I’ve been pretty irked about the new iOS iTunes Home Sharing, so I thought maybe I’d write up a post, and you guys could help me understand it a little bit better at this point.
Home Sharing for OS X
In iTunes on OS X, since version 9, Apple has had a technology called Home Sharing. The OS X version of Home Sharing lets you “stream and transfer music, videos, and more with up to five other computers on your local network.” The important thing that I’d like to emphasize here is the “transfer.” Home Sharing was built to help people move their purchased content from one machine on their network to another. It’s super useful, and I use it on a daily basis, but now Apple’s introduced iOS iTunes Home Sharing, which is essentially the same thing as sharing your iTunes library on a network.
Both the OS X version of Home Sharing and iTunes Library sharing let users stream content, while only Home Sharing would let you push or pull media from one iTunes library to another.
Home Sharing in iOS
But now, with iOS iTunes Home Sharing, Apple’s only letting people stream content to an iOS device. That means that Home Sharing now has two very different definitions on two different platforms. The iOS iTunes Home Sharing lets users “play your entire iTunes library from anywhere in the house. If it’s on your Mac or PC, you can play it on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch over a shared Wi-Fi network.”
So here we are—two technologies named the same thing, but described in two very different ways. It’s not very Apple like, and unless they have something up their sleeves about streaming media that we’re not privy to just yet, it doesn’t make much sense at all.
As far as I can tell, AirPlay seems to be the technology that lets you push content from one device to another, and iOS iTunes Home Sharing lets you pull your media from another iTunes library.
Is this as simple as one pushes and the other pulls, or am I missing something entirely? Can we expect that we’ll eventually see iOS iTunes Home Sharing letting users permanently move data over the air, from one iTunes Library to another, like its OS X counterpart? Because if you ask me, that’s what Home Sharing has been defined as up until this point, and it’d be a shame if we never see it come to iOS devices.
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"I think the difference is that apps like Remote actually give direct control of your computer to the iPad, limiting what can be done on the computer while you're controlling it remotely. This new feature would allow your computer to act like a media server - playing directly from the library to your iPad, rather than opening iTunes on your computer. "
-quote from apple forums
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LikeI think you need to consider that this strange situation is not their fault but possibly the music industry? Once you allow OTA sync of music or even the ability to push pull with two different features but that action actually stores the song an not just stream it then you open up the door for piracy.
No one has mentioned this by the Apple TV2 was the true first iOS device to get home sharing. That is the only way to play songs and movies from your iTunes to your Apple TV now. No synching. They just moved this technology to iOS for their other devices now.
The reason they allow library sharing on your local wifi is because the music industry let them assuming that people don't bring entire computers to each others house to swap songs
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Likei think it is kind of a push/pull thing, but you also have to think through the ramifications of that.
look at Dropbox for iPad. it doesn't sync your entire 2GB (or 10 or 50 or 100 GB) Dropbox to your iOS device like it does on the desktop. it computes on the device and reaches to the cloud for data when it needs it. most iOS are like this in that the UI and engine are on the device, but most of the data is in the cloud. even apps like photography apps and sound recording apps enable exporting to the cloud; i think most people don't want to keep ALL of that data on their device, though they do want to keep it.
if you look at what you've been postulating about MobileMe, this setup for Home Sharing makes a ton of sense. Back to my Mac + Home Sharing + (home server/time capsule or MobileMe cloud storage) = access to my entire iTunes and Photo libraries with my iOS device.
sure, pulling a file across might be nice from time to time, but given iOS has no file manager (observable place to store the pulled files), i don't think we'll see that from Apple until we see OTA/cloud syncing (i.e., sans 30-pin), which is a much bigger deal.
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LikeGreat point!
I also find this pretty weired. For me it also blurs a bit the line between the iOS Remote app for iTunes and Home Sharing. - Although I am not able to really narrow this down as clearly as you could. :)
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LikeI think you did fine. ;) This is just a giant mess at this point.
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LikeI've always been so confused by that service. I've just used Library Sharing for everything. But I haven't tried it with Home Sharing. Does it only transfer purchased items?
I find it counter-intuitive that you need to use Home Sharing for AirPlay to work... especially so when you try using an Apple TV at someone else's house.
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LikeThink about it. We're vested in this stuff and it's confusing to us, imagine what the average consumer is thinking.
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