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Comment by voytec | Hacker News Reader

I remember having an iMac with 3TB hard disk on which I stored all my CDs ripped in an lossless format. iTunes had an option to stream the library to local network and since this iMac was on 24/7, this was a perfect solution for me to have an audio-NAS and also kind-of remote streaming when I was connecting via VPN to my home network.

Than there came Tim Cook's "upgrades": OS X was renamed to macOS, iTunes to Music, and Apple blocked LAN-related options which came with purchased devices.

At the same time Apple asked me to pay for the same functionality and their ecosystem's attractiveness started getting shittier. Since then, with similar actions, Tim Cook switched increasingly more of my activities from Apple's increasingly-hostile and toxic ecosystem to almost anywhere else.

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I think what you experienced is a shift in philosophy at Apple and rot by low maintenance. In the early 2000s Apple's approach seemed to be having your computer be "the hub" and things could sync or stream from your computer (like your iPod requiring a computer). That seemed to cause problems when you had multiple computers, take your devices away from home, requiring your computer to be on and connected, requiring you to own a computer to use devices, etc. They seemed to abandon that for awhile and later shift to the cloud being the hub...along with ongoing subscriptions.

Apple seem to believe what you’re talking about is supported via Home Sharing [1]. I have attempted to get this to work with a little success but I wonder if it was too little too late for you?

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202190

Too late. I have called Apple's support when they did this and they told me that there was no way to still use such functionality without paying for online Apple Music. They would serve me copies of some of my previously LAN-shared music from the internet.

For some reasons, which I don't recall, it was supposed to be some - not all - music from my original CDs, ripped by me under law allowing to have digital copies of owned audio CDs.

Home Sharing covers some of it, but the limitations of requiring everything physically on the same network and logged into the same Apple ID sound way more stringent.

Even for a family for instance, it means they'd all have to share the same ID, which would be a royal PITA, especially if you're setting parental controls for the kids.

You can have multiple people in your family share different things from their devices. When I go to home sharing in the TV.app, I see both my computer and my spouse's.

When I was in college, there were always some people on the network who would leave their iTunes wide open, and that was how I discovered new music to listen to.

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