It’s the bane of every serious music fan: the iTunes library. Even with Home Sharing, keeping your jams flowing smoothly between different computers with different iTunes accounts requires a lot of fiddling. So the easiest solution is to purchase an AirPort Extreme and a NAS (short for “network attached storage”) drive, keep your library on the NAS, and use MediaRover to make sure all your computers use that one central library. Here’s how…
Connect the NAS to the AirPort Extreme, then launch AirPort Utility. Click Manual Setup and enter your password if prompted. Select Disks to display the drive, then click the File Sharing tab and “Enable file sharing.” Select “With accounts” under the Secure Shared Disks drop-down and ensure AirPort Disks Guest Access isn’t allowed. Select Configure Accounts in the Secure Shared Disks section, then click the plus button to add an account. Create a username and password, then select Read and Write under Sharing Access. Click Done, then Update to apply your changes.
Use the AirPort Utility to get your NAS properly set up.
Visit mediarover.com for a free account that lets you sync up to eight computers. Download and install the MediaRover application on your Mac, noting your account’s email address and access code. Launch MediaRover and enter this info. On the next screen, you’ll be prompted for a name to indicate whom a synced playlist belongs to -- for example, “Workout (Dad)” -- and you can also specify your Mac’s name. Click Next, then choose a syncing option. If you like tinkering, choose Manually Configure. Otherwise, click Default Sync.
Use the AirPort Utility to get your NAS properly set up.
In the next screen, select Manual Configuration and specify the path to the NAS -- your router’s IP Address followed by a forward slash and the name of the connected drive. In the username field, type the username and password you created in AirPort Utility. Select Next to make MediaRover verify the NAS; click Next again when the test passes.
MediaRover will automatically connect to the NAS drive and sync your iTunes library. Each file sports a nifty icon: a green arrow means the song is synced to both your local iTunes library and the NAS drive; a red “X” means it cannot be copied (this applies to videos or DRM’d files); and a spinning wheel means the file is being copied to or from the drive. Click Preferences to tweak other features, including various sync settings.
Get in the habit of launching MediaRover periodically so it can sync iTunes libraries.
Install and configure MediaRover on other computers to sync them. You’ll have to launch MediaRover manually to sync an iTunes library with the one stored on the NAS drive, and once that’s done, you’re ready to rock. Or jazz. Or whatever.
