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How to Get Music Off Your iPod
ptorrone writes "Never did we think we'd need to do a How-To on something which should be part of the basic functionality of a portable music player, but once you put your tunes on an iPod unfortunately it's a one-way sync unless you know the tricks for getting them off. Here's how to get your stuff off for free on a Mac or PC and how to re-enable a useful tool with a Hex editor." Cory Doctorow has been writing about this on boingboing recently; he discusses Apple's message to iPod owners.
It's not that first time such 'backup' tool is available, and it's also not the first time Apple found ways to neutralize such tool by way of a new version.
Additionally, it's relatively easy (compared to ripping CDs) to do it on iPod because Apple basically owns the device and its content, and they can do a lot to force users to comply. iPod doesn't need to follow a standard format (like CDs must play in all CD players), they can set/change the format to suit.
The article is quick to point out that "We're also hopeful Apple might consider not spending engineering time and lawyer fees on chasing after applications and developers who just want to give folks an obvious feature that's being left out only to appease the RIAA. At the end of the day, Apple needs to know that we're their customers, too."
However I think the BoingBoing article sums it up nicely - " Apple didn't have any choice. If they don't play nice with the suicidally stupid record industry, the industry will stop supplying music for the iPod."
When/If these online music distributors have gained enough market shares (maybe 30% of all music album buyers?), they might able to turn around and force the record industry to make changes, because it's not nice to lose 30% sales overnight.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
This is exactly why I go with Archos.
Video, Pictures, and you don't have to do anything illegal to be able to keep your own music.
This story is simply yet another plug for the folks over at Engadget.com, submitted by Mr. Torrone himself. (Hint: he's with Engadget.) They're trolling for hits, plain and simple.
At least grant us the courtesy of a disclosure statement if you're gonna let 'em plug their site under the guise of news.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
story link contains pornographic ads.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
On a Mac it's pretty easy to get everything off the iPod - fire up a shell, wander into the directory where the music is stored on the mounted iPod, and simply copy out what you want.
The tool they talk about would make it easier but even a novice can use a shell if they are just following directions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would hardly say that Apple trying to protect its relationship with the music content providers, which is the whole reason that the iTunes Music Store exists in the first place, not to mention the online store with by far the highest marketshare, is tantamount to Apple telling its customers to "eat shit and die".
.
His preemptive rebuttals are also complete bullshit. Yes, we're the "customers", not Sony/BMG. And he himself admits that the record companies are idiots; yes, those are the idiots that Apple has to deal with. A lot of people think it was a miracle Apple/Steve Jobs got them even to agree to this "crazy experiment" in the first place.
Additionally, getting music back off the iPod is not part of the advertised capabilities or features of the service, period, and never was. Remember iTunes 4.0b12? It let you go both ways between every iPod and iTunes under the sun, with no limits. You could two-way sync every iPod and iTunes library on earth. Remember iTunes 4.0, and its internet music sharing? The record industry might not be telling Apple *exactly* the specifics of how to implement the protections, but Apple is under pressure to not make it too "easy" to "share" music on a wide scale, while still making the DRM and protections as transparent as it possibly can.
The proponents of things like iPod Download, and even the linked article, talk about things like stolen computers and hard drive failures. Well, in fairness, Apple does have a recommendation. You might hate it, and you might think it sucks, but it's to have your music library backed up somewhere other than your computer, and other than your iPod
Further, as long as the iPod is just a freaking disk, its contents will be able to be retrieved. But Apple CANNOT look as if it is passively ignoring things that are perceived by the music industry to be "dangerous", whether they are or not. Yes, Apple can try to help the music industry understand, and even pressure them in the right direction - and probably has, quite a bit, frankly. Remember, this whole online download thing is in its utter infancy.
If you want to hate or blame Apple for "selling out", and saying that they should just tell people like Sony/BMG to go fuck themselves, and if they lose them they lose them, fine...that's you call. And no one is forcing you to use or buy any of Apple's services. This is Apple's service and products, and they're running them how they feel they have to to ensure the iTunes Music Store's continued existence. Do you think they WANT to make things hard on customers? Quite the opposite! And maybe someday Apple will have the leverage to start pressing these things with the music industry - Jobs believes people should really be able to do what they want with their music. But people also want music from the major labels, so you can't piss them off right off the bat. What to do? Frankly, I think Apple is in the right here, and Cory Doctorow is the one who can eat shit and die.
Just use gtkpod, and copy the music to and from the ipod using a convenient graphical interface. As for resetting the ipod if you've screwed it up with DRM, I find the following command works every time: dd if=ipod_firmware of=/dev/sda1. Not graphical yet, but perhaps in the next version of gtkpod?
Doesn't the iPod act as USB storage device? Can't you just mount it and copy the filesystem? If not, then that's pretty damn lame. I might have considered an iPod if it could act like a portable harddrive.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Well, mine was free, and this article was helful. So na na na na na!
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
I don't see why people go around downloading these programs to do it. If you mount your iPod, the songs are in /Volumes/blah blah's iPod/iPod_Control/Music
/posting AC, just in case
Seriously. This stuff has been common knowledge since the first generation iPod. There have been numerous softwares to accomplish the same thing and many of them can be found at iPodlounge.com
A simple google search will turn up more than enough results. Was it really nesse3sary to put this on the front page of Slashdot?
T Money
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There's also CopyPod for Windows which allows you to select individual albums/songs. http://www.copypod.net/index.php
I think one important aspect to Apple's constant user downgrades of the iPod/iTMs is that they stop customers from doing what Apple tells them to do: Back up their songs.
Oddly, Apple's iTMS wants it both ways. They say they are selling you a license for the song, not the physical song. But when you lose a song, they treat it like you lost physical property, even though you paid an apparently perpetual license fee that allows you to have the song and play it.
If something happens to your iTunes library, Apple will not let you re-download those songs again even though the "Fair Play" DRM insures that their could be no piracy involved, since the songs would be locked to the same computers as the original. Tough luck, says Apple, it's your fault for not backing up. Naturally, one would think that the iPod's large disk drive and auto synch would be the perfect way to back up songs, but the schizophrenic Apple won't let you copy your songs off iPod. (Yes, there are ways, but Apple may close that back door at any time.) iPod owners are constantly having to ask on Forums how to recover their accidentally erased iTMS library from their iPod because Apple doesn't officially allow anyway to copy their songs from your iPod to restore their music. Ridiculous.
Their is literally no customer advantage to the Apple downgrades. And copying your legal songs is not illegal. I'm glad that Corry is staying on this.
What, you can't do that in windows/mac??
Helpful, even.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
i have gotten my stuff off my ipod sever times
i use the disk use feature to copy all the folders holding the files.. then i use the itunes organize feature to let it rearange the files again into their respective foders...
Just use the iPod support plugin in Winamp. Not only does it let you sync and listen to your iPod in Winamp, it allows you to "Copy Selection to Hard Drive". There are still some kinks in it. It has a habit of creating literal album names for directories (which is a problem for DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing...". Windows doesn't like them ellipses).
Of course worse comes to worst I navigate into the iPod in Windows Explorer, CTRL+C all the directories and CTRL+V it onto my Harddrive. No big deal.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Just to clarify, it's not actually that hard to get music off an iPod. Sure, iTunes won't let you copy music off it, but on a PC, it's this simple:
Voila! - All your mp3s are there - you can even play then straight off the iPod (in something like WinAMP) if you like.
Admittedly, on a Mac you have to resort to the Terminal (basically all the music files are hidden in Finder), but it's not exactly rocket science!
