Slashdot Mirror
iTunes Disables MusicMatch
spooza writes "If you own an iPod and use it with MusicMatch on a Windows machine and then install iTunes, strange things happen: after the installation, MusicMatch is unable to communicate or even find the iPod anymore. Of course this might be a coincidence or bad programming on the Apple side, but since MusicMatch also introduced a pay-per-download service it seems not too farfetched to suspect that Apple simply took the opportunity to knock out an opponent. The funny thing is, Apple and MusicMatch cooperated before, because Apple wanted to have software that was able to work with iPod and thus not lose potential customers that want to buy an iPod but have only Windows." MusicMatch recommends deleting, then downloading and reinstalling, the MusicMatch software to reenable it.
i don't know why geeks rally behind apple at every turn, they seem to be like any other large software coporation out there, in it for the benjamins, and nothing else.
Apple doesn't start going the way of Microsoft...
Oh, you mean by locking customers into expensive, proprietary software? No. They're already worse than that. They lock customers into expensive, proprietary software AND hardware.
So Apple co-operated with MusicMatch, up and until it had its own software, and then used it to knock out its former partner.
Reminds me of a certain big software company somewhere in the North West of the USA.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Gator/Claria has been pretty upfront that their software can be used to track information on the client computer.
I don't even use Gator and yet I know this.
I work for Apple and am therefore posting anonymously. While this was done on purpose, it was buy a sole developer, and not a decision by Apple. That developer has since been let go.
Bullshit! If that was the case, iTunes would have immediately been 'fixed' to stop that behaviour, and/or a patch released.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
This is classic Apple (as I type this from my 15" TiBook) and lets face it. Apple is used to controlling the environment it is in (why the hell freezing over joke was less of a joke than outsiders realize) and this only smacks of something any Apple user has known since they became an Apple user. That Apple takes care of the hard part and doesn't leave much control to the end user as a result. ie; It just works...
FYI: I like that as much as I like the exact opposite with Linux, which I run on multilple machines so the above was not a dig.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
If you have an iPod and had the choice of MusicMatch or iTunes what would you choose?
MusicMatch:
1) WMA-Crippled Music Downloads
2) Pay more for more features
3) Shit-poor interface
iTunes
1) AAC-crippled Music Downloads that play on the iPod
2) Full features (ripping, smart playlists, etc) for free
3) Great interface
Sorry, no competition here. Move along.
They're as obnoxious as Real when it comes to file extension stealing. MIGHT be a coincidence, but given all the windows tricks of the past, I bet Steve Jobs just smells the money.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Before I had iTunes, I had Cassidy and Greene's software (I can't remember the name) for playing and managing MP3s and moving them onto my Rio 500.
Then iTunes came out and it did everything except better. It probably disabled the Cassidy and Greene software. Who cares? I sure didn't. I deleted the damn thing once I had iTunes.
Now I have iTunes (for Mac) and an iPod. I don't see why I would want anything else?
I thought MusicMatch was the stop gap solution for Windows iPod users until iTunes comes out. Now that iTunes is out, why would you want to keep using Music Match?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
This doesn't strike me as frontpage material, folks. It's kind of a no-brainer.
You are now installing Windows XP. If you have previously installed any third-party Internet browsers or email programs, they may not function properly after the upgrade. Microsoft does not support the use of third-party Internet browsers and email programs. If you want to use those functions, you must use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, or use an operating system not published by Microsoft.
<I Understand and Agree>"
It's kind of funny to see how Slashdotters race to the defense of Apple when they start acting like a monopoly, but when MS does it, the sky is falling. (Probable defense by Apple zealots: "Apple isn't anywhere near as bad as Microsoft." Problem with that defense: That doesn't justify defending Apple, that justifies criticizing them more selectively.)
If you're a sysadmin nerd, it's sort of a given that if you have two sources accessing the same filesystem at the same time, you're going to clobber your data. (That is, unless special protection is used.)
Maybe Apple just wanted to prevent people from screwing up their iPods.
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
"as it's a bit different here in the Windows world where Apple doesn't own the OS and hardware."
And soon you won't even own your own hardware in the Windows world.
Are they really competition? I guess they sort of are... but then again, Apple WAS bundling MusicMatch with the iPod all along until they released iTunes.
I guess the way I see it - they deliberately disabled what they considered an older version of the iPod software (MusicMatch) in favor of the newer version (iTunes).
"Why would you want to use Musicmatch when you have iTunes"
"Musicmatch is a piece of crap, iTunes is much better"
"There's nothing wrong with this, Musicmatch was a temporary solution until iTunes came out"
The thing is, you ought to have the choice of using whatever program you want. Internet Explorer doesn't diddle the network settings of Mozilla or Netscape when it installs so that they will no longer be able to communicate with the www.
