Cringely thinks Apple has an Airport Express replacement coming

Cringely, one of my favorite tech writers for over a decade, is as addicted to Apple watching as any geek. One of his recent columns had the slightly whacky claim that Apple was going to sell a wearable headmount display for the video iPod by the end of this year (he was reaching there -- I think this is weird enough that it will have to be pioneered by kids first).

More to my interests, he's been speculating about an Apple Airport Express replacement ...

PBS | I, Cringely . October 13, 2005 - Seeing Is Believing

... When the Apple experiment is complete and successful, we'll see the movie studios sign on, at which point Apple will finally announce that Video Express, which is the component still required to practically link this new video system to your TV. That rash of products will also include Apple's much faster 802.11n version of its Airport access point, which suggests that the Video Express will be 802.11n as well, which figures.

And of course that's when Apple will start selling Sony flat panel TVs in its stores. I don't think Apple will do its own brand of TVs like Gateway, Dell, and HP have done. They'll stick with Sony, which makes sense for a ton of reasons including undermining any thought Sony might have to competing with Apple in the video distribution business.

The current high-speed standard is 802.11g. It does not have the capacity to stream even lo-res digital video -- even if it were compressed. (The current Airport Express requires an uncompressed digital audio stream)! So it makes sense that a video compatible replacement would be 802.11n.

netTunes: remote control for OS X iTunes

I've been dismayed Apple's fumbled execution of the AirTunes vision. Then I came across netTunes ($20).

NetTunes is a "simple" remote control application for iTunes. You install it on server (one) and clients (multiple). It 'captures' the iTunes screen on the server and delivers it to the client. In other words, it's a "classic" raster based remote control application -- save that it only works for iTunes.

I've been testing it over a (slowish) 802.11b LAN with the client running on an iBook and the server running on a G5 iMac. I made two key preference settings:

1. Set for fastest display (ie. uglier but fast).
2. Set remote display to scale to size of client display (very important since my remote display is 1680 x 1050 and my local display is 1024x768) rather than downsample remote display.
   

And the result? Well, it's not lighting speed and it's not beautiful, but it does seem to work. I tested swiching users on the server (no apparently problem) [OOPS. Fast User Switching is indeed perilous. Further testing indicated] and I tried putting the client to sleep and restarting (took a few moments to reconnect). If it holds up in further testing I'll gladly pay $20.

Update 10/15/05: No, this one doesn't work. Once I'd registered ($20) I could do enough testing to show that the Fast User Switching is incompatible with netTunes server. The author had told me that beforehand, but I was having enough success on the 30 minute trials that I decided to give it a shot. It seems to work, but if one does something to open a new window the server dies. NetTunes really does require that iTunes run in the foreground session. That makes it of limited utility for me. I'm told that it work very well with folks using a headless Mac mini as a dedicated media server.

Update 10/23/05: I kept on using NetTunes, but things didn't get better. Even when iTunes was running in the GUI user session a screensaver would make it unuseable. The final straw was some new system instability and iTunes lockups. Probably unrelated to NetTunes, but the timing was bad. I removed the server.

The Apple AirTunes vision -- not really ready for primetime

[This post strains the blog metaphor. It's partly chronological, partly revised. In summary I was initially very unimpressed with the Airport Express and AirTunes -- but I'm beating it into submission.]

Apple's AirTunes vision sounds good -- on the web page:

Apple - AirPort Express

AirTunes Unleashes Your Music

... AirPort Express with AirTunes brings your iTunes music in your Mac or PC into your living room — or wherever in your home you have a stereo or a set of powered speakers.(1) All you have to do is connect your sound system to the audio port on the AirPort Express Base Station using an audio cable (included in the optional AirPort Express Stereo Connection Kit) and AirTunes lets you play your iTunes music through your stereo or powered speakers — wirelessly. iTunes automatically detects the connection of your remote speakers, so you just have to select them in the popup list that appears at the bottom of the iTunes window and click play.(2)

Enjoy your playlists, set iTunes to shuffle through your entire library or repeat your favorite songs over and over again — however you like to enjoy your music on iTunes, you can now enjoy it that way through your stereo speakers, wherever they’re located in your house.

Buy more than one AirPort Express Base Station and connect one to every stereo or set of powered speakers in your house — one to your stereo in your living room and another to a pair of powered speakers in your kitchen, for example. Its small size and affordability make it perfect for having more than one. Imagine being able to play your iTunes music on whichever speakers in your house you prefer.

