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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.
This is has honestly been the only reason that I still boot up in Windows.
Also seems I not the only one:
"iTunes has been our No. 1 most requested application," CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White said in a statement.
And presumably a free open source version cannot be far behind? Now, if I can just take this opportunity to ask the iTunes people to please add some (a lot) more to their back catalogue then the world will become perfect.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Bender: What better way to celebrate our success than by me showing Bubblegum this globetrotters uniform I made myself.
BubbleGum: Let me see.
Bender shows him his uniform.
BubbleGum: Hello lawsuit *rubs palms*.
Jonathanjk.com
Apple haven't sued Codeweavers over QuickTime under GNU/Linux so why would they do it over this?
It's running whatever software Apple offer. No DRM is being tampered with.
I think they will worry far more about RealNetworks than this.
Join the Free Software Foundation
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...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Wooohoo.
transmission_err
I have been in love with iTunes since I first used it in Windows late last year, I have all my music in it, and allow it to keep everything organized. While in Windows, everything is nice and neat and tidy, however, as soon as i switched to Linux and loaded up my tunes in XMMS, or Juk, or Kaffeine or any other multimedia player, all the titles and ID3 tags would look messed up.
While some of the open source projects out there have been doing a great job emulating iTunes, none have yet to duplicate the easy of use and great interface that Apple gives us. I wouldn't say this is the only reason why I use Windows, but I would say that while in Linux, I rarely listen to any of my music because I find it too difficult.
Thank you code weavers, and I will be looking forward to the release.
tourettes
You mean that he purchased from iTMS using iTunes on Windows on Linux?
What about gtkpod?
iTunes is not an X windows app. That's why porting it to Linux won't be much easier than porting to Windows.
Oh and the parent is moderated interesting! No it's not it's rubbish. Repeat after me Aqua is not X! CoreAudio is not ALSA (or OSS)!!!
Yes Mac OS X has got BSD kernel, but 95% of things above that level (exlcluding OpenGL) are proprietary Apple stuff and so a nearly full blown port is requeried from Mac OS X to Linux! Nowadays programs like iTunes use more then fopen(...); and printf(...).
No, they aren't. X11 is completely separate from Aqua/Quartz. One of the many reasons why you need either Xfree86 or Apple's modified X11 to run X applications. Additionally, like the grandparent said, iTunes is based on Carbon, which is separate from the BSD subsystem. For the most part, OS X uses BSD for its kernel and services only: all Mac OS X native programs are written in Cocoa, Carbon, or Java.
You are not the only Linux user in the world. Some of them might even have these "iPods" you mention.
You know, I've never found artists not getting a very big cut as a good excuse to not pay them at all...
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Even w/o an iPod or an interest in iTMS, iTunes can make a great music program. Like many other things Apple, iTunes doesn't necessarily have unique features, but (nearly) all its features are easier to use than in (nearly) all other software (there are always exceptions).
Things that you can do anywhere but are particularly easy, pleasant, or automatic in iTunes:
o Searching for songs
o Manipulating playlists
o Consistent sound quality/volume
o Smart playlists
Other nice things that some people use:
o AppleScriptable (OK, only applies to Macs but extremely useful nonetheless)
o Album art
o Rate your songs
Just a few thoughts...
-Rob
Cheers,
Ian
OSX still uses a BSD interface which is alot similar
/dev/whatever/ so I don't see any problem
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
Wrong. 0 for 3. Thanks for playing "Slashdot pundit who doesn't know what he's talking about".
Ummm... yeah. Great screenshot.
I looked at the screenshot and saw the OS X like buttons... my first thought was "Wow! They ported Crossover to OS X so now I can run iTunes on my mac!!"
Then I realized what I was thinking, and felt dumb.
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.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"You know, I've never found artists not getting a very big cut as a good excuse to not pay them at all.."
Talk about your erroneous, false conclusions. I wasn't referring to iTunes as an alternative to Kazaa, but I was pointing out that it's funny that so many people are excited about the opportunity to buy low-quality DRM'd music on Linux (like their Windows counterparts).
Contrary to popular belief, you don't have an inherent right to music, just like the RIAA has no right to sales. Listen to non RIAA bands, or go out and make your own music.....
I should have a right to the music I have paid for though. That's what anti-DRM people are usually complaining about.
Which OS? I used to use Tag&Rename when I ran my music stuff under Windows - excellent program. Don't know for Linux, and under OS X I just use iTunes to manage stuff.
Cheers,
Ian
Don't tell anybody, but this must actually break the iTunes DRM good and hard. CrossOverOffice almost certainly uses a standard Linux sound driver to get the sound data to the sound chip. This is bound to mean /dev/dsp, which is "hackable" in the sense that anyone with root access can snarf the digital audio data between when it gets decrypted by iTunes and when it gets sent to the sound chip. You can then make unlimited unencumbered copies. Additionally, knowing that the file was uncompressed from lossy AAC compression, it should be possible to recompress it in such a way as exactly to recover the original compressed file, just sans DRM encumbrance.
