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Sync Your iPod on Linux
scatboy writes "Tex9 has software for using an iPod (yes, another iPod story) on Linux. It uses a graphical drag-and-drop interface through xtunes, their version of iTunes on Linux. They are looking for beta testers of the xpod software now.
I have a dual boot box that has only gone into Windows lately to load my iPod with the betas of XPlay. I held out on making the final purchase of XPlay due to rumours of Apple coming out with their own Windows software at MacWorld New York. This is an even better reason to wait. I am very excited about a chance to measure uptime in months again!"
Why the heck didn't Apple come out with a Windows version in the first place? They have arguably the best MP3 player in the industry - imagine how many people would have bought one if it had come supporting Windows from the outset.
People aren't gonna buy an iMac just for an iPod. But if they buy an iPod for Windows and LOVE it, they might be better inclined to buy Apple computers in the future. Seems to me Apple went about this the wrong way...
Personally, I think this is a vindication of Apple's strategy to keep the iPod Apple-only for a time. It kept demand to a reasonable level, allowed them to focus on Apple-only hardware, sold a lot more Macs, and in the long-term will not keep anyone out of the iPod Revolution.
I can't see any reson why someone won't make an add on , to use the IPOD as a hard drive for the GBA. Just think of the games you could run.
I have already seen a camera with a usb plug , surly an alteration of this could work ?
Cruise TT
Given that Apple politely asked Mediafour, the makers of XPlay (the Windows "iTunes" equivalent to interface w/ iPod), to change their name from XPod to something else, I think you've got a point.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
This is really cool tech, a really cool program, and good for linux.
But i couldn't help but notice: did you see the little thumbnail screenshot? It appears that they are attempting to directly copy the iTunes interface, right down to the positioning of widgets and aqua+brushed_metal skin.
STUPID. Apple has made it very, very clear that they consider the skins/themes to their programs "trade dressing", and that if you sell a product with the same interface and textures as one of theirs, they WILL send lawyers after you. Notice that anyone who tries to make a theme explicitly described as "aqua lookalike" gets a letter from Apple Legal. No matter whether you believe apple has the legal right to do this, you have to at least acknowledge *they do this*, and it really isn't worth the bother of risking having to deal with apple legal. Just make something DIFFERENT, and then this won't be a problem. It's just a matter of saneness and safety.
I will agree that trying to copyright "look and feel" is bullshit, but look. Skins are images. You can copyright images. There is no reason to pretend that a skin/theme to an mp3 player is not a copyright violation just because, well, the textures may look exactly the same as they do in the interface you're knocking off, but hey, they aren't EXACTLY the same images! Um, no.
You can also copyright layouts, like in graphics & design, leading me to think that if you create a program where every button, text field, and interface widget is in exactly the same place as in iTunes, and you got hauled into court over this, you WOULD lose.
What is so hard about just HUMORING APPLE and DESIGNING YOUR OWN INTERFACES AND GUI SKINS? You just look stupid when you clumsily copy someone else's interface vertabrim. Yes, i get the idea is to be all like "look, you can do things on linux just the same as on mac!", but what it actually COMES ACROSS AS is "look, i am too uncreative or incompetent to design a user interface, so i just ripped off Apple's wholesale!"
In case the page get's slash-dotted or you can't be bothered here are the reasons in a nutshell.
- USB != Firewire
- iPod uses Firewire
- GBA uses USB
PS: iPods fail the bounce testYou may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
However I don't see what this has to do with the iPod. The iPod doesn't have any USB capabilities. It only has FireWire. So unless someone has come out with a FireWire connection for GBA, I am not sure how you would connect an iPod to a GBA...
yeah,but that's all you can use...
That's funny. On mine-- right this second-- I'm using XEmacs, GCC, and XFree86 to work on a new GTK application, Tomcat for Java servlets development, Outlook for talking to the idiots^Wcolleagues on the business side of things, and Maya for playing with a dynamics simulation in the background while I compile. Oh, and OmniWeb for posting this.
I didn't realize that all I was supposed to be using was my iPod. Better shut some stuff down....
Why the heck didn't Apple come out with a Windows version in the first place? They have arguably the best MP3 player in the industry
Because in less than a year, Apple's seen the iPod become so successful that Windows and Linux developers are creating their own solutions--some of them complete with FireWire cards--to do Apple's job *for* them.
