iTunes 10 breaks third-party server compatibility. Again.

Do you use an “iTunes compatible” device like an Iomega ix4 or Drobo FS or Roku SoundBridge? Have you noticed that it no longer works since you updated to iTunes 10? That’s because Apple made a simple change to their Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) that causes third-party devices to fail to connect correctly. Although software patches are already appearing, there is no guarantee that older devices like that Roku will ever be updated.

DAAP, Firefly, and iTunes Clients

Apple introduced “music sharing” over a network in version 4.0 of iTunes way back in 2003, and third-party devices have been trying to play along ever since. Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) was based on http and xml and leverages zeroconf/Bonjour to discover and stream audio across a network. iTunes can act as both a server or client.

Although Apple only licensed the protocol to a select few client applications, DAAP was successfully reverse-engineered shortly after its debut and integrated into a number of third-party clients and servers. Apple has continually modified DAAP for almost a decade, adding MD5-based and proprietary authentication in versions 4.2 and 4.5, but this has not stopped third-party servers like the open-source Firefly/mt-daapd from serving as an iTunes server.

Apple was successful in preventing third-party clients from accessing music through iTunes, adding a client validation challenge to version 7.0 that has not yet been broken. This allowed them to limit client access to only those few third parties who paid for a license, including the Roku SoundBridge that I own.

No More Servers?

Did your "iTunes-compatible" home NAS suddenly stop serving music?

Since it was open source and capable of supporting iTunes, the Firefly Media Server (formerly called mt-daapd) has seen widespread use in “home media servers” like the Iomega ix4 and Drobo FS. Just about every home NAS that supports iTunes uses this software or a related fork, and just about every one stopped working with the release of iTunes 10.

As of version 10, when iTunes requests a list of songs, it requires the server to respond with a correct “mediakind” response. Previous versions apparently assumed type 1 (music) whenever this was missing, but iTunes 10 simply refuses to play, reporting odd error messages like “untitled playlist.” So Apple has broken iTunes compatibility. Again.

A patch is ready for some versions of mt-daapd, but a more important question is raised: Should commercial products rely on reverse-engineered protocols like DAAP? Much of the Apple ecosystem is reliant on reverse engineering, from iPod chargers to AFP to Time Machine. Many of the resulting “tricks” are commercialized in a wide variety of products from manufacturers small and large. Even IT titans like HP and EMC advertise Apple support based on reverse-engineered protocols!

Stephen’s Stance

Anyone want to buy a lightly-used Roku SoundBridge? It may work with iTunes for a while yet...

In my review of the Drobo FS, I questioned the wisdom of relying on “buggy and limited software” and discussed my use of “a real iTunes instance on my always-running iMac.” My experience with a Linksys NSLU2 running Firefly was never positive. Even my two Roku SoundBridge clients don’t work very well, and they’re licensed! I’m much happier with the performance of my AirPort Express, even though it would be nice if Apple would update the Remote app for the iPhone!

Many people complain about Apple’s “walled garden” approach, and I think they have a point when it comes to protocols like DAAP. By not allowing third parties to develop compatible hardware and software, they’ve forced everyone underground. Now that they’ve changed their implementation, all of these devices are “broken” in the eyes of users. Some, like the Roku, are out of date and might never be updated.

This is typical Apple. Out with the old and in with the new. They did the same with their own Apple TV hardware this month, stranding the few buyers it found without an update. Some may suggest that this minor change to iTunes is a conspiracy to push AirPlay, but I imagine it’s a simple case of upgrade-itis. Who cares about all that old junk when all this pretty new hardware and software is available?

We really can’t blame Apple for this. They never allowed the DAAP protocol to be used, and never promised that these reverse-engineered servers would work. In fact, I wonder why they even allowed “iTunes compatibility” to be promised without licensing. Perhaps some of the larger companies have Apple licenses, but I doubt it. At the end of the day, it is these vendors who are responsible for promising compatibility that they could not hope to deliver.

Note: The Roku SoundBridge still works fine as a client with iTunes 10. To clarify, I was saying that Apple could break this functionality in the future and Roku would be unlikely to fix it since they seem to have abandoned this product line.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | iTunes 10 Breaks Non-Apple Streaming (Again)
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Homes now need data storage as well as closets...

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

Along with my professional focus on enterprise storage systems, I’m enamored of home networking, and recently passed the three terabyte mark at home! This got me thinking about where home storage is heading.

As you can see in the photo, my office closet is overflowing with computer equipment (and one sweet guitar), but my data storage is much better organized. I have a hacked Linksys NSLU2 with 500 GB as a file server, a 500 GB PC backup disk, a 160 GB Time Machine disk, 1 TB of TiVo storage, and the rest. But wouldn’t it be nice if this could all be combined into some kind of super home server?