Ahem. Ok, now back to reality. iTunes will stream to one AirPort Express Base Station (AExpBS). So you might have 3 of 'em attached to powered speakers, but only one will play at a time. So much for music throughout the house!

In any case, it doesn't work all that well. Even when I stream to the AExpBS from a powerful server I get occasional pauses in the music (even with a large buffer set in iTunes -- I think the problem is that the AExpBS needs a much larger internal buffer - but see below, later I fixed this). The biggest problem, however, is the lack of remote control for iTunes (see below for workarounds).

The situation Apple ought to be encouraging is a media server holding music and Apple devices controlling that. For example, music on a G5 iMac, control via an iBook. One LAN with multiple Apple wireless devices. Well, that's what I tried:

1. G5 iMac with iTunes running in a Tiger login session, connected to AirPort Extreme Base station by 10 Mbps wired ethernet. iTunes is sharing Library.
   
2. AirPort Extreme base station configured for 802.11 b networking.
   
3. AirPort Express Base Station attached in bridge mode to the wireless LAN, with speakers.
4. G3 iBook with 10.3.9 connected via 802.11b to WLAN, with iTunes running locally. iBook streams to the AirPort Express Base Station.

So what did I discover?

1. Well, the above seemed pretty obvious to me, but when I wrote it down it occurred to me that very few people are going to be geeky enough to configure this.
2. The fundamental setup is stupid. The iBook isn't acting as a remote, it's actually streaming the music. Way too much work for something that runs on a battery. The iBook should be controlling the application running on the iMac. [1]
3. There were (initially) glitches and pauses in the music. Their are multiple bottlenecks in the situation I could improve (switch my ancient 10Mbps hub for a 10/100), but I suspect the G3 iBook is a key problem -- especially since I use WPA on my LAN. The G3 just doesn't have the firepower to do all the encryption and streaming -- especially since it's running multiple simultaneous users. [2] Actually, the problem persisted even after I eliminated the G3. The Airport Express really needs a large internal cache; which, of course, would make it impossible to synchronize output between multiple base stations (sometimes analog is just better!). Additionally, I've been told that the Airport Express requires an uncompressed audio stream -- this vastly increases the burden on even a perfect network. In reality, there are a lot of moving parts on a wireless LAN with two interacting base stations, not to mention my neighbors' WLANs.
   

I'll figure something out. I tried switching to running iTunes on an XP server and using Microsoft's pretty decent 'Remote Desktop Connection' client to connect from the iBook to the XP -- but RDC let me down. iTunes/Windows would stop responding when accessed via RDC.

[1] There's a neat 3rd party AppleScript application that does something like this, but it doesn't support use of remote speakers! Also, it's very early in development. This needs to be an Apple product. I also tried using 'Chicken of the VNC' to connect to the iMac's embedded Apple Remote Desktop Client, but 'Chicken' blew up. Might not have liked the large display area.

[2] Ok, so this is cruel. Bottom line though is that the media server should be streaming, the iBook should be a remote. Apple needs to provide the thin client solution I've been whining about for years.

Update 10/15/05

• Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection didn't work as well as I'd expected! It was fine when I used it with a new invocation of iTunes, but I couldn't reconnect to a running version.
• I went looking for TuneConnect so I could ask the author about enabling control of remote speakers. That, however, led me to NetTunes. This $20 shareware app seems more like what I need -- remote control of iTunes. So see my NetTunes review. [I registered NetTunes -- but it turned out to be incompatible with both Fast User Switching and with my OS X photo images screen saver. So it bit the dust too.]
  
• This stuff is really not ready. The Jobs reality distortion field has been working overtime when it comes to AirTunes.

Update 10/16/05

• Savvy users, I'm told, are using Mac minis as headless media servers, with remote control via NetTunes. iTunes is quite happy to work with a shortcut in place of the standard iTunes data folder, so one can in theory have iTunes on the mini and iTunes elsewhere manipulate the same data set. God knows what happens if both try to edit the db ath the same time!

Update 10/18/05

• Slimdevices Squeezebox2 is looking better all the time. I'd need eed to get rid of that pesky DRM of course. Why can't Apple manage something like this? They have a very interesting discussion on the impact of streaming audio on wireless LANs:
  

  What kind of impact will Squeezebox2 have on my wireless network?

