There are times when even the faithful such as me see cracks appear in the church of Apple. I can’t list examples because there’s too many for this small blog entry and the memories are too painful anyway, lets just say they are many and varied and involve both the ways Apple treat their customers and their product failings.
The only reason I still keep the faith is that once in a while they do something spectacular that wipes their slate, if not really clean, then a sort of dirty charcol grey.
The latest saving grace is a small iPod/iPhone application simply called “Remote”.
I have a relatively nice media setup at home. A good amplifier, a great plasma TV and among other things a Mac Mini attached to the lot. I use the Mac to play all the music and movie files I store on my NAS storage in the loft and it works great.
The one thing that has always been a bit lacking in the setup was that I had to either turn the TV on or remote control into the Mac from my laptop to play music (or at least choose the music I play).
This is where that Remote application comes in.
Remote gives you exactly the same UI as the iPod’s internal player except instead of playing the music on the pod, it controls iTunes on the designated Mac and plays the media from there. Not just music but Movies too. The volume control in iTunes even moves relative to the one on the Remote. It can even divert the music to an Airport Express. As ever the devil is in the detail.
It is so well integrated and slick that I think it is almost perfect.
So just when I begin to be frustrated and my faith tested, Apple is redeemed, and all is well again.