iTunes 12.7 Library Sharing / Home Sharing with PowerPC <-> Intel

[AphoticD]

Just to document things, here is a list of supported PowerPC versions of iTunes which can connect and use iTunes Shared Library and Home Sharing features when connecting with the current version of iTunes (12.7).

• iTunes 6.0.5 on Jaguar 10.2.8 - No go. (States "Shared library version is not supported.")
• iTunes 7.7.1 on Panther 10.3.9 - Library sharing: OK, Home Sharing: No go.
• iTunes 8.2.1 on Tiger (G3) 10.4.11 - Library sharing: OK, Home Sharing: No go.
• iTunes 9.2.1 on Tiger 10.4.11 - A OK.
• iTunes 10.6.3 on Leopard 10.5.8 - A OK.

Any PowerPC Mac running Panther or later will handle music streaming no problem, but video streaming in iTunes is likely to require something faster than a G3. Video streaming over wifi works great with my AlBooks, but a Mac using an original Airport card will have trouble keeping up unless connected over Ethernet.

My TiBook G4 867Mhz handled playback of h264 DVD rips perfectly when connected to Ethernet, but playback of the same videos in iTunes were too much to ask of my Pismo (G3 400Mhz). I suspect the better option for video streaming on the G3 is File Sharing -> mplayer or running VLC with a server/client connection.

So if you have an iMac or iBook which you can connect up to a speaker system. Don't hesitate to put that old PowerPC to work with iTunes to act as a Music Jukebox or Movie / TV Show player and it will pull down your library from any current Mac.

----

Just on a side note, I stumbled a bit with 8.2.1 on my Pismo, because I had previously installed iTunes 9.2.1 (which doesn't launch on the G3) and had to remove it before version 8.2.1 would install. Even after reinstalling, the Shared Libraries just wouldn't load. Digging a little deeper revealed the CoreFP framework also needed to be removed before installing the older version of iTunes.

For my own future reference and for anyone looking to do the same, to completely remove iTunes 9.2.1 in Tiger, run these commands (one at a time) in Terminal:

lsbom -fls /Library/Receipts/AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom | xargs rm
lsbom -fls /Library/Receipts/iTunesAccess.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom | xargs rm
lsbom -fls /Library/Receipts/iTunesX.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom | xargs rm
lsbom -fls /Library/Receipts/CoreFP.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom | xargs rm
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/iTunesAccess.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/iTunesX.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/CoreFP.pkg

And finally (just to clean up):

rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app

If the system complains about not having privileges to delete the files then first enter a root shell with sudo -s and try again.

-AphoticD

 

[eyoungren]

I will just mention, if you have not heard my spiel by now, that iTunes 4.0 is the ONLY version of iTunes that can share your library over the internet.

All other iTunes sharing requires computers to be sharing the same network.

Apple quickly removed this feature in the iTunes 4.0.1 release.

You can find iTunes 4.0 in that FTP link I gave you (that's where I found it).

I have it on my G5 and can stream my library anywhere.

 

[AphoticD]

I will just mention, if you have not heard my spiel by now, that iTunes 4.0 is the ONLY version of iTunes that can share your library over the internet.

All other iTunes sharing requires computers to be sharing the same network.

Apple quickly removed this feature in the iTunes 4.0.1 release.

You can find iTunes 4.0 in that FTP link I gave you (that's where I found it).

I have it on my G5 and can stream my library anywhere.

That’s handy to know. Can a recent Mac connect to the v4.0 share? And how do you manually connect to a share outside of the LAN?

 

[eyoungren]

That’s handy to know. Can a recent Mac connect to the v4.0 share? And how do you manually connect to a share outside of the LAN?

That's the downside to it. It will only share with other devices running 4.0.

Outside your home network to connect you press CMD+K and then enter the IP address of your router. So you have to open the ports for this in your router and direct it to the computer running 4.0.

Google Play stopped uploading my library on my PowerPC Macs so I moved it to my Intel MBP. That allowed me to just use 4.0 on my G5 and my 17" PB with a copy of my music library.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/itunes-4-0-rises-again….2028499

 

[647156]

Don't forget that 9.1 does launch on Tiger on G3s, even though it wasn't officially supported.

 

[AphoticD]

That's the downside to it. It will only share with other devices running 4.0.

Outside your home network to connect you press CMD+K and then enter the IP address of your router. So you have to open the ports for this in your router and direct it to the computer running 4.0.

Google Play stopped uploading my library on my PowerPC Macs so I moved it to my Intel MBP. That allowed me to just use 4.0 on my G5 and my 17" PB with a copy of my music library.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/itunes-4-0-rises-again….2028499

I wonder if there is any way to use 4.0 to connect two remote Macs, then bridge across to pick up and re-share with a newer version to talk to modern Macs, AppleTV, iOS, etc

Did v4.0 have the Import option to transfer files between libraries? (Or was that only introduced with Home Sharing?)
[doublepost=1505920682][/doublepost]

Don't forget that 9.1 does launch on Tiger on G3s, even though it wasn't officially supported.

Cool. Another useful tidbit. Are there any downsides to running v9.1 on a G3? Missing features?

I wonder what feature specifically required Altivec, forcing the G4 “requirement”. I’d have to go through the release notes, but all I can see which is really different is the introduction of the Home Sharing feature and more integration with the iTunes Store. Which no longer works anyway.

 

[eyoungren]

I wonder if there is any way to use 4.0 to connect two remote Macs, then bridge across to pick up and re-share with a newer version to talk to modern Macs, AppleTV, iOS, etc

Did v4.0 have the Import option to transfer files between libraries? (Or was that only introduced with Home Sharing?)

I don't know on both points. The library of 4.0 is pretty simple compared to what we have now. But that was back when syncing was just with iPods so it didn't need to be so complex.

You can cheat a bit with any version of iTunes to share across the internet (just keep things close to the same version), but it takes a bit of work and requires that non-local computers do not have their own iTunes library (or some extra work).

What you do is turn on file sharing on the Mac with the host library and open the AFP port in your router. Then, with the non-local Mac you connect and mount the local Mac drive on your desktop.

From there it's a matter of using an alias to the local Mac's iTunes library and putting that alias in the non-local Mac iTunes library location.

When you open iTunes on the non-local Mac it reads the library from the local Mac through the alias and you're streaming your home library over the net.