" To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. "
I don't know when we started being so collectively condescending to the average computer user, but there was a time when you might tell a user to copy a file on their computer and reasonably believe they could do it. These days, most people approach the user like you might approach your retarded cousin who was raised by ferrets on a remote island: don't tell them anything, you might frighten or confuse them (unfrozen-caveman-lawyer style).
Personally, I have faith in people, and when someone asks me how to copy files off their iPod, I show them how to do it with the normal shell commands or file manager interfaces. The belief that people need a WYSIWYG GUI application to move files between storage devices is, I think, a result of the incorrect and insulting attitude that developers are so much smarter than their users.
There is no reason why this should have been modded down.
He stated a legitimate reason why he does not own an Ipod.
That's not what the article says, the article REFUTES that point, sheesh.
feh. stuff.
Yeah, I've read about this on the pop culture sites, but its simply fucking amazing that its even an issue with Slashdotters.
This is the simplest fucking thing to do...at least if you understand unix commands such as cd, ls and cp.
Moving files to the iPod is a little harder (as it requires knowledge of the xml to do so), but fucking shit...I was told how to do this by a senior apple developer just before I picked up my 1G iPod and his response was that the idea was to make it a hinderance to folks that were willing to trade files, but it was well known that if someone wanted to do this, they would.
I think this is perfectly legitimate -- they don't stop anyone from publishing how to do this, they do stop folks from making tools that are entirely designed around ripping content.
What we really need is a how-to instructing geek nation how to get their iPod back after some scumbag stole it!
So you have done this have you, or did you just decide that talking out of your ass would probably get you moderated up?
There is no "directory" that holds the music, the iPod is purposely crippled to split it into something like 100 directories, and spreads the files randomly around them with random file names. The only way to find the song you wish to copy, or, God forbid, the album, is to have an app that reads the iPod's proprietary database file and finds the filenames that way.
Such apps have been written, and Apple is busy breaking them for no good reason other than making life worse for its customers.
These days, most people approach the user like you might approach your retarded cousin who was raised by ferrets on a remote island: don't tell them anything, you might frighten or confuse them (unfrozen-caveman-lawyer style).
That's because there are a whole fuckton of people out there who don't know, don't care, and refuse to learn even the most basic thing about computers (like copying files or not clicking on random attachments). The revel in their ignorance. Faced by such willful ignorance, the documentation guys took one step back, gave the one finger salute, and started writing in babytalk, knowing that nobody reads the stuff anyway.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
But regardless I dont see why this is such a big deal... it was never advertised as being able to do this, and it keeps the RIAA from being total bastards and getting a law passed banning ALL hard drive music devices... Hell Apple isnt the only manufacturer who does this to its MP3 player so why is it a big deal... espesially a big deal 3 years AFTER the device came out?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
When I had an ipod, I used EphPod to deal with my music (because iTunes doesn't run on Win ME). EphPod is pretty good on its own, and it has the "feature" that allows you to download from the ipod to your computer. You click and drag. Pretty simple..
You can do it just fine on a PC as well.
I don't know, maybe i'm just completely missing something here, but this article seems incredibly stupid to me. I just don't understand why you'd have to do any of this at all. Why would you not be able to get them off the iPod? In Windows you can press F3 and type *.mp3 in the stupid search box and it will list every MP3 on your iPod and you're free to copy them where-ever you like. You don't need EphPod or a hex editor or any of that, and you never did. -_-
Doesn't all music on an iPod come from a computer? Why not get it from there? The only point I can see to this is the argument of hard drive crash, but there's no need to damn Apple for not providing tools they never said they would.
Just back the files you didn't get from your own CD's to data CD's and be done with it.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
In iTunes, select "Enable FireWire disk use." under iPod Preferences.
Open terminal.Note: this might not be exactly right, as I'm not sitting right in front of Terminal right now. But come on, this isn't exactly rocket science.
Well, the door was open...
Rather than restrict sharing to say, 3 network MAC addresses, they removed the feature altogether.
This seems to be another annoyance for users who just want to stream their iTunes from home to a pals house, or musicians who use the iPod to listen to their own music.
Again, no trouble for those who would like to bypass such restrictions, just a pain in the ass for those who use(d) these features legitimately.
I just bought an Iriver ifp 795 and i can't get music files off it either. You can use it as a hard drive for other types of files but not musics ones, and only through the iriver music manager software. I hope somebody comes up with a hack for iriver products also.
On a Mac, this is fairly simple.
1) Plug in the iPod and make sure it mounts as a disk. Note the name of the disk (it will be whatever you named your iPod, likely John Doe's iPod).
2) Open a new finder window and press cmd-shift-G. In the sheet that opens up, type the following: "/Volumes/John Doe's iPod/iPod_Control/Music"
3) Your finder window will go the the music folder. It will look empty, but it's not. In the folder *above* the music folder, the music folder itself will appear as a greyed out folder. Drag this icon to wherever you'd like to put it. The copy will begin.
4) Once the copy completes, enjoy the music.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
On a Mac it's pretty easy to get everything off the iPod - fire up a shell, wander into the directory where the music is stored on the mounted iPod, and simply copy out what you want.
the only problem is to find out in which directory ranging from F00 to F48 the file you want is located. which can be quite a hassle, especially if your files are all named trackNN.mp3.
Well, mine was free, and this article was helful. So na na na na na!
Well all those advertising companies don't have my information, and I don't get bombarded by even more flyers every day trying to sell me things.
Everyone will sell out for a price, I guess that a "free" iPod is a high enough price for a lot of people...
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Why yes I have actually done this. Because it's pretty freaking easy if you have a Mac and an iPod. In fact if you had some device like an iPod that mounted as a disk, wouldn't you go exploring to see how it was structured?
But I guess you're too bitter to actually be inquistive and can't imagine someone else knowing what they are talking about.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not saying you're lying but my iPod's library is entirely searchable with non-random file names. The file names on my iPod are in the thisisthesongname.mp3 format.
Just mount the iPod in firewire disk mode go searching via the terminal or make sure you set hidden files as viewable in Finder/Explorer.
Or download the handful of GUI apps that will do it for you. Apple disabled an iTunes plugin - not the ability to move files from your iPod.
But it doesn't matter so much for a few reasons. One is that the files still have id3 tags in them.
Another is that if you are backing up the iPod, all it takes is a recursive copy and you are done. Still very useful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Having just done this myself when I bought a Powerbook overseas when I had my iPod with me and not the laptop that had my music collection I can add my two cents on how to do this fairly easily.
First you can't see the directory the music is stored in by using Finder as Apple disables it but if you open a terminal you can copy all the files across from the mount point.
Yes as you stated this contains a big mess of numerical directories with crappy filenames but all the files are still properly tagged (you do tag your mp3's right?) so iTunes still works perfectly okay if you add these to your library.
After doing that though I consolidated my library and it brought everything back into a sane state with an Artist / Album / song hierarchy automagically then I just deleted what I copied off the iPod.
Quite simple really and with no third party tools or hex editing of anything.
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But you can use Mirrordot. Yeah baby!
You are partially incorrect. It's true that the files are put in random directories, but the filenames remain the same.
/Volumes/iPod ./ -iname *portishead*
./ -iname *portishead*`; do open $i; done
$ cd
$ find
If you wanna get fancy, you can import them by checking the "copy imported music to iTunes" and do:
for i in `find
This will reimport all of your portishead songs. I should know, I just did it because my hard drive died a couple of weeks ago and my backup was bad. This was the only way I could get some of my music back.
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"Apple didn't have any choice. If they don't play nice with the suicidally stupid record industry, the industry will stop supplying music for the iPod."
