I agree to all of your points. Just to play some simple tunes there shouldn't be a connection to MySb.com needed. I guess i was just the fastest way for them from 'hey we can use any stream for alarm' to 'uh oh - some users just want some simple tunes'.
To understand why they chose this approach (and didn't change it most probably due to time constraints) you have to remember the history of the SqueezeBoxes. It all started with a company called SlimDevices, which had only 'Slim'-Devices - really dumb thingies which actually just played music and couldn't do much of their own (Classic, Boom are still around). So all the alarm problems were around back than already - a server #1 who needed to trigger starting a stream and a server #2 with the actual stream. Noone really complained about bad alarms - maybe because not many people really used it - and also back in these times I guess >98% had their own server as mySqueezebox didn't really exist. Then they started with the Controller - the first device with some memory and an embedded linux. It even had a beta for playing music - but again noone had to care for alarms. Then they took what they had with the Controller and just build a Radio chassis around it - i little better processor and it could also play music. And the Touch again put more processing to it and now even can run the SB-server. So now the current devices (except the Boom, but I guess this on will be discontinued soon) are all really Fat and could do a lot on their own - but if you look at the times it needed to get a Controller out, a Radio out and a Touch out then you see that they wouldn't have survived doing a whole rearchitecture inbetween. And they have another problem: they are many ?? customers who want funny things like 'I want to schedule my alarm from the server, I want to schedule an alarm from my Controller, I want to stop an alarm from the WebUI' - so doing it 'right' again will prove very difficult. Then the old devices are still around and of course still need support - so the engineers will have to support two alarm systems for a long time. I still hope that at some time they decide that its worth to change the alarm system. Unfortunately I doubt so - I guess the Radio is selling very good (despite its lacks in the alarm system) - and we - who need the alarm - fiddle around in this forum until it works - instead of selling the Radio again. Then we buy a Touch or a Boom and all the other cool stuff around the Squeezeboxes make us still advertise it to friends. Maybe not our grandma - but I guess she isn't the actual target audience ;) ... -- bluegaspode 1x SB-Controller+Receiver (Duet), 1xSB-Boom. 1xSB-Radio Server (7.4.1) running on SheevaPlug (Ubuntu) with attached Western Digital MyBook Essential. Secondary 7.4 Server on Debianized Buffalo Linkstation LS-CHL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bluegaspode's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=31651 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77883 _______________________________________________ Radio mailing list Radio@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/radio
