Slashdot Mirror

Oh how I wish I could have the iPod hardware with an open source program in Linux to put music on it ... unfortunately Apple does not want this.

You can. I know, the software that interfaces with iPods on linux are all something of a kludge, and Apple occasionally breaks compatibility and jerks you around. But you can run open software on your iPod and make it really easy. After screwing around with iPod loaders for years, I switched to rockbox and never looked back.

I assumed that someone who appears to have been on Slashdot for quite some time would be at least familiar with a cross-platform project like FUSE, if not one of the underlying technologies of KDE. My bad.

What I'm trying to convey is that the only way to get an iPod to play something it doesn't know about without the user telling it to would be for the iPod to look for 'stuff on the disk' by default, which negates the benefits of its being designed to not have to do that, just to suit a minority of users. There are programs out there which can be run from the iPod's disk (a la portable Firefox) that can load songs onto an iPod without iTunes. I mentioned one in another post, which I sometimes use myself if I want to add an MP3 without adding it to my iTunes library.

I just checked Apple's site. They don't seem to have a Linux version of iTunes.

Use WINE. Or YamiPod, or something else. There's plenty to choose from.

Yep. There's absolutely no way to use an iPod under Linux

Now, don't you start your whining about your precious Ogg and FLAC or-anything-else-support neither!

Now STFU, you fucking Troll...

It is exactly the same type of restrictions that Apple applies to all their products; be it iPod, iPhone, OSX or whatever else you can think of.

The NIN content that Apple found objectionable can currently be bought from iTunes, just not as an app. Similarly, OSX is a pretty well understood platform that really only needs hardware developers to bother creating compatible drivers. You can put any content you want on iPods, and there are a wide variety of secondary apps to do this if you don't like iTunes.

Really, the only thing Apple has this much control over is the App store. Friends of mine have had far less trouble getting music onto the iTunes store than onto the app store. This whole thing smacks of expecting the iPhone to be just a Nokia Candybar ++, and being overwhelmened when people are using it like a genuine platform.

---- Apple could provide a Framework for iPod interaction, but it doesn't - that's not open to third parties. This closes out reasonable competition for the sake of their music store. . . .

• gtkpod
• Anapod Explorer
• PodLift
• YamiPod
• Floola
• ImTOO Pod

The fact that Apple doesn't devote resources to publishing and maintaining an SDK hasn't stopped the groups above from putting out products that manage an iPod without a user even needing to install iTunes. The fact that you apparently didn't know they existed says something about the overwhelming demand for such products in the general market.

If Apple truly wanted to lock out such products, it would be easy for them to run the syncing process through a home-grown encryption tool for which they hold a patent. That would make any other product that worked an automatic infringement of the patent, and any attempt to circumvent the encryption a violation of the DMCA.

As for limiting DTrace, I think it's most likely that Apple's decision is based on its contractual agreements with the movie studios who just signed up to provide rentals. Those are the guys who demand that HD content remain in encrypted and unobservable channels from disc to screen. Granted the rental files aren't HD, but they are exploding media, to keep the Apple offerings more or less channel-neutral with pay-per-view cable, and I don't think the MPAA would be happy about a tool that allows people to snoop the video channel as it passes through iTunes.

Use Yamipod. There's an option within the program to copy a song from your library to your computer. I use it all the time.

Check out http://www.yamipod.com/

Of course once you are done railing on Apple (and yes I think they deserve some criticism for not making the iPod a standard USB drive and letting the iPod import the songs itself into it's database) take a look at YamiPod. It runs on Windows, MacOSX and Linux and is a self contained binary (no real install needed) that will import your songs for you. I formatted my ipod to FAT32 by connecting it to a windows laptop from work with iTunes and iPod Update installed on it, but with the newer ones this step isn't needed as they are all FAT32 now) then accessed it like a regular drive, dropped all 3 versions of YamiPod on it and now I can import and export songs from it on any machine I want.

If you can't find a way to sync your iPod with your Linux machine you haven't really been looking!

When will we get to mod articles "-1, Troll"?

In addition to that a quick search for ipod on Gnome Files turns up Banshee , Rhythmbox , Listen and Yamipod>{not open source} , all of these look like nice options for iPod and music library management under linux but Banshee and Listen really stand out. No DRM of course but there is an entry on codeweavers' site for iTunes though i've no idea how compatible it is at this stage.http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/bro wse/name?app_id=134

yamiPod can play, rename, and retransfer music off of an iPod for free.
http://yamipod.com/

You're lying:

http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/
http://www.yamipod.com/.

