MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > a lot of people would like to use the apple gear without the apple > software though for local tunes (or vids) that aren't all on smallish > pods/pads. software that was capable of running apple gear, slim gear, > dlna gear, more or less equally well has a good chance of being widely > adopted imo. > I agree if it worked, but it will never work because after a while they'll realize they can't play their DRM protected music purchased via iTunes on it. The only hope in this direction would be if the new iCloud offering by Apple removes the DRM protection on all your old files when streaming from iCloud. Of course, iCloud is never going to support streaming to third party applications, so it wouldn't work anyway.
I'm also not convinced there is a lot of people who want to get away from Apple software, I know there are some geeks and advanced users like you and me that does but probably at least 80% of all Apple users prefer to continue use iTunes for their Apple gear because that's the only thing "that just works". MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > don't know if this is legal, but there is this: > > http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/04/12/apples-airplay-goes-open-source-sorta/ > That's the "ShairPort" software I suggested in my previous post. I'm not sure if it's legal but it's definitely not making Apple happy, so it's just a matter of time until they find some way to stop it. Apple wants companies using AirPlay to buy their chips and pay their license fees. MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > true, but it could take the SBS route... a company pairs it with its > hardware and yet makes it available for other hardware. great way to > get adopted. besides, i see this solution as being much less "visible" > than the SBS one. more of a handheld remote operated type thing. > Yes, the question is just how they would earn more money by developing software which encourage people to buy hardware from other companies than themselves ? >From a customer perspective it would be great but from a commercial perspective it simply won't work. The main reason being that you need to be able to communicate with any players and the other manufacturers aren't going to be that interested to help you do that because some of them are going to want the user to run their hardware and software instead. Try convincing Apple or Microsoft that it would be a good idea if all their hardware could be used together, so users can mix and match exactly how they want. Try to do the same to Sonos, Logitech, Ruku, Sony, Chumby and you will realize the problem. The only way this is going to happen is if all companies works together and that means they have to standardize the protocols, which currently means DLNA, which is a compromise, which results in poor user experience compared to a setup completely made by a single company. Just look at Sonos, there is a reason their system is a lot simpler to configure and setup compared to Squeezebox, the main reason being that they have decided to handle a bigger part of the cake themselves. Specifically by use a proprietary wireless network solution, pre-configure everything and not involve third party hardware besides the music file storage into the setup. Let's face it DLNA is really great if you like to listen to a single song or like to stream video, but it doesn't result in simplicity, it result in complex setups with a lot of troubleshooting. And as pippin has mentioned in another thread it's really not suitable for an always running music listening system. MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > it depends how it was developed. lots of community projects have > different strategies. > Could you mention a few, community driven, which have a unified simple user interface ? I'm not saying they don't exists but they aren't very common, I've been involved in some both as contributor and user so I think I know what I'm talking about. To understand the problem you have to understand why people get involved in community based open source projects and what kind of people that get involved, it's usually people who love to develop software and love to add a lot of functionality and a lot of customization possibilities, but it's not that common that people who are good in user interface design and people who have simplicity in their mind get involved. Company driven open source project is a completely different matter, here there is a possibility to create a unified UI, but the problem here is that all companies are driven by commercial aspects and this often makes it uninteresting to make it easy for other companies to earn money on your effort, so they tend to compete instead of collaborate. MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > u see slim adding DLNA to their server now already. (i don't know if > their DLNA includes a control point or not, but it should). > Not sure, I know it includes a UPnP Media Server and a UPnP Media Renderer. I don't think it's designed to make it possible to control third party players (renderers), but I might be wrong about this. MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > maybe they add airplay too. > I certainly hope so but any comments from Logitech representatives in this forum hasn't been very optimistic so far. MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > my only beef with that scenario, is that i don't like SBS as is. i'd > prefer making something cross platform like foobar into this jack of > all trades. > Not sure I understand what you are saying, foobar isn't cross platform as far as I know and foobar is definitely not for the mass market, it's way too technical and complicated for that. The same thing can also be said for WinAmp by the way. I do love the WinAmp browsing functionality, not from a mass market perspective but from a music discovery perspective, make it really flexible to quickly find what you like. MrSinatra;636609 Wrote: > > you're probably right, thats why for now i just want the slim hardware > to be DLNA capable. if the revue is going to be, i don't see how/why > they wouldn't add that ability to the next gen SB hardware. > Yes, I realize you think DLNA is here to make everything easier, for me personally someone still has to show me a DLNA based setup that works anywhere close as good as a Squeezebox or Sonos setup before I'm convinced. Still, I'm not sure why I keep discussing this because I'm pretty sure we have very different goals. You seem to focus on the possibility to combine devices from different companies while I'm focused at getting the best possible music discovery/listening setup even if it means I'll buy everything from a single company. I don't love everything in SBS but so far I've yet to find a server solution that's better. There are client applications, like for example WinAmp, which offers a better music discovery experience but I don't want to goto the computer when controlling my music and I definitely don't want to be forced to run Windows. Is there any UPnP/DLNA server that's even close to offer something similar to SBS (excluding those built on top of SBS) ? -- erland Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info)) (Developer of 'many plugins/applets' (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=88215 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
