[chabig]

Apparently, when you stream music to an Airport Express the music does not play at the computer. You just get the sound out of one device at a time using AirTunes.

So what if your wife wants music on living room stereo and you want to listen to different music while you work on the machine? Now this is speculation, but since iTunes now works with fast user switching, I suspect you'll be able to stream from the iTunes in your wife's account, then fast user switch to your own account and listen to your music there.

This would be really cool.

Chris

[benb]

Unfortunately, I believe it is impossible to open up iTunes twice while using FUS. Or at least it was in the Panther betas.

[chabig]

Then you haven't tried lately. Since iTunes 4.5 was introduced (yes, 4.5, not 4.6) it has been possible for multiple users to launch iTunes, and they will all play at the same time.

So if my hunch is right, one user can have iTunes streaming to an Airport Express base station while another user listens to something else.

Chris

[Art Vandelay]

Originally posted by benb:
Unfortunately, I believe it is impossible to open up iTunes twice while using FUS. Or at least it was in the Panther betas.

Either one of the 10.3.x or iTunes updates fixed that. The above does seem possible.

[benb]

Originally posted by chabig:
Then you haven't tried lately. Since iTunes 4.5 was introduced (yes, 4.5, not 4.6) it has been possible for multiple users to launch iTunes, and they will all play at the same time.

So if my hunch is right, one user can have iTunes streaming to an Airport Express base station while another user listens to something else.

Chris

No, I haven't tried lately.

[chabig]

It'll actually be really cool if this works as I surmise. And it might even drive the purchase of multiple AE base stations per household.

Think about having a party at your house with different music playing in each room, all controlled from a single Mac. Or suppose you run a retail store--you could have different music playing in different parts of the store--all controlled from a single Mac (or PC).

Chris

[Horsepoo!!!]

What would be awesome is iTunes being able to simultaneously stream different songs to different remote speakers *and* play through computer speakers.

Of course, this would eat up a lot of the network bandwidth and would take lots of CPU power, but it would be ridiculously cool.

In the future, the computer will definitely be the hub. You'll be able to stream movies to different TVs in the house, you'll be able to play music to different speakers in the house, you'll even be able to have multiple simultaneous users on one single computer (using TVs or computer monitors in different parts of the house.)

This should probably start happening in 10-15 years.

It'd be neat to hook the computer up to an alarm system too. Anyone trying to open a window or door in the house would notify the computer (wirelessly or through wires, whichever is more difficult in a few years for a thief to bypass) and then the computer could notify the police right away, or call you on your cel phone to warn that an intruder has entered your home.

So many things could happen. If kitchen appliances get some form of wireless communication (long range bluetooth?), it'd be easy to start the oven when leaving work instead of relying on timer features that you have no control over if you're stuck in traffic or whatever.

Fridges will probably soon scan its own content (don't ask me how...but I hear it's the future ) and report to you what you're low on, or what you don't have. Instead of displaying it on an LCD on the fridge, fridge companies should just let it send it to a computer wirelessly and let computer software (which are easily updateable) to notify you of what's missing. This combined with iRecipes (a future Apple app perhaps? ) would allow you to easily choose a recipe, and iRecipe would communicate with the fridge to find out what ingredients you're missing. Heck...imagine being at work and not knowing what you have left in your fridge and being able to call up your computer to ask iRecipe what ingredients you're missing for recipe X so that you can drop by the grocerie store on the way home. Oh, and you could tell iKitchen to turn the oven on and set it to 400 degrees.

If Apple wants to continue a revolution...this is what I propose the future should look like. Apple is the only one that can bring this. No one else will dare step the plate until Apple does.

Of course, this could also only be available on Macs since if it was available on PCs, some hacker would definitely set your house alarm off, turn your oven on and set it to 450 and leave it on all night, and order you eggplant for your fridge.