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Importing music via remote disc on MacBook Air
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I found this by Doug Aamoth on crunchgear.
"... can put a DVD in my regular computer, plop down in the living room, and watch the movie on my MacBook, right? No, you cant. It needs to be fully transferred first.
What about games? Can I play a game that needs to access the CD or DVD for copyright purposes and/or to load new levels as the game progresses? Again, no. It doesnt work like that. Youd have to dump the entire disc onto your hard drive and then use some sort of disc drive emulator not an overly easy proposition for most folks."
Still nothing about importing a disc into itunes though...
"... can put a DVD in my regular computer, plop down in the living room, and watch the movie on my MacBook, right? No, you cant. It needs to be fully transferred first.
What about games? Can I play a game that needs to access the CD or DVD for copyright purposes and/or to load new levels as the game progresses? Again, no. It doesnt work like that. Youd have to dump the entire disc onto your hard drive and then use some sort of disc drive emulator not an overly easy proposition for most folks."
Still nothing about importing a disc into itunes though...
My inclination is to say that this is probably true. You're not actually accessing a CD or DVD; you're accessing a network drive that happens to contain the contents of a CD or DVD. The code for ripping stuff from disc is probably going to want to talk directly to the drive, not as if it were a network drive. That means no ripping, no watching DVDs, and probably no burning files to a remote CD or DVD burner.
Hmm...that's kind of a bummer. Although I could move files from computers using an external hard drive, I would have to format it for windows as my other computer is a pc running xp.
Anybody see other solutions?
Anybody see other solutions?
Well, you could always install iTunes on your Windows PC, rip your songs there, and then WiFi them over to your MBA. Remember: If you have Remote Disc, that means your MBA and your remote machine both have WiFi. So copying files over once they've been ripped should be easy as cake. (Piece of pie? You know what I mean.)
Oh, and something else you should look into is Microsoft's RDC client for the Mac. It lets you take over a Windows PC from your Mac and drive it. Go to mactopia.com to download it (it's free).
Sorry, it's early and I may be missing the painfully obvious (also the MBA will be my first mac). If I rip cds with itunes on my windows machine, how do I "wifi" the files over to the macbook air?
You will need to create a shared folder on your PC, which the Mac can connect to (in Finder, I think it's Tools > Connect to Server). Then you just put the files in that folder, connect to the folder from your Mac, and copy the files. Or you can turn on File Sharing on your Mac and use the Windows PC to copy the files to your Mac. Once the files are on the Mac, you just import them into iTunes.
Sorry if this is a short explanation, but I am at work right now and don't have access to a Mac.
Well, the WSJ review is obviously shooting for a simple explanation of things.
If you have a machine available to set up Remote Disc on, then you probably can install iTunes on that machine and rip your music there. Once the music is ripped, you just need to copy the new song files over the same WiFi network that Remote Disc is also using.
And you can also install Handbrake on the machine where Remote Disc is installed, and rip your DVDs into movie files there. Once that's done, again you can copy the movie files over to your MBA.
But yes, if you want to install Windows on your MBA, or if you want to watch a movie on disc or play a game that requires access to the CD/DVD, then you will need the external SuperDrive.
If you have a machine available to set up Remote Disc on, then you probably can install iTunes on that machine and rip your music there. Once the music is ripped, you just need to copy the new song files over the same WiFi network that Remote Disc is also using.
And you can also install Handbrake on the machine where Remote Disc is installed, and rip your DVDs into movie files there. Once that's done, again you can copy the movie files over to your MBA.
But yes, if you want to install Windows on your MBA, or if you want to watch a movie on disc or play a game that requires access to the CD/DVD, then you will need the external SuperDrive.
Isn't that part of the idea in removing the optical drive? I'm sure Apple sees this as a way to push more people toward buying their music and movies via iTunes. Not really a bad thing in my opinion from a business perspective.
Sure, it will allow you to import audio cds, etc. WITH the external drive for $99
Oh of course, it makes sense until the next anti-competition lawsuit comes along.
Up to now we have always had the option of using our cds/dvds instead of iTunes. By selling a separate superdrive they can maintain they still give us the option, but have made it much more effort to use a cd rather than download from itunes.
I doubt there is any hardware reason why you can't run a dvd remotely or rip a cd - after all I have streamed DVD quality movies from my networked hard disk without a problem.
A hardware reason, no. A software reason, yes.
The DVD Player application and iTunes both expect to be able to talk directly to the DVD or CD drive; when you connect to a DVD or CD drive across a network, it becomes a network drive and that's a whole other way of accessing the data. This is why DVD Player won't let you play a DVD from a shared DVD drive, and why iTunes won't rip music from a CD in a shared CD drive.
I don't buy this. You can get network mountable CD drives for backup purposes. If it was a software problem, apple are also a software company and can correct it.
Yes, and the backup software in that case doesn't mind that it's writing to a network device, because it's designed to allow for that possibility.
In the case of iTunes and DVD Player and pretty much any other media player application you care to mention (Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.), concepts of playback and ripping are going to be expecting the CD/DVD to be directly accessible as local devices, not as network file shares. It's true that Apple or Microsoft or Real could change their applications to support this concept, but I would not expect them to for a corner case like "I am accessing the CD/DVD via a network."
So it's not that it's not possible; it's that they choose not to make it possible.
i see. the only reason I'm wondering is because I'll be doing electronic music composition. I'm all about purchasing music online, but until these large music services like itunes are able to provide music equivalent to a wav file, I'll still have to use a cd/dvd drive.
but no biggie, as i'll be able to use my windows laptop to do the conversion. Thanks for all your help everybody!
but no biggie, as i'll be able to use my windows laptop to do the conversion. Thanks for all your help everybody!
Yeah, but this is a brand new piece of software that does this kind of miraculous uber-cool thing and you are complaining cause it doesn't do the one thing you want. Your expectations are a little ahead of reality here.
There is a shareware app (can't think of the name right now) for Mac that will allow you to transfer the music from your iPod to a new computer. So you could sync your iPod (assuming you have one) to your Windows iTunes and then plug your iPod into the Mac. Using that software you can copy all the music from the Pod to the Mac. It only takes as long as a regular sync and is a two click operation.
If there isn't enough space on the iPod, then rinse and repeat until all the music is copied over.
Not at all, there are four main uses of an optical drive. Install applications, backup data, rip music and watch dvds.
They are not just things that I want them, many people will want to do the same. I am complaining because apple obviously designed this software to funnel users into using the itunes store for their music and films.
Excuse me, but what is so brand new, miraculous and uber-cool about this? As far as I can tell, the only thing new to it is remote booting (which only works for booting OS X, and is kind of a self-inflicted problem on the MBA). For the rest Remote Disc doesn't appear to do anything that a standard network shared DVD drive doesn't. And I don't even need to install a 40MB package and click permission dialogs all the time for that. On Windows, I just right-click the drive, choose Sharing and Security -> Share this drive. I don't have my Mac here right now, but I'm sure OS X can do this out of the box too.
I don't see any reason for a limitation of this sort. If anything, couldn't you use disk utility to mount the remote disc, create a new "local" disc image and rip from there (worst case scenario)?