This product has been available for over 1 year, and WHS has been RTM for nearly 10 months?
Do you mean HP has released a new MS server version?

PS, It works great with my imac/vista machines and is defo something Apple should compete in.

D

I don't want to put my data in the "cloud", especially not without encryption.
The Problem is, that Time Capusule is too slow, also if your are using Gigabit-ethernet. I hope that Apple is maybe using P.A.Semi to make a powerful and economic cpu for a new device.

I don't want my data in the cloud either. In fact I hate the "cloud" concept. Clouds bring rain and snow. Clouds become tornados.

Stupid metaphor.

quote:
"We heard in August that Apple had some plans to expand the Time Capsule platform to include a lot of this functionality and more. "

Wasn't that the time when Steve wrote the letter about "doing to many releases together..."? (iPhone 3G/App Store/MobileMe)

I like this idea. I've never been one for cloud computing, because I'm not in complete control of the server. Something like this could easily find a place in my house.

I sent in an email just yesterday that wasn't too dissimilar from this. I would call it complementary.

While a hw play would be useful, Apple seriously needs to update key media software to work with networked storage. Whether it's Apple networked storage or not, I don't care much.

But iTunes seriously needs to support networked libraries - I know the hacks and use them, but they are hacks. I want one networked share with my tunes. When I add a file, it should show up automatically in all my iTunes. When I spend the time on getting album artwork that isn't on iTunes store, I want that to show up in all my iTunes. Etc.

And iPhoto - I can not believe there is no support for networked libraries. It's absurd. I have a Mac Mini HTPC that I love. But having to copy all my pictures onto the on-board disk is a problem. I have lots of external storage, but can't touch it. And not keeping the images as separate, readable files? That's more hare-brained than MS Outlook using a repository file for mail. Take a hint - change the storage model to use a DB like iTunes, support any folder type (remote, USB, or NAS), and support shared libraries.

Enough already, I'm upsetting myself...

I posted something very similar back in March - there's mockup on my blog here - oddly similar to the one from MR forums, although not so silly, in my opinion :)

http://www.macpredictions.com/2008/03/apple-iserve-with-itunes-server-mo...

That's my silly mock-up! I'm honored that it has graced your pages.

MacPredictions, I never saw your mock-up, but I admit, I didn't stretch my imagination very far to create mine.

I'd make a few changes and since it's my fantasy I reserve the right to make it as outlandish as I want. With that said here's my ideal OS X Home Server.

1. It is indeed based on ARM but uses a more powerful chip than the Marvell Orion chip inside of Time Capsule. I'm assuming that Apple has an ARM Architecture License and so this chip may be custom.

2. 4 SATA drive bays and the default filesystem is ZFS. This allows for the easy creation of pooled storage or RAIDZ volumes as well as for doing delta snapshots.

3. Dual WAN ports. With the internet becoming a key technology having redundancy for WAN ports is as important as redundancy of data. Plus if you're lucky enough to live in areas with two broadband providers you'll often find it cheaper to go with two of the penultimate packages rather than the big fish (i.e Comcast's 50GB connection is $149 but their 30Mb is $65)

4. iTunes 8.5 (or whatever they choose to call it, iLife and iWork all supporting this network storage. With apps that have metadata you have the option of one set of metadata to rule them all or you can have network storage with local metadata (this way each person handles their own ratings and other bits of info. MobileMe support would be a given.

5. There would be an API for this box so 3rd parties could support it. Though they'd have to rejigger their binaries to support ARM architecture using Xcode 3.x. Of course streaming to the new ATV 2.0 (also ARM based) and iPod/iPhone would be a given.

6. Future upgrades- SSD (say 32GB or so) storage would be embedded into the chassis and act at the first tier of storage for caching. That way often used files would be returned almost instantly and it would allow for slower drives behind the SSD as well as spinning the drives down saving power.

In the end a Media Server of some sort is a must for households with multiple Macs and iPhone/iPods. I think Apple will deliver a device but I'm thinking that it's going to be based on Snow Leopard and thus it will not be until summer when it's announced.

From: http://www.isosync.com/isoblog/?p=12

Network-able (browse, add, modify from all clients) iPhoto, iTunes (with video) is long overdue. The hacks are horrible and not "Apple-like".

This will sell many more AppleTV, MacMini and iTouch hardware.

While I'm at it...

Bring the AppleTV to the 21st century... Add 1080p and offer an external Bluray drive that will stack on top of the AppleTV. (its not that much of a "bag of hurt" just pay the Sony their piece, don't be so greedy).

Enable hardware accelerated media trans-coding (CUDA??) or offer a USB device (like ElGato's Turbo.264, but with 1080p target capability). This device alone could fetch $199 (easy...)

I don't see Apple supporting Blu-ray in their consumer computers and Apple TV for quite some time. If someone wants Blu-ray they can buy a Blu-ray player. Apple is in the business of promoting iTunes content where they make money. It makes little financial sense to support Blu-ray when they should be pushing iTunes content foremost.

I'd love to see the nextgen Apple TV playback 1080p content even if the store doesn't sell content in this resolution and doesn't have any plans to. Consumers will be moving to HD camcorders and being able to save in 1080 and playback this content will be nice.

