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iTunes Internet Sharing Restored With Third-Party App
Suppafly writes "As reported at boingboing, iCommune creator Jim Speth whipped up a little application called 401(ok) that combines a few hacks to restore internet-wide sharing to iTunes 4.0.1. You can download the app from SF.net." As one might expect, it is basically a port redirector.
There was absolutely no consumer-based reason t upgrade to 4.0.1, other than to appease the record labels.
Wrong. Not just a little bit wrong. Completely wrong.
1. The sound enhancer bug was serious. Turning on the feature basically made your shiny, new AAC's sound like hammered shit. And leaving it off was bad for people with average or below-average speakers.
2. The AAC encoder was hard-coded to use the "fast" setting, when it was supposed to be hard-coded to use "best." As a result, AAC's encoded with iTunes 4 don't sound nearly as good as they should have.
3. A variety of issues existed regarding ITMS and firewalls. These have been fixed.
4. Internet music sharing was never actually supposed to be possible. According to the documentation, it was supposed to be limited to the local network segment, either via Rendezvous discovery or via direct connection. The fact that you could share music over the Internet was a bug, not a feature.
I think they may have snuck in some minor networking fixes, but overall the motives were quite... arbitrary.
No, the motives were quite specific and concrete. "We screwed up, and people are using iTunes for music piracy. That's the ONE thing we won't stand for. Fix it! Now!"