Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

A lot of i* devices from Apple have turned up in my household over the last few years, it started with iPods until we all had one (or more!) then an iPad, an iPhone, a MacBook pro and most recently an AirPort Express and most likely an Apple TV in the future (for streaming music in the family room and/or kitchen).

But there is still one Achilles heel for these device; iTunes – they all rely on this awful application to update their content, sync photos, music etc. from my own collection. I own a lot of music CD’s and I have lots of DVDs ripped to MP4 format – I don’t buy everything online (despite Apple’s best efforts).

Why, when almost all of these devices have built in WiFi do I still have to sync them via a USB cable with iTunes, particularly as my iPad has 64Gb of storage, that takes ages to sync over USB.

Apple has had all this chatty bonjour p2p networking stuff in the products for year and home-sharing was a long over-due feature but still nothing in the iPad 2 and most recent OS updates.

I can see this being integrated into MobileMe; but for people like me with a *large* multi-TB media collection that’s going to be an expensive (and for many folks) impossible solution.

Come on, Apple – your stuff is generally great but this is rapidly becoming a pain point!