Finally, one of the greatest features missing from Aplpe iOS devices ( iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) has now been made available as of iOS4.3…Home Share.

Home Share has been around in some guise for a fear or two now, allowing computers on the same network to see, browse and play music and videos from other iTunes Libraries on the network. What was lacking, however, was the ability for an Apple iOS device to see and stream this content whilst on the same network, it was restricted to OS X and Windows operating systems running the latest iTunes.

Let’s say I’d just purchased the latest XX Album in iTunes on my Mac Pro, if I wanted to listen to that on my iPhone 4 whilst in the garden (still connected to WiFi) I’d have to connect the iPhone up via USB and sync the new album to the iPhone. Not a big hassle but still inconvenient [hopefully one day soon Apple will pull their finger out and enable WiFi syncing of content to an iOS device, USB cables are so 2000].

The idea of Home Share is that now, any iOS device on my WiFi network can see, search and stream/play any content from another computer running iTunes on the same network, just what I’ve been after. Finally I can keep movies on my Mac Pro’s huge RAID hard drives and lie in the garden or in bed and stream a movie to my iPad.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get it working, no matter what I selected in the iTunes preferences pane the “Shared” option wouldn’t appear on my iPhone or iPad.

I double checked on the iOS devices that I had entered the correct Apple ID in the Home Share settings:

Settings–>iPod–>Home Sharing

I made sure the iOS devices were updated to iOS4.3 and iTunes was on the very latest 10.2.1 and rebooted everything.

It still wouldn’t work. I powered on my Macbook Air and enabled Home Sharing on that and that instantly showed up on the iOS devices….so the iOS devices are behaving correctly but for some reason iTunes on my Mac Pro wasn’t playing ball. I checked to see if it was a firewall issue but the firewall on my Mac Pro is off (Firewall is handled by the router and TimeCapsule). Eventually I found out what I had to do….and felt like a right idiot for not spotting it sooner!

In iTunes I’d been check in the Preferences to “Enable Sharing” but what I had failed to spot in the Advanced menu was “Turn Home Sharing On”!! Err that could be the reason it’s not working. By default this option is set to be ON but I do vaugely remember turning it off last year when trying to debug some network latency issues with my Apple TVs.

In iTunes click on Advanced in the tool-bar at the top:

Select the option to Turn On Home Sharing [if it says turn Off Home sharing then your Home Sharing is already on and you have another problem, sorry]

Once you’ve done this, you should see a new Home Share icon in the side bar:

Click on that and then in the right hand pane enter your Apple ID (email address) and password and hit Create Home Share:

You should then be greeted with a screen saying that Home Sharing is now on and confirming the email address used to create the home share.  [NOTE Make sure this matches the email address entered on the iPod settings screen on the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch.]

Now on your iOS device, when you go into the iPod app and click on “more” in the bottom right corner on the iPhone/iPOd touch or Library at the top left of the iPad you should be able to see the new Shared section and select the library you just shared:

So if you’re having difficulty getting your Home Share visible on your iOS device:

1. Make sure your devices are on the same network, this is crucial! If you have multiple WiFi networks all devices that home share MUST BE ON THE SAME NETWORK. If, like me, you have an Apple Airport Extreme or TimeCapsule computers connect via ethernet cables are classed as being on the same network as the WiFi devices.
2. Make sure your iTunes is fully up to date, at the time of writing that is version 10.2.1
3. Make sure your iOS devices are fully up to date, at the time of writing that is version iOS4.3
4. Ensure you have entered the same Apple ID on both iTunes and iOS settings.
5. Finally, and most important, make sure Home Sharing is turned ON in the advanced settings of iTunes, see above screen shots.

Ping is the new social networking side of iTunes that lets you follow artists and friends to see what they are listening to, tracks they are buying, concerts coming up etc. Sounds great but how do you get your friends to find and follow you? This bit should be simple but in a very un-Apple-esque way it isn’t.

Fortunately you can just copy a link to your profile and send that to friends via email/twitter/facebook/etc.

First you need to launch iTunes and then click on the Ping icon underneath store:

You should now see your own personal profile page. All you need to do here is right click (ctrl-click) on your name at the top and then select “Copy Link” from the drop-down list. This copies a link to your profile onto your clipboard that you can paste into an email, tweet, etc

The link will look similar to:

http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?userId=92779645 [This is my profile link btw]

and will open your web browser and should then automatically open your iTunes and navigate to your Ping profile page for others to easy hit the follow button.

Along with my local “Computer” speakers and Airport Express “Lounge” speakers that I used to have in iTunes

the AppleTV now appeared in the drop down list of available speakers to stream music to:

I hit play in iTunes and selected the AppleTV speakers from the selection box, after a few seconds pause to connect with the AppleTV, my song started streaming through the TV speakers and surround system in my lounge.