This just bugs me. In 1999, I recommended to a neighbor that he install QuickTime to view some movies that I'd posted on the web. He was nervous, but I (being the computer "expert") assured him that everything would be OK. Well, it wasn't. Some of his software broke. He uninstalled QuickTime, and then *lots* of his software broke.
I showed him iTunes last Friday, and told him it was availble on Windows. He said he wasn't too sure, after his QT experience. I had to agree with him...and it looks like maybe he was right to be nervous.
Apple needs to be cool if they want to be accepted in the Windows world. If this is lazy programming, then please, Apple, do a better job. If this is an Apple conspiracy, then just knock it off!
And soon you won't even own your own hardware in the Windows world.
Don't you think this is a bit of strange angle to attack Windows from in a story regarding a DRM program from Apple, ported from the Mac?
DRM is DRM is DRM is DRM. Palladium and iTunes are one and the same. When you install iTunes you have already said, "Of course my computer decides what I can and can't do, and I obey." You can't get further from owning your own computer than that.
It's kind of funny to see how Slashdotters race to the defense of Apple when they start acting like a monopoly, but when MS does it, the sky is falling. (Probable defense by Apple zealots: "Apple isn't anywhere near as bad as Microsoft." Problem with that defense: That doesn't justify defending Apple, that justifies criticizing them more selectively.)
"Acting" like a monopoly? Who cares if companies act like monopolies? More so, who cares if companies ARE monopolies? Only thing we care about is when companies that ARE monopolies begin to abuse their status. The iPod is popular, but it is by FAR not a monopoly.
And your argument would only make sense if Microsoft actually posts something like the warning you described above. Instead, they secretly fuck with the compatibility of programs, use price discounts to lock out competitors, etc, ALL BEHIND YOUR BACK.
I'm still waiting to click the "I Understand and Agree" statement from Microsoft. Where is it?
That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. The copyright holders of the songs decide what you can and can't do, which, honestly is they way it shoudl be. I'm sorry you're upset that you can't copy music for free anymore without fear of legal troubles, but guess what, it's ALWAYS BEEN ILLEGAL. Now we have a way to get it LEGALLY and at CHEAPER prices at that, and the DRM even allows itself to be LEGALLY cirrcumvented in this age of DMCA....AND YOU STILL FIND A WAY TO COMPLAIN.
I'm sorry for the flamebait, but that's absolutely pathetic.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Before you over-react and call me a fanboy or a zealot, I have two home computers running Linux, and my worktstation at work runs Linux. I have never owned an Apple computer. And I did start off calling this tactic anti-competetive. I just tried to clarify how it's not anti-competetive by way of monopoly abuse (selectively criticizing).
When I first read this, I was thinking "big fat deal. Everyone knows Apple does proprietary stuff." Then I read some of the comments about how people would be attempting to storm the gates of Redmond if Microsoft pulled something like this, and realized that my attitude is hypocritical.
And I still don't care.
Apparently, my principles don't come into play when the software works seamlessly and efficiently and the UI is so pretty.
This would bother me, but OSX is shiny and it's distracting me....
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
So, basically Apple is saying "If you buy our product it will only work with our other (free) product."
That's like being pissed when someone says "If you buy our Linux database, it will only work with the (free) Linux OS." "WTF? What happned to choice? Since when is Linux a Monopoly? I WANNA RUN AIX & SOLARIS!" "Sorry, Linux only."Let's take that one step further: Apple has their bad points, but overall they have been consistently higher-quality than Microsoft, and they rarely absuse their position. Microsoft forces crap apon people, buys out competition and replacies their market share with their own crappy product.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Does this mean that everything rotten thing a company does is permissible UP TO the point they achieve market dominance (as long as they provide a helpful EULA)?
If this is the case, I never again want to hear complaints about the terrible things Microsoft has done before they were actually convicted of monopolistic practices, nor the terrible things they have done in markets where they don't have monopoly status.
Apple does this shit again and again, its despicable business practice, and I'm sick of people glossing over it. Maybe it's not "monoplistic", but its still a crap way of advancing your products over competitors.
...you have a company a with ~5% OS marketshare writing software for another OS...
and trying to remove "another OS"'s user's choice in music applications by disabling software already installed and configured on that user's system.
The only software Apple should be replacing on a Microsoft (or any other OS) install is previously installed Apple software.
Apple is perhaps more evil than Microsoft; they just don't have the market share yet.
Lots of people have complained that if you have an iPod for Windows, and you have a Mac, when you plug the iPod into the Mac, the Mac wants to reformat it. And when you have an iPod for Mac and you plug it into your Windows machine, MusicMatch doesn't work with it without reformatting.
This is because the iPod looks like a disk drive. On the Mac, it's formatted as an HFS volume. On Windows, it was formatted as a Windows volume.
