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Apple Developing a Home Media Server?

RAMDoubler said:
Thank you! Me likey! :D

Now, let's see. iStore with one drive, maybe $799, plus $399 for add'l 1TB drives. Could get expensive pretty fast.

Anyone see any way it would cost any less from Apple considering the price point of the 1TB TC?
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yes the way they charge less is to do 4 or less drives. Possibly even 2 drives. Apple has been working on ZFS for quite some time. By using ZFS, you can have raid 5 like redundancy with snapshots without the need of all of the raid headaches.

Furthermore, expandability could be done either add on modules, or USB ( or even firewire or esata, though don't bet on these last two). This would give the use the ability for more storage without having to implement a whole system for it.

I have noticed that apple likes to add capabilities and functionality into products without the need of complexity and unnessary buttons & ports.

My guess it it would look a lot like a larger time capsule - with only 2 drives (dual 500GB or dual 1TB), 2 USB ports, 10/100/1000 Ethernet & 802.11n. It may also have an airport basestation built into it... although that is about a 50%-50% possibility. Don't believe that a device like this will be as feature rich as the windows home server. It will probably more like an appliance vs a computer. It will have a set of features that it does well, with little to no upgradability. New features will either be an OS-type update or done in new versions of buying the whole system. I believe these things because it is consistent with how apple has built its business with ipods, airport networking, macs & its software.

Finally, a device like this probably has a fixed price point that it can successfully be sold at to get both maximum profitability and not out price itself in the market. I highly doubt it will exceed $800 - for that much you can almost get another macbook. I think 2 models at $649 & $799.
 
Full of Win said:
Makes total sense. I've come to the conclusion that after 3 months of copying moves from my NetFlicks subscription, and trying to view them on three separate Macs, there has to be a better way.
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Thanks dude. You are the reason this media servers tuff does not advance as fast as it should. Buy your ****, then argue you can use it any way you want. If you are just ripping netflix, then you are stealing.
:mad:
 
OllyW said:
The six drive Netgear ReadyNAS Pro starts at $1700 with 3 x 500GB drives.

What makes you think that a seven drive server (as shown in the photo) from Apple of all people would be half the price?
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I'm a dreamer... ;)

HP MediaSmart Servers start a lot lower than that with a 1TB drive. A $1700 starting price point for an Apple Media Server misses the mark as far as I'm concerned.

Now, I don't disagree with you...wouldn't surprise me a bit if it starts out at $999. I'd be wholly disappointed, but not surprised.
 
Michael73 said:
One other thought...it would be great if this wasn't specifically a hardware product. I would be nice if those of us with a MacPro could designate a drive or partition as the "home media drive" that other apple devices could sync with.
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Definitely. I hope Apple doesn't lock these features down to a specific device. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't see why this can't be done in software only. Installed on a Mac of your choice, music, photos and movies could be streamed and synced to other Macs.

Then after a few months, some hackers have (hopefullly) developed a compatible server for Linux, so that you could build a cheap home server yourself...
 
you know, they would have to compete with windows home server- which will work with mac. so I dont think it will be horribly expensive. Besides- anyone seen hd prices these days? 99 bucks for a terabyte drive!
 
Count me in as another potential owner. Given the amount of media that people have on their computers nowadays, there has to be a better way to store all this stuff.

I agree, iTunes does a terrible job dealing with more media than will fit on one drive. It would be great if it could all go on one centralized server with RAID backup capability.
 
MacAlpha said:
Count me in as another potential owner. Given the amount of media that people have on their computers nowadays, there has to be a better way to store all this stuff.

I agree, iTunes does a terrible job dealing with more media than will fit on one drive. It would be great if it could all go on one centralized server with RAID backup capability.
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iTunes also does a poor job when you importing a large amount of ripped movies. I don't think it is built to house a huge movie library and share them on a network.
 
How likely?

As a relatively new Mac user (since July) I don't have a lot of historical context to base such rumors on. So question is - how likely to you think this is to be released at MacWorld? It seems to be a fairly complex release that would require updates to the OS, applications (i.e. iTunes), the MobileMe service, and new hardware for the server itself.

It seems to me that this kind of massive change would be difficult to implement quickly and hard to keep under wraps. Or am I underestimating Apple? Any other tech company would have had a leak before now for a release this big happening in a few days....
 
Macwick said:
As a relatively new Mac user (since July) I don't have a lot of historical context to base such rumors on. So question is - how likely to you think this is to be released at MacWorld? It seems to be a fairly complex release that would require updates to the OS, applications (i.e. iTunes), the MobileMe service, and new hardware for the server itself.

It seems to me that this kind of massive change would be difficult to implement quickly and hard to keep under wraps. Or am I underestimating Apple? Any other tech company would have had a leak before now for a release this big happening in a few days....
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There have been products that apple has been able to keep total control over before announcing it. granted, most don't but some do. this could also just be a rumor or this could be the first leak about it.
 
The prices people are throwing around seem very steep. I would never pay $999 for the ability to play my mp3s, movies, or view files remotely. I already have all the mp3s I need on my 20GB iPod and 16 GB iPhone. To add movies to the mix wouldn't be worth it. Why pay this much for movies when I can just stop at a Redbox and pay a dollar. I can't see any other reason why I would need my movies remotely in an emgergency situation. As for files, I already can remotely access all the files I want on my iPhone. Sorry, I wouldn't pay more than $299 for these features.
 
Yvan256 said:
...And yes, I have to check/uncheck the "let iTunes manage files" every time I add something. It works, but it's annoying.
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Why not just leave it checked or unchecked which ever one you use more, then just hold down the option key when you add files that you don't want itunes to add automatically, or vice versa.
 
How's this different than a mac-mini with a Drobo attached. I would rather see them upgrade the mac-mini. I can roll my own media server. Apple's solution will be expensive.

Of course, I will probably want one when Steve tells me how great it is and how it's the best thing since sliced bread. :rolleyes:
 
Only issue I see with the access everywhere part is that for the iPhone & iPod Touch the streaming would likely further hurt battery performance, probably more so on the touch. Less of an issue if you have a laptop with you and connected to an ac power outlet.
 
rickeym said:
How's this different than a mac-mini with a Drobo attached. I would rather see them upgrade the mac-mini. I can roll my own media server. Apple's solution will be expensive.

Of course, I will probably want one when Steve tells me how great it is and how it's the best thing since sliced bread. :rolleyes:
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you mean when Phil tells you
 
An Apple media server would seem to contradict the very notion of what the media server is about today - CHEAP.

HP's WHS boxes go for $450 to $799. You can gather some old hardware and put one together yourself, throw in some $60 500GB HDDs and a license of WHS for $129.

Apple is not likely to be cheap. The functionality might be high - a server for iTunes, movie storage, etc. Apple can integrate it vertically with all of its other parts - iTunes especially that would allow for one collective "home library" for all the users attached to that server, instead of individual libraries on each computer. Even streaming your stuff back down to your iPhone/iPod Touch would be great (though I would expect the content industry to **** a brick). But I don't know if its worth the price Apple will put on it. Especially for someone like me who already has a WHS box with 1.5TB of storage.
 
So... they can't even get Back to My Mac working properly and you guys expect this thing will actually work?
 
mmcxiiad said:
iTunes also does a poor job when you importing a large amount of ripped movies. I don't think it is built to house a huge movie library and share them on a network.
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Yes, with a huge library (maybe >1TB) iTunes really is slow. It becomes unusable.
 
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