# TiVo FINALLY officially supports MacOS X 10.4 Tiger



## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2006/02/tivo_desktop_fo.html

How long has Tiger been out? 10 months or so? And the old desktop DID work, it just needed a tweak that we here figured out months ago.

I'm glad to see this finally arrive but I think it's hilariously pathetic that it took TiVo so long. Pathetic.

I secretely hope that yesterday's 10.4.5 breaks it again because that would just be classic. 

PS I won't be installing it myself; I have no need to with Galleon.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

cwoody222 said:


> PS I won't be installing it myself; I have no need to with Galleon.


So all that's really needed then is for the next version of HME to break Galleon.


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

HDTiVo said:


> So all that's really needed then is for the next version of HME to break Galleon.


Galleon and the HME SDK are both open source, so anyone with the ability to do so can fix that without waiting on TiVo or the original Galleon developer.


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## Aeolius (Oct 18, 2005)

Granted, this verson isn't supported on Intel Macs... oh well. Here's STILL hoping for a DVR from Apple.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Well, the Intel Macs have only been out about a month. Give TiVo until 2007 at least


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## timg (May 12, 2004)

Based on past events, it seems to me that the Intel based Macs won't be supported until a month or two after 10.5 is released. Of course, the release that supports the Intel Macs won't support 10.5 ...


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## cheezus (Jan 29, 2002)

Still no TiVoToGo though, so who gives a flying &$*@# ?


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

Actually someone raised an interesint question on my site about memory usage... I tried it out and took screenshots abotu 6AM before I left for work so I don't know. Another question I just thought of... does that LAME aac streaming hack work with the new software?? 

As I wrote on the blog, it's good to see they do have mac expertise int he office again, but it's a little discouraging that they released this software - I can only assume the TTG Desktop is still a ways off.


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## Aflat (Aug 29, 2005)

Since it is for the PowerPC, doesn't that mean you can run it under Rosetta?


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

One reader tried it on Intel and it failed. He/she speculates Java 1.4.1 doesn't work under Rosetta.


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

davezatz said:


> Actually someone raised an interesint question on my site about memory usage... I tried it out and took screenshots abotu 6AM before I left for work so I don't know. Another question I just thought of... does that LAME aac streaming hack work with the new software??


On my machine, it's sitting idle with a resident set size of ~80MB. I don't recall how much the older version used, but that doesn't seem out of whack for an app running under the JVM.

Yes, the AAC transcode support is still present.



> As I wrote on the blog, it's good to see they do have mac expertise int he office again, but it's a little discouraging that they released this software - I can only assume the TTG Desktop is still a ways off.


Eh, maybe. Probably safe to say "no TTG Desktop in the next month", but I don't know that you can draw any real conclusions beyond a relatively brief time frame. Really depends how difficult the fix was (both to code and to qualify for release.)


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

davezatz said:


> One reader tried it on Intel and it failed. He/she speculates Java 1.4.1 doesn't work under Rosetta.


TiVo Desktop is a Java application that includes JNI libraries. The Java Virtual Machine on Mac OS X Intel can't load JNI libraries under Rosetta -- they have to be universal or native. TiVo would need to build Intel flavors of their JNI files.

The JNI file contains native functions for some system utilities, code to handle Bonjour, image resizing, invoking the sound converter, and, apparently new in 1.9.2, several crypto functions (BlowFish and Turing logic, and references to MAKs). Looks like some of that TTG work crept in...


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Dennis Wilkinson said:


> Really depends how difficult the fix was (both to code and to qualify for release.)


Well, one could assume the fix itself was quite easy since we worked around it ourselves months ago.

More likely is that something SO easy too SO long due to it just not being a priority AT ALL for TiVo.

Why it would slip out now when their top Mac priority SHOULD be TiVoToGo is what worries me.

So I agree... this tells me, indirectly, that we're still a WAYS away from TiVoToGo for Mac 

And probably even longer away from either Desktop or ToGo supporting Intel Macs.


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

cwoody222 said:


> Well, one could assume the fix itself was quite easy since we worked around it ourselves months ago.


