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Remote iTunes Streaming to iPhone or iPod Touch?

adbe said:
I'd largely agree with you, but then I don't feel like replacing a perfectly good 16GB Touch with a 32 or 64GB model when for no extra cost I could extend the utility of the one I have.
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I hope you realize that you just explained exactly why it won't be available for no extra cost ;)
 
ModernDemagogue said:
I don't know why people are so excited.

SimplifyMedia also already does this as well, and has been doing so for months. I can even access different iTunes libraries on different machines rather than tethering me to one library, plus it automatically pulls up band info, lyrics, etc...
Click to expand...

There are homebrew methods as well. I set up an Abyss web server on my old Lombard PowerBook G3 to serve music files to my iPod touch. I now have access to my entire 75GB library wherever I can get a WiFi connection. Just last month, I was listening to music on my home server in Japan while traveling in California. Works like a charm.

Where there's a will, there's a way...
 
paulshephard said:
But on the same principle mentioned, I also agree with a previous poster. It's all well and good extending a current product to make their customers happier; but theoretically, how could they possibly then upgrade their iPods?
At the moment, it is largely based on getting more memory into the same size shell as the previous iPod (for example, the current 80Gb iPod Classic being the same size as the previous 30Gb iPod).
If memory was literally no object, they could only really enhance things such as the design of the hardware and the UI, of which quite a lot of people won't necessarily be interested in; resulting in a potential loss in sales for their new products.
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That's certainly a concern for them. To some degree video and other high bandwidth media would offset this risk a little, but yeah, they'd certainly need compelling reasons to upgrade beyond capacity.
 
cameronjpu said:
I hope you realize that you just explained exactly why it won't be available for no extra cost ;)
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Nothing comes for no extra cost where the iPod Touch is concerned. ;)

To be fair though, the Touch didn't need to receive the January update. The App store is a little different in that Apple are making money hand over first there, but features have been added to the Touch that could have been rolled into a 2.0 version.

Again, it depends what other hardware features Apple has up its sleeve, or maybe even what ideas they may have to monetize the other end of the chain, I.E. the server box itself.
 
We would already have the wi-fi streaming functionality if apple hadn't locked down DAAP! :(
It does however explain WHY they locked down DAAP, they clearly plan on adding the functionality themselves... Fine by me, don't care you does it, just hope it's soon as this would be SO handy for me... If they can make it work over the cellular network too that would be bloody amazing!! :D
 
won't that affect sales of higher capacity iPods? I guess they don't care if they cannibalize themselves anyway...
 
Do It Yourself

You can stream audio AND video from your home server to your iPhone right now with no additional software. You won't have playlists, but for selection of specific songs or videos it works great...

System Preferences > Sharing > turn on Web Sharing

In Terminal, navigate to the web directory:

cd /Library/Webserver/Documents/

And make a symbolic link to your music or video location:

ln -s ~/Music
ln -s ~/Movies

Then put in the IP of that machine into Safari on the iPhone:

http://192.168.1.100/Music
http://192.168.1.100/Movies

(Replacing the IP number above with your dekstop's IP.) And there you have your files.

Interestingly, I can play MPEG-4 video files through this connection that iTunes won't let me sync to the iPhone directly. So it seems iTunes is more restrictive than it needs to be.
 
adbe said:
To be fair though, the Touch didn't need to receive the January update. The App store is a little different in that Apple are making money hand over first there, but features have been added to the Touch that could have been rolled into a 2.0 version.
Click to expand...

According to Apple, they are not making a lot of money there, and they are operating it much like the rest of the iTunes store, just trying to do better than breaking even. Seems illogical to me too though, seems like the profit margins should be pretty great on anything priced over $0.00.
 
cameronjpu said:
According to Apple, they are not making a lot of money there, and they are operating it much like the rest of the iTunes store, just trying to do better than breaking even. Seems illogical to me too though, seems like the profit margins should be pretty great on anything priced over $0.00.
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Really? That surprises me. The downloads are typically fairly small, so bandwidth should be on a par with a single iTunes song, but a lot of the library is selling for around $3-5.

