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Slashback: Drives, Pods, OEMs
Drive-n to strong drink and harsh words. Kenneth Yu writes: "You might recall the overwhelming response to a recent 'Ask Slashdot' regarding the abnormally high failure rates of IBM 75GXP Hard drives, and the pulling of all 75GXP from Pair Networks' Servers. A class action lawsuit has been filed by Michael Granido, Jr., on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated. You can view the complaint in PDF format at http://www.sheller.com/IBM_complaint.pdf. This story was initially reported by Tech Report (http://www.tech-report.com)."
Apropos that, jriskin writes: "Storagereview.com has its new reliability database up and running. I have no affiliation with the site, but it only benifits the community to have as many people contribute as possible. The database is a listing of hard drives and whether or not they have failed, when they were purchased, etc. So get over there and put in all your HD data!" Things like this could help eliminate the anecdotal-only nature of many of hardware complaints, especially if people who are happy with their hardware bother to report it.
Falling far from a tree has nothing to do with it. Majik writes "A quick correction - the iPod has *10* gigs of storage, not 5 (or 6 like the Nomad). And with the Firewire interface you can move an entire CD in under a minute. Although I admit I was hoping for more out of the product announcement, it's still pretty darn cool ... "
On the other hand, jchristopher writes: "Love it or hate it, Apple's new iPod digital music player is here. Yesterday, many people commented that "at least it has no copy protection" and praised Apple's attitude toward digital music. Unfortunately, this may not be the case - according to this New York Times article, the iPod does indeed have copy protection - MP3 files copied to the iPod from one Mac to the iPod CAN'T be offloaded onto a different computer. Ouch!" That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet, which is sort of a shame considering that it has all the right things built in to be even better than the several portable firewire drives on the market.
Unorginal Equipment Makers. An Anonymous Coward writes: "This is a follow-up on a previous story posted to Slashdot about Microsoft's anti-competitive OEM contracts." It's a report by German journalist Erik Möller (hi, Erik!), who too an extremely thorough look at the details of OEM bundling deals, and what they mean to customers. Möller's conclusion: "No operating system will ever be able to compete with Microsoft Windows on the desktop market as long as OEMs cannot legally install it besides Windows without losing their license."
'Technical meaures' covers a pretty broad swath. Robotech_Master writes "The RIAA has responded to the 'license to virus' story, calling it a false Internet rumor and explaining their side of the story." So the RIAA officially does not want a license to hack, at least on paper.
Where'd you get that from? Look at the specs: 5GB hard disk drive.
From Apple's iPod Web page:
"Small though it is, iPod has a hefty 5GB hard disk drive."
As for transfering files, it is my understanding that in Idiot Mode (which Apple calls Default Mode), the iPod can only synch with one primary computer at a time. you can operate the device from within iTunes in non-idiot mode, which gives you more flexability.
What the iPod does is mirror the macintosh it's connected to. What that means is that if it's got the mp3s from one mac, they'll get overridden with the mp3s from the next mac you sync with.
However, if you use the iPod as a firewire disk, then you can copy files back & forth (including mp3s that you can play) with glee. They just wanted the RIAA off of their back, so now you have to (gasp) click and drag your files in order to copy them.. It's called "manually copying" the files...
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That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet, which is sort of a shame considering that it has all the right things built in to be even better than the several portable firewire drives on the market.
Apple has said explicitly that you could use this 5GB (yes, FIVE gigabyte, not ten) as a storage medium. Presumably the storage of MP3s would be restricted to interfacing with only one unique copy of iTunes. But that's no problem, just zip up (or use the excellent DropStuff, free utility from Aladdin for windows and mac) those MP3s and transfer the files that way. Sure, you won't compress them much, but you can route that silly protection.
Note that in product demos of the beast, the iPod shows up as a FIREWIRE DISK ON THE DESKTOP. I see no problems with transferring MP3s, just be a little craftier. Sheesh. Hardly any hacking required.
As far as the copy protection goes, it is really not draconian. If you sync your iPod with iTunes, iTunes will overwrite all songs on the iPod that you don't have on your copy of iTunes. However, you can manually copy music files from the iPod to any Mac. The Register has more info. They actually got to play around with one.
It does come wrapped in plastic that says "don't steal music" in 4 languages.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
thanks for posting the link. I can't say that my short report was really "thorough", since much of it is quotes from Hacker and Gassee, but that's partly because of its subject. Since the kind of OEM deals it discusses are certainly not frequent (and possibly organized in a clever contractual hierarchy), it is quite easy to cover them up.
