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How to sell a bazillion Mac Minis

March 1, 2008 at 10:20 | Print This Post Print This Post

Much has been written lately about using a Mac Mini as a media hub - I’m a big fan of the idea, partly because Front Row is such a lovely way to relive album art. But I’d love to extend the music elsewhere in our house, and it’s not easy to do this with the Mac. The Apple Express’ iTunes extension abilities are great, but you need a remote GUI to make it work and there isn’t one yet (though iPhone hacks are emerging). I’d love to see Apple release a touchscreen device that does nothing but connect via WiFi to iTunes and act as the controller - it would come with a recharge dock, and would be cheap, cheap, cheap - cheap enough for one in every room. And Apple could sell media packages with a Mac Mini, and couple of sets of Airport Express, controller and powered speakers. Instant music everywhere, all running off the same collection.


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One Response to “How to sell a bazillion Mac Minis”


  1. Rich (2 comments.)
    March 1st, 2008 at 11:50

    I’m a big fan of the Logitech (formerly Slim Devices) Squeezebox line:

    http://www.slimdevices.com/

    The SqueezeCenter (formerly SlimServer) server software runs wherever the music library resides, and can access iTunes data, although I don’t use it that way so I’m not sure how complete that integration is — I let it build its own database of music, and run it on Linux anyhow. But here’s the iTunes integration page on the wiki:

    http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?BeginnersGuideToiTunes

    The device itself is a plain old audio component, with the display either on the device itself (on the Squeezebox, a very bright fluorescent display) or the remote (for the Squeezebox Duet, a color touchscreen on the remote). The Squeezebox itself connects over wifi, and even supports WPA2.

    The server software’s open-source and extensible, and there’s a decent library of community-provided plugins, that do everything from easy access to BBC or Live Music Archive streams, to displaying phone caller ID on the SqueezeBox’s display. Mine even gives me a weather forecast when it’s turned off.

    http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?SlimServerPlugins

    I’m not 100% sure it’s what you’re wishing for here, but it’s a great way to get local and network music to places where a little piece of hardware fits in better than a computer. The audio signal chain is excellent, too, with a great onboard DAC. I’ve ripped my own collection to FLAC, and our Squeezebox is basically the only way we’ve listened to music at home for the last few years.