You had it exactly wrong. BoingBoing pointed out the stupidity of this argument (and he's right). Since you seem to be incapable of the 7th grade comprehension necessary to understand this, I invite the readers here to go to the article directly.
Really, this is a stupid argument to make.
Am I misunderstanding this article? I am a film student and I have classmates that will put video onto their ipods and bring in their footage via ipod to the edit labs, and then bring that edited footage back home... what am I missing?
once upon a time OS X 10.3 messed up my HD completely with the encryption of a large file and not enough HD space. that meant total system crash, and therefore mp3 collection gone. after searching around, i came across ipodrip which trivially restored my data off the ipod. costs $10, but then $10 compared to a whole music collection is peanuts -- and you want to support the smart guys who figured out to undo the weirdness of the ipod filesystem...
As well as knowing how to use the "find" command.
All my MP3's/AAC's are pretty well named, so generally it's not so much a problem.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's like everyone was just waiting around for Apple to do something like this, and now that they've done it, no matter how minisculy important it is, OMFG APPLE IS FORCE-FEEDING US FECES.
There's dozens of programs out there that let you download from an iPod (so many have been linked already that I won't even bother) the one difference between all those and iPod Download? iPod Download is an iTunes plug-in. Is it really a stretch to imagine the RIAA pulling their music from the iTMS (or even suing Apple) when they see iTunes being used for "illegal file sharing"?
Adam
If Microsoft did this, all of Slashdot would be outraged and ranting about evilness and what not.
Apple does it and people come out of the woodwork to defend them and find work-arounds.
Why is buying an Apple iPod is any different than buying an MP3 player laden with Microsoft DRM?
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Well, Apple's not on your side, even if you're an Apple customer.
Really? You just noticed this?
The Apple ][ owners knew this.
The Newton Owners know all about "being Steved"
And TAM owners know that Rhapsody^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMac OS X doesn't work on their machines.
Why would anyone expect something different from Apple THIS time around?
Few companies are 'on your side'.
No offence, but it's quite clear you've never worked in a retail computer or tech store before.
Trust me: I work at Staples, and this sort of behavior is perfectly justifiable. Joe User is a fucking moron, and they tell you that in plain English when they begin their question.
"I don't know anything about the computer! How do I get music off of my iPod?"
Just go do a find in Windows and Search for hidden files and *.mp3 and search only in the mounted drive and all of your mp3's will show up in find results
I also saw such ads on my visit. This sort of info is important to those of us at work.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
You are just stupid. You can't figure out how to properly use an iPod so you blame Apple? Are you stupid or what? How much simpler does Apple have to make it?
I do point out how to do things in the shell to others and in online forums from time to time. But for example, one thing I was trying to help someone with was formatting a drive with FAT16 and an odd cluster size. I think you would agree that pointing out how to use format_msdos requrires a fair degree of precision and warning about how if they get the device wrong they could loose the main drive! I trust users to a point, but the shell can be very powerful so you want to be clear about what will happen for first-time users.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you don't like what Apple is doing (and this is certainly not the first time they've done something I don't like) then don't buy their products. Don't hack the damn player just so you can have your own music. Vote with your feet. It's the only way they'll get the message.
The iPod was the only Apple device I'd considered buying in about 20 years. (I learnt my lesson from the way I was treated with my last purchase which was an Apple IIe). Its this sort of nonesense that means I won't do it. Other players are coming out and I doubt the iPods stranglehold on the market will continue.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yes, but he violated an unwritten but well understood Slashdot rule: never never never say anything bad about Apple, Steve Jobs, or anything Apple makes, has made, or will ever think about making. Apple criticism is automatically modded down, and repeat offenders are IP Banned.
Sorry to say it, but root is root. Apple can try to make it harder, but its Unix. I think alot of the posters are more worried about an easy way to catalog the music as opposed to just getting the music off the ipod. There is a distinct difference.
# nohup
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
If you use a mac, there are plenty of graphical applications, some free and some shareware (that you can get from versiontracker.com), that allow you to easily get songs off your iPod and access it through an iTunes-like interface:
1) iPodRip
2) iPod Access
And some cool apps that let you download RSS feeds and news to your iPod like "Pod2Go". Just search versiontracker.com for "ipod", you'll get plenty of results.
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Oh no! Whatever will I do??
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
http://www.darkridge.com/~jpr5/src/icopy.pl
Specify a search pattern and it will copy from the iPod to a specified destination any song whose Title, Album, or Artist matches the search string.
--jordan
How long do you expect me to sit around and explain this to my sister in law? So much for the claim that OS X is the GUI that "just works".
Sure there are ways to copy the music files from an iPod to a PC or Mac.
It's another ordeal entirely to copy the related Playcounts, Playlists, and groupings from a well-groomed iTunes database.
To get everything, just use iPodRip (PC/Mac).
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Anyone who halfway knows their way around a *nix machine could do this with their eyes closed.
For those of you who do not, enable "Hard Disk Usage" on your ipod via iTunes. Unmount/mount your ipod. Open your terminal and "cd" into the music folder of your ipod, located in your devices directory. Google search how to copy directories in any *nix environment and you're all done.
No need for someone else to write you a pretty GUI, after all you read /. so do it yourself through the terminal.
I boycott signatures
I appreciate seeing the article posted here and on Engadget. I was considering buying an iPod but I was not aware that Apple discourages iPod backups and future iPods will probably try to make backups impossible. Furthermore it seems iTunes does not allow you to re-download songs you that already paid for. This is ridiculous. So I would like to thank Endgadget and Slashdot for saving me the money I would have wasted in iPod/iTunes.
I've been able to copy tracks off of my Nomad Jukebox 3 using Red Chair's Notmad Explorer and according to the features page for Anapod Explorer, you should be able to copy tracks to and from an iPod/iPod Mini. Sure, it's commercialware, but for me, it's worth the price (Creative's software for music transfer for the Nomad is unstable and very, very bloated).
Looks just like a diskdrive to my computer..files go both ways.
Blar.
Maybe I'm the freak, but when I read 'we' here I assumed it meant 'we iPod users', not 'we at a company I'm not going to state in this write-up but you'd see if you hover your cursor over the word we'. Sure, it's a link (now, anyway - not sure if it always was) but being a two letter green word among black lettering it's easy to miss.
I also don't see why you're defensive. It seems like every story involving a 'sister site' (or whatever) of Slashdot notes that in passing. Just start putting a disclaimer in that this is a press release and you work for them and not give the impression it's something you happened upon, and avoid the controversy altogether.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
All of this "superior user," "holier than thou" crap from a guy who works at Staples? Perhaps when you have made the big move up to a McDonalds you can pontificate from upon high.
"bite mesteveb also works"
But shouldn't that be "stevej"?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
It's not like anyone would give them a real email or phone, right?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
what do /.ers think is the most hackable portable music player? I have a few things that I would love to do with my player, such as making audio "flash cards" for the languages I am learning, along wiht the word printed on the screen(I'm learning Chinese and Japanese, so it would be nice if I could take advantage of the fact that the iPod can render all those characters).
It's pretty obvious it's possible to do this on the iPod, but Apple won't release SDKs for it. Are there any players that will let you program them to achieve such a thing?
Monstar L
Interesting, I have the same experience with people who work at Staples.
http://www.busyweather.com/
My first mp3 player was the Rio500. This device inspired a lawsuit against the maker, Diamond Multimedia, because the RIAA claimed it would enable piracy. The case was thrown out of court, but just to cover their asses from additional legal challenges, Diamond disabled the capability for files to easily be copied from the player back to a computer.
