If you’ve always wanted to like iTunes but just couldn’t get over the bloat and added junk that comes with it in Windows, this is the walkthrough for you.

[ Lifehacker :: Install iTunes 10 Without the Extra Bloatware ]