Share iTunes libraries with older Macs

May 25, '04 09:19:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

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!

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Mac OS X Hints
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