iOS 8.4 Removes Home Sharing for Music

Is everyone that truly misses this option walking around their house with headphones attached to a 16GB iPhone? Do you not have the storage to sync your iphone/ipod to iTunes? Do you not have speakers? I seriously don't get the outrage here. I use home sharing to move albums from my main mac to another but actually plug in my iPhone to transfer music to use outside the house.
 
I tried setting it up on a personal Linux server a while back and all the cool features wanted $.
Ive been using it for years. I dont know what you consider "cool features" but its a full featured media server for free. Plex pass (paid version) pretty much only give you access to beta versions.
 
And yet more reason for this decades long Apple buyer to look elsewhere for his next EVERYTHING. It's the 90s of Apple all over again.

Apple, the Frigidaire of Computers. They make the best (and overpriced) appliances. Too bad I'm in the market for actual computer products.
 
Is everyone that truly misses this option walking around their house with headphones attached to a 16GB iPhone? Do you not have the storage to sync your iphone/ipod to iTunes? Do you not have speakers? I seriously don't get the outrage here. I use home sharing to move albums from my main mac to another but actually plug in my iPhone to transfer music to use outside the house.

Thats not the point. I don't want to sync everything to my phone all the time, I want what i need for mobile and what i want when i need it or want it. I stream it from my mac mini to our garage or outside. or everyone can listen to everything we have on their own devices without cluttering with syncing and all that nonsense.

there are other purposes for it outside of that, but its nice. theres a lot of functionality within home sharing that doesn't have to be convoluted with family sharing or syncing and authorizing devices..same with our video and tv shows we own...they can stream them to their iPads or other computers with limited capacities and not have to manage multiple libraries and not take up bandwidth just to watch something we already have.
 
Thats not the point. I don't want to sync everything to my phone all the time, I want what i need for mobile and what i want when i need it or want it. I stream it from my mac mini to our garage or outside. or everyone can listen to everything we have on their own devices without cluttering with syncing and all that nonsense.

there are other purposes for it outside of that, but its nice. theres a lot of functionality within home sharing that doesn't have to be convoluted with family sharing or syncing and authorizing devices..same with our video and tv shows we own...they can stream them to their iPads or other computers with limited capacities and not have to manage multiple libraries and not take up bandwidth just to watch something we already have.

I will concur. As someone with several hundred gigabytes of audio books (yes I'm an audio book-aholic) even on a 64 GB device keeping them all synced is impractical. In addition not everyone has a home environment where they can blast music (or books) out of their speakers 24/7.

Apple has been disrespecting the Local Network for the last few years.
 
I don't get it, can't you use the remote app and airplay to stream music from your computer to another device? I just tried that and it still works. What did they take away?
 
Typical over reaction from some people to change!

I can still access my own iTunes Library on my iOS device using the Remote app :D

That won't do you any good with headphones or a dock to play from your library locally. In other words, Remote requires an Airplay capable device to send the output to (i.e. I cannot send output from iTunes to an iPod Touch or iPhone, only things like Airplay speakers, receivers, Apple TVs and Airport Express units).

What does Apple music have to do with the fact that I OWN all the music that is in my computer so I should be able to share it with anyone in my HOME? It's not like I can share outside of my network. Stupid.

I've read one theory elsewhere that Apple Music is licensed to play on only one device at a time and that some way, some how having the ability to access your home library with Apple Music on it might offer some way to "home share" that music to multiple devices. I personally don't see how as long as iTunes makes a distinction between your music library and whatever Apple Music streams. I haven't looked at the new iTunes, but if there is no real distinction (e.g. there is no distinction in iTunes between movies stored locally and "iCloud" versions stored on Apple servers, but the difference is that you "OWN" the license/right to watch those movies and songs whereas Apple Music is licensed for only ONE device at a time and the music available to stream can potentially change over time if an artist pulls their music (e.g. Netflix changes their streaming catalogs ALL THE TIME and too bad if you wanted to watch such and such movie when it changes). Even so, all iTunes has to do is flag streaming songs to not "home share" in iTunes and the problem would be solved.

But again, that possible "reason" for dropping home sharing (for now) was speculation on another site (I think it was a MacWorld article). If it is the reason that means the iTunes team screwed it up and the iOS team "fixed" it by wiping out home sharing. That's an absurd "fix". Logically speaking, it makes more sense that Apple wants to "encourage" you to get Apple Music rather than "buy" songs. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if LONG LONG TERM Apple would prefer to stop selling music altogether and just "rent" it as the profits would never end that way (i.e. you buy only once, but you rent forever). Of course, something like AirFoil could get around this limitation for your home network with no difficulty, making it rather moot. Of course, whether AirFoil will even work in El Captain with the new rootless security remains to be seen. I fully expect things like Xtrafinder to not work period in El Capitain without disabling rootless entirely.

