According to AppleInsider, Steve Jobs and crew could be working on a new version of Apple’s iPhone Software that could provide users access to their home iTunes libraries on-the-go.
It is widely regarded that streaming media from a stand-alone device to a mobile device would require so much bandwidth that it would make the process unbearable. However, Apple might be able to get around syncing the entire song, thus relieving the “cloud” of intense strain. How would they do this you ask?
Here’s one possibility:
New versions of iTunes and the iPhone Software could theoretically eliminate this problem by syncing only the metadata — or tiny files containing the barebones attributes of each media item or playlist but not the content itself — from a user’s iTunes library to their portable devices.
Using this metadata, iPhones and iPods would contain “virtual media items” representing every playlist, video, photo, and mobile game stored on their computer, even if the sum of those files would ordinarily be too large to fit onto the devices’ hard disk drive or flash drive. This is possible because metadata capable of representing a media item consumes only faction — typically less than 1 percent — of the space required to store the media item itself.
“As a result, the user perceives that the virtual media items may be available on the [the media player],” Apple said. “In this manner, the virtual capacity of an electronic device may be increased.”
This would mean that users would be able to choose what “virtual media items” they want to display or playback without worrying about streaming or loss of quality. This technology is probably still a ways off, but the prospect of taking your home media library with you, wherever you go, is something that we hope comes to fruition sooner rather than later.