Nuff said.

free
http://www.7-zip.org/
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
http://djlizard.net/software/dial-a-fix
http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

shareware
http://www.steganos.com/?product=safe8&language=en
http://www.agnitum.com/products/tauscan/index.php
http://www.kaspersky.com/antihacker

What's your point with the question, "All I have ever known is that to download music to your iPod or purchase music for your iPod you had to use iTunes - no execptions. Even books bought through audible.com needs iTunes to dowload the books to the iPod last time I looked"

Is it Apple's problem then that no one else writes programs to load music onto an iPod? How about Yamipod? I mean, what else are they going to do? Rely on Microsoft to write a program to upload music to their MP3 player? Does it bother you then that Sony uses SonicStage, Dell uses MusicMatch, and Creative uses Creative Media Source?

What's the problem with iTunes? Because it's free? Because it's crappy? Does that mean you don't use IE, either? Apple bought iTunes when it was called SoundJam, then released it as iTunes; and when it was first released, it was compatible with Rio, Creative, and Sony MP3 players; it was a generic MP3 jukebox written for Mac users because no one else would provide a decent one (sound familiar? Developers tend to forget about the Mac, so Apple usually takes it upon themselves to provide decent programs to their user base). Even as far back as last year, iTunes was compatible with OTHER mp3 players. I'm not sure if they still are, but I don't see why Apple would remove that functionality.

So why do we have to use iTunes? Because no one else (Microsoft, Creative, Sony, Dell, etc) is willing to write iPod compatible software. Only third parties who don't make MP3 players do.

So maybe I'll try again. You're asking, "Do I have to use iTunes to use an iPod?"

The answer is, "No you don't have to use iTunes to use an iPod". There are even WinAMP plugins for the iPod and people have also written tools to allow Windows Media Player to synch with the iPod. Why are you blaming Apple for the lack of iPod support from Microsoft and others? The iPod doesn't use secret sauce: All it does is create a database of all the songs to enable quick ID3 tag browsing without spinning up the harddrive, and it stores all the songs in a hash-table on the iPod to maximize efficiency and minimize tree depth.

More info on iTunes with other players.

If your going to be using the iPod on a Mac/Win/Lin box, just put all the Yamipod varriation on it. That way you can just run that program. If your using windows or mac, you can even run yamipod from the ipod itself.

You don't get it.

No, YOU don't get it.

If you need iTunes to use an iPod, APPLE controls what goes on and comes off. Not me. Not you. ONLY Apple.

You DO NOT NEED ITUNES TO USE AN IPOD. On the Windows side of things you can use Anapod Explorer, YamiPod, ml_iPod for Winamp, iPod Agent, or ephPod to name a few. OSX users have choices as well. Furthermore, even if I use iTunes, how is Apple "controling" what I put on my iPod? I buy a CD. I rip it to MP3. I put it on my iPod. End of story. Where is the control? I assume you are referring to the fact that iTMS uses DRM'ed AAC, but the fact is I am in no way forced to use iTMS. iTMS != iTunes.

The fact that you can use it how you want is ONLY due to the fact that Apple lets you.

Um, yeah. I *can* use it how I want, thanks for pointing that out.

I'd never buy a music player where someone else controls the content.

Neither would I.

I'm getting one instead of an iPod because it's just a portable hard drive that doesn't use any drivers

To use the ipod as USB storage you don't need any drivers (it's just a normal usb disk). To copy songs from/to the ipod, you do need an application that handles the ipod's music database (a few simple files on the ipod's usb-mounted disk), but there are several which you can put on the ipod itself and therefore have available to you where ever you go. Even if you really can't get any sort of program to run (e.g., a solaris box mounting it as a usb volume), you can still copy the music files normally, though you'll have a slightly harder time finding them, because the ipod renames/moves them to speed up the UI.

Honestly, if your player doesn't have a centralized database, it will have a slow UI. The only way to quickly display meta-information (song title, and so on) is to have it in a central database. Otherwise you spend several seconds waiting for a menu to show up each time you make a selection.

Ofcourse, if you're looking at the DMC offerings, likely you just want something to tinker with, and the ipod is definitely not good for tinkerers.