Frankly 720p can look damn good. I watched Transformers in HD DVD on my Sharp HDTV and it looked so fantastic I had to remember that my HDTV can only display 720p content. I'd like to see Apple begin to support 720p content up to 8-10 Mbps (versus the current 5 Mbps ceiling) this would shore up any doubts about whether 720p could rival the so-called 1080 coming across satellite, Cable and Fibre. I find my FIOS TV pixelates quite fast in HD.

http://www.drury.net.nz/2008/01/31/itunesiphoto-server-your-time-has-come/

C'mon - Back to My Mac and Time Machine don't function properly for most of us already. Why would a media server featuring these badly implemented features be a draw to us? And isn't the Apple TV really just a media server?

any body figure this might just come in the form of a firmware update to time capsules?

that would make perfect sense to me

I bought one of these in March of 2007. It has had limited Mac support from day one (file and media sharing). I don't know what the recent buzz is about. There was a serious flaw that involved multiple disk drives that was fixed by software update this past July.

However to the best of my knowledge it does NOT support automatic Mac backups (it does a fine job automatically backing up Windows machines), and you can't "manage" it from a Mac (not that you need to).

After owning several much more expensive and hard to maintain (and impossible to "disaster recover" RAID arrays, I have to admit that this simple product is MUCH more effective in a home environment).

Apple has grown strong in the notebook sector. Many of us just own a notebook for work and home simultaneously.

I have been watining for a long time for something like a media server to make the way out of Cupertino. I currently own 3 external drives!! (2 of data, one for TimeMachine).
Everytime I need to sync my AppleTV I have to turn the computer on and then sync it (there little space in my notebook).
Pictures....
I have Aperture on my computer and it works great. Unfortunately I cannot keep all my pictures on it so I had to move the least recent to one of the aforementioned external HDs. So the only thing I get is the previews when I am on the road. I would so much like to be able to download to my notebook the pics I want simply by downloading them from a HomeServer device, instead of creating tons of MobileMe galleries just to have that functionality of some sorts.

I also create videos, which take another external HDD since they are in HD. So everytime I plug my notebook there is like a ton of cabling around.

Functionalities I wish was there in a HomeServer by Apple?
1. ability to connect wirelessly and "wired", maybe with Firewire to be faster (uh.. oh... wait a second... well maybe not Firewire... something else)
2. better integration of products like these with Apple's PRO apps like Aperture (so that I don't have to create both a Vault for pics and a TimeMachine file for the rest). Vault for Aperture needs a revamp (as well as the whole "upload to the cloud" idea in Aperture, but that's off topic).
3. Ability to sync my iPhone directly on the Server
4. Better integration with iTunes. iTunes will need to be redesigned soon (should have been already). Too many devices syncing with it and far too complicated management (ever tried to spot the right Aperture album you want to sync from a list of 30? They all appear random, no preview, nothing!!). iTunes need to allow me to decide easily WHERE my file will phyisically be stored (when I purchase music for instance) and also let me decide when and where I want to move that file.

Sorry for the long post.. One more thing would be the possibility for more countries to purchase video. But for the time being the other methods are working well so I am in no big rush....

Apple won't do that.
Most Mac users (not just 9to5 readers like us, who have terabytes of media) simply don't need it. They are fine with a USB/FW disk (oops, make that USB).
For the same reason, I can't imagine that Apple is selling a lot of Time Capsules right now.
I would embrace more Mac-friendly 3rd party solutions, like those from Synology.

I don't know the figures (nobody does, except Apple) but TimeCapsule has been for a long time one of the top sellers of the Apple Store Switzerland... So there is actually some interest in such devices. Furthermore, many purchased computers and the market seems to be slowing down. That's were the "add on" market takes off. Like it did for Logitech with their peripherals. A lot of customers bought computers and then spent money on the "peripherals".

DSLRs and camcorders have been bestsellers during this holiday season. In time people will need a lot more space than today for their own media. And if Apple wants to increase purchase of digital content on the internet they better help people organize it in a smart way instead of carrying it always with them.

I wish I could easily stream my music from my home to my office without having it all on my computer... (an example)

Manufacturing such a product is cheap and the added value of simplicity in a market like that where only a handful of manufacturers are slowly realizing that their solutions have been too complicated up to now is huge.

Apple iLife Home Server

Hardware:
Time Capsule Enclosure
500GB/1TB HD
GBit LAN Port (3)
GBit WAN Port
802.11N(A/B/G) wireless
USB (2)

Features:
Integrated Router
Time Machine Backup
AFP/SMB File Sharing
USB Printer Sharing
iTunes Server
- Streaming over LAN and Internet*
- Syncing via network to Local iTunes Library
- Syncing via Network to WiFi capable iPods/AppleTV
iPhoto Server
- Syncing via network to Local iPhoto Library
- Syncing via netwrok to WiFi capable iPods/AppleTV
- Slideshow streaming over LAN
- WebGallery Photo sharing via Internet* (MobileMe w/o uploading to cloud)
iWeb Server
- Browser based server admin (accessable via Internet*)
- Publish iWeb sites to Internet* (w/o uploading to cloud)
- WebDAV folder sharing to Internet* (like iDisk)
- Personal Domain Name* .me.com

*Internet based capabilities require MobileMe subscription.

Is this a leak of the new product specs? If it doesn't have any RAID capabilities and we're stuck with the Time Capsule form factor, color me unimpressed.

You can already access a computer using dynamic DNS if you use MobileMe. The naming structure is computer.username.members.me.com

I.e. MacBook.9to5mac.members.me.com

You can also see this if you open terminal and select connect to server from the menus at the top and select any if your computers that have your MobileMe info set up on them