Mac Mini as dedicated iTunes Server

[dnanian]

Hi, Dr. Blueberry.

I've also got a Mac mini as a dedicated media server here, so I'm quite familiar with the setup you're proposing, and I do think that netTunes is exactly what you're looking for.

Let's go through the questions, which I'll answer in order to avoid all that nasty quoting:

* Yes, you can have multiple Macs running the client simultaneously. Of course, as you might expect, the more connected the slower the performance, but it works fine. Get the fast mini, with memory!

* launchTunes is typically useful when you're sharing music that isn't necessarily on the machine where you're playing. For example, I have a Mac mini that is my netTunes server, but my music is on my OSX server. I run launchTunes, using my OSX Server as the "server", and the mini as (one of the) clients.

So, when I start up iTunes on any machine on my network, it automatically ensures iTunes is launched on the server.

Similarly, if you just wanted to listen to the music stored on the mini from another machine's iTunes, you could set up the mini's iTunes as the server, and install launchTunes on the other machines. So, you'd start iTunes locally and it'd ensure the mini's iTunes is running, and its library could be used locally.

* That's right, netTunes gives access to iTunes on the computer, and she'd "take over" -- it's not designed for "multitasking" an existing machine between iTunes and other work... really for a (primarily) dedicated machine

* I'm not sure why she'd see the desktop, unless iTunes was taking a while to respond -- but it is possible to get access to other applications if you're persistent

* Yes, I have -- it works great with Server.

Hope that helps! Let me know how it works out for you: I think you'll be quite pleased.