Chapter 8 of “Take Control of Apple TV” Available
A DIY project that I’ve long pondered but never actually constructed is a digital picture frame. Not one of those lame ones that’s good only for snapshots, but something that uses a display in the 19- to 24-inch range. Something suitable for mounting on the wall like art, rather than relegating to the corner of a desk.
Part of the reason I’ve never gotten around to making such a frame is that the Apple TV does a bang-up job of displaying photos from our extensive collection on our 50-inch Panasonic plasma HDTV. We don’t leave it on all the time to save energy (my proposed frame would power up only when it noticed motion in the room), but we quite enjoy watching our photos flip by in the Apple TV’s screen saver after we finish watching Netflix. If you’re reading along in Josh Centers’s streamed ebook “Take Control of Apple TV,” that’s what you’ll find in the just-published Chapter 8, “View Photos & Home Movies.”
Josh walks you through putting your photos onscreen via the iCloud Photos and Flickr apps, and explains how to display photos stored in iPhoto or Aperture on the Apple TV as well, if you think cloud-based photo storage is for the birds. He also provides advice on configuring the screen saver for different resolution photos, suggests several approaches to slideshows, looks at moving videos from iMovie to the iMovie Theater app on the Apple TV, and reminds you that you can also just use AirPlay to display photos and home movies.
As with Chapter 7, “Rock Out with Apple TV,” Chapter 6, “Apple TV at the Movies,” Chapter 5, “Master AirPlay,” Chapter 4, “Discover What’s on Offer,” Chapter 3, “Control Your Apple TV” and Chapter 2, “Set Up Your Apple TV,” this chapter is available for free, but only to TidBITS members; everyone is welcome to read Chapter 1, “Introducing Apple TV,” to see what’s on deck. Please keep those comments coming — they’ve been very helpful so far! When we’re done, everyone will be able to buy the full ebook in PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket (Kindle) formats, and TidBITS members can save 30 percent on this and all other Take Control titles.
Publishing this book in its entirety for TidBITS members as it’s being written is one of the ways we thank TidBITS members for their support. We also hope it encourages those of you who have been reading TidBITS for free for years to help us continue to bring you carefully considered, professionally written and edited articles each week (for more details on what the membership program means to us, see “Support TidBITS in 2014 via the TidBITS Membership Program,” 9 December 2013).
Hello, Adam.
I'm a little confused about paid membership.Having purchased at least thirty Take Control books between 2005 and now, I thought I was doing a good job supporting tidbits. This isn't the case?
Thanks for buying those Take Control books - our authors do appreciate the support immensely. But TidBITS and Take Control are by necessity somewhat separate financially, since Take Control revenues largely go to paying authors and editors, along with compensating us for the time we spend explicitly on Take Control. TidBITS itself requires significant effort on the part of numerous people, and as we said when we announced the TidBITS membership program in http://tidbits.com/article/12508,it simply isn't sustainable without support from the people who benefit from it.
Streaming these in-progress chapters in TidBITS to members ahead of publication is one of the things we do to thank those people who do support TidBITS directly; Josh's "Take Control of Apple TV" will be available just like any other Take Control book when we're done. (If it were a normal Take Control book, you simply wouldn't know it was being written until we finished.) In essence, we're just trying to provide a little perk to those who help keep TidBITS running.
We're walking a fine line between trying to sweeten the deal for TidBITS members and ensuring that authors whose books are streamed (we also did this with Jeff Carlson's "Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac") have an audience left at the end.
In short, then, if you'd like to read "Take Control of Apple TV" now, you can become a TidBITS member, or you can just wait a few more weeks and buy the book from the Take Control site when we're done. TidBITS members also save 30% on all Take Control orders.