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Apple Updates, Cripples iTunes
squiggleslash writes "Apple has issued an update to iTunes 4, iTunes 4.0.1. It can be downloaded via Software Update. The big change seems to be that iTunes will now only stream music to other Macs on the same subnet. This is presumably a response to people publishing public lists of shared iTunes playlists, though it does mean that anyone wanting to stream music from home to work or vice versa is SOL. Oh well." You can't share between 4.0 and 4.0.1 iTunes, so be careful in updating. AppleScript access to shared playlist tracks is fixed, though. Woop woop.
I don't have access to a Mac (let alone two) but couldn't you use a VPN if you wanted to stream from home to work or vice versa? You know, tunnel the traffic so it looks like one local network even though it isn't?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
No, i'm complaining, and i'm sure others will as well.
Apple is rapidly approaching a point that their only saving grace is that there is nary a hint that Apple is actively maintaining rights to my Mac to disable any software that may do this, if iTunes 4 won't - such as in XP, w2k, etc.
If/when that happens, then yeah, i will remove X and install YDL on the whole damn hard drive.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Apple's Music Store allows you to authorize up to three Macs to play your purchased music. They could have allowed you to share music with any machine that has your key. This would satisfy the "want to listen to home music at work" request while still meeting their responsibility not to allow outright piracy.
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the strongest word is still the word "free"
Personally I think that's user friendly. Obviously our definitions of "user friendly" and "user hostile" differ quite radically.
Can I take it that you've never used iTunes?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You can still play your AAC files purchaced from the iTunes Music Store, even if you Mac "died" (as you put it). For that matter, you can archive all of those files as either AAC or AIFF files on any media you chose, including the HD of your Linux PC (which should be able to support AAC "any day now")
You seem to have this crazy notion that AAC is another Windows Media Player file alternative, created solely to place ultra restrictions on files and force you to "rent" music rather than purchace it (as a new Microsoft music service is expected to do in a few months). Nothing could be further from the truth. AAC was invented at Dolby for the purpose of offering a better compression algorythm than MP3, and it succeeds briliantly. At a bit-rate of 128, it sounds as good or better than a 192 VBR MP3. Yes, it stores some information in the DRM layer... this is exactly why it will become the new standard. It permits fair use (archiving, copying to other sources, listening on other playback equipment, sharing it with close friends) without allowing you to freely rip off and distribute the files they sell you (and are trying to sell to others) to the entire world.
Kindly offer one example of "fair use" which is prevented by the DRM restrictions Apple places on the files they sell you (and only the files they sell you). Here's a little help: "Fair Use," according to US copyright law, includes the right to make back-ups, to make copies to other media, to extract samples for educational use. Fare Use does not include the right to make copies available to other people, although the files sold by Apple actually allow that on a limited basis.
Now, which Fair Use rights do you think we are being denied? We are all very anxious to hear this.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If I had mod points to give, one would be yours, FRB.
When I first heard about the iTunes streaming service, I immidiately began speculating about the many ways I would use it. The thought of accessing all of my music from all over my house and even at work, while keeping it all stored on HD that's shared out to everywhere else I go... it seemed like a new Golden Age was dawning.
But then, for the sake of my CD-less car stereo and listening to music while jogging, I bought an iPod. Once I had the iPod, all these thoughts of streaming completely vanished. I've got my entire record collection in my hip pocket at all times now, and I can listen to it on any music device that I can extend a stereo mini-jack from (which, thanks to RCA-to-mini cables, FM transmitters, and those tape adapter thingies, means damned near everything that has speakers.) Screw streaming from a server... I would need another computer running iTunes to do that. The iPod is the music library now. Every time I get another album (or cave into the desire to download a song off iTMS,) I just rip to my main computer, and sync the iPod to it in a matter of seconds next time I plug in the Firewire cable (which won't be long, since that's how I recharge the iPod 90% of the time).
I had friends parrot the "iPod will change the way you listen to music," hype to me over the past year or so... and now that I have an iPod, I see the light. You can call us all "pod people" if you like, (or "iPod people"... hmm, "iPeople?") but this tiny little gadget actually was a bigger revolution than I really expected it to be before buying it. Those of you who haven't acquired an iPod yet probably think I'm crazy, but iTunes for Windows comes out at the end of this year and the rest of the world will catch up. I'll see you when you get here. I now value my cheap little iPod more than my car or my TV. The hype was not a lie.
Fuck streaming.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.