iTunes For Linux, Thanks To CodeWeavers

pizen writes "The folks over at CNet have the scoop that a new version of CrossOver Office (3.1) now supports Apple's iTunes. The preview version of the software is being tested and is currently only available to current CodeWeavers customers. They expect a final version to be available later this year." Reader snowtigger contributes a link to this screenshot. White demonstrated iTunes on a Linux machine at OSCON as well; a rendering glitch marred that demo, but he was still able to demonstrate playing back a song which he'd purchased from iTMS using iTunes on Linux.

Comments

Re:Well, it saves Apple some work!

[Ford Prefect]

I think iTunes on MacOS X is a Carbon application, ie based on an updated version of the old Macintosh APIs. If it's anything like Quicktime for Windows, the Windows version of iTunes probably makes use of what's effectively a Carbon layer for Windows.

Just because there might be BSD stuff underneath everything on MacOS X doesn't mean everything directly uses the BSD APIs...

Re:Hmmm

[Valar]

You know, I've never found artists not getting a very big cut as a good excuse to not pay them at all...

Re:It's still all unix

[Senjutsu]

OSX still uses a BSD interface which is alot similar

iTunes doesn't, so you're wrong here. It uses Carbon, a completely different and very large API ported to Mach from MacOS. I doubt highly it touches the BSD server much.

and OSX's fancy graphics are still X11 based

Wrong. Quartz is essentially a display PDF renderer, written from scratch and having nothing to do with X11.

and music devices and disks are still /dev/whatever/ so I don't see any problem

Wrong. 0 for 3. Thanks for playing "Slashdot pundit who doesn't know what he's talking about".

Re:Yuck...

[Otter]

Sounds like Apple are embeding the UI layer and the Application layer, that's what you get from a single vendor solution....

Uh, no. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. The point is that MacOS isn't FreeBSD with an Apple window manager slapped on top, as Slashbot dimwits all seem to believe.

Well.. maybe not.. but how hard can it be for Apple to do a carbon copy for Linux, like they've done for Windows.

Probably just about as hard to make, although a lot harder to support. But for 1% of the desktop market instead of 97%, "no harder to make" isn't necessarily a winner.

Re:Hmmm

[FuzzzyLogik]

i've bought 140 songs from itms. probably a good 40 or 50 of them were from the pepsi promotion. but with my klipsch pro media speakers they don't sound bad either. my monsoon stereo in my car seems to like them too because it sounds like any other cd. ya.. i agree 128kbps is kinda low and i wish they'd raise it to 160kbps or 192kbps but oh well. this gives me a way to buy single songs from those cd's that have 1 or 2 good songs on them and not spend $10-15 to get those 1 or 2 good songs. even if they quality isn't cd quality i still saved myself a crap load of money by buying them this way. if you looked through my itms smart folder you'd notice that it's all 1 or 2 songs by an artist and not full cd's. I still buy the full cd's from a store like best buy or cdnow.com. but when it comes to a couple songs on a cd that sucks other than those couple songs.. i'll take the DRMed low quality than paying $10-15 for them.

Re:This is a good thing

[_|()|\|]

are you retarded?

And this is why the gulf between Linux and Mac OS is so wide. "It's so easy, just do this and this and this. Oh, you mean you want it to just work?"

Whether it's because iTunes tagged the files unconventionally, or because the XMMS is broken /inferior, the simplicity of iTunes didn't translate to the original poster's Linux environment. iTunes has plenty of room for improvement, but it's a solid app., both on Windows and OS X. I don't blame the OP for missing it.

Re:really

[PhoenixFlare]

I personally have no interest in paying apple $1/song for a proprietary format; reencoding in ogg is not an option. Really, $1 per song is very, very expensive - considering a cd is about the same and you get a nice semi-permanent media, far higher quality audio, with artwork lyrics, etc.

Only if you like and will listen to every single song on that hypothetical CD. If you'd rather pick and choose every track to make sure there's no dead weight that you'll always skip over, then $1 is a perfectly good price point.

Come to think of it, $1 per song is a complete rip off. If they were ogg encoded, I might give it some consideration at .50/song.

With how pervasive MP3 is these days, it's going to take a hell of a lot of catching up before anyone will give a damn that a relatively miniscule group of people won't listen to music that isn't ogg encoded.

Re:really

[Mant]

If $1 a song is too expensive, it should come down, unless online operators start colluding. Still, it is cheap, in Europe we pay a lot more.

Remember also Apple are only making a small profit at the moment. At $.50 they would lose money. If you have no interest, don't buy. I don't. Just accept you aren't part of their target market. I'm puzzled why people need to keep saying they wouldn't buy something, just don't buy it.

That is so silly.

[SPYvSPY]

The claims on that website you link to are ridiculous.

First of all, it claims that Apple basically does nothing to reap its one-third cut of the price of a song on iTunes. What about the front-end costs of bulding the iTMS backend, developing the client application (for multiple platforms) and the ongoing costs of the bandwidth? I guess that's "basically doing nothing"?

Secondly, if a recording artist is making 11 cents per song on iTunes, isn't that 11 cents that the artist would never otherwise receive? I mean, an artists' overhead for selling on iTMS ought to consist of: (a) rehearsal and studio time, (b) mixing services, (c) hiring session musicians and maybe a famous producer or something, and (d) marketing. The label gives them an advance for all that stuff, and takes it back (and then some) in their 53 cents per song cut of sales on iTMS.

So, once the artist has paid back the label for any advance money, every 11 cent per song sale on iTMS is pure profit, right? The artist has no ongoing expenses for selling on iTMS, right?

And Apple has lots of really expensive ongoing overhead, right? And Apple says they're barely breaking even on iTMS today, right?

So how is Apple screwing artists?

Re:That is so silly.

[huchida]

So how is Apple screwing artists?

You're absolutely right, Apple is not screwing artists. To all you downhillbattle trolls, see if you can grasp this concept: iTunes makes their deal with the entity that holds the rights to the song. If the artist signed their life and rights away to the label, then they have no choice as to how the music is distributed and what cut they take. It's a terrible shame that the music labels do proudly and routinely screw over their artists, but it's not Apple's responsibility to take a stand and start the revolution, no more than it's Tower Records' or Amazon.com's.

Now, there are artists on iTunes who aren't on a major label and take a bigger cut for themselves. If you support them-- or similar DIY business models-- then maybe, just maybe more and more will realize that they don't have to be a part of the RIAA machine.

Re:Linux is about open standards

[plj]

Insightful my ass. Could parent or parent's moderator please explain, how the hell it is supposed to affect Apple's bottom line if Apple's customer using iTMS with iTunes for Windows client is actually some other os, which just happens to provide the same interfaces iTunes for Windows needs? That customer is still shopping on iTMS, and DRM is still effective. That customer may still own an iPod, too.

Theoretically one could explain that it is easier to bypass DRM on Linux than on Windows, but as we now have things like a commercially licensed PowerDVD for Linux and Hymn for Windows, I think that argument won't really hold any water.