iTunes is the best jukebox on the market, but I have always bemoaned its support for legacy hardware. Each of my three daughters has a PowerMac 5500 running OS 8.6 (the last OS to properly support their TV Tuner cards). I have experimented with various ways of allowing my iMac running OS X to act as an MP3 server for my kids' older Macs, such as building an Apache-served jukebox webpage that links to the .m3u playlists I manually created, as well as using the excellent and free MP3 server SUSHI.
These solutions were either too awkward (my kids having to have a web browser running to manage the playlists) or too time-consuming for me. Happily I stumbled upon a legacy utility that will patch the installer for iTunes 1.1, allowing it to install and run on OS 8.6. Then using the awesome OS X utility SharePoints, mentioned in earlier macosxhints, I shared my iTunes Music folder across my LAN.
After adding the shared folder to each of their iTunes Libraries and a quick tutorial, my kids have each created their own customized playlists and are enjoying all the wonderful features of iTunes on their older Macs!
These solutions were either too awkward (my kids having to have a web browser running to manage the playlists) or too time-consuming for me. Happily I stumbled upon a legacy utility that will patch the installer for iTunes 1.1, allowing it to install and run on OS 8.6. Then using the awesome OS X utility SharePoints, mentioned in earlier macosxhints, I shared my iTunes Music folder across my LAN.
After adding the shared folder to each of their iTunes Libraries and a quick tutorial, my kids have each created their own customized playlists and are enjoying all the wonderful features of iTunes on their older Macs!
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