Comments on: Home Sharing is iPod touch’s killer app for families

By: gregor

gregor — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:44:46 +0000

There seems to be no limit to the number of devices that can share a single itunes account. The scenario where this is relevant is for school class sets. We’re looking at using IPTs for education, and this is a selling point.

By: Alison Scott

Alison Scott — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:20:53 +0000

I offer my family as a counterexample; I have a Mac desktop and laptop, my husband has a laptop (and a LED cinema display as his desktop), my daughter has an iMac and my son has a Mac Mini. So that’s five. I recently upgraded my (five year old) laptop — I intend to give the old one to my daughter but I will not be able to authorise that computer on my iTunes account or for Home Sharing (which otherwise is very good I think). I don’t think we’re that unusual a family — it’s just that Macs last so long we can trickle them down to other family members almost indefinitely.

By: Greg Gehr

Greg Gehr — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:19:40 +0000

You do have to use one account to initially set up the home sharing on each mac, but after that is set up, you can share apps from multiple accounts among multiple macs (up to 5) by authorizing each mac with all the iTunes accounts.

My wife has a MBP and an iPhone and her own iTunes account. I have the same (MBP, iPhone, own iTunes acct). We have set up home sharing using my account, and then each of us has authorized the other’s mac with one of our five “authorizations” on our iTunes accounts. I have purchased an app on my iTunes account, and my wife has successfully copied it over Home Sharing, and installed it on her iPhone, (thru her additionally authorized Mac), where they now run, no problem. Likewise, she has purchased apps, I have copied her apps via Home Sharing to my Mac, (additionally authorized by my wife with her account), installed her apps on my iPhone, they run, no problem. Same with music. It did ask us to repeat the password at one point, which was odd, because it then indicated it was already authorized, but regardless, it works! We can both buy apps, and share them with each other using Home Sharing. Bringing my son, who has his own iMac and his iPod Touch into the Home Share next!

By: Bill Henry

Bill Henry — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:50:08 +0000

Now if you could access the streaming video and music from your iPods and iPhones over your home wifi from the various homeshared Macs in the house, you would have supplied everyone with a personal gaming AND media viewer in one iPod touch purchase.

By: abugida

abugida — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:42:27 +0000

Are there a lot of games with DLC? I was under the impression that they are quite a hassle for developers b/c Apple does not deliver them, but the developer has to provide them from their own servers and for this reason has to collect customer credentials just to be able to offer re-downloads and/or re-activations which in effect takes away much of the service the AppStore offers to developers for its 30 % share. Is that correct?

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:06:12 +0000

You can only use home sharing with one iTunes Music Store account. Home sharing works well. I’ve an iPod synced to one computer and an iPhone synced to another and I can copy over apps (and music, etc) between them.

I think the article may be wrong in saying its limited to 5 iPhones or iPod touches. It’s limited to 5 computers, which each can support multiple portable devices. It’s unlikely people will have one account, up to 5 computers and lots of devices though.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:30:27 +0000

While this is definitely a sellable bullet point for iPod/iPhone to families, it would be better if the game library was anything even close to what you can get on other portable gaming systems. The iPhone has a lot of cheapies, a lot of half-assed ports, and a lot of pure junk. There’s nothing on par with the quality of the latest Pokemon game or the latest Mario&Luigi. Yet.

Sure, every kid in your family can share one purchased copy of TapWords Bonus Deluxe 3D or whatever… but when the rest of the kids are trading pokemon with DSi’s, being budget-minded is not going to score them cool points!

By: Walt

Walt — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:37:08 +0000

Congrats on the position Peter. Look forward to reading your articles.

By: Seth Weintraub

Seth Weintraub — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:35:51 +0000

Good to see the MacCentral guys back at it.

By: Moeskido

Moeskido — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:33:20 +0000

Mr. Cohen, congratulations on your first post on The Loop as a staffer.

By: Moltz

Moltz — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:29:19 +0000

I’m not sure how all in-app purchases work, but some are at the account level and can be purchased once and downloaded again to multiple devices. I bought the extra levels in Ramp Champ, for example, and only had to download them again to my wife’s iPhone. I didn’t have to pay.

By: Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:32:10 +0000

This may be obvious, but I’m having trouble using Home Sharing. I enable it on the Mac mini in our home that we use as a joint media machine. That machine uses my iTunes account. I have that account authorized on three computers for iTunes Store playback.

I enabled Home Sharing on that computer, and then tried to make this work on my wife’s, who has her own iTunes Store account. I attempted to log in to Home Sharing using my account on her computer, and got an error.

Should that work? Or do you have to have a single family iTunes Store account?