Besides, fully half the reason the iPod is as big a hit with Mac users as it is is the integration with iTunes: create your MP3 playlists, organize your collection, and it will be automatically synchronized with your iPod when you request it. iTunes isn't just Apple's MP3 jukebox, its their "driver" software for iTunes. Creating a marketable Windows/Linux solution would require them to achieve the same level of integration with one or all of those platforms' MP3 packages. Why take the time to do that, when someone else is clearly willing to do the job for them?
Personally, and somewhat pettily, I think Windows users deserve to know how it feels to have a peripheral with no built-in support for their platform for a change. For years, Mac users have had to spend extra money to read files, access networks, sync PDAs, download digital photos, scan from scanners, and print to printers designed for the other 95% of the computing world. I'm reasonably certain there's not a single other MP3 portable on the market that sports full Mac OS synchronization. If Windows users have to wait a little while to use a gadget Apple designed that they want, then I consider that poetic justice.
Sorry if you got redirected or the link was temporarily hijacked. It was xTunes for me back then and it is xTunes for me now. Below is a pasted excerpt of the text, in case this problem happens again:
xtunes
xtunes is a comprehensive digital music system. It supports ripping CDs, burning CDs, playing digital music (MP3 and Ogg Vorbis), and organizing digital music in a library with playlists.
Features:
* xtunes maintains a library of all the digital music files it knows about. Music files get into the library by either ripping cds or importing existing files.
* xtunes supports the standard playback methods including loop and random to play any song in the library. The user can create unlimited playlists of any length to specify the playback of their music. xtunes can play any audio cd.
* xtunes can rip any audio cd into any supported digital music format. It uses cddb to look up information about the cd. A playlist is automatically created for the cd and all the songs are organized into the library.
* Creating an audio cd using xtunes is a piece of cake. Simply select a playlist and click the burn button and xtunes handles all the rest: decoding the songs in the playlist to wav files, spawning cdrecord to create the cd.
* xtunes is built with an extensible plugin framework, similar to xmms or the gimp. Plugins are used for decoding, encoding, song information, and output. This allows xtunes to support ripping/playing/burning multiple digital music formats.
* xtunes now supports the Apple iPod. Simply drag songs or playlists onto the iPod icon and they are automatically transferred to the iPod. See the xpod page for more information.
Windows users say the darnest things...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
(Curerently 317 days uptime so far with Linux)
-- My Weblog.
No, no, no.. rebooting is bad for the environment. You see while it only takes a little electricity to sustain a computer, it takes quite a bit more to "reboot" it. Why almost a 1/100 of a penny more. And that's 1/100 of a penny that could be going to save the panda's foundation.
...for their foundation. ...
So you see, uptime is good for pandas.
yes.
Their xTunes software looks like a feature-for-feature clone of iTunes. I read somewhere that apple asked MediaFour no to name their software "xpod" ...
In other words, I can see Apple attacking this company, Tex9, for tradmark infringment, as is their way...
I see that xTunes is GPLed, and that xPod is a pluggin...it doesn't seem to be GPLed currently...Tex9 may end up making it proprietary or something...
Yes it is. While I sleep, the computer can be downloading stuff, doing it's housecleaning, and scheduling things that I told it to. You may not have use of this feature now, but having this feature enables other technologists to dream of what they could do with it. This is called improvement.
Because the ipod was never really an option for me. Most people were relieved that there was a Windows product released to transfer tunes. That still did not help me. So now this will become a viable option now that it will run on an OS (linux) that I have in my house. Having a partition for Windows is kinda like a recovering alcoholic keeping a 12 pack in his fridge...
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
True.
It's not size that matters. It's how long you keep it up.
Desiring an iPod, I went out and bought OsX for my virtually-unused iMac. I had a version of Os 9.something that was a bit too old.
I haven't regretted either purchase in the least - they are both top-quality products.
Now I'm looking seriously at their servers...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Apple's seen the iPod become so successful that Windows and Linux developers are creating their own solutions--some of them complete with FireWire cards--to do Apple's job *for* them.
At least this time, Apple isn't frivolously wielding the DMCA against the makers of such software; the company has only requested that third-party software publishers not infringe Apple trademarks. Thus, "XPod" becomes "XPlay", but big whoop; development and sales continue.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nothing personal, I just felt like paraphrasing that great freedom fighter who said it.
Look sonny, when I need to work I want to leave my computer running for 2 or 3 days without having to close all my apps and find where I was last time I was working and without waiting for the machine to come back from its nth ( n>>>>1 ) crash.
Specialy now with broadband connection to the internet, the computer can do many things during the night or while I am at work. For that to happen the underlying OS has to be stable.
In my office I have to reboot my Winblows machine 2 or 3 times per week because it just gets confussed when running more than one or two things (MS things, mind you).