A few months ago I just upgraded and bought an iPod 40gig. I really appreciate it over my Rio500. I am disappointed that I can't easily transfer music from the player to my computer, but I can understand their rationale.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
my nomad has this ability right out of the package. even easier using the notmad software. i only wish xp would recognize it as a drive to REALLY make it easy.
swanker than you
That seems like a ridiculous idea. MAC addresses only exist on the local network therefore this would lead to even more restrictive behavior than before.
Over the internet you have to use IP addresses... since they are (normally) globally unique.
He doesn't own an iPod because you can't get music off? But as numerous posts have shown you can in fact do just that. So what was his "legitimate" insight into not owning an iPod apart from his obvious irrational dislike of them?
If he stated he didn't like the interface, I could understand - I would disagree, but I know there there really is not going to be an interface that pleases everyone. If he stated he was displeased with sealed batteries, again you could argue about if they were good or bad but not that it was not a valid consideration he might have.
But when he states he doesn't own one because it lacks a capability it actually has, then I'd say it's far to moderate him down as just plain wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"a result of the incorrect and insulting attitude that developers are so much smarter than their users."
Wow... I hope I never have to come behind you fixing code!!! If you code like an average user you claim to not know more than, Jesus talk about a nightmare. Have you ever successfully compiled anything?
I doubt any average user even knows anything about "Hello World!".
I figure you mean smarter not necessarily in the field of work but generally. Our field of work allows us to poke and prod a LOT of aspects the end user has no care about, therefore knows nothing about.
Since Wal*Mart is starting to put the squeeze on the RIAA and the music pimps, they will see that it is in their own best interest to maintain an ITMS as a hedge against being pushed, like all Wal*Mart suppliers, into dependency, servitude and eventual oblivion as independent entities.
Wall*Mart is NOT good for America.
Wall*Mart causes price wars that they ultimately win on volume (buy cheap in China and sell cheap in the 'States [and let the volume take care of the shipping,]) and everyone they rub up against is doomed without some form of 'free trade' barrier like a tariff on imports.
Wall*Mart wins but/and the local producers who can't afford themselves of the retail volumes, and who were the market place before, loose.
The ultimate price of a Wall*Mart style of enterprize is your freedom because if a Wall*Mart doesn't carry something, there nobody left to produce it.
All they need to do is start squeezing the markets they have devastated and, like all monopolies they WILL. Not right now, but in a few years, look for Sexy M.F. by Prince and it won't even exist anymore.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7463
Open Pod is an applescript for iTunes that builds a playlist from the files on your iPod, which you can then copy to your music library. This thing saved me hours of re-ripping when I deleted all the music from my hard drive to save space, not knowing that I "couldn't" copy the music back from my iPod (I was an iPod newb when this happened). I don't know if this works in Windows. I would guess not...
sudo eat my shorts
Yeah, I've got a Neuros. I can copy to/from the device to my heart's content. Then again I can also do live recording to the device, something you iPod people can only make petitions (that get ignored by Apple) about.
But hey, enjoy the ability to view photos on a tiny LCD. That's useful.
I've never had a problem getting the songs off of my iPod, especially since I use iTunes to organize my music. The music is just stored in a hidden directory on the iPod, so all you have to do is copy that directory, and then tell iTunes (or any other good jukebox) to import a directory. Tada! Music transferred. It's not like Apple made it really difficult to remove it.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Posting anonymously since my wife occasionally swings by...
My in-laws are exactly that type. No matter how many times I tell them how to copy a file into or out of a folder, they Just Don't Get It(tm). If I say anything, they pull a Bush and say how hard it is or shrug and say "maybe I'm just stupid". One of these days, my tact is going to run out. On the plus side, my wife actually tried helping them with something and she yelled at them for being so dense. Maybe there's hope...
WTF?
What is "the authorized machine"? Can't I use my iPod (that I don't have yet) anywhere I like? And people actually buying this crap? How is this better than any other mp3 player that acts as an USB stick without any stupid DRM and other restrictions? What does iPod offer that makes people to put up with DRM?
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
I'm surprised that the article discusses several stand alone programs but not the simples backup tool of them all (in Windows XP, that is): The xcopy command.
/s /h /f {path to your ipod} {path to a folder on your computer where you want to store the music files}
If you've mounted your iPod as a disk, open a command line window and execute the following command:
xcopy
This will copy the folder structure on your iPod to your hard drive. The downside is that the music files will be in the iPod's internal (and somewhat strange) directory structure. But if structure matters to you, you can reimport the files into iTunes, and the files will be organized for you.
This is not a great solution if you want to backup just a few files, though.
When I connect my ipod on XP, it mounts as a drive. Then all you have to do is just go to something like 'E:\iPod_Control\Music' and copy all of your music files over.
check out the new release here:
.1% of their time in Terminal, and the rest using the Mac OS GUI) can get their music off of the iPod and back onto their Mac.
http://www.crispsofties.com/i.i/index.html
Uses AppleScript, and basically (i think) does all the Unix commands y'all are taling about elsewhere under an easy-to-use GUI shell, so people like me (who spend about
By the way, some of us used the iPod as a primary storage device for our music, as we didn't want to hassle with upgrading our old, small 10GB hard drives on our Macs, so THAT's why a utility like this is so important: we wanted to be able to get the music back onto our Macs later on, but store them mainly on the iPod. Why Apple doesn't concede that the iPod is a great portable storage device (for non-music AND music-oriented files) is beyond me....
I got an iPod, and a month later I had to format my PC's hard disk. I had absolutely no idea that you couldn't copy your songs off the iPod. It seemed like such an essential feature that I simply assumed you could do it. Oblivious, I completed my format, reinstalled iTunes, and plugged in my iPod.
Before I knew it, all my music was deleted off the iPod as well. I still like my iPod, but Apple needs to be more up front about this missing feature. It's just like buying a car without a reverse gear.
I recently switched to a Powerbook and I am glad to see this iPod Download tool. You can be sure I'll be using it regardless of the legality.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
You don't even need to use the command line. All you need is Windows Explorer or the Mac OS X Finder. Search on the drive the iPod is mounted as for the first part of the song you're looking for, and make sure you're searching hidden files.
/Volumes/iPod
For example, from the Finder:
1. Connect your iPod
2. Go to File > Find
3. From the Find dialog, select Specific Places from the Search in menu
4. Check the drive your iPod is mounted as, and make sure everything else is unchecked
5. Select Visibility from the menu at the bottom, then select visible and invisible items from the menu next to it
6. Click the + sign to add other criteria to search by
7. Select Name and contains from the menu at the bottom, then type part of the name of the song.
When copying a whole album, this ends up being quicker than doing it like this:
$ cd
$ find . -iname \*song\ title\*
$ cp [insert path here]/02\ Song\ Title.mp3 ~/Desktop/music/
I mean, under WinXP I just mount my pod as a disk, make sure that (as always) I have show hidden files enabled, and copy the files off.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
i can't even get to the blog.
usually there's a su ic ide gurls ad is all. but yeah, many companies might not even have the patience to acknowledge that an ad is just an ad.
it's too bad SG couldn't provide a totally safe for work ad from a safe domain name.
hmm.
m.
Been doing this for years. A quick look on versiontracker.com finds a few tools to do just this, and you have been able to for quite some time. (yes, on my Mac)
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Since the iPod contents are basically nothing more than a duplication of your iTunes library, backing up the playlist which you are synching the iPod from gives you a complete backup. Done.
For that matter, your playlist itself is pretty much already a backup of your iPod. If your iPod ever gets stolen or destroyed, simply plug a new one into your computer, and then click "yes" when it asks if you want to sync with the playlist.