  While streaming music, Squeezebox2 will use some network bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth depends on the bitrate of the audio file. MP3 files use up to 320k bits per second, AIFF, WAV, AAC and other formats may use up to 1.5M bits per second, but since Squeezebox2 supports FLAC, this can be reduced to around 800k bits per second on the fly. A solid 802.11g network can generally support around 15-20M bits per second of data, even though it's rated for 54M bits per second. This means that you can support more than one Squeezebox2 on an 802.11g network, but the number depends on the audio data rate and how busy the network is otherwise.

  I've switched the WLAN from mixed 802.11 b/g to 802.11b and simplifed parts of my network. Airport Express is skipping less. I've seen this before -- 802.11g smells more and more like a failed standard. Now we all wait for 802.11n.
  

Update 10/19/05

• Things are looking better. My network reconfiguration (moved iTunes files off server to iMac, switched to 802.11b/locked, reset to default channel configuration) seems to have eliminated the skipping problem. Esoterica though, most won't have a chance with this.
• NetTunes often works even with Fast User switching. It's not supposed to and it's very fragile, but if I connect, make my changes, don't cause any windows to open, and disconnect I can sometimes escape alive. In fact since it's incompatible with my screen saver, it works better this way. NetTunes is really for remote control of a headless Mac Mini.
  
• TuneConnect is back up front again. It can't control speaker selection, so I have to remember to leave iTunes directing output to the Airport speakers - but otherwise it's a decent little remote. It DOES work fine with fast user switching on the media server, I've even had several clients connected simultaneously. Main annoyance is that it's designed to work with a string matched set of tunes -- not a playlist. Sigh. I'm hoping the developer will fix this.
  

Update 2/18/06:

TuneConnect failed. Fast User Switching breaks remote AppleScript. Now I'm trying PatioTunes. It does look like the web server method is the only one that really works. I do love embedded web servers.

Update 8/10/2008:

I ultimately gave up around 5/06. Now the iPhone has an iTunes remote control app ....

Best Free Web based Applications

nedwolf - Best Free Web Applications

A wonderful list, I'm familiar with most of these.

Panther secrets: I'm so behind the times

I run Tiger on the iMac, Panther on the iBook. I came across this old article by chance, and was amazed about the things I didn't know: Macworld: Feature: Panther Secrets Declassified. The Mac is like that, full of odd abilities.

BTW, the old hack for enabling hidden calculator views in Panther doesn't seem to work any more, I wonder if some Panther upgrade broke it. The hidden views display as silvery metallic windows. These were never officially supported, so I can't complain too much. It does make me want to look again at Tiger's calculatory though.

Security at $6/month: PublicVPN.com

When you use an open hotspot, your network traffic is available for any other user to sample. Passwords can be easily captured.

Unless you first set up a VPN connection. Then, regardless of what network you're on, your traffic is secure. Most of us, however, don't have a VPN server. That's why PublicVPN.com is interesting. Use their server for $6/month.

Apple remote works with iPod universal cradle - what about AirPort Express?

First, I will vent about my iMac. I bought my 20" about 2 months ago. Now it's utterly obsolete. Gnash. Weep.

I'm not interested in the iPod video for now, though I could see using a future version to stream video to in-car monitors when we travel. I am, however, interested in the Apple Remote. For me it was the most interesting part of the presentation:

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

This may not be the biggest new Apple product of the day (not by a long shot), however, it is long overdue. Apple has released the Universal Dock that will fit all versions of the iPod that have a dock connector. iPod photo owners need not hang their heads in shame because of their less than svelte iPods now.

Besides embracing all iPod models, this dock works with the new Apple Remote control (bundled with the new iMacs, and available for purchase separately) so you can control your iPod from across the room. Pretty sweet, and all for $39.

So the universal cradle works with the Apple Remote, eh? Might be just the ticket for the new compact multi-room home stereo setup I'm assembling. If it's wireless [jf: it's not] with decent range it might work just swimmingly. The next thing I want is an add-on to my existing iMac to enable the Apple Remote and/or a version of the AirPort Express that works with it. I wonder how long I'll have to wait for the latter ...

Update 10/13/05: Alas, won't work. It's IR. From Macintouch: "[Ray Sanders] A tidbit picked up on the ars-technica forums... The new remote control is IR. The new iMac has no IR receiver per se. It appears that they use the iSight cam to receive the IR from the remote. Some of the wags over there *really* want to hack the iSight driver so as to do IR imaging." I love the use of the cam to do IR, I wonder when they'll add gesture control (raise hand to control volume?). Maybe the remote will become obsolete ... IR is very retro; I generally like IR but it won't work for my scheme ...