I am an Apple person because they have the better system approach with the right hardware to make the system work. I started out saying I am a Mac person, but Apple has gone way beyond Macs so it is no longer fair to think in terms of conventional computers if one wants to deal with A/V optimally, both at home and away.
My most recent piece of acquired equipment is turning out to be way more beneficial than the primary reason I purchased it in the first place. I have 3 Macs, an iMac (desktop in my home office), a Mac Mini (a dedicated A/V server located in my A/V system, which is also my prime audio system) and a MacBook Pro 17 which is my main business machine and goes home with me every night.
The piece that I just purchased for $300 is an Apple 2 TB Time Capsule, which is an automatic WiFi based back up system for all Macs on the network. The Time Capsule backs up everything on my network hourly and automatically including my laptop as soon as it returns to the network from being at work.
The reason I am writing this piece is that the new Time Capsules have two features that you may not know about and I love: 1) Their WiFi is driven by a new Broadcom chip that actually pushes more throughput through my WiFi than all previous home WiFi networks, allowing multiple tasks to occur simultaneously without buffering issues and much better streaming of large files; and 2) there is an USB input that allows for an additional drive or daisy-chain of drives (in my case La Cie Quadra with almost a TB of dedicated music files that was formerly linked to my Mini for music/video playback) to be hooked into the Time Capsule, thus making it available to the entire network.
By starting iTunes on each of my Macs while holding down the option button, a window opens that allows me to reassign the library that iTunes considers its resident library. By choosing the drive connected to the Time Capsule and then selecting the iTunes library on that drive, all of my Macs now have access to my entire multimedia library as long as they are on WiFi network, which extends far enough to cover a 10k sq. ft house, which means totally onto my deck to feed my rather substantial outdoor system via my MacBook Pro which I hook directly into the dedicated power amp that powers my outdoor speakers. It also means that each computer that has Spotify loaded onto it has access to my entire iTunes library, but can be played back at HiRes, even if the files in the library are merely MP3 as long as you have the $10/mos subscription instead of the free services which is MP3.
BTW, if you download the Spotify mobile app to your phone and hook your phone into your car or another system somewhere away from your home, you now have access to your entire library where ever you go or ride!!
My most recent piece of acquired equipment is turning out to be way more beneficial than the primary reason I purchased it in the first place. I have 3 Macs, an iMac (desktop in my home office), a Mac Mini (a dedicated A/V server located in my A/V system, which is also my prime audio system) and a MacBook Pro 17 which is my main business machine and goes home with me every night.
The piece that I just purchased for $300 is an Apple 2 TB Time Capsule, which is an automatic WiFi based back up system for all Macs on the network. The Time Capsule backs up everything on my network hourly and automatically including my laptop as soon as it returns to the network from being at work.
The reason I am writing this piece is that the new Time Capsules have two features that you may not know about and I love: 1) Their WiFi is driven by a new Broadcom chip that actually pushes more throughput through my WiFi than all previous home WiFi networks, allowing multiple tasks to occur simultaneously without buffering issues and much better streaming of large files; and 2) there is an USB input that allows for an additional drive or daisy-chain of drives (in my case La Cie Quadra with almost a TB of dedicated music files that was formerly linked to my Mini for music/video playback) to be hooked into the Time Capsule, thus making it available to the entire network.
By starting iTunes on each of my Macs while holding down the option button, a window opens that allows me to reassign the library that iTunes considers its resident library. By choosing the drive connected to the Time Capsule and then selecting the iTunes library on that drive, all of my Macs now have access to my entire multimedia library as long as they are on WiFi network, which extends far enough to cover a 10k sq. ft house, which means totally onto my deck to feed my rather substantial outdoor system via my MacBook Pro which I hook directly into the dedicated power amp that powers my outdoor speakers. It also means that each computer that has Spotify loaded onto it has access to my entire iTunes library, but can be played back at HiRes, even if the files in the library are merely MP3 as long as you have the $10/mos subscription instead of the free services which is MP3.
BTW, if you download the Spotify mobile app to your phone and hook your phone into your car or another system somewhere away from your home, you now have access to your entire library where ever you go or ride!!
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