There are only two occasions when you would want to rip songs from the iPod to the computer: 1. Your computer's HD got wiped and you had no other backup of your playlist other than the iPod itself. 2. You are copying music from somebody else's iPod.
The first case will never come up as long as you are the sort of person who backs up their PC. The second case is the reason why Apple obfuscates the means of doing this: They don't want their device perceived as a tool for easilly stealing music.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I have owned two iPods now... one 2G 20Gig iPod and one 3G 20Gig iPod and in both cases I had no problems getting the songs off the ipod.
I mean, under XP, just like others mentioned, I just drag and drop, making sure that I have the "Show Hidden Files" option checked. On my linux boxen its even easier as they dont particularly care for the DOS hidden attribute...
On my linux machines, I just mount the iPods and cd to the appropriate directory and cp -R * to wherever I want them to go.
Is this some kind of new 4G thing? I really didnt think it was THAT difficult. In fact, I had more trouble getting my firewire card to work under linux than I did in getting the iPods seen.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
That's fucked up!!
If company policy is against browsing news stories on their time, then you shouldn't do it, it's time paid by them.
But, if a woman showing some skin gets you fired, it's just some fucked up company policy.
Don't try to make the world comply to your fucked up company policy, change your company policy, or the company you work for.
I don't understand why nudity is such an issue in the US, here in Uruguay, you get to see nude people on air TV, although it's not very usual.
It's very funny when you turn to US-made MTV/E!, and they blur people ass-crack/nipples, or beep-out stuff people say, or middle-fingers!!
Nudity is not harmful for people. It would be stupid to waste your companies bandwidth downloading porn, but witch-hunting for nudity is pretty stupid.
"Other times, you've written stuff like "the folks over at Engadget", which infers that you have nothing to do with Engadget."
No, it implies that. Am I the only one who notices these things?
If this were truly about restoring your music after a catastrophic computer failure, you would not need any of these tools. You would just need a simple script that is something along the lines of:
/Volumes/myIpod -name *.mp3`
mkdir ~/Desktop/restoredMusic
for FILE in `find
do
cp ${FILE} ~/Desktop/restoredMusic
done
(Another couple lines would do this for every filetype supported by the iPod)
All metadata is stored in the ID3 tags, so if you drag the entire contents of the new folder into iTunes you will have all your music back.
The only reason to use iPod Download or iPodRip or any of those add-on programs are if you want some of the music, but not all the music off of an iPod. Let's face it, when you want to do that you are most likely taking music off of a friend's iPod. I expect plenty of responses about obscure use cases where you want some but not all of your music on your work or wife's computer. I know those cases exist, but I would say they account for 2% of the actual usage of the program, and there are probably easy workarounds for all of them.
I'm no saint, and I freely admit I have used these programs before. However, I am not into pretending to be the victim of mean old Apple.
Uhm... Actually, iTunes names files as [song number in album][whitespace][title].m4a. Album and artist information is only stored on ID3 tags and in the directory structure of iTunes, not iPod, libraries.
Using your code on a typical iPod (or iTunes, for that matter) library, you would only find songs whose title contains "Portishead." Luckily in this case, Darwin saves you the additional hassle of dealing with case-sensitivity.
Not sure if you can change this default behavior, but even if you could, it's certainly something the average user would not have done when backing up.
hymn (Hear Your Music aNywhere) formerly called PlayFair - Removes Apple's FairPlay DRM from iPod / iTunes http://hymn-project.org/
Damn you for slashdotting BoingBoing!!
Right. The files are merely stored in a hidden directory on the iPod. If you're not comfortable using the terminal to copy files around, get a utility that will let you see hidden folders. It's not *too* hard.
nuff said.
It has already been clearly established that the iPod is not a 'backup' medium and it is not acceptable to store the 'only' copies of your music on it. Quite regularly, answers in Apple's troubleshooting tips for iPod problems instruct the user to restore the Pod, which returns it to the completely empty default-install state.
So why would anyone be silly enough to keep the only copies of their music on their iPod, forcing them to then use this tool? With iTunes, you can't even get music onto the Pod without first importing it into the library. So it's a given that the music is already on your computer. (And where did it come from? If absolutely necessary, you can re-rip your CDs, or copy from your burned backups for iTMS or illegal music downloads.)
So tell me, is there a legitimate reason for your only copy of any song to be exclusively stored on your iPod?
The OP is correct from a certain point of view - MP3 files written using gtkpod on Linux. That's what I'm using, and this is what I see:
Of course, I do have some filenames that make sense. I took advantage of the free iTunes from Pepsi (from way back) and used Windows iTunes to grab some songs for my iPod. Those are written like this:
However, gtkpod writes the MP3 files with names that aren't the song title.
Doesn't the iPod have an XML file specifying the location of particular songs as they relate to albums and artists? Clever use of sed should allow you to find the location of anything you want. Of course, you could easily write a script or a simple shell (ipsh?) to automatically map this information. Or you could just write a GUI program or possibly device driver. The latter option might not be feasible, but it would be neat.
Can I run iTunes on my Apple IIgs?
It boggles the mind that sci-fi authors nowadays need to place ads for Suicide Girls to make an extra buck. Not. Safe. For. Work.
i have two computers with different music on them. i use an ipod to send files back and forth.
it's way easier because of the itunes integration--i have two playlists, one called "from g4" and another called "from powerbook" and i just drag all the new music on each machine to the appropriate playlist.
with ipod download, i can just plug the ipod into a machine and sync my music pretty painlessly.
there isn't a better way to do this that i've found, but i'm willing to hear it.
london is drowning and i live by river
Yes it does, since you can mount it as a drive it comes by default with the ability to copy things from it. They made it a little trickier but not much more than seeing hidden files.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Rip. Mix. Burn. (Newly added: And then never touch those files again, you pinko commie pirate scum!)
Sheesh. I'm glad I got an iRiver instead. It just shows up like a USB mass storage device, no questions asked. In fact I've already used it to transfer large files without making coasters.
iPod Agent (windows)
I despise DRM more than anyone I think.
But this is not a DRM issue. This is just talking about the technical mechanism the iPod uses to store music in a filesystem you can mount quite legally.
There are some things that have grey areas of access. But here there is no grey area - you mount the iPod, turn on the finder/explorer ability to see hidden files, and there you go.
Please do not cheapen anti-DRM arguments by making everything that is a tiny bit obscure into a DRM attack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've had my iPod since 2001 and have often used to transfer songs. It's really quite simple. Just open up a Terminal (on OSX) or Cygwin (on Windows) and browse to your iPod (usually something like /Volumes/"My iPod" or /cygdrive/f.) Then it's just one line :
/temp_folder \;
find . -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {}
That will copy all the MP3 files to some temporary place. Then just drop the folder on iTunes (make sure you have the "let iTunes keep your music organized" option turned on) and it will copy everything nice and neatly to your music library.
In this case there are no DMCA issues - the iPod uses a hidden directory to store files. They are sitting tight there.
There is only the hidden directory, which because the iPod quite happily mounts as a drive I don't think you can even argue is a DMCA issue. It's not a copy protection mechanism, just a technical aspect of how the filesystem works. The broadcast flag for example is an example of a stupid, but dedicated, copy protection mechanism - but the visibility flag on a folder is used for lots of other things and cannot be claimed to be a copy protection mechanism.
If they had kept the songs in a custom binary database instead of stored as they are on a file system, then you might have a point.
I don't disagree with your final point though, vote Libertarian.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple to iPod owners: FUCK YOU
Shiny Apple GUIs be damned, I want a shell script to do it!
