Apple's iTools not just for Macs?

Aaron Greenberg asks: "On Macintouch today, they've linked to a page explaining how Mac users not running MacOS 9 can utilize some of Apple's recently announced "iTools". Among iTools more interesting features is 20 MB of free remote storage via AppleShare IP. This service would be available to Linux users with AFPFS - an implementation of an AppleShare client for Linux that is only alpha quality and currently not being developed. While 20 MB of remote storage isn't something to go nuts over, I was wondering if it might inspire someone to continue work on AFPFS? Does Apple's open source release of MacOS X (Darwin) have code which would help further this project? For someone who works with Macs and Linux on the same network, it would be a nice tool to have. To those who might be quick to suggest netatalk - NOTE: netatalk only allows Linux/*nix users to serve files to Macs, but will NOT mount remote Mac servers using either classic AppleShare or AppleShare IP."

Comments

Apple's Attitude

[ben_]

AFAIK, iTools is an initiative by Apple to add value to Macs. That is, Apple benefit when you buy a Mac (being a hardware company), and so to make buying a Mac more attractive, they offer value-added Mac-only services like iTools. Wonder what they'll do if we freeloading Linux people started signing up in droves to get at those services (since you can bet that the majority of us are not running on Apple hardware, LinuxPPC notwithstanding). It would be interesting to see how they reacted; piss off many of the OSS world or pay for them to use iTools without getting any revenue in return? Interesting choice, Mr Jobs :-)

Re:Apple's Attitude

[TheHornedOne]

Considering that you'd be writing code to bring Apple HFS+ compatibility to Linux/UNIX and it'd likely be GOOD code AND that they still might come up with a way to derive some other benefits from it, I suspec they wouldn't mind if you developed an iTools option for Linux

Re:Apple's Attitude

[Phil-14]

Well, it seems to me that iTools would actually be enhanced if you could use it from other platforms. If it were usable from Linux, I could use it to move stuff from my mac to my linux box. If it were only usable from the MacOS, I could then use it to move stuff from my Mac to my Mac, which is pointless.

What they realy need to do

[LWolenczak]

What they realy need to do is stop working on file sharing, and port quicktime to unix platforms, so we can watch quicktime4 movies, cuz xanim dosent cut it.

Redhat and similar initiative?

[Midnight Thunder]

Although the service Mac orientated, the is nothing stopping Redhat or other companies coming up with a similar initiative. One way of making sure that only the paying customers get to play with this is to request a serial number or registration code. Otherwise, there are so many other sites which offer web pages with ftp access for uploading the data (and hence data storage :-) ), that there is no need to dwell on taking advantage of Apple's site.