Lanchester.net ...musings of an old nerd

Buying gifts for others is a process laden with missteps. For example (with details changed to protect the guiltily), we once bought some Buddhist friends a nice Buddhist book, only to receive a Buddhist monk's chant tape the next holiday from the friends. The friends mistook our desire to buy something they liked with an interest in the subject. Or maybe they're just re-gifters. :)

In any case, I thought I did a pretty good job figuring out what to buy DH for a recent anniversary. He loves to listen to music. He plays an old iPod through an iPod speaker system upstairs in the bathroom as he gets ready in the mornings, and he constantly hooks his Mac up to speakers to play his eclectic mix of tunes. What better to buy the man than a wi-fi LogiTech SqueezeBox Radio, recommended by "internationally beloved(TM)" technology pundit, Andy Inhatko, writer for the Chicago Sun Times?

This speaker with a wireless card and a nifty display will connect to multiple Macs and play your music or internet radio. Splendid!

There are a few drawbacks.

• The manuals and documentation are poor. Try reading the info at http://wiki.slimdevices.com and http://forums.slimdevices.com. (SlimDevices apparently sold the SqueezeBox line to LogicTech.)
• The current firmware, 7.5.1, is buggy, at least for me. The menu on the device kept changing. I couldn't switch between mysqueezebox.com and my Mac as a source (explained later) because the menu choice to switch them kept disappearing. The home menu wouldn't always go home. Bizarre!

So is it worth it? Yep, even with the bugs. 

Somewhat well-explained concepts:

• The SqueezeBox has to connect to your home network so it can access internet radio and also your iTunes (or other music library).
• It can connect via built-in Wi-Fi or via Ethernet.
• You can connect more speakers to SqueezeBox, although I think the built-in speaker is just fine for my great room (kitchen/living room).
• It comes with an audio cable to connect an iPhone/iPod (although if your Mac is on the same network, why would you?).

Some concepts that aren't explained at all (and I finally figured out by trolling the SlimDevices forums):

• To connect to internet radio, the SqueezeBox has to connect to your network so the SqueezeBox can connect to mysqueezebox.com, where you will need to set up a free account.
• To connect to your Mac's iTunes, you need to download and install software called SqueezeBox server, which indexes your iTunes library, including playlists.
• The connection to mysqueezebox.com and the SqueezeBox Server connection to your Mac are mutually exclusive. You can only have one active at a time.
• You CAN listen to internet radio via your Mac's SqueezeBox Server connection. So why would you care about mysqueezebox.com? Well, my two Macs sleep a lot of the time to save energy, and why would I wake up a Mac just to listen to internet radio?
• And why do you even care how you're connected? Well, because the box's presets (like preset buttons on your radio in the car) seem to be saved by connection--which Mac are you connected to, and are you connected to mysqueezebox.com. Favorites seem to be handled the same way. So in my house, there are two Macs, then the mysqueezebox.com connection. That's three possible connections, and you've got to stop and think what presets are where. I've decided to just use the same presets for all. We don't have that much internet radio we listen to. Six presets will work for now until I can sort it all out.

Applications are something you can "install" on your SqueezeBox. I have the Podcast Player app installed, and Joyce Meyer's podcast and Leo Laporte's MacBreak Weekly podcasts saved in the app. Pretty cool. Of course, apps are installed and managed via SqueezeBox Server (which is on your Mac), so I'm guessing my Mac has to be on to play those podcasts…a bit of a pain.

All in the all, I love this thing. The wild child will be wanting one for her apartment now.