English is easier said than done.
Here come the holier-device-than-thou posts.
You may have noticed just a few posts here that refute what you are saying. I can quite legally get to the music on my iPod if I wish.
If it's so illegal, the please do point us to an example of one of these iPod reading programs being sued instead of just technically sidetracked when Apple releases a new update.
Heck, Fairtunes is still around and that lets you strip the DRM out of files!! If that's legal, then why would not a program that's basically a custom filesystem explorer be legal as well?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Using your code on a typical iPod (or iTunes, for that matter) library, you would only find songs whose title contains "Portishead." Luckily in this case, Darwin saves you the additional hassle of dealing with case-sensitivity.
Just a slight note to be pedantic - it's actually HFS+ (the filesystem) providing the case-insensitivity. If you have a FAT32 formatted iPod the search would be case-sensitive even on a Mac (I think - I have not tried that exact scenario myself).
I agree wit the other poster though that you could probably use some sed, perhaps Awk to parse out the XML file and find all the songs in an album pretty easily. I'll have to explore that again...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As another reply says, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to copy music from your ipod to your computer. Their example is having multiple computers. I used it to copy mp3s from my Linux ReiserFS partition to my NTFS partition.
The iPod is a 20gb portable hard drive, and should be capable of being used as such.
Fortunately, at least in windows and in linux, the ipod is easily mountable as a generic firewire hard drive. Nothing difficult about it. I don't see how this is an issue for anyone.
Apple may make a token effort to appease the music industry, but no serious attempt to stop copying from the ipod to a computer.
Other than that, I don't see a lot of different between an iPod and an MP3 player laden with MS DRM.
This is all why I keep my songs in MP3, not AAC. And why I keep copies on my HD so I don't need to copy them back off my iPod anyway.
Jeffrey - I think you're both right.
Geeks should respect users a lot more, but a GUI can't hurt. I love to see that attitude on Slashdot. Sure stands out.
Apple's unwillingness to release software updates for anything other than the iPod hardware currently available for sale has disuaded me from purchasing any other hardware from Apple. I fail to understand how audio bookmarks or similar features in the latest software release would not work properly on my generation-three iPod (though I can understand how support for additional codecs would be difficult). While my technical opinion of Apple's hardware remains high, especially when it comes to laptop computers, I refuse to do business with Apple if this is their attitude towards their customers.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Whichever one of you it was.
You have spoken up about the hypocrisy of Slashbots and voiced a dissenting opinion. Prepare to be modded into oblivion! Your comment score was modded down from 4 to 3 right before my eyes! Your karma is taking a nosedive and Slashbots are marking you as a Foe! But all is not lost; there is still time. Hurry, and report to your nearest LUG meeting for reprogramming! Godspeed!
These things cost $500 and you can't even take your shit off of them? That's completely nuts, if you ask me. Man am I glad that I went with the Rio Karma.
I thought most people had directory browsing and "drag and drop" down pretty well.
Guess not.
Pretty Pictures!
Ok so here is what you do get a smart phone (a ppc not some awful palm piece of #$^%"smart phone" ) then you get some sd or cf cards or the cf hard drive made by ibm.... then just load up those with mp3s and what ever you want... on my Tmobile phone/ppc I can watch movies. listen to mp3s and even get streaming audio downloaded from the net... in addition I can add blue tooth or wifi... so why get an ipod? sure it can hold 40gb or music. but I am willing to deal with swapping out 1 gig sd cards when I want to change music and have all the advantages that my hand held offeres NOT TO MENTION STREAMIMG AUDIO OFF THE NET WHICH MEANS I CAN LISTEN TO RADIOSTATIONS TOO. why spend all that money on a device that does only one thing? I even have 5 different types of game machine emulators on it( sega ms, Sega gs, atairy, c64 and amiga) When I want to play music through my car stereo I can plug the head phone adaptor into a wireless transmitter and listen to mp3s while buzzing down the road.... PEACE OUT.
However, even though HFS is still case-insensitive as far as file naming goes, the bash shell is still case sensitive and you need to take this into account when doing scripting.
Almost everything in my music collection was ripped from the originals using grip under linux, and I put the artist name in the song title, so the above worked for me. If you have whitespace in the filename, you will have to do some fancy quoting.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that this is an acceptable solution for people who use OS X? The "whiners that can't open a shell" are EXACTLY the people OS X is designed for. People who can use a shell use Solaris, BSD or Linux.
If you want to get your music off an iPod on OS X, just mount it as a drive, cd /Volumes/whateverit'scalled ls -la in it, cd to the hidden Music directory, then run something vaguely like
mkdir ~/Desktop/files ; find . -name '*.m4a' -print0 | xargs -0 -J % cp % ~/Desktop/files
It's hardly a great secret. Unless they broke this in the new version of iTunes too?
So just so everyone gets it straight. When Linux users have to issue a cryptic command to do something useful, it is because Linux is poorly designed. When OS X users have to issue a cryptic command to get something useful done, it is obvious and only an idiot wouldn't know how to do it.
That's one nice thing that I've liked from Napster. Once you download a song, you can still download it onto 2 other computers, and I think you can still download it onto the original computer more than once if you do lose it for some reason. I bought an album on iTunes at home, hoped to be able to download it at work to listen to it in both places, but when I got to work, I realized I'd have to go back and copy the files onto a USB flash drive to get them there. Sure Apple lets you listen to your music on 5 different "trusted" computers, but you have to use some physical medium to get it there... After making it so that you can't download it once, why go out of their way to make it hard for people to get their music to the other authorized computers? (rhetorical question, I'm not really asking for an answer)
Actually, there's a third occaison:
Let's say you have a computer with only a 4 gig hard drive (like me; I know, I know :). Your iPod holds 20 gig. There's no way you can hold all your iPod files on your computer, so you've got a lot of music on your iPod that just can't be stored on your machine.
So what you do is rip a CD, copy it to the iPod, delete it off your PC. If you use iTunes in it's default config, every time you sync you'll be wiping out your iPod!
I'm sorry, but what other music players allow the easy removal of music from them when they are not removable-media based? Not many... but let's get to the real point: choices.
The iPod is the run away digital hit. Not many people share the author's need to remove music from their iPod. At least not based on their purchasing trends. It's as simple as an analog-out being plugged into a recorder, and always has been.
Apple had to put certain restrictions on the usage of digital music to allow a viable commercial downloading service that most people in the world use. Otherwise, we'd have more Microsoft-esque tactics and/or illegal Napster-like proliferation. Nobody really wants that.
Like it or not, Apple has done a good job of letting use live the digital lifestyle and making it relatively easy to copy your music. You can burn CD's to your heart's content, and authorize your music on 5 computers. Does that sound restrictive to you?
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Or get TinkerTool and have the Finder show hidden items then just use the Finder to copy the songs.
The other day a coworker on the 10th floor wanted a copy of some of my mp3s. I thought, hey, my iPod is sitting on the dock of my Mac back in my office. Let's see if I can just SSH in and copy the files off.
/Volumes/iPod. I did "ls". Whoa, there were a shitload of directories with all my MP3s in them! I tarballed the lot of them and scped them to my buddy's machine. He dragged them into iTunes. Whoa! there were all the MP3s, playlists, album covers, everything.
And I did.
I SSHed in. I went to
If you own an iPod, all the files are just sitting in directories on the iPod. No weird encryption, the files are all "songname.mp3."
You can just drag them off the iPod onto your desktop.
I can't believe some idiot wrote a piece of software because he thought this was too hard. I can't believe some other idiot spent all day writing a review of this software. I can't belive Slashdot linked to it.