Of course, people should let Apple know how unhappy they are with this change. But we all saw how much good that did with the free trial artist royalty thing. Obviously, someone famous is needed to scold Apple into fixing this situation. Ordinary humans mean nothing to Apple feedback.

Home Sharing is coming back; it got pulled temporarily because of the delay in updating Apple TV.

When that's out, Home Sharing will return to iOS devices, but in a new app.

I don't even know WTF this means. Home sharing wasn't an "App". It's an OPTION to load your home library on your iOS device. AppleTV isn't affected nor will it be affected since that's its entire job (well they could affect it, but then no one will buy it anymore). Having it on your iPhone/iPod Touch is just a convenient feature to listen to ALL your library at home with headphones or whatever. As someone pointed out above, the REMOTE App allows you to manage your home library to send to any Airplay receiving device. The problem for headphones is that iPhones and iPod Touches aren't Airplay RECEIVERS.
 
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This is exactly why I've moved away from Apple.

"Hey everyone - here's this neat feature. Buy our products!!"

"Oh yeah, by the way, that feature you like... you can't have it anymore. Don't ask questions."
 
I don't get it, can't you use the remote app and airplay to stream music from your computer to another device? I just tried that and it still works. What did they take away?

all that does is controls that device. i.e.; iPhone controls the Mac's library.
Yes we control our central library through the remote app, but thats when we're playing music or all watching a show.

What home sharing does as described before is access to your entire library on any device at any time on your network. stream books, movies, music, etc to a phone, iPad, mac, other Apple TV you name it.
 
Of course, people should let Apple know how unhappy they are with this change. But we all saw how much good that did with the free trial artist royalty thing. Obviously, someone famous is needed to scold Apple into fixing this situation. Ordinary humans mean nothing to Apple feedback.

Wouldn't be the first time that Apple's solution to something they broke was "buy a new one" or "pay for a different service of ours"

When Apple went from iOS 6 to iOS 7, shortly after, They broke iOS6's ability to use facetime. Instead of fixing the change, They just told everyone "upgrade to iOS7, even if it means buying a new device"

When Apple released OSx Mountain Lion, They broke / Removed support for 32 UEFI's. the SAME UEFI's apple had still been selling 2 years prior on several models. Instead of just porting over the driverset that already existed for OSx, they said "we're not supporting it, want latest OS o nyour 2 year old hardware, buy new hardware".

this is a very common occurrence with Apple Co. One of the reasons that I am very hesitant to user some of their services. I always worry they'll pull the plug and tell me to continue to get similar functionality, I have to spend more money, often without valid excuse WHY they made that change.
 
2 weeks after I finally got around to set up a dedicated mac to handle all my itunes stuff..
rage-guy-ffffuuuu-827748-l-124x124.png
 
This is a crazy overreaction. The release notes states as a "known issue":
  • Home Sharing and Genius Mixes are not currently available.

    As an "issue" that means they're working on a fix, not that they've removed the feature.
While correct; it wouldn't be Apple's first time where an "issues" resolution was "buy a replacement"

I can see Apple eventually coming back with "well, it's broken, want similar functionality, subscribe to Apple music and just stream your music"
 
I don't get it, can't you use the remote app and airplay to stream music from your computer to another device? I just tried that and it still works. What did they take away?

Listen to what you said, "stream to ANOTHER DEVICE". They "took away" the ability to LISTEN to your home library on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. In other words, the headphone jack (or Bluetooth headphones) on said device. Why would anyone want to use a headphone jack? I dunno. Isn't that what the iPod was originally invented for? Believe it or not, some people do listen to headphones around the house (whether working out, doing chores or just listening quietly to not disturb others in the house that may be sleeping or whatever).
 
Thats not the point. I don't want to sync everything to my phone all the time, I want what i need for mobile and what i want when i need it or want it. I stream it from my mac mini to our garage or outside. or everyone can listen to everything we have on their own devices without cluttering with syncing and all that nonsense.

there are other purposes for it outside of that, but its nice. theres a lot of functionality within home sharing that doesn't have to be convoluted with family sharing or syncing and authorizing devices..same with our video and tv shows we own...they can stream them to their iPads or other computers with limited capacities and not have to manage multiple libraries and not take up bandwidth just to watch something we already have.

So your friends can walk around your router with their headphones on? Got it.
 
Use plex media server.
The reason I went Apple was vertical integration and the once excellent and reliable ways of making things just work that seemed no-brainer features.

With Apple removing so many features and applications I've become accustomed to, often at a blink of an eye so to speak, I'm beginning to wonder how much of the extra value I always knew I was getting when paying more for "the same" as often cited I'm still getting.
That and their expansion of attempts to upsell me left and right and strip me of former freedoms.

Really, this iMac is getting a very long and good run and I'm not so certain anymore what my next computer will be.
Probably a PC for the heavy lifting and then let's see how long Apple let's me use up to date software on this well over 2000€ computer.

They are more and more testing the affection of informed buyers and power users.