Similar apps in Linux can run for weeks without any problem.
Did ya get it now?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When it first came out the HD was the same price as the iPod, but as far as I can tell the Toshiba hard drive has dropped in price yet the iPod hasn't.
I wouldn't expect the iPod's price to drop at the same rate but at least something. Otherwise the markup on the product is increasing all the time and the later you leave it, the more you're essentially being ripped off.
I'll readily admit that I don't have the facts to hand but if this is the case, then it might be better to get an Archos Jukebox and put up with the lack of functionality (but gain on massive savings).
Or wait for the Toshiba Gigabeat.
(Again, I could be wrong, so please correct me)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Every time you reboot, God kills a kitten.
I looked at an iPod, it's nice but it's not suitable for running, i can't stick a firewire card in my work PC (where all the bandwidth is) and it's far too expensive for me.
So, I'm looking at the Frontier Labs, Nexus II. Anyone bought one? Is it any good? Do you like it? Major points for me is:
For $200, it may not be everything iPod is, but looks a good bargain.
Many thanks to anyone who answers!
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
(Uptime? I use Mac OS 9. Uptime measured in minutes.)
sulli
RTFJ.
It is my understanding that:
1. The iPod uses HFS+ (the preferred FS of OSX)
2. Linux can't read HFS+ at present (if you dual-boot a Mac OS and Linux, your bootstrap partition is limited to HFS)
Can someone elaborate?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
you are doomed to repeat it. Very few people remember that in the 80s (or was it early 90s) Apple sued MS over the Windows interface, among other things, because it too closely resembled mac. Then there were the suits over the Lotus 123 interface ripping off (I think) SuperCalc.
The courts decided back then that a UI is not something that can be copyrighted. They claimed it'd be like copyrighting the interface to a car, and thus would be bad for the industry.
But, then again, that was eons ago.
(I'd have to go digging to find links for this, but I'm sure there are duly motivated people who will research this and/or correct my flawed memory.)
The iPod is a FireWire disk. Windows needs software for it because it's formatted in HFS+ (I believe). But Linux has native HFS+ support (and UFS, for that matter). You should just be able to plug it in and use something like "rsync" to synchronize your music. Other than that, iPod uses MP3 tags.
Yes, it is. And at very least I demand the option to do just that in my OS.
Here's an example: I have a SOHO fileserver I built that is up 24/7 (77 days, 18-something hours as I write this). It's like those Snap NAS devices you see in Fry's, but mine didn't cost $1600 and it's based on Red Hat 7.3. It has 80GB of RAID1 disk space, acts as a printing daemon, runs Apache and ssh for remote access, X in case I want to remote display an aplication, VNC in case I want a remote desktop from my wife's Windows box, Samba for sharing to her machine anmd NFS for remote mounts to my other Linux boxes. It has MP3 ripping and encoding software, and a MySQL database that has everything from a list of ID3 tags for those MP3s to my personal finances to the household event calendar for the year. It has Java, C, Perl and PHP on it for when I write/test software. Long story short: I rely on that machine for a lot of things, and it's very inconvenient when it's down (as it was when I upgraded to RH7.3 and added the RAID pair). In fact, one could argue that the very nature of the machine requires that it be up 24/7. So it fits your definition of a server (and I also use it as my remote access machine, so it often functions as a "workstation").
However, I used the same CDs to install my desktop OS as I did for the fileserver's "server" OS. This came naturally to me and I didn't give it a second thought until now. The line between workstation and server is -- to me and in my situation -- almost completely blurred. As a consequence of using my server OS on my desktop, my desktop machine stays up as long as I need it to. And I sometimes want it to be up for a long time. I often have remote consoles to a bunch of different work machines open, an editor going with files everywhere, half-baked GIMP projects on my fourth desktop, etc. I do personal side projects at night, "regular" work in the day. By keeping all my apps/files open to where I had them the night before, I can come home, sit down, power on my monitor and pick up instantly where I left off. It's very handy and provides a sense of continuity. I couldn't live without that "feature", probably, to say nothing of the supreme inconvenience of having your workstation decide all on its own to force you to reboot it...
Rebooting is for when you add hardware and upgrade a kernel, nothing more. I admit that I might be slightly unusual as far as PC users go, but why wouldn't I demand the option to have any machine be up as long as I need it to be up?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Yes, the BSD kernel is very impressive, stability wise. As for your wise-ass remark about just turning a computer on, why don't you try something known as an AVERAGE run-time, and ask if it is determined by human whim, hardware failure or software failures.