The real benefit of high karma is basically getting free reign to incur -1 mod downs.
I fear no Foe!
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
The only problem with doing a copy like that is that it doesn't bring across your playlists, play counts or ratings. Also, songs that are .wav's do not have their meta data brought across as they cannot contain any.
Neither of the programs listed in the article seem to do either, and as a developer of this exact type of software, I know how valuable it can be.
Here are some of the options I find worthy (Mac OS X only):
- iPodRip - I wrote this, so it is a plug for me. Recovers everything. Ten unrestricted uses, so feel free to download it, recover and delete it.
- PodWorks - Cheaper than iPodRip but it contains restrictions. Does not recover all meta data.
- Senuti - Does not recover playlists or any meta data. Free, although if you wanted to recover for free, simply use iPodRip and throw it away.
In the end for most users it is all about ease of use and trust. You can't ask the developer of terminal or the Unix command line for assistance, but you can ask the developer of an application. You also may not feel safe in a CLI, where as a GUI can provide that comfort zone. Those apps only require a single button press and that gives users peace of mind.
This can be done with XPlay without having to do shite.
try podworks
works great for me (i dont have itunes 4.7 yet) and it has a nice feature to preview the song you wnat to copy off the ipod.
I am a windows user, and i found a cool utility called MP3 Tag Tools (www.download.com). If the user shows hidden files/folders, you can copy the music directory on the ipod after enabling iPod firewire disk. Copy that folder to your hard drive and then run this program and you can rename the files according to the ID3 tags, and even put them in their respective folders, whichever folder name you prefer. my $.02
...but for those of us thinking about buying one, this is news. I was planning on one as a holiday gift, and had no idea there were issues with getting files off of the ipod.
It's not intuitive to think that once you put files on an ipod or pda that you won't be able to copy them to another device.
don't buy an ipod. buy an iriver, rio karma, or any of a zillion other non-drm players out there.
then send apple a letter telling them you bought a competitor's product because apple cripples their products.
The only issue is iPod music is stored in Fxx folders with no apparent pattern. If you wanted to copy only a specific album or something like that, EphPod or similar tools would save you a whole lot of time.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
So I encourage... someone... to turn the binary patching stuff into a nice, easy perl script. :-)
Has anyone considered that Apple actually made it rather easy to do this?
Had they been the real evil corporation that Apple-haters tend to want to cast them as, they could quite easily have arranged for something like byte scrambling to take place as the music tracks transferred from iTunes to the iPod.
Then, getting the data back to the computer from an iPod would have been a lot harder.
It reminds me of the early days of DVD players:
They are only slightly less evil than most. Any business will do whatever it needs to in order to remain afloat. Even if it means pissing off or fucking over their loyal customers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Then why not link to the original article instead of a paraphrase thereof on your ad-supported site? Pretty much everyone here has a blog or site of some type, yet only you and Roland Pipequalle are ill-mannered enough to direct people to yours instead of the original source. Not only is it deceptive, but it shows a sad lack of creativity. Go off and write some interesting journalism / software / whatever, then you can link to yourself for the right reasons.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Well, that depends. If you have Windows XP and your music is in MP3 format, Explorer has a built-in feature that will read the ID3 tags, allowing you to sort the files based on album, artist, genre, et cetera, just as you would based on file type or size.
I guess if you're not using XP and/or your music is in AAC format, though, you might be in a bit more of a bind. :/
Some of her nipples? Why, how many has she got?
If you have a mac anyway. It actually reads the iPod internal database and puts the files into the proper subdirectories, just like the original iTunes Music folder... not that digging through strangely named subdirectories to find your music is hard... this just removes that step nicely. It also plays the tracks off your iPod directly, if you'd like.
Senuti link.
Hello Terminal?
/Volumes/ipodname/")
The directories with the music on the iPod are just hidden in the finder. Using Terminal, you can easily access them. Or, even easier: apple-G opens the "go to folder" dialog, in which you can print the path to the iPod's music directories (easily found by rooting through
Who needs a fucking hex editor when you've got terminal and copy/paste?
Don't Crease the Weasel!
Why is buying an Apple iPod is any different than buying an MP3 player laden with Microsoft DRM?
Because iPod itself is a play against Microsoft Palladium DRM. If you remember the days before iPod the prevaling opinion was that all content was going WindowsMediaDRM with Palladium as the default coding. There was to be no Palladium for QuickTime, and hence no Macintosh.
iPod changed that. It showed the content owners there was another way. Bust-up Job, Steve-o. The iPod saved Apple in more ways than one.
I had the 5-gigger before the iTunes store was unleashed. There wasn't any DRM to speak of on iPod. FairPlay came about because of the store.
Apple is walking a thin like here. They had to agree to DRM to get the content providers on board. But they made it far more liberal than anyone would have expected at the time. Remember being surprised that you could burn to uncompressed CD from the store? As many times as you wanted?
Currently they put small hurdles in the way of people wanting to get their data off of the iPod - but not big hurdles. If you have a shell, you can extract the music. Oooh, complex. If you have a text-editor you can reenable any of the 'disallowed' iTunes plug-ins - they didn't even ROT-13 the names! They're throwing the smallest bones possible to the RIAA but they do need to keep them fed.
The author of the Article seems to think Apple should just tell them to shove it. Sorry, iPod/iTMS isn't that entrenched yet. Maybe in a couple years. If RIAA shut them off at this point someone would come along and fill the niche, probably with WMA.
Apple isn't going to risk this when they're paying $.65 per song to RIAA - maybe when they're down to $.20 - they still need the leverage.
So, note to author: if you like the iPod it's because Apple knows what it's doing, in more than one aspect of their business. You can always load linux on the iPod if you're that upset.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...For free, no less.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
"Manufacturers made it rather easy to disable region coding, to the extent that a salesman could do it on the way to a cash register."
;)
Um, last I checked the region coding was done via the DVD Player hardware/software and wasn't something a salesman can do on the way to the checkout.
Generally this requires a flashing of the BIOS of the DVD player, which is illegal in many places.
Granted the region coding is trivial to bypass, but not quite that trivial.
When I can afford to I will buy an iPod, however, I would of been quite upset if there was NO way to copy MY music OFF the device.
I paid for my computer, I'll have paid for my iPod and I've paid for my music. Why the heck should someone tell me I can copy my music ONTO my iPod but not back OFF?
If Apple ever makes an iPod where this becomes impossible I will have to buy an older-generation model, but I sure wouldn't buy a restricted one!
This is bull, because Apple doesn't have to sign a license to sell the iPod.
If you are claiming the misic companies are forcing this, then you need to read the (second) article.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What you're describing is a de minimus Copyright infraction - technically illegal, but not strictly enforced (or enforceable). Think of the tree falling in the forest and no one being around to hear...
Making a copy of a Hollywood DVD you purchased - even if it's not encrypted - is almost surely illegal (just as making MP3 copies of your CDs is, under US law, illegal). The only exceptions to this would be the occasional creator endorsement (like Michael Moore encouraging people to copy F911) or a feature that has fallen out of copyright - and even that could be illegal if it's been "enhanced" in any way (like the version of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" with the rock soundtrack).
I'm not saying this to call you a thief or any of that moronic bullshit, only making the point that THE LAW is often stupid and needs to be changed. (and purchasing ANYTHING from Hollywood is a very good way to help make sure that doesn't happen in our near future.) Laws set precedence in our society, and the precedents we've been setting in recent years are all headed strictly in the direction of making this a world where you need a "license" (and therefore some form of corporate permission) for literally everything relating to the exchange of information.
