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One of the highlights of Apple’s computer systems is the power they give with ease of use simplicity. Programs like iPhoto make what could otherwise be complex tasks straightforward for non-technical people. But to date Apple’s consumer focus appears to have been on individuals, with iPhoto, Aperture and iTunes all being implemented on an individual user basis (although each has some basic sharing capabilities).

What Apple seem to have missed is that couples (and I presume families) sometimes want to have separate accounts (or computers) for individuals, but still have shared media libraries.

For example, my wife and I have separate user accounts on a shared iMac so that we can each maintain our own files, email, calendar, etc. But our music and photo libraries are something we want to share. Out of the box Apple doesn’t seem to have a great solution to this problem.

In the past I’ve placed our iTunes and iPhoto (and later Aperture) libraries in the shared user folder and pointed the applications in each account to this location. This hasn’t been without problems though. File permission issues have on occasions caused hiccups, and with the release of Aperture 3 this workaround seems to have broken altogether. In addition our iTunes library outgrew the space on the internal drive on our last Mac and had to be moved to an external drive, which now isn’t backed up by Time Machine. On top of this, for all of our media to be available on our AppleTV the iMac has to be turned on, logged into my account, and have iTunes running.

To overcome these issues I wish Apple would make a home media server—something like a cross between their Time Capsule and a Drobo. Such a device would provide data redundancy to make sure all our valuable media is safe and also allow individual accounts (on both single and multiple home computers) access to that shared media pool. With the proliferation of other media consuming devices, such as AppleTVs, iPhones, and iPads, a home media server could also provide an always-on streaming source for them.

There not currently being an Apple home media server, I’ve tried to come up with another solution to my problem. Because I like to play with techo toys I have a Mac mini server, but although I could either use it as a shared storage location or to serve the content it still wasn’t a great solution. It is an expensive way to add shared storage that doesn’t provide data redundancy and as a media server runs into the problem of being the device things like iPhones and iPads must be synchronised with, which is a problem if you want to sync other content from your regular user account. Devices like HP’s MediaSmart Server are nearly there, but still appear to have the same synchronisation issues and don’t guarantee long term Apple compatability.

So in the end the best solution I’ve been able to come up with is a Drobo (which is currently on order):

The Drobo will give me an expandable data storage bucket with data redundancy, and being an external drive won’t pose the file permission issues of sharing on the internal Mac drive. But although it will allow me to share my iTunes and Aperture libraries between multiple accounts it still doesn’t overcome the problem of sharing with my laptop or providing always-on streaming to my AppleTV, iPhone or iPad. Hopefully this is something that Apple will one day address.