One could assume that. One could be wrong  (I don't know that one _is_ wrong, of course.)

I'm the one who found the workaround, remember? "Easy workaround" does not necessarily imply "easy fix." The fix for the Bonjour issue should have been straightforward (or a non-issue, since 10.4.2 cleared that up), as the installer crash most likely was (reproducible seg faults _usually_ are.) The periodic "broken picture" icon issue could have been tricky, however, depending on the root cause, since it had somewhat sporadic reproducibility.



> More likely is that something SO easy too SO long due to it just not being a priority AT ALL for TiVo.


I am in possession of no "insider knowledge" here, but I'd say it's equally likely that they were short Mac-knowledgeable developers.



> Why it would slip out now when their top Mac priority SHOULD be TiVoToGo is what worries me.
> 
> So I agree... this tells me, indirectly, that we're still a WAYS away from TiVoToGo for Mac
> 
> And probably even longer away from either Desktop or ToGo supporting Intel Macs.


It could have "slipped out now" because it was ready to go now. It could have been released now because they fixed the issue as part of the TTG work, and it was very easy to merge the change back into the non-TTG flavor and get it out the door (and my preliminary peeks at the distribution lend some weight to that theory.) We don't have enough real data, so your gut reads this as "TTG isn't coming for a long time", my gut tells me "we can't tell anything about TTG delivery date from this other than that it won't be in the immediate future, at least not within the next month." I guess I'm a bit more "glass half full". 

After all, "TiVoPony has stated TiVoToGo will support MacOS in mid-2006!"  -- going another 4 months without official support might be considered unreasonable if the situation can be remedied quickly.

As far as Intel Mac support goes, I think we can tell even _less_ about that from this release (although it seems to me that not having Intel support in this "patch" release makes me lean more toward an earlier, rather than a later release date.)

Frankly, with all the sound and fury about lack of official support of Tiger here and on the TiVo support forums, it strikes me that TiVo would have wanted to get this out as soon as it was practical, regardless of TTG support. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

Dennis Wilkinson said:


> TiVo Desktop is a Java application that includes JNI libraries. The Java Virtual Machine on Mac OS X Intel can't load JNI libraries under Rosetta -- they have to be universal or native. TiVo would need to build Intel flavors of their JNI files.
> 
> The JNI file contains native functions for some system utilities, code to handle Bonjour, image resizing, invoking the sound converter, and, apparently new in 1.9.2, several crypto functions (BlowFish and Turing logic, and references to MAKs). Looks like some of that TTG work crept in...


Thanks for the explanation.  The commenter could have been trying to tell me that, but my limited understanding led to an inaccurate posting on my part... While I am a Mac owner, I don't know a whole lot about the guts of it anymore.

I agree that a whole lot can't be read into the TiVoToGo Desktop for Mac other than it won't be in the "immediate future" as you say. TiVo's dog years scheduling has me intepreting "immediate" as in 3 months rather than your one. Then again my assumption was made BEFORE you identified the TTG framework appearing... wouldn't it be cool if I was wrong!


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## mikellanes (Dec 6, 2002)

With the LAME file installed all my aac music shows but when I try to play them the tivo just scrolls thru the songs then goes back to the menu, am I missing something?


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## iWish (May 16, 2005)

I think it is great that they finally fixed this. (Knock on wood -- since I haven't tested it yet.)

While there has been a great workaround by some dedicated TIVO/Apple consumers I'm still getting the broken pictures every four to six slides, which definitely takes the wow factor out of a impromptu slideshow for the guests.

In fact, I've been going to the trouble of posting pictures to my Yahoo acount to get around the broken picture issue, which by the way has led to $cash$ for a TIVO business partner (and less money for Apple's business partners) since I found that photos were cheaper through Yahoo than going through Apple. And even with a fix I'll probably continue to post some pictures on Yahoo to backup my photo's, lower the of cost ordering photos, and because of the the always-on ease of the Yahoo photo feature.


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

mikellanes said:


> With the LAME file installed all my aac music shows but when I try to play them the tivo just scrolls thru the songs then goes back to the menu, am I missing something?


