Apple patent app describes iPhone, iPod touch remote access to iTunes libraries
Friday, August 08, 2008 - 09:23 AM EST"The Cupertino-based electronics maker notes that downloading media items from a computer to a media player is often a time consuming process, and one that is limited by the player's storage capacity. Therefore, users who are out and about sometimes find themselves without access to some of their content, which sits inaccessible on their home Mac or PC," Marsal reports. "New versions iTunes and the iPhone Software could theoretically eliminate this problem by syncing only the metadata -- or tiny files containing the barebones attributes of each media item or playlist but not the content itself -- from a user's iTunes library to their portable devices."
"Using this metadata, iPhones and iPods would contain 'virtual media items' representing every playlist, video, photo, and mobile game stored on their computer, even if the sum of those files would ordinarily be too large to fit onto the devices' hard disk drive or flash drive... Users would select virtual media items for display or playback on their handhelds just as they would today under the assumption that the entire contents of the file sit on the device for immediate playback. But instead of accessing the files from the device's built-in storage, the iPhone or iPod would use a wired, Wi-Fi, or cellular connection to remotely access and retrieve the media items from a user's home Mac or PC," Marsal reports. "Through similar techniques, users could also manage their iTunes libraries remotely, reorganizing, deleting, or adding files while on the go."
More in the full article here.
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Can't wait for all the extra Safari crashes, sluggishness, hard reboots and overall instability that comes with -that- software update.