But I think the evidence for their existence was already overwhelming before my own search (you don't have the CEO of a major competitor making such factual claims if there's nothing behind them), and at the point where one manufacturer told me quite straight-forwardly "Yes, we can't create dual-boot machines under our OEM contract, but please don't quote me on that" I decided to do what is called a cut in Prolog and not investigate further. It is really up to the anti-trust authorities now to subpoena these contracts and to then examine them in detail. If I am not mistaken, this was already done by the US regarding the "modification of icons on the desktop" question.
Interesting: In the K5 article, there were quite a few vocal Microsoft supporters who argued that this is a non-issue, either because the contracts don't exist or because they are not relevant -- in the attached poll, however, ~85% said that the OEM pratice should be investigated and quite possibly forbidden. So the silent majority seems to agree that this is a major issue.
Don't be fooled into passivity by a vocal minority: If you agree it's an issue, do something about it -- fax or write the EC in support of my report, or e-mail your own legislators (wherever you are, this seems to be an issue everywhere). Don't let MS get away with this.
Thanks,
Erik
Ok, Slashdot gets it wrong on the iPod again. Here's the deal, as can be found on MacFixIt. The iPod has two basic modes, the automatic music management system that syncs with iTunes, and a more manual sort of management method. It will only auto-sync with one "setup" of iTunes, meaning that you can't go to another computer and have it automatically copy all the music that the iPod has but the HD doesn't to the computer. However, you can manually transfer music files back and forth between the iPod and any compatible computer. This all, of course, totally ignores the other major functionality of the device as a plain-jane Firewire HD, which can be used to copy whatever you want between computers.
Aw Jeez.
The iPod has 5 GB of storage.
It also does not have any copy protection, but it won't auto-sync between two machines, you have to do it manually (just drag & drop the files).
Hope that clears things up just a little.
All hard drive manufacturers use the proper SI/metric meaning for mega and giga, i.e. 10^6 and 10^9. Why? Because it's not technically a lie, and it makes the drives look bigger.
Computer UIs, however, usually present to the user the CS definition for mega and giga, i.e. 2^20 and 2^30.
The capacity of the iPod is 4.6GB, 4.6*2^30 bytes, which is 5 billion bytes.
You can see this in Apple's user-interface preview of the thing -- click on the "About iPod" button.
Or for quicktime-less folks, a GIF of the relevant screenshot.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
From the PDF FAQ linked above:
Now this is interesting... If I'm reading this correctly (and I'm pretty damn sure I am), this means that I could, for example, shoot some footage with my trusty Firewire-capable DV camcorder, and upload all that data to the iPod... While I assume that this would result in the loss of some or all of my MP3's and other files on the iPod's HD, this would mean that one could use the iPod in lieu of additional DV tapes, or (more logically), as a backup for said footage.
The iPod obviously wasn't designed to lock out other possibilities for use... It just has specialized functionality for use with other Apple products. My other Apple products.
Ok, here is my reading between the lines of their FAQ.
When iTunes puts mp3 files on the drive it does something wicked and secret to them so that:
1. Only files so encoded will be playable by the internal firmware.
2. Said files are invisible when the drive is viewed in Firewire mode.
So yes, you can use it to transport mp3 files, but it isn't practical. What they had to prevent, to keep the RIAA from sueing their butts off, was the nightmare scenario where everyone buys one and plugs them into each other's machines, instantly exchanging music libraries with each other. If you thought Napster over DSL was bad, try FireWire speeds.
They also don't want PC or Linux folk to be able to use their products. In their way they are as bad as M$, you either buy into the Mac way or they don't want you touching any of their toys.
Since it IS just a FireWire drive with an onboard computer though, it WILL be hacked. If it doesn't get a Linux port it darn sure will get one of the BSD's within a year. After all it is a computer with 5GB of drive, 32MB of RAM, a usable display and some input devices with a FireWire port to talk to the outside world.
Democrat delenda est
First hand account of the iPod:
o ryid=1004046897,20517,
http://www.macaddict.com/cgi-bin/storypage.cgi?st
From the article:
" Breakout!: I'm pretty sure I'm the first one who found this, even though I found it by accident. If you select "About" from the main menu, then hold the center button for a couple seconds, a mini breakout game appears on the screen. That's what I call an easter egg!"
This probably means you could do a lot more with this than first appears.