This is great news for me as I only purchased my Airport Express to stream music to the Lounge since the AppleTV didn’t have Airtunes functionality. Now I can remove the Airport Express and put that into the kitchen, and I was about to buy another Airport Express just for that so I’ve saved £70 thanks to Apple’s free update.

There is an new option page in the AppleTV settings for Airtunes allowing you to turn the feature on/off and also set an Airtunes password:

UPDATE:
If you have your TV turned on and showing the AppleTV source, when you change tracks on your computer/laptop and stream to the Apple TV Airtunes speakers the corresonding track name and album art are shown on the TV as if you were selecting and playing the music from the Apple TV.

After plenty of rumors across the web, the latest software update has just been released from Apple.It was announced at the Keynote Address (watch it here) along with several other new products, including the MacBook Air and Time Capsule wi-fi base station with up to 1TB storage for wireless backups.

Back to the iPhone update. Upon reading about the announcement I clicked the Apple logo in the top left of the desktop and ran a manual software update to obtain the latest iTunes, etc. Half way there…….After opening the new iTunes and connecting the iPhone I clicked “Check for Updates” only to be informed that Apple’s Software Server is Busy or unobtainable, check internet connection or try again later. Since my network was functioning correctly and all web site were accessible I assumed the server had reached its connection limit with everybody trying to get the update.

True enough, half an hour later iTunes asked me to agree to some new T&C’s before downloading the 1.1.3 software.

I thought it had already downloaded the update but a quick look at my network activity showed it downloaded at full speed (1MB/s) for a while:

Finally the update of my iPhone firmware began:

and I am pleased to say all went smoothly.

I picked my iPhone on launch day in the UK (November 9th) and after making a few calls several friends complained of a “creaking” sound coming down the phone.

I eventually narrowed the sound down to the plastic housing for the speaker and microphone, applying gently pressure to the sides of the housing when holding the phone caused the plastic to flex and creak. As the microphone is housed in this area the small sound was greatly amplified down the line to my friends.

I took a trip back to the Carphone Warehouse the next morning, explained and demonstrated the problem and they instantly agreed it was a fault and would issue a replacement. The problem was none of the sales staff were able to talk me through the exchange procedure for the iPhone as I was the first to return a faulty iPhone. They seemed to be under the impression when I connected the replacement iPhone to iTunes I would have to start a new 18 months contract and ask for a refund and termination of the previous contract. This seemed ludicrous to me so after an hour wait in store whilst they called somebody for advice they finally gave me a new iPhone but removed the SIM from my old faulty phone and installed it in the new one.

That was it as far as they were concerned, it should just work! WTF of course it won’t, I powered it on in front of them to prove my point, and sure enough the phone was in Emergency Call only mode until I connected to iTunes.

Somebody then reassured me that iTunes would recognise the phone as a replacement and I’d simply have to enter my old number to migrate my account to the newer handset. This brought up a new problem, since I was migrating from Vodafone to O2 and was porting my number, I had been issued with a temporary O2 phone number for 7 days. Did I enter this temporary O2 number or my number being ported across if iTunes asked?….blank faces from all the staff again!

I left the store and decided to just try it and see what happened, and for the benefit of anybody else wandering how the replacement iPhone process differs from the new sign up procedure I took screen shots at each stage:

Step 1: First Screen shown when replacement iPhone connected.

Step 2: iTunes knows an iPhone is already registered to my account and asks for my existing mobile number. At this stage I decide to enter the temporary mobile number that I’ve been assigned until my number ports from my old network.

Step 3: It then asks me to confirm my Apple ID and password.

Step 4: A brief wait while it checks my Apple ID against the mobile number given.

Step 5: I am then asked to review the Bill name and change to mobile number. I notice that it’s defaulted to the 9991231234 phone number for some reason but I go with it and see what happens.

Step 6: I’m presented with an error saying the iTunes store may be busy!

Step 7: I’m then present with the same review your O2 account information page but this time it’s picked up my O2 username and external email address I signed up to O2 with along with the temporary phone number I previously entered.

Step 8: Another short wait while it processes my activation. You’ll notice that it didn’t ask me to agree to any T&C’s again, nor did it ask me to verify my tariff.

Step 9: Activation complete it now asks if I wish to restore a backup taken from my previously faulty iPhone.

Step 10: I chose the most recent backup and hit continue and it takes a few seconds to restore the backup. (note I didn’t have any music or photos in the backup simply contacts, calendar and email settings)

Step 11: All done. The replacement phone is now connected to my iTunes and O2 accounts, the old phone contents have been restored on the new iPhone and I’m all set to go.