Now, with iTunes for Windows, you can share your iPod between Windows and Mac. This is because iTunes for Windows knows how to deal with HFS volumes. But unfortunately, MusicMatch for Windows does not know how to do this.
So you lose something, and you get something. Depending on what you want, you may prefer one solution or the other. If you prefer MusicMatch, stick with it. If you prefer iTunes, stick with it.
The point is that this was not just an arbitrary attempt to shut MusicMatch out of the business. It was done for a good reason. If MusicMatch wants to maintain iPod compatiblity after you install iTunes, this is doable, because HFS+ is a documented standard, and the source code to read and write HFS+ filesystems is available from Apple - it's part of Darwin, which is open source.
So yes, Apple did make an incompatible change. And it sucks for people who really like MusicMatch. But there was a good reason for making the change, and I personally think the end result is a significant improvement. YMMV.
Maybe it's not "monoplistic", but its still a crap way of advancing your products over competitors.
...
If you look at it in the exact same way that the court looked at Microsoft, then you'll find it is monopolistic:
Number of Apple computers shipped without Mac OS X: 0
Percentage of Apple computers running an operating system not developed by Apple: (slightly larger than 0)
Competitors' software broken by Apple software when installed to use with Apple hardware:
Remember that in the last anti-trust case against Microsoft Apple was ruled to not even be a competitor in the OS space because they didn't run on x86 (Microsoft wanted Apple to be considered a competitor, of course, whether or not they actually see them this way). This is how Microsoft suddenly had a 95+% market share when before the trial the numbers tended to be in the 80-85% range, because the market was limited to a very specific area (primarily x86-based desktop PCs). Not to mention the portions of the case regarding forced bundling of Windows, requiring OEMs to buy a copy for every PC they shipped, meaning that OEMs wouldn't sell PCs without Windows (notably, though, the fact that many OEMs offered Linux before the case even went to court was omitted).
There are 2 different types of monopoly at hand here, and the only reason people overlook (or even deny) Apple's monopoly is because it's in a relatively small market. When Apple extends their practices into larger markets, there are a lot more people to take notice, and this is just that. (I'd also add that when Microsoft made Office look the same on the Mac as it did on Windows, Mac users cried foul, and even Apple cried a bit, but most of the applications Apple releases for Windows look like they are Mac OS apps, rather than Windows apps).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. The copyright holders of the songs decide what you can and can't do, which, honestly is they way it shoudl be.
Beating people up is illegal and considered immoral. If I do it, I can be punished - but that does give people to right to take over my mind and control how I can move my arms.
Driving too fast is illegal and considered immoral. If I do it, I can be punished - but that does not give people to right to remote control my car.
Slandering others is illegal and considered immoral. If I do it, I can be punished - but that does not give people the right to control what I can say.
Copying files with the copyright owner's permission is illegal and considered immoral. If I do it, I can be punished - but that does not give copyright owners the right to take control of my computer and control what I can do with the files.
We do not practice proactive enforcement of laws in free societies. We have laws, we have a social contract, and we have law enforcement. We DO NOT bind peoples hands until they have committed a crime, and we do not lock people into their houses until they can prove they have a legal reason to step out. That I can use my computer to make a copy a music track does NOT mean that giving up control of it to the copyright owner "is they way it shoudl be."
I would attack you as you attack me, but I see no point. Somebody who has so little respect for his own freedom, already has no respect for himself.
DRM Program from Apple? What the fsck are you smoking?
/technical/ reasons why Apple would want to disable MusicMatch's syncing with the iPod.
/when you install it./
/chances are good/ you will want to use iTunes for syncing with your iPod anyways should you continue to use iTunes (not guaranteed, but likely).
iTMS uses the FairPlay DRM. I have a lot of songs and I can't think of a single instance when FairPlay got in my way or kept me from doing anything. I can burn the songs to as many CDs as I like, play the music on up to three computers (at a time), and transfer it to as many iPods as I like. How exactly is that restricting me?
If I get desperate I can rip it off a burn, but I don't even see why I would do that (for my situation).
The rest of iTunes has no DRM incorporated. What this entire story is about is not any form of DRM, but Apple replacing MusicMatch's functionality with their own. You can still use MusicMatch, you can still use your iPod, you can still use MusicMatch with your iPod (with either a hack or by reinstalling MusicMatch), but there are some very good
I fail to see how you are being restricted, even exempting that Apple tells you what iTunes will do
Besides, if you own an iPod and you've download iTunes,
So would you and whichever moderator modded you up remove your tinfoil hats?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I totally disagree. Copyright is not a natural right; it is a limited privilege extended to works for the purpose of promoting intellectual progress. The copyright holder has limited rights concerning the redistribution of works, but they do not and cannot "decide what you can and can't do." Beyond preventing you from redistributing the work in a manner that impedes intellectual progress, they should have no further legal powers. I believe the DMCA gives copyright holders powers that are not authorized by the Constitution and go completely against the goal of copyright law.