Personally, I swore the entire US industry off years ago. And I find I rarely miss the stuff I used to miss. Recently after losing a large chunk of my music from my hard drive I surprised myself when I realized the first things I was looking to replace (after re-ripping my own few CDs purchased used or directly from artists) were downloads from Magnatune, "foreign" stuff (mostly from Russia and France), and underground techno.
This is easy. Download Sharepod. It's an executable and two DLL files. Stick those files on your iPod in the root directory.
Plug the iPod into anyone's computer, navigate to it via explorer, and double-click the SharePod executable. Voila. You now have a nice, GUI-driven way to copy one, some, or all of the songs off of the iPod onto that computer.
Easy. Portable. Takes up a megabyte or two on your iPod. Works on any PC into which you can plug your iPod.
A lot of bottom-of-the-line DVD players had codes you could input via the remote to either change, or disable, their region checking. Not doable on the way to the cash register, because it had to be plugged in, but still... easy.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Here in australia, many DVD players (including the one I just bought) are region free out of the box. :)
It might say "region 4" but it is definatly region free
To those who *actually* don't see what is the problem, what people have a problem is that this user is constantly shilling their sites in just about every related article and post. People posting links to their site usually isn't a problem, but it is a problem when they take every chance to plug their Ad filled site. They do this so often a lot of us have come to the conclusion that they really have nothing real to offer, and are abusing slashdot for financial reasons.
m
There are those of us that are getting sick and tired of the user, his shilling, and his related domains. It happens soo often I would consider him to be a spammer.
I think that slashdot should block his domains, and make sure if he submits any they are not his. Here is a list of domains to block, feel free to add on to it:
flashenabled.com
engadget.com
bookofseg.co
And I wonder how many of him or his astroturfing shills are posting "Why do you hate him, his ideas intrigue me, he is 5+ insightful, I wish to subscribe to his newsletter."
Haha whoa whoa..easy there, fellah. I never professed that I was holier than thou or a superior user.. I'm just saying that you have to start off assuming that people know nothing about computers because they generally don't know anything. If anyone wants to come in and talk at a higher level, I am always available. But take it from someone who works retail: most people (AKA Joe User) know nothing, if not very little, about computers. Also, there's no need to insult my job. I realize it is shitty and I never claimed it to be great. I'm only 21 and I'm still in college. At least I'm working and not doing drugs like half of the population my age.
HAHAHAHAHA
True, true.
One of my co-workers once said to a customer: "If you use a switch as opposed to a router, you have to use crossover cables on all of the computers."
If I didn't read /. at least once a day, I'd be putting my departments security at risk.
/. 40 times a day = 40 times the security. =)
Reading
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Oh? I've certainly seen plenty of Apple criticism here that was modded up, and I've never heard of anyone in Slashdot history being IP banned for repeatedly criticizing Apple. Do you have some helpful examples?
Broken Helix. It's interface is simple and easy, and you can instantly import to iTunes, rather than having to go to Finder and import them. Also, by my tests, it's a bit faster than most other iPod download apps.
In Sony, SCOTUS didn't say "timeshifting is legal." Look it up. In fact, the majority opinion, as I recall it (and I'm not going to look it up right now because my head's full of nyquil) explicitly makes the point that (paraphrasing) "while technically an infringement of the owner's copyright, is not practical to enforce without intruding too much into people's homes."
That "fair use" stuff is written into old school recordings. The RIAA tried to quash home taping in the 70's, tried to squash home video, tried to squash mp3s and such - but no matter how many times they lose (on those rare occasions) it's not because "personal copying is legal" - it's because some things just cannot be policed without setting all kinds of other precedents.
That's why things need to be changed NOW. Once we're all online and every activity is just a click away, it won't be impractical at all to enforce the unenforceable.
Game over.
In the European Unioin there are common laws that specifically prohibit the region coding scheme, so region-free players there are legal. :)
Here in North America the player you buy at any "normal" chain will be Region 1. Though quite a few have built-in backdoors to change the region or make region-free.
I see, but getting back to the main point, this also confirms a "typical" iTunes/iPod user, who rips via iTunes and "consolidates" his/her library (= no artist name and a lotta whitespace) would need such a How-To. So as long as we're debating general usefulness of the "hack" in TFA, I guess there is some.
/., well then it's probably true TFA is old news.
However, if we're discussing the interest of posting something like this on
Personally, though, I think this kind of information may help as you deal with the non-geek world: when asked for help, just mail a link to TFA followed by "No! I will not fix your computer!"
It must not be too hard, cause a lot of people figure it out PDQ. It was just as easy as a switch in iTunes for me in preferences...
Plus of course you can also mount it as a USB drive. And I'm pretty sure the instructions tell you how to do so if you like.
When the instructions tell you how to do something, would you not agree that is a standard feature?
It's not like a backdoor debugging menu in a DVD player for crying out loud!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You say that as if the song went straight from the iTMS to your iPod and was never stored on your computer. As that's not the case, and nothing prevents you from burning the file to a cd or copying it to another computer, I don't see what your point is.
(gawd damn the filter is a PITA. just wanted a fuckin ? mark but noooooo)
If we're talking just your computer here, the songs in question have to already be in iTunes for it to transfer them to your iPod, so you're complaining about nothing. If we're talking about "borrowing" music from your friends, if you are so lazy that you can't use Explorer or the Finder to copy the files over to the iPod while using it as a mass storage device before bringing it home, and then bitch as if it were Apple's fault, you don't deserve to own a computer.
There is no license involved with purchasing a physical cd. They fall under the First Sale doctrine, which basically means that once you buy a book or a cd, you can do anything you want to it: destroy it, use it as a frisbee, sell it for a billion dollars. The only thing you can't do is make copies and distribute them.
That's because there are a whole fuckton of people out there who don't know, don't care, and refuse to learn even the most basic thing about computers (like copying files or not clicking on random attachments). The revel in their ignorance.
Yes, there a great deal of those people around. One of the reasons why Bush is apprantly about to win re-election.
At least I'm working and not doing drugs like half of the population my age
Hey, be fair. Some of us work AND do drugs...
"You're arguing for a universe with fewer waffles in it," I said. "I'm prepared to call that cowardice."
The point I was trying to make is that it doesn't matter if you can do it or not. You have the music on your computer and you can not only listen to it on 4 other computers, but you can burn it unlimited times. However, the advantage of preventing copying OFF the iPod is that it restricts easy piracy to other computers. This, in turn, has allowed the downloadable music industry to flourish. Without this feature, it simply would not exist.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Of course, good luck finding it... Engadget had a link, and then the link vanished. Tsk, tsk.
I can see Apple's side, wanting to "play ball" with the record co's, etc. But when they make a backup program that actually BACKS UP my data properly (lost 100+ songs on the last backup) I'll stop using the plugin. I had to rely on my iPod to actually get those songs back.
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
You can't argue with or shame torrone - he's like a demented puppy humping your leg. He's been posting crap on /. for years to boost his ad-supported websites, going all the way back to his personal garbage about Macs and Segues. I think he used to work in advertising or still does so he's well used to "viral marketing" techniques and using /. for his own ends. he also will never purposelessly fail to "get" the point that he should link to direct source tech material and not his recycled advertorial effluent postings. He also seems to write about 50 replies to each poster, endlessly recycling the same one or two excuses. Don't believe me, check this out:
http://slashdot.org/~ptorrone
> If you want to hate or blame Apple for "selling out", and saying that they should just tell people like Sony/BMG to go fuck themselves, and if they lose them they lose them, fine...that's you call. And no one is forcing you to use or buy any of Apple's services.
It's interesