It ’s been almost two old age since Sling Media , the makers of the Slingbox office - shift video machine , announced that they mean to make a Mac version . I get my first glimpse of the SlingPlayer software lead on a Mac in early 2006 at Macworld Expo . But although Sling Media said they were targeting spring 2006 for arrival of their Mac participant , the release of Intel Macs slowed the pace .
It was n’t until July of last yr that Sling announced its private Mac Beta program , a program that began in earnest late last summertime . And around about Halloween , the first public beta of SlingPlayer for Mac go far . And while I danced a gigue at its arrival , it was most definitely the product of a ship’s company that know a bunch more about Windows than about the Mac .
That initial version was a close port wine of the Windows version of SlingPlayer . Last leap I grease one’s palms a Slingbox in expectation of the Mac software ’s reaching , and then drop many months watch over baseball game game on Windows microcomputer and , later , on my Mac via Parallels Desktop . The beta Mac musician , when it arrived , looked much the same as the PC thespian I ’d been using , right down to the Windows - style windowpane controls in the carte du jour legal community . In short , it worked , but it was n’t pretty .
Monday , the final version of SlingPlayer for Mac was released , and substance abuser of the beta reading will realize that it ’s a radically different mathematical product from the most recent public genus Beta .
For the past distich of months I ’ve been testing this new , remixed ( yet still “ 1.0 ” ) variant of SlingPlayer for Mac . The behind - the - scenes skinny is , Sling Media employ some people who antecedently were Apple engineers , people with deep noesis about how a Mac - aboriginal app program should act . Here ’s a cluefor the clueless — big “ ecstasy ” icons on your window do not a good Mac interface make .
In any event , the extract of outmoded - Apple endowment is evident throughout the SlingPlayer interface . If you ’re not intimate with Slingbox , it ’s a hardware gimmick that lets you watch whatever is on your household TV put from anywhere else in the public , so long as you ’ve got an Internet connection . So for example , this weekend I was able to watch the local program of a San Francisco Giants baseball game this weekend while at my in - laws ’ family in Los Angeles .
The new SlingPlayer port will be familiar , as it should be : it resembles the QuickTime Player , with a gravid free rein / stop release and a volume slider . The Remote pallet , which lease you assure your home DVR and other devices , has a transparent floating coming into court similar to pallet in iLife and Final Cut Pro . Even the Preferences windowpane has been make over to behave like you ’d look from Mac software . ( Also unexampled in this version : financial backing for more gadget , include the Apple TV . )
I ’ve really revel using my Slingbox , and the final version of the Mac player is a pleasure to apply . Stay tune up for a full followup in a footling while , after I ’ve had more time to put the new SlingPlayer and SlingBox Pro through their paces .