Are these files from the iTunes Music Store, or un-DRM'd AAC? Files with FairPlay encryption still can't be decompressed.

If they aren't iTunes Music Store files, you might try invoking LAME from the command line and be sure the install actually works.


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## mikellanes (Dec 6, 2002)

Dennis Wilkinson said:


> Are these files from the iTunes Music Store, or un-DRM'd AAC? Files with FairPlay encryption still can't be decompressed.
> 
> If they aren't iTunes Music Store files, you might try invoking LAME from the command line and be sure the install actually works.


The songs have been stripped f the DRM. I found out it was a DivX plugin that was messing things up, disabled it and all is well.


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## dr_lha (May 13, 2005)

Doesn't work for me. I get an error on the TiVo despite the software appears to be running OK on my laptop.


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## 2farrell (Jul 12, 2002)

dr_lha said:


> Doesn't work for me. I get an error on the TiVo despite the software appears to be running OK on my laptop.


I've installed it on my Mac for the first time and even though my TiVo's see the Music and Photo's published, when I select either the TiVo shows, "Please Wait" for quite a while and then the Network error message appears. I don't have this problem with the PC version running on the same Network.
Am I missing something?

EDIT : OK, my bad, didn't turn the Firewall on for TiVo Desktop. BTW, is there a way to get TiVo Desktop to Play or Transcode Non-DRM AAC files?


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

2farrell said:


> BTW, is there a way to get TiVo Desktop to Play or Transcode Non-DRM AAC files?


Yes.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3782731&&#post3782731


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## 2farrell (Jul 12, 2002)

Dennis Wilkinson said:


> Yes.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3782731&&#post3782731


Thank you.
I'll give this a go later today.

EDIT : Just installed it and works perfectly. I did stop the TiVo Server before installing it and the Started after. Didn't know if this was necessary but it worked immeadiatly. Thanks again.


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## briguymaine (Mar 17, 2004)

This is hilarious! As soon as I read that the new desktop was released I just had to laugh. Luckily, 1.9.1 has been working just fine on my 10.4 system right after I upgraded Java a few months back, just popped up and started working one day, huh. So I won't be jumping at the chance to upgrade the Tivo Desktop any time soon, I've been burned by them before. But it's nice that the Tivo dev team has finally caught us up to the Windows version from what, 2 years ago?

Good job Tivo, and I can't wait to buy the brand new Series 3 HD Tivo for $2000 when it's released in 3 years!  

Come on Apple, give us a better dvr!


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

cwoody222 said:


> ...I secretely hope that yesterday's 10.4.5 breaks it again because that would just be classic. ;


Works fine for me in 10.4.5 on a G5.


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## ScubaCat (Jun 26, 2003)

I bought Tiger when it first came out but only installed it on my Powerbook and not my G5 iMac because I didn't want to lose the ability to view my pictures and listen to music through my TiVo. After waiting so long I finally took the plunge with Galleon and got it working then decided to go ahead and upgrade my iMac to Tiger. 

Imagine my surprise after the upgrade when my TiVo desktop continued to show up! I had no problem playing my music or viewing pictures through TiVo Desktop.  

I just now found out about the new version of TiVo desktop and have not installed it yet. It makes you wonder where the change was actually made!


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

ScubaCat said:


> I just now found out about the new version of TiVo desktop and have not installed it yet. It makes you wonder where the change was actually made!


You may not have had issues with 1.9.1 on Tiger, but others did: the installer crashed at the end of install; the preferences pane would crash sporadically; and you'd randomly see "broken image" icons in the slide show. The first one could be ignored, the second could be worked around temporarily, at least if you were comfortable at the command line, but the third wasn't able to be corrected by the user.

That's what they fixed. I don't know whether iLife '06 added any other complications for them, but they claim that to be supported as well.


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## tcbeatie (Nov 13, 2002)

2farrell said:


> EDIT : OK, my bad, didn't turn the Firewall on for TiVo Desktop. BTW, is there a way to get TiVo Desktop to Play or Transcode Non-DRM AAC files?


thanks for the tip


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