12-10-2007, 10:25 PM
[quote deckeda]My biggest concern here, however, is that I've read that the server and clients all need the same version of iTunes. This is OK today but would wipe out a lot of older Macs when the next updates require Leopard to run iTunes, no?
I don't think the compatibility is as bad as you think. I think newer iTunes can play music that is being shared by an older version of iTunes. This was an issue for the Roku when iTunes 7 came out, the Roku couldn't play it's shared music for several months while they worked on a firmware update, but it could still play iTunes 6 shared music and the computers with iTunes 7 could also play the iTunes 6 shared music.
I think there is probably some limit to how many version back Apple supports sharing compatibility with, but Apple is also pretty good at making newer iTunes run on older versions of the OS, the current 7.5 version will run on Panther 10.3.9, Apple has some motivation for this, even if you don't buy the latest hardware or OS from them, they still want to sell you a few 99 cent songs.
I don't think the compatibility is as bad as you think. I think newer iTunes can play music that is being shared by an older version of iTunes. This was an issue for the Roku when iTunes 7 came out, the Roku couldn't play it's shared music for several months while they worked on a firmware update, but it could still play iTunes 6 shared music and the computers with iTunes 7 could also play the iTunes 6 shared music.
I think there is probably some limit to how many version back Apple supports sharing compatibility with, but Apple is also pretty good at making newer iTunes run on older versions of the OS, the current 7.5 version will run on Panther 10.3.9, Apple has some motivation for this, even if you don't buy the latest hardware or OS from them, they still want to sell you a few 99 cent songs.