Hello
I have a couple of macs in the family/house. (3 with 3 more on the way.) One or two them (mine) will be an Air (with its inherent storage shortage problems).
Ideally, I am looking for a flexible solution to share music and video across these machines (possibly through some sort of itunes server, time machine or using the hard drive of an apple tv) in a way that lets me select what I want to store both on the server and locally, and what I want to store only on the server. The server should be accessible from all computers and I really would like to use contents from the server with ipods/(iphones?) I connect to any of the machines (regardless if the music is stored only on the server or also locally.) Is it even possible to sync an ipod if your music is not stored locally? I don't have an ipod yet so I don't know how syncing works. I will surely get one when I buy the Air as I will need all the extra storage space in my pocket I can get.
The real life situation is that my dad encodes his abundance of CDs religiously. And he wants to have it on his laptop. It would be nice to have access to that music but I do not want a local copy on my future air. (Maybe a few favorite songs, no more.) I also encode some music but with the storage problems of the Air I doubt I will want to store much of that locally. My dad might want to have access to what I encoded but probably would not want a local copy. (Or if he does, he wants to have that option.)
Is there a good way to accomplish this kind of a setup? As I said, I have more than enough apple hardware laying around. TIme Machine is on the way. Apple TV (or NAS) I am willing to buy any day. I have a mini that should go out of commission as soon as I buy the air (hand down the MBP to the dad, who than hands down the PB to the MOM who than will not need the mini.) So I can turn the mini into a server if need be.
Basically, I am willing to spend money on this. I just want a solution. I can't seem to find it.
Any advice for me?
I have a couple of macs in the family/house. (3 with 3 more on the way.) One or two them (mine) will be an Air (with its inherent storage shortage problems).
Ideally, I am looking for a flexible solution to share music and video across these machines (possibly through some sort of itunes server, time machine or using the hard drive of an apple tv) in a way that lets me select what I want to store both on the server and locally, and what I want to store only on the server. The server should be accessible from all computers and I really would like to use contents from the server with ipods/(iphones?) I connect to any of the machines (regardless if the music is stored only on the server or also locally.) Is it even possible to sync an ipod if your music is not stored locally? I don't have an ipod yet so I don't know how syncing works. I will surely get one when I buy the Air as I will need all the extra storage space in my pocket I can get.
The real life situation is that my dad encodes his abundance of CDs religiously. And he wants to have it on his laptop. It would be nice to have access to that music but I do not want a local copy on my future air. (Maybe a few favorite songs, no more.) I also encode some music but with the storage problems of the Air I doubt I will want to store much of that locally. My dad might want to have access to what I encoded but probably would not want a local copy. (Or if he does, he wants to have that option.)
Is there a good way to accomplish this kind of a setup? As I said, I have more than enough apple hardware laying around. TIme Machine is on the way. Apple TV (or NAS) I am willing to buy any day. I have a mini that should go out of commission as soon as I buy the air (hand down the MBP to the dad, who than hands down the PB to the MOM who than will not need the mini.) So I can turn the mini into a server if need be.
Basically, I am willing to spend money on this. I just want a solution. I can't seem to find it.
Any advice for me?