The same would, of course, also go for any successful attempt to run Windows Media Player under Linux.
DRM is a pipe dream. There is a fundamental physical reason why it will never work, though a formal mathematical proof escapes me right now. It's time to stop trying to do the impossible, even if that means having to swallow the unpalatable.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Why Apple Needs iTunes for Linux.. PHP-Nuke As of Late, I have been looking into buying an ipod, they are so cute and sexy, but I cant get over the fact that I cant download music legally for it. You might ask me, why cant you go onto Apple's iTunes and pay for your music, well because THEY DONT support Linux! I have been using Linux for the last 5 years and I feel that it is the perfect desktop for me. It has loads of functionality and it always seems like things are getting updated, so it feels like a new experience every time I turn on my computer. (most people don't like that, but it keeps me productive). I have everything I have ever wanted in Linux, except a legal way to download music. I have even gone as far as buying a ibook to play around with macosx and use iTunes, but I was soon disappointed that I couldn't transfer my iTunes collection I had just purchased to my Linux computer. Now there is a very cool open source project called playfair, that takes the DRM (Digital Rights Management) Software out of the AAC file that you download from apple and allows you to play it on your Linux computer. But this is again not legal, and it could be used for wrong doing. Apple doesn't understand if they would have supported the Linux community in the first place, they wouldn't have programs like this all over the Internet. The only thing they have done to support Linux at all is creating a ton of open source software that helps the open source community, but not Linux in general. I would even go as far as saying there are probably more Linux users out there than Mac users and it only hurts Apple not to create a Linux version of iTunes. Come on apple help stop Piracy and come out with iTunes for Linux!
keanmarine.com
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.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
The AAC codec in iTunes is now excellent and really takes on all comers. The one biggest feature for me is the ability to transcode from WAV-->AIFF-->AAC-->MP3 with just the click of a button. It makes keeping a reference copy of your collection in uncompressed form very easy and desireable because you can easily automate the process to rip for portable use and smaller sizes. Smart Playlists make this even easier.
First Real makes their player compatible with the iPod. Now someone makes iTunes available on Linux.
Apple hardly needs to do a thing to improve iTunes. Their competitors are doing it all for them.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Great... now only if I could get firewire to work easily and reliably on linux.
I'll admit to keeping a Win partition on my machine, so that from time to time I could boot into XP and play with apps like iTunes. I was pretty taken with iTunes at first, but the only thing it seems to offer over any collection of similar Linux apps is convenience. Why not use apps like rhythmbox (for gnome) or juk (for kde)? While neither app is as mature as iTunes (yet), they both do a great job. And both have better .ogg support than iTunes.
I would argue that ITMS, while convenient, isn't that great a value. Why not opt for one of the other services that lets you download files encoded at a higher bitrate? Or in multiple formats? Or from Linux? This is exactly the kind of application where Linux users should be looking to innovate, in the interest of offering more choices, and not just waiting for the CrossOver port. There are plenty of great projects out there doing just that, and they could all use the attention that CrossOver's iTunes work seems to be getting.
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.
.50/song.
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
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.
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.
easytag. It has a parser that can fill in id3-tags from the filename, or the other way around (rename files to match id3-info). The parser is quite flexible, using user-provided patterns. So for example if the files where named like ARTIST_ALBUM_SONGNAME.mp3 you'd provide easytag with the pattern {artist}_{album}_{title}.mp3 and have it work as expected. Also supports looking up info from cddb aswell as specifying manually as a last resort.
Cocoa apps are, in theory, not hard to port over to GNU Step unless they use a lot of the new features. GNU Step apps can usually just be tweaked a bit and recompiled as Cocoa apps.
That's all well and good, but like the parent said, iTunes is written in Carbon, which is like the old OS 9 api's, so it doesn't use ANY of the bsd like api's for anything.
"Slashdot pundit who doesn't know what he's talking about".
Isn't that America's favorite game show?
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
You use it because it's the best music management app out there.
People generally want to use the best if they can, right? Now you (and other Linux-folk) can.
The real question is... Why wouldn't you use it? It's free, it's powerful, it's easy, it's simple!
GPL Deconstructed
Sorry I wasn't entirely clear. I mean, if you take, say the Mahler 2 San Fran/MTT CD and encode it with lame as a mp3 or encode as an ogg (to the highest levels), it comes out sounding like ass unfortunately. Lots of airy distortion, and noise. And if you have a choir in there, you can really hear the noise even worse. Lame is good for pop songs, etc. but it just doesn't work as well as the Franhaufer (sp?) encoder with classical music unfortunately.
