Saturday, October 18, 2003

Apple - Discussions - SMB shared iTunes Lib: Dual Mac/Win Client

Editing a single SMB share iTunes repository from Mac and Windows iTunes clients.

I have iTunes 4.1 installed on a Win2K and WinXP box and on an iBook. The tunes all sit on a single SMB share. As a fairly expert OS X and Windows user who's been using iTunes for about 6 months, I feel it's blown away the entire PC music management world. Hence this question.

Has anyone tried the terrifying experiment of pointing every version of iTunes at the same iTunes library? Does the whole thing explode?

Thus far I've one machine (the iBook) that manges the main library and does the burning. I dropped the library folder on the other machines to build their view, so they each have their own repository.

For various reasons, depending on compatibiilty with the photo Vault feature of my iPod, I may switch the library management to the WinXP machine, redo my iPod with FAT32[1], and also sync my iPod there.

If I do that, I have two options for library management:

a. Point iTunes 4.1 on the other machines to the main machine and manage the respository from any machine.
b. Use Microsoft Remote Desktop from the other machines to control iTunes on the XP machine and share the library to the other machines.

Anyone experiment with option a? It seems by far the riskiest.

john

meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, iPod, iTunes, LAN, mixed LAN, wireless LAN, shares, server, music server, 802.11b, ethernet, configuration, mixed architecture

[1] I'll put an HPFS+ image on the iPod drive for mounting on a Mac, but be able to use the iPod with a USB cable as a very large "thumb drive". An iPod that's a PC mountable USB drive, a firewire mountable HPFS share, a music box, a Photo Vault, a recording tool and a lightweight PIM is an intriguing proposition.

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