Glassed Silver:mac
 
Folks I'm sure it'll be back or a variation of it. It's not the end of the world. All will be well again.
 
While correct; it wouldn't be Apple's first time where an "issues" resolution was "buy a replacement"

I can see Apple eventually coming back with "well, it's broken, want similar functionality, subscribe to Apple music and just stream your music"
But why let go of Genius Mixes? They could be a great selling point for Apple Music: create mixes from the music you already own by searching the entire Apple Music library. (Truthfully, that prospect was one of the main things I was looking forward to in the system). The alternative is to create a radio station from your known songs, which may prove to be good enough in time...
 
The reason I went Apple was vertical integration and the once excellent and reliable ways of making things just work that seemed no-brainer features.

With Apple removing so many features and applications I've become accustomed to, often at a blink of an eye so to speak, I'm beginning to wonder how much of the extra value I always knew I was getting when paying more for "the same" as often cited I'm still getting.
That and their expansion of attempts to upsell me left and right and strip me of former freedoms.

Really, this iMac is getting a very long and good run and I'm not so certain anymore what my next computer will be.
Probably a PC for the heavy lifting and then let's see how long Apple let's me use up to date software on this well over 2000€ computer.

They are more and more testing the affection of informed buyers and power users.

Glassed Silver:mac

What upsell's are you seeing that aren't on par with any tech/electronics/etc. company? If anything OS X and iOS are becoming more user friendly not less so and the integration is more than ever before.

No homesharing. Chill out people. I'm sure it will return or at least a different variation of it. This has always been the way Apple does things. Upgrades come over time. Features disappear then reappear in a different form etc. a brand new service is launched and it doesn't have everything everyone wants and folks are ready to jump ship a few days into it.
 
DRM in the sense that your AppleID is included in the file and it's very difficult to remove. You can still copy the songs to other devices, but if you were to share them online they could be traced back to you.

What's worse for me is, iTunes Match (and no doubt Apple Music streaming) degrades many CD versions of albums, unless you like it heavily compressed and with increase volume. "Mastered for iTunes" is not necessarily sonically better than orig. release Mastered for CD or Vinyl, it's just louder!

Do you have a link to info on the Match changes?

I don't consider a "watermark" to be DRM which in the context of music always meant it was locked to authorized devices. What I don't want is for music I add on one computer to locked to other computers using Match. In other words, I don't want to have to have a "master" iTunes computer that feeds the cloud.
 
What upsell's are you seeing that aren't on par with any tech/electronics/etc. company? If anything OS X and iOS are becoming more user friendly not less so and the integration is more than ever before.

No homesharing. Chill out people. I'm sure it will return or at least a different variation of it. This has always been the way Apple does things. Upgrades come over time. Features disappear then reappear in a different form etc. a brand new service is launched and it doesn't have everything everyone wants and folks are ready to jump ship a few days into it.
Jump ship a few days into it?
I'm not even saying that, oh and it's not like this is the first instance of shipping software that's not ready if you like to think of it as "just not in there yet".
Home sharing isn't a feature of the new service, so I'm confused why you bring that up.

I don't just hold Apple to the standards set by other companies, because if you look at their history, their marketing, etc it's exactly what you are not supposed to do.
"Only Apple could do this" is just the latest example set by Tim Cook.
This company wants to give you the impression they play above everyone else, yet they make stupid moves that are obvious upsells and if you haven't seen them left and right I don't know if it's worth pointing them out, but okay:

-soldered and glued parts all over, even when it's not necessary.
-optical image stabilization on iPhone 6+ only
-giving iPhone 6's generation of phones only 1GB, oh come on. Meanwhile the iPad has 2GB and we all know what happens to the device that has been featuring too little RAM for too long. (iPod 4th gen anyone?)

These are just a few examples, the more I give the more people will try to dismantle my argument picking the one that they think is a bad example.

And as I said, I'm not saying I'm jumping ship tomorrow, but I will say that Apple is ditching a lot of the incentives of what brought me to the Mac and iOS and had me be a mostly happy user of their products, but I don't like BS - especially not when the company constantly calls out other companies for their BS and saying they are not in it for the money, of course they are, but they have become less considerate of advanced users.

Glassed Silver:mac
 
Do you have a link to info on the Match changes?

I don't consider a "watermark" to be DRM which in the context of music always meant it was locked to authorized devices. What I don't want is for music I add on one computer to locked to other computers using Match. In other words, I don't want to have to have a "master" iTunes computer that feeds the cloud.
Match is still DRM-free.

The "Music in the Cloud" library, which is part of Apple Music - as opposed to the still intact iTunes Match - is DRM'd.

So basically, iTunes Match in a subpar form is "included" in Apple Music.
Funny that they watered it down to older, frowned upon standards in a service that's more expensive than the service it integrates.
Guess that's why they didn't just flat out say: "Music includes iTunes Match as well for no additional cost" or something along those lines.
It'd be a lie.

Glassed Silver:mac
 
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