Also, many OS X apps like iTunes, iPhoto, etc. store their data in XML files and easy to navigate file systems, so you can get at them with your own software/scripts/etc. I bought a Mac because OS X in general has the overall quality newcomers have found in apps like iTunes. It is a rare thing to be able to build a complete OS that is easy enough for newbies but powerful enough to satisfy software developers/hackers/power users/etc.
What does Juk have over iTunes as far as managing you music collection?
iTunes is free (like Juke)
iTunes is on v4.6 with the accompanying stability and polish
iTunes has sound normalization
iTunes has song ratings
iTunes plays CDs, internet radio, and streaming music from other computers
iTunes rips songs
Unless there's a version of Juk I don't know of... Juk doesn't rip songs or play CDs?
GPL Deconstructed
i use juk (kde app) to listen to my music, and i used it to rename all the chilli peppers songs of one of their albums (files named properly, but id3 tags were like 01 - unknown or similar. under juk, click tagger > guess tag information > from filename.
it worked out the correct id3 tags perfectly
"AppleScriptable" ... one of iTunes biggest downfalls. I ran into a really weird situation a week after I bought my iPod. I wanted to create a "smart" playlist that would randomly select 20 minutes of music for exercising. Sounds simple, right?
Wrong. The ONLY way to do it was through AppleScript. You could create the playlist, but it would always have the same 20 minutes of music. I needed to script a way to remove all songs from the playlist so iTunes got the hint that I wanted 20 minutes of random music *every* time I opened the playlist.
And it's not that it was overly complicated, or differed much from what's already offered (iPod updates, for example, date-based playlists on the fly). Apple's reliance on AppleScript though, perturbed me. Basically, there was no way to get this functionality WITHOUT AppleScript. It's become an excuse.
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?
Repeat after me: "iTunes is not just a music store."
Good, I knew you could do it.
I have a shitty sig!
I've always considered $1 for a good song to be a great deal when thrift store record shopping. If the album contains 1 good song (good being a relative term) then I've done pretty well. Even better if I average that ratio over the course of a day's finds.
Now with iTMS, I am pretty much guaranteed that ratio. I know what song I'm getting and its usually one I've been wanting for a while. To me it is worth it. Also you don't have to buy a whole album or buy from RIAA members. It really is that easy. But if you don't want to do either, fine, but I get tired of those who pronounce judgment against those of us who do find it useful.
JuK is painfully slow with 600+ albums...
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.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
I love being able to use embedded quicktime in firefox in linux =) It rules.
The next version of Mac OS X will have an application to program automatic tasks with a GUI, without using AppleScript.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
GtkPod is an excellent program for managing the iPod but the authors make no claims regarding iTunes, which of course they would never be granted access to in any case. Apple controls the iTunes commerce channel.
<pedantic>Actually, Cocoa, Carbon and Swing are the frameworks you can use. Java, Objective-C, AppleScript, Python and Perl (and more every day) are languages you may choose from in order to target those frameworks.</pedantic>
Cocoa and Carbon are both considered 'native', though. For a new project, the only real choice is wether you want to go procedural and target Carbon or OO and target Cocoa. Legacy code bases will naturally choose Carbon to leverage existing code, but there are virtually no differences in capabilities (now - there were) between the two frameworks now.
In fact, most of the Cocoa objects use the same low level data structures and functions under the hood as the Carbon framework - so much so that Apple offers 'Toll Free Bridging' between the types. An NSString object can be swapped with a CFString reference without having to convert it at all. The idea here is to encourage 'hybrid' Cocoa/Carbon applications - but the the fact that this works proves that there isn't much difference under the hood between the frameworks.
The advantage of using the Cocoa framework is simply being able to use Objective C (very funky at first, but very cool language) and an extremely elegant framework that does most everything you might need with minimal work. If you're starting a new project, you should be using Cocoa. It's fast, powerful and is Apple's Wave Of The Future. I don't expect Carbon to go away any time soon (you try telling Adobe that they have to rewrite Photoshop from scratch), but I do expect lack of effort at some point. This doesn't mean that Carbon is somehow non-native.
iTunes is a legacy application (released initially for OS 9), therefore it was started on the Carbon framework. However, a LOT of the refinements Apple developed using iTunes (alternating row colors on lists, split views, controls in table cells, etc) has made it down into the frameworks and are now available to both Cocoa and Carbon.
PS - Interesting tidbit: The Finder was initially a (badly) modified Carbon application when OS X was first released. It was re-written in Cocoa for 10.2, and I believe it is the ONLY Apple application that has made that transition. It's either a testament to the simplicity of the Finder (right) or the power of Cocoa (likely) that they were able to change so easily. Not that I don't have my gripes...
