jessedyck.com

I’ll start off with a quick explanation of my set up, then what the problem is, and finally the obvious solution.

I have 2 computers. One is a 15″ Macbook Pro which I recently purchased to replace an iBook G4. My other computer is a desktop Windows box that I used to do all my gaming on. I’ve mostly grown out of that, so I’ve been cannibalizing it slowly and using it as a file server.

Since my laptop only has 160GB hard drive (for now) and I have a lot of music, I have most of it on my desktop and stream it through iTunes to my laptop. This is where the problem lies. I always put my laptop to sleep when I’m not using it because I hate unnecessarily using power. The less I use, the more Hydro can sell to the Americans, which means more money for the Canadian economy, and ultimately less power that has to come from coal. Ever time I close my laptop though, iTunes disconnects from the share on my desktop. I come back a few hours later, maybe just want to listen to a track or 2 while I get ready to go out, but iTunes has to reconnect and (I assume) download the entire library all over again. For a library of my size, we’re looking at 30 seconds or more. Why?

Here’s what I’m wondering. I know that iTunes stores it’s library locally in an XML file. I assume that in the background all iTunes is doing is serving up a stripped down version of that XML file to tell the client iTunes what tracks are shared. My library, and I’m sure most peoples, does not change all that often, at least not daily. So why can’t iTunes cache and only redownload it if it’s recently been changed? It seems so simple to me, so much so that I figure there has to be a much more technical reason as to why that isn’t possible. It’s as simple as storing a lastModified field in XML and having the server send that over first.

Is it because it takes too long to make the initial connection? Maybe that’s what’s taking so much time and not the transfer of the track list. I’m not sure, but I feel that there must be a solution, and I feel that Apple should be all over it seeing as their primary market is Laptops and a two computer model (a la Air).