Past Failures: Home Servers

Home storage appliances and servers have come and gone over the year, with none seeming to make much of a mark. The market remains littered with UPNP media servers and home NAS boxes dashed on the shoals of an unappreciative public. Nearly every home network device company has produced one or two home storage servers, none of which have succeeded. Although I use a Linksys NSLU2 at home, I had to hack its Linux software and completely replace Linksys’ features to create a useful device! The un-hacked NAS devices of Buffalo, Western Digital, Netgear, and the rest have generally failed to find buyers as well. So far, consumers seem content with simple USB and FireWire external drives.

The most adventurous home storage servers came from Zetera and Ximeta, both of whom relied on proprietary IP SAN protocols. Note that these were SAN products, sharing block storage over Ethernet, rather than conventional NAS solutions. Both required drivers, limiting client support. The one Zetera buyer I know was pleased by the performance but never used the device as anything but a large hard drive for one PC.

Then there is Microsoft. Recall that the latest Windows Home Server is only their latest attempt to enter this market, and yet I know of no one who has adopted the device. The same can be said of the various media center servers from Microsoft and others. At this point, it seems likely that the future of home storage servers will not come from Microsoft, though their two XBox generations have great potential as clients.

Even EMC has entered the market with their nifty (but largely unnoticed) LifeLine product and Iomega acquisition. Supporting file services and backup for computers as well as audio and video for media players, EMC positions LifeLine much like their Retrospect backup product, but goes further in offering a complete software solution for hardware OEMs wanting to offer a non-Windows home server. Although an impressive offering, it is too early to tell if EMC will have much success with this product.

The Sleek, Shiny Elephant in the Living Room

Of course, there is one company that sells media players and servers by the bushel, complete with sleek, shiny interfaces. Apple’s tremendous success with the iPod has led to their iTunes software becoming the dominant media organization platform, complete with its own proprietary discovery and sharing protocol. Now, with the Apple TV and video iPods, the company is broadening into more media categories. Surely their dominance here puts them in a special position when it comes to setting the stage for a home server or storage revolution.

They also have a strong position in the world of dedicated home storage. Their Airport products are among the only routers to be widely implemented with shared storage. Although many other companies offer similar products, low customer understanding means that these functions are not widely used. And the new Time Capsule device is surely already the most widely-used home NAS product.

But Apple has not yet shown any home server strategy. Administering multiple iTunes servers can be frustrating for users, with no inter-iTunes synchronization or centralization capability. Although the Mac Mini, Apple TV, or Time Capsule could certainly be seen as a home server, the company does not position them as such in the market. Indeed, some iTunes users like myself rely on compatible third party media servers like Firefly and TwonkyVision rather than using iTunes itself. Still, rumors of an Apple home server persist.

One issue for Apple is their reliance on proprietary protocols. Although the Bonjour discovery protocol is certainly simpler than UPnP in practice, Apple stands alone in relying on it. They also steadfastly stick to AFP for NAS and DAAP for remote media streaming. This limits the number of third-party clients and servers that can be used with their hardware and software.

The Future is Friendly

Although Apple has not yet tipped a home storage strategy beyond Time Capsule and Airport Extreme, they are best positioned to deliver a real home storage solution. A simple step would be to create an iTunes media server integrated with Time Capsule and add client/server media synchronization. The company already has OS X backup and file services integrated, and this move would further centralize the digital home around Apple products. But the company’s reliance on closed protocols like DAAP is worrisome, since it locks consumers into nearly all-Apple solutions.

Microsoft’s Media Center and Home Server combination, based around UPnP, shows great promise, with many compatible third-party clients and servers already available. But my own experience with the solution has not been at all positive (I still can’t get my Roku SoundBridge, Vista Ultimate laptop, and Media Center PC to see each other!), leading me to question the viability of this option.

Although Apple or Microsoft could come to dominate, I suspect the future of home storage is out of both companies hands. A number of others are working on improved home server experiences, including EMC’s LifeLine and the expanding use of Debian Linux and open source tools. But all could be sidelined by improved Internet-based services. Google, Microsoft, and Apple continue to expand their online consumer suites with greater storage, synchronization, multimedia integration, and all have the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for in-home storage.

Although I cannot yet tell which service will win, one thing is certain: Consumers demand friendly, flexible solutions. They don’t want to fuss with their media, and they don’t want simple shared storage. They want integration with multiple devices and flexibility to access their content on any device. The first company to offer a simple, flexible storage server for the home will surely be on the right track!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | The Future of Home Storage
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Let’s take a look at what we know and what we don’t, starting with the firmest information.  And read to the end to see my own wild speculation…

Very Likely 

• Further Mac Pro and Xserve updates are extremely unlikely.
• iTunes movie rentals are all but confirmed, but will it be version 8 or version 7.6? I bet on the latter.
• An update to the iPhone/iTouch (1.1.3) is in the wild and has received much press, plus it would be required to support those movie rentals, making a Macworld intro very likely.
• Leopard needs a rev, and 10.5.2 has been spotted (if you pardon the pun), so that’s a likely Macworld intro.
• Apple officially announced the iPhone/iTouch SDK back in October, and claimed it would be released in February, so it’s likely they’ll spend some time focusing on what it can and can’t do, and probably will introduce some third party apps, too.  Mac Rumors suggests a Sling Player app, at least, and I’m looking for some games.
• I expect a revved MacBook Pro, with the new Penryn CPUs, thinner and prettier, but nothing really amazing.

