Given multiple computers in households, additional devices such as AppleTV and iPhone, etc., iTunes needs to either move to or have an optional capability to run as a server. I want an iTunes Library to act as one central repository for all my media. It should be able to have purchases added to it from multiple locations, and be synced and/or streamed to even more locations. The iPhone versions of the iTMS/App Store already have this sort of capability (buy on the iPhone, gets pushed back to iTunes on sync), and this would add incredible capability.

Think of a implementation-hidden, UNIX-y approach to your home Media Library. One component (the Library) stores all the media, and gives hooks for adding purchased content, regular content, downloading subscribed content (season pass TV shows, podcasts, etc.) Clients to this Library can be anything. iPods, AppleTVs, other front-end focused instances of iTunes.

Now add the ability for either a revised AppleTV or a brand new device to act as the Tivo media grabber that could dump captured TV content (HD/cablecard/firewire grab capable) into the library.  Add streaming over the web to iPhones/iPod Touches a la Simplify Media…

iTunes is close to this already. But if it could run in an asynchronous or headless mode (not monopolizing the Library files or requiring the front end to always be running) and allow remote devices to add files, Apple will have a no-compromises solution to the whole household’s media.

Erin and Cooper had birthdays. Cooper is now 3 and had a big party at JW Tumbles which is like a kids gym. It was a hit, lots of his friends were there (pics are up on adventures) and everybody slept well that night.

Fletcher got tubes in his ears in late February, had some fluid draining out for a while, and then got rotavirus from school (non-stop spit-up and well, the other end). He seems better today – we think we’re out of the woods, but quite the ordeal for the little guy.

Went ahead and got the new Intel based Mac Mini – pretty sweet. Quite fast, double the memory, seems to be working well. One of the issues is tracking down or verifying Intel or Universal versions of all the apps. They are coming out fast and furious, but not everything is all ship-shape yet. For instance, the exporter I used to send stuff from iPhoto to gallery seems hosed for now. ffmpegX is almost there, MacTheRipper is working on it, VLC seems good but still only by using a nightly build. Some stuff can use Rosetta, but a lot of things need to be recoded. Plus, you just want to use the full power of the new box.

Mac Desktop (80 GB Main and 160 GB iLife and Games) 240 GB
PC Desktop 30 GB
Mac Laptop 40 GB
PC HTPC 40 GB
FreeBSD Dev Server 30 GB
Mac File Server (40 GB Main/Website and 400 GB files and 320 GB Backup) 760 GB

(Oh, and 2 iPods – 20 and 40 GB)

Total: 1200 GB, or Over One Terabyte.

Desktop home folder daily
Server home folder daily
Sites folder daily
iTunes and iPhoto libraries weekly
Quicken files weekly
Misc file server files monthly

Cardhu the Mac mini as the web server, maybe running off an external firewire drive (probably the 160 GB) for size plus longevity (?).

Oban the 1 Ghz Athlon with FreeBSD 5.X as fileserver with 2 200 GB drives in software RAID-0 (gvinum).

Springbank the old fileserver goes away/becomes new testbed.

Knockando the 867 Mhz PB 12″ becomes dev/Mac testing/used more as a laptop.

New mac mini gets ordered when it would come with Tiger, used with the Dell FP2005W (need a name!).

Cosmo the Celeron 466 desktop becomes solely for Erin’s work and a 2nd browser.