Culture is more than commerce
Actually, it's still in carbon. Very easy test: attempt to execute an operation that would normally hang Finder (emptying the trash, etc.). Notice the wait cursor you get (hint: it'll alternate between the pinwheel and the stopwatch). Unless the developer has added the stop watch resource into the program (which Apple hasn't), the stopwatch is a legacy wait indicator from OS 9 and Carbon.
At least 95% of the population can't tell the difference-- 128kbps AAC sounds great. The other 5% or less can suffer the inconvenience of buying physical CDs or using P2P.
--
Saying that artists only receive $0.11 per song or less isn't just unperceptive, it's wrong.
Most artists have up-front contracts with their labels, paying them millions in advance. Musicians don't make their profits from album commissions.
--
Wow - you're right. I could have sworn I heard Apple trumpeting about that change, but I seem to have mixed one of those silly rumors with real life. Damned pre-coffee posts.
That only strengthens my original point, though - with the only difference being that Apple hasn't moved any of their applications from one framework to the other. Apple themselves treat Carbon and Cocoa as equals and the proof is in the Applications they develop.
Culture is more than commerce
What good is this when we already have Linspire's lsongs?
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
Damn HTML...
The Cocoa Finder has been a perennial rumor in the Mac community since OS X was launched, as though a Cocoa rewrite were some sort of magic spell that would solve all the problems in the <10.3 Finder with no further effort. In 10.3 it's just a much-better-written Carbon app.
There's an even simpler test for Carbon/Cocoa-ness: It's possible to use most Cocoa controls while a window remains in the background by holding down Command while clicking. If you can manipulate a window without bringing it to the foreground, it's Cocoa. If it always pops on top, it's Carbon.
http://crossover.codeweavers.com/pipermail/announ
Hopefully it will be added soon so I can rid myself of Windows once and for all.
If that's what he wants, it's relatively easy (just requires a CTRL+A, then Delete to refresh)
Set a Smart Playlist with, say, Random 25 songs from library, Live Updating, and (for grins) Only include checked songs. When you want to refresh, clear the contents and the playlist will regenerate to fill the criteria. As long as Live Updating is turned on, this works for ALL Smart Playlists, the only caveat being if you use one of the "Not played in..." criteria, in which case it works no differently than the Party Shuffle.
The name iTunes refers to what it does - plays tunes (music). It has never been meant for video, although you can now have music videos through iTMS, and they could easily incorporate video because Quicktime is running the show underneath the GUI.
/. I don't hear much about it. The average person knows mp3, if I even try to explain AAC to them they get confused, so I tell them to think of it as mp4 and of course the higher number helps them see it as better (I do know what it is, so you don't have to tell me.)
Why the crap do you want to make a thousand folders to put each individual song/movie in so that you can search them? In OSX I could do the same and search in the finder for "Rated-G Animated Movies" following your method of approach and still come up with the same results possibly faster. Using tags or metadata is much better to organize then making folders.
I can't say anything about your PC, but I have a Dual 2.0Ghz G5 and have iTunes running most of the time and it doesn't make a dent in slowing down what I'm doing. I work on Photoshop mostly and usually am not working on a file less then 100 MB. Buy some more RAM.
I can't comment on the iTMS quality as I haven't purchased anything. I do have 65 GBs of music on my drive though, and a 128 kbps AAC is roughly the same as a 160 kbps mp3 to my ears. I rip at 192 kbps mp3 though for compatibilitys sake.
And are people really asking for Ogg playback? Out of
Just downloaded the latest alpha, and installed iTunes, but the pulldown menus are kinda b0rked (common with not-quite-there Crossover/Wine apps). It's a step forward, though. I find XMMS perfectly useable, and with the LongPlayer companion app, i have a great random jukebox, on par with iTunes w/ Party Shuffle.
The problem is the signal is already decompressed by the time it gets to the sound card driver. "Breaking iTunes' DRM" means getting access to the unencrypted compressed sound data. There is no known way to recover the AAC compressed source from the decompressed version--to preserve the same sound quality as the original iTMS file you have to recompress lossless (which creates a much larger file)--if you just recompress as AAC or MP3 you will lose quality from the roundtrip, although presumably this is fine for some. Basically, iTMS DRM is supposed to guarantee that you cannot create a unencumbered small file of the same quality from your downloaded songs, plus put a convenience barrier to discourage casual file swapping.
if you tick "compilation" in the info/id3 pane in itunes, it creates a artist directory called "compilations" and puts the album, then the tracks in there (the file names do not have the artist tho... iirc)
"compilations" also comes up as an artist in the browse section
*however* (and this annoys me muchly) this is not replicated on the ipod - the ipod ignores "compilations" altogether and u get a billion artists in the artist browse list
to get around this i give compilations "compilation" as the artist and name the song "artist - song name" and soundtracks have "soundtrack" as the artist
its a bit crap but u only have to do this for the ipod, not if all u use is itunes