This is a sentiment I have never understood..."Apple is cool, so people only use Apple computers to be cool"...It almost defies logic...If Apple were "cool" why wouldn't they have more market share, or at least mindshare?...As a long time Apple user, I can say, anecdotally, that I have never once had a conversation with another Apple user regarding how much cooler our computers are than others.
/. spewing fictitious nonsense about a platform they know nothing about -- and I'm not talking about Apple either...
People who choose to use Macs have always dealt with 'less' options...I don't see how being on the fringe is cool...If anything we have generally felt marginalized -- sure we have steeled our resolve with a belief that we get more done, or that we work more efficiently, but that really just helps to fortify our own conclusions...does that make us 'different'...I could care less...does being 'different' make us 'cool'? Again I could care less.
It always seems like it is the people who do not use Apple computers who have an obsession with being 'cool' or not. I myself, just continue to do my work on my Macs as I have done for many years now.
BTW, do you really think Apple users think they are 'cooler' than Linux user think themselves. If you cannot acknowledge that there are vastly more Linux poseurs out there than Apple poseurs, you are fooling yourself. I can support this simply by the fact that Mac users, as lame as you want to see them, by the lowest common denominator, at least run productivity/creativity apps most of the time. Most Linux wanabees just spend their time installing the latest release, do no coding, no produuctivity/creative app work, and then post AC drivel on
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
But this discussion is about software on Windows PCs. How does it leverage their monopoly of MacOS based PCs to gain extra market share in the portable MP3 player and/or online music retail markets?
Apple is using iTunes to disable access to the iPod from other programs as well as to install QuickTime on the PCs. Essentially they're trying to leverage the popularity of the iPod (which I believe is one of the best-selling portable MP3 players available) to force these other products (iTunes, QuickTime, ITunes Music Service) on end-users. A savvy user can easily get around much of the behavior of iTunes and QuickTime in taking over media functionality on Windows machines, and Microsoft was forced to make this slightly easier for users (adding in the 'Set Program Access and Defaults' item in the 'Add/Remove Programs' Control Panel entry), but the only way for the average user to really stop this behavior is to uninstall the Apple software and reinstall the pre-existing software.
Breaking other people's software and bundling software together is exactly the behavior Microsoft was accused of in the antitrust trial. In the case of iTunes, the biggest offense comes to users of Apple's hardware (the iPod), which means they're leveraging a user's choice in hardware to force a software choice on them (assuming they've made the decision to try iTunes, they don't get the choice to use the software side-by-side with other software to access their hardware).
Apple has no monopoly positions in the Windows based PC market.
Apple doesn't need a monopoly position in the Windows-based PC market. They are attempting to create a monopoly in software for synchronizing the iPod on Windows by breaking software that previously worked, and then further trying to extend that monopoly into other areas by taking over the functions of all other media players on the system.
Remember that at the time the antitrust trial was brought against Microsoft they didn't have anything resembling a monopoly in either Internet browsers or media players, either, but were accused of using an OS monopoly (over a very limited market) to push out competition in these areas. During the trial they gained a majority market share in the browser space and a fair amount of market share in media players and other 'middleware' applications, but this wasn't the case when the trial started (before Windows 98 was released).
As far as leveraging a monopoly on MacOS based PCs, it was simply that monopoly that allowed them to market the iPod and iTunes to the point where the platform had enough strength to leverage it's way into the Windows-based PC space. Apple is now simply leveraging the popularity of the iPod to push iTunes into the Windows space, though iTunes also gained some reputation of it's own on the MacOS that made some Windows users curious as to what the big deal was (and frankly, the only thing I see as a big deal in it is solid seperation of the interface and playback functionality, because the thing won't miss a beat playing a song even if it's redrawing at a piss-poor rate and half-frozen).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
iTunes does exactly what Palladium is designed to do: it controls the content that users download by encrypting it and keeping the decryption key from the user. When it runs, it takes control of the computer to make sure that the data is used only in authorized ways.
iTunes is less effective than Palladium might be for several reasons, but the philosophy is the same. The software is user hostile: it controls rather than enables you.
(Of course, one gets told over and over: "If you don't like it, don't use it" etc, and of course, I won't. But DRM is an attempt to "put the Internet back in the bottle" as the originally linked article puts it (the person who linked it apparently didn't read it: John Walker seems to agree with me regarding DRM and ITMS), and iTunes is the shining beacon of evidence that people will accept it. Every post I make is simply the futile hope that I can make somebody understand why we should be in control of our computers, not the other way around, and maybe make it a little less lonely out here.)
Well if people never attempt to commit a crime why should they care if there "hands are binded."
I don't know whether to be happy that you are making my argument for me, or scared that there are actually people in world who think like this...