Maybe Yes, Maybe No

• I’ll bite on the long-talked-about subnote rumor, but it’s definitely not a sure thing.  I’m expecting a 12″ or 13″ subnote with flash storage (no internal hard disk or optical drive), and a super-thin aluminum and black (iPhone-type) case.  But I do not expect it will have a touch screen or tablet, though the funky touch pad might have some enhanced multi-touch capabilities.
• The early release of the big-box Macs suggests to me that we can expect updates to the portables, but the MacBook was just updated in November, so I expect it’ll be left alone for now.
• The Cinema Displays are getting long in the tooth, so they need a rev, and this would be a good time to do it.  I expect another aluminum and black look (like the newer iMacs), and would be shocked if iSight and an IR receiver wasn’t built in.  I’m also expecting expanded Windows compatibility, more aggressive pricing, and DisplayPort and HDCP, but all this might not be mentioned in the keynote.
• The demise of the Mac Mini has long been rumored, but I hope it isn’t true.  I’m looking instead for a new small desktop Mac with a new industrial design.  How about a PCI-Express slot, too?
• I’m definitely not expecting a 3G iPhone, though a 16 GB model and shuffled-down prices would be a good bet.

Wild Imaginings

• I don’t expect a big Blu-ray splash at this show.  The Warner Brothers announcement was too late to change product plans, and Apple was conspicuously waiting the HD war out on the sidelines.
• Something needs to be done with the Apple TV, and this might just be the big announcement.  I like the idea of this being Apple’s first Blu-ray product, and a Blu-ray Apple TV at a nice price to replace my DVD player might just get me off the couch and into the stores.  But I seriously doubt this Apple TV will have a tuner, let alone DVR capabilities.

The Big One

OK, that’s out of the way, that’s the show.  But wait, there’s one more wild imagining in my head…  As Jeremy Toeman pointed out, an enhanced Cinema Display could make a darn fine TV.  So let’s walk down this path a little…

Lots of folks were disappointed that Blu-ray drives remain unavailable, even on the new Mac Pro, and I just said I didn’t expect one in the revved MacBook Pro, either.  But what if Apple is ahead of us all on this one.  What if the update to the Cinema Display also included a Blu-ray drive?!?

Introduce a new line of displays – call them Home Cinema or something.  Put in an internal iMac-like Blu-ray drive that can both play standalone to the display or be connected to a computer (over FireWire or USB) and used as a computer drive.  Suddenly every Mac has a Blu-ray option, and those Cinema Displays start looking like a much better option than a Dell or ViewSonic at half the price.  Lots of folks would love a more-converged entertainment computer, and some might just buy the big Home Cinema as a standalone entertainment unit.

But let’s follow Jeremy’s suggestion a little further…  Roll the guts of an updated Apple TV (running full OS X) right into that Home Cinema and create a Macintosh Cinema.  It’ll have integrated iTunes movie rentals and Blu-ray, and could be used as a regular computer with the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

And roll out the guts of the Macintosh Cinema and you’ve got a worthy replacement for both the Apple TV and the Mac Mini.

And please, Apple, buy TiVo and integrate that, too!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Working Backwards Reveals Apple’s Macworld Plans
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It amuses me to think of the statistics:

• We have 11,284 tracks stored, including 279 Christmas songs and 549 kids songs!
• Most songs were ripped using LAME at the VBR3 setting in joint stereo
• This music library takes up 58 GB of storage on my NSLU2/Firefly server
• The jewel cases take up six large cardboard boxes, but the original discs take up just two fat CD storage books

We’ve quickly adapted to a hierarchical model for home music distribution.  The main server has everything, so our two Roku Soundbridge players play directly from it.  But we also use iTunes on three machines, and have imported a subset of the music to each based on personal preference.  From these iTunes implementations, we sync a sub-subset to our iPods – a 40 GB click wheel, two iPhones, and two Shuffles.

Although our TiVos can play MP3 files over the network, we don’t bother.  It just seems wrong to turn on the TV to listen to music…  Similarly, we don’t use Windows Media Player for much of anything, even though it’s compatible with the Soundbridges and media server.

We listen to a lot more Internet Radio than I thought we would, too.  Sometimes we’ll even tune in WKSU over the Internet rather than hoping for good FM reception.  And I’m listening to WBUR a lot again, too.

I’ve also started to rip DVDs to watch on the iPhone, and am storing these on the NSLU2 too.   Add in the iPhone versions created automatically by TiVo Desktop Plus, and I’m amassing a large collection of H.264 media.  In fact, I’ve already got 50 GB of H.264 video stored up there!  Makes me want to go get an Apple TV so I can easily watch it at home.  Is the end of the DVD coming soon, too?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | No More CDs
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.