Personally, I would consider this, over a Mac HS or WHS box.
It's similar looking to a WHS box, but it runs Linux, and costs like half the price (500 GB), and has a web-based UI, that allows Linux, Mac, and Windows users to access it - which is more important IMO, as with WHS, it's basically Windows only, and an Apple version would probably also be OSX only or crippled. And I don't see why Time Machine couldn't work with this somehow.
I doubt it would be crippled, but it would be HFS+ (or ZFS in the future) which may cause some issues for Windows.
I like the HP models. They run cool but the fan is a bit too noisy. Intel Mac Pros and iMacs have significantly less fan noise.
As for TimeMachine, you can use it now with eh HP device as it sees it as a networked drive. I haven't see the Linux interface, but I do like the Windows software.
I mention the current hardware as a baseline of equipment required for a simple home server/dvr/media center type of setup?
I mention the home automation aspect because that is the future of the true smart house. Integrating the media control with the home automation only makes sense from an end-user ease of use aspect. I am sure we can all agree that a software front end to control both your 'digital life' and the functions of a modern automated home would be better designed & implemented by Apple rather than Microsoft?
I would envision all input sources (cable, internet-derived media, telephone, etc.) piped into the server; access from that point is the 'head' unit (this would be the main HDTV in the living room/den/etc.), thin clients are either feed via Gigabit Ethernet (for zoned HDTVs or 'iMacs') and via WiFi for the tablets?
Direct TV and ATT u-verse are working on full home DRV systems. Comcrap is not want $6 or more per tv or even more for a DVR box. The others want $5 per tv.
With out a good cable card system with full 2 way then don't put cable in.
Maybe apple can work with Direct TV on a box Direct has a apple tv like on demand system over the internet + SAT right now.
I mention the current hardware as a baseline of equipment required for a simple home server/dvr/media center type of setup?
Except that Apple has gone the download vs DVR route. I expect Apple will leave the DVR stuff to elgato. The Apple media cener is just aTV and iTunes.
Quote:
I mention the home automation aspect because that is the future of the true smart house. Integrating the media control with the home automation only makes sense from an end-user ease of use aspect. I am sure we can all agree that a software front end to control both your 'digital life' and the functions of a modern automated home would be better designed & implemented by Apple rather than Microsoft?
That future has been the future for some 30 years. Heck, X10 was developed in 1975.
For whatever reason it hasn't caught on.
Arguably, neither MS or Apple is doing home automation in the near future given the size of the niche (tiny) and because Crestron solutions, although pricey, work well.
X10 and INSTEON modules seems waaay out of scope for both MS and Apple.
Quote:
I would envision all input sources (cable, internet-derived media, telephone, etc.) piped into the server; access from that point is the 'head' unit (this would be the main HDTV in the living room/den/etc.), thin clients are either feed via Gigabit Ethernet (for zoned HDTVs or 'iMacs') and via WiFi for the tablets?
Except that it appears that the Apple strategy has but one media input: iTunes. They appear to expect to co-exist with other systems (PS3, Blu-Ray, etc) with the aTV part of the rest of the various media boxes that Apple has little hope of controlling or integrating with (cable boxes for example).
For telephony I would expect Apple to embace VOIP probably through iChat or just docking the iPhone to your Mac (either physically or over 802.11). with the iPhone all the telephony integration is there in your pocket and wireless connectivity.
Home automation and other integration over the iPhone and iPod touch will likely have solutions soon after the June SDk release.
Is it possible that Apple will do more? Sure. Likely? Probably not.
I'm personally not suggesting Apple suddenly spring out Telephony and Home Automation apsps. As with any server it's the applications running from ISV that count.
I'd expect to see El Gato, Parliant and Perceptive Automation (Indigo) with modified apps that work for server/client scenarios.
I don't know how much Apple will participate but regardless of what they do the typical home of 2015 will resemble the typical business of 2000. There will be networked everything and virtualization. The emphasis will be on Green thin/thick clients and centralized management and likely storage of the main media.
Metadata will remain intact as it traverses through different filesystems and security will be domain based. Parents will be able to monitor and filter their childrens data quite easily even if they try to rename files.
VOIP phone systems will be the norm with auto attendant features to get rid of pesky telemarketers and of course push voicemail.
ZFS will mature and handle storage pooling and snapshots. Time Machine will gain WAN backup to .Mac. Upload speeds for broadband carriers will finally become in vogue (Sorry Comcast you're behind here...hello FIOS)
Apple will ship a multifaceted product that is tablet like but so much more. Amazing things are done with it like Home Theatre control (imagine a low cost Crestron copy), display of IP cameras (security) and much more.
Apple will not make a GPS but they will develop a nice backend structure for those vendors who want to deliver GPS functionality from iPhones all the way to laptop/tablets
The pieces are all starting to coalesce into a sum that is potentially greater than all the parts. Digital Lifestyle is still a toddler.
Basically what you need is a back-closet Linux box with a decent server/GUI implementation. Or perhaps a Hackintosh server if you want the Mac gui. Or just buy an old Powermac/Mac Pro and a server license...
All of the parts are waiting to come together, and what's missing is the software to make it "just work?." The jury is still out on optical discs and cable TV as delivery methods, but the idea of a central database of media content on our computer is pretty much a given.
If Apple decides that iTunes can serve centralized content to multiple clients (iPhone, Apple TV, MB Air, etc.) then my 5 authorized Macs can appear to use the same iTunes library. Of course not all the content will always be everywhere, but it will be available anywhere I can access sufficient bandwidth to stream it. Local caching of media a la Apple TV or iPhone makes offline access just as easy (if the software is smart enough to know what I'm going to want to access).
Anyone who has used Apple TV, iPhone, or iPod is already living in a world of thin clients. I'd suggest that MB Air is the beginning of a redrawing of the line between thin clients and full-fledged computing platforms. With Back To My Mac and the seamless sharing in Leopard's Finder, the first steps toward seamlessly integrating multiple "computers" into one "computer" (as in "Computer, locate Lieutenant LaForge") have already been tread.
Sooner than later users will tire of the endless manual syncing of files from one machine to the other, work desktop to personal laptop to iPhone. The sooner my Macs learn how to share nicely with one another (and push content to the iPhone from multiple machines, for cripes sakes) the better.
When I leave a document open on my desktop at work, it would be nice if I could just use Spaces to get back to it from my laptop on the couch at home. Same with the movie I started watching in the Living Room and now want to fall asleep watching the end of in bed.
Anyway, it really is just the beginning for all of this. Besides Multitouch and mesh networking, we pretty much have all the hardware we need to begin dreaming up the software to drive a new era in personal computing.
Comments
Personally, I would consider this, over a Mac HS or WHS box.
It's similar looking to a WHS box, but it runs Linux, and costs like half the price (500 GB), and has a web-based UI, that allows Linux, Mac, and Windows users to access it - which is more important IMO, as with WHS, it's basically Windows only, and an Apple version would probably also be OSX only or crippled. And I don't see why Time Machine couldn't work with this somehow.
http://www.amazon.com/HP-MV2120-500G.../dp/B0015313O8
And the unit is sharp looking to boot.
<image>
I doubt it would be crippled, but it would be HFS+ (or ZFS in the future) which may cause some issues for Windows.
I like the HP models. They run cool but the fan is a bit too noisy. Intel Mac Pros and iMacs have significantly less fan noise.
As for TimeMachine, you can use it now with eh HP device as it sees it as a networked drive. I haven't see the Linux interface, but I do like the Windows software.
I mention the current hardware as a baseline of equipment required for a simple home server/dvr/media center type of setup?
I mention the home automation aspect because that is the future of the true smart house. Integrating the media control with the home automation only makes sense from an end-user ease of use aspect. I am sure we can all agree that a software front end to control both your 'digital life' and the functions of a modern automated home would be better designed & implemented by Apple rather than Microsoft?
I would envision all input sources (cable, internet-derived media, telephone, etc.) piped into the server; access from that point is the 'head' unit (this would be the main HDTV in the living room/den/etc.), thin clients are either feed via Gigabit Ethernet (for zoned HDTVs or 'iMacs') and via WiFi for the tablets?
Direct TV and ATT u-verse are working on full home DRV systems. Comcrap is not want $6 or more per tv or even more for a DVR box. The others want $5 per tv.
With out a good cable card system with full 2 way then don't put cable in.
Maybe apple can work with Direct TV on a box Direct has a apple tv like on demand system over the internet + SAT right now.
I mention the current hardware as a baseline of equipment required for a simple home server/dvr/media center type of setup?