Maybe the cost of serving all the 0 - 99c apps is quite high though, so effectively it balances out?
 
@mrzeve, thanks for the link to our blog, and thanks to everyone upthread for the Simplify Media mention. Just a quick update, Apple has approved Simplify Media for the App Store and it will be available in about a week.

The version for firmware 2.0 has similar features to the 1.1x jailbreak version (access your own music and songs from up to 30 friends), album art, lyrics and artist bios. And, more importantly it works over WiFi, 3G and EDGE.

As for pricing, the iPhone version will be free for the first 100,000 people to download it. For new downloads (not basic updates) after the first 100,000, the app will be $3.99. The desktop version of Simplify Media runs on Mac, PC and Linux and it is free.
 
Nonsanity said:
You can stream audio AND video from your home server to your iPhone right now with no additional software. You won't have playlists, but for selection of specific songs or videos it works great...

System Preferences > Sharing > turn on Web Sharing

In Terminal, navigate to the web directory:

cd /Library/Webserver/Documents/

And make a symbolic link to your music or video location:

ln -s ~/Music
ln -s ~/Movies

Then put in the IP of that machine into Safari on the iPhone:

http://192.168.1.100/Music
http://192.168.1.100/Movies

(Replacing the IP number above with your dekstop's IP.) And there you have your files.

Interestingly, I can play MPEG-4 video files through this connection that iTunes won't let me sync to the iPhone directly. So it seems iTunes is more restrictive than it needs to be.
Click to expand...

Of all the ways i've tried to do this, this is by far the simplest. Dude, you are seriously on my christmas card list! Thanks! ;)
 
Forget the streaming, I'd find it really useful just having an easy to browse and search copy of my iTunes library on my iPhone. I buy a lot of music on cd and having a copy of my library to check what I've already got would be a real help to me. Before anyone asks, yes my library really is that big.

I've been looking for an app that would help me out but haven't found anything suitable yet. I guess a spreadsheet would be one option but browsing and searching would be a nightmare - I need a neat little interface to make it nice and easy.
 
This would be amazing. My iPhone is full to the brim and applications are crashing constantly (which I assume is related....).
 
what exactly are they attempting to patent? I think streaming stuff from things to other things has already be done before.
 
TheSlush said:
Storage capacity rendered meaningless! (For song storage at least.)
Click to expand...

Nope, not really.
What about when you're on a plane or don't want to drain your battery by using the wireless radios?

It's still good to keep your content locally. ;-)
 
Most Likely

Most likely Apple is just hedging a bet that someone else will probably have made an app to do that.
As long as they have that patent, they have a basis to deny iTunes Store publishing (as if they couldn't anyways), and/or sue anyone who DOES create such an app. (To stream content from an iTunes library)

Still, It would be AWESOME if they DID make that functionality available!
 
Nope, not really.
What about when you're on a plane or don't want to drain your battery by using the wireless radios?

It's still good to keep your content locally. ;-)
Click to expand...


not to mention buses or trains-
 
I rather have remote syncing than streaming. Although I'm pretty sure if you could stream from your Mac at home, you should be able to sync remotely as well.
 
paul-simplify said:
@mrzeve, thanks for the link to our blog, and thanks to everyone upthread for the Simplify Media mention. Just a quick update, Apple has approved Simplify Media for the App Store and it will be available in about a week.

The version for firmware 2.0 has similar features to the 1.1x jailbreak version (access your own music and songs from up to 30 friends), album art, lyrics and artist bios. And, more importantly it works over WiFi, 3G and EDGE.

As for pricing, the iPhone version will be free for the first 100,000 people to download it. For new downloads (not basic updates) after the first 100,000, the app will be $3.99. The desktop version of Simplify Media runs on Mac, PC and Linux and it is free.
Click to expand...

Any thoughts on Apple trying to patent something you've clearly been doing for so long?
 
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