Gear News and Reviews

The Shared Library

Many of you have households with more than one computer.  One of them is most likely your ‘main’ machine that manages all of you media files such as music, movies, TV shows, etc.  In our house my wife has her laptop, I have my laptop and we have an iMac in our office that serves as our ‘main’ computer.  This is the machine that downloads our iTunes subscriptions, music and movies.

However, everyone knows that it’s much more comfortable to watch your movies and TV shows on the couch or in your favorite La-Z Boy instead of sitting at your desk.  Previously, we had to copy the media files we wanted to watch/listen to to a thumb-drive and then transfer them to one of our laptops.  I was looking for a more sensible way of doing this without third party software.  I liked the way iTunes categorized my files and I was already familiar with the iTunes interface so when I found out that Home Sharing was available as part of the iTunes 9 upgrade I gave it a try.  Perfect, seamless, exactly what I was looking for.

To turn on shared libraries, find the Advanced menu.

To activate Home Sharing, start iTunes and find the Advanced menu.  Scroll down to Turn On Home Sharing, at this point you’ll be prompted for a password.  Enter your password and on the left-hand side of your iTunes window you’ll see Shared.  Under Shared you’ll see a list of your authorized libraries.

Choose your music, movie or TV show, wait for a few seconds for it to buffer and you’re set.  Enjoy!

GNAR Rating: 5-Stars

If you’re like me you’ve probably download WAY too many applications for your iPhone.  I’ve downloaded some application simply because they were free and I might need them at some point. All of this has left me with a total of 99 apps to manage, most of which I don’t ever use.

Once they’ve all been downloaded and installed I spend more and more time trying to find an application among the 5 or 6 different screens. Before the iTunes 9 release I would try and manually manage my app placement by physically dragging the apps around from screen to screen. An unnecessarily tedious operation. Thankfully, iTunes 9 has an app manager that helps you organize iPhone screens.

iTunes 9 applications screen is a tremendous help for keeping your apps organized on your iPhone.

Once your iPhone is plugged in, click on your phone in the left-hand column and select the Applications tab. Once there, you’ll see a virtual screen that mimics what is currently installed on your iPhone. You may organize your apps by: Name, Category or Date. After you’ve listed your apps in the desired format simply drag your application over to the virtual iPhone screens displayed to the right.

That small addition to iTunes 9 has made a world of difference for keep all these apps organized.  Thank you iTunes.

GNAR Rating: 5-Stars