Except that Apple has gone the download vs DVR route. I expect Apple will leave the DVR stuff to elgato. The Apple media cener is just aTV and iTunes.
I mention the home automation aspect because that is the future of the true smart house. Integrating the media control with the home automation only makes sense from an end-user ease of use aspect. I am sure we can all agree that a software front end to control both your 'digital life' and the functions of a modern automated home would be better designed & implemented by Apple rather than Microsoft?
That future has been the future for some 30 years. Heck, X10 was developed in 1975.
For whatever reason it hasn't caught on.
Arguably, neither MS or Apple is doing home automation in the near future given the size of the niche (tiny) and because Crestron solutions, although pricey, work well.
X10 and INSTEON modules seems waaay out of scope for both MS and Apple.
I would envision all input sources (cable, internet-derived media, telephone, etc.) piped into the server; access from that point is the 'head' unit (this would be the main HDTV in the living room/den/etc.), thin clients are either feed via Gigabit Ethernet (for zoned HDTVs or 'iMacs') and via WiFi for the tablets?
Except that it appears that the Apple strategy has but one media input: iTunes. They appear to expect to co-exist with other systems (PS3, Blu-Ray, etc) with the aTV part of the rest of the various media boxes that Apple has little hope of controlling or integrating with (cable boxes for example).
For telephony I would expect Apple to embace VOIP probably through iChat or just docking the iPhone to your Mac (either physically or over 802.11). with the iPhone all the telephony integration is there in your pocket and wireless connectivity.
Home automation and other integration over the iPhone and iPod touch will likely have solutions soon after the June SDk release.
Is it possible that Apple will do more? Sure. Likely? Probably not.
I'd expect to see El Gato, Parliant and Perceptive Automation (Indigo) with modified apps that work for server/client scenarios.
I don't know how much Apple will participate but regardless of what they do the typical home of 2015 will resemble the typical business of 2000. There will be networked everything and virtualization. The emphasis will be on Green thin/thick clients and centralized management and likely storage of the main media.
Metadata will remain intact as it traverses through different filesystems and security will be domain based. Parents will be able to monitor and filter their childrens data quite easily even if they try to rename files.
VOIP phone systems will be the norm with auto attendant features to get rid of pesky telemarketers and of course push voicemail.
ZFS will mature and handle storage pooling and snapshots. Time Machine will gain WAN backup to .Mac. Upload speeds for broadband carriers will finally become in vogue (Sorry Comcast you're behind here...hello FIOS)
Apple will ship a multifaceted product that is tablet like but so much more. Amazing things are done with it like Home Theatre control (imagine a low cost Crestron copy), display of IP cameras (security) and much more.
Apple will not make a GPS but they will develop a nice backend structure for those vendors who want to deliver GPS functionality from iPhones all the way to laptop/tablets
The pieces are all starting to coalesce into a sum that is potentially greater than all the parts. Digital Lifestyle is still a toddler.
If Apple decides that iTunes can serve centralized content to multiple clients (iPhone, Apple TV, MB Air, etc.) then my 5 authorized Macs can appear to use the same iTunes library. Of course not all the content will always be everywhere, but it will be available anywhere I can access sufficient bandwidth to stream it. Local caching of media a la Apple TV or iPhone makes offline access just as easy (if the software is smart enough to know what I'm going to want to access).
Anyone who has used Apple TV, iPhone, or iPod is already living in a world of thin clients. I'd suggest that MB Air is the beginning of a redrawing of the line between thin clients and full-fledged computing platforms. With Back To My Mac and the seamless sharing in Leopard's Finder, the first steps toward seamlessly integrating multiple "computers" into one "computer" (as in "Computer, locate Lieutenant LaForge") have already been tread.
Sooner than later users will tire of the endless manual syncing of files from one machine to the other, work desktop to personal laptop to iPhone. The sooner my Macs learn how to share nicely with one another (and push content to the iPhone from multiple machines, for cripes sakes) the better.
When I leave a document open on my desktop at work, it would be nice if I could just use Spaces to get back to it from my laptop on the couch at home. Same with the movie I started watching in the Living Room and now want to fall asleep watching the end of in bed.
Anyway, it really is just the beginning for all of this. Besides Multitouch and mesh networking, we pretty much have all the hardware we need to begin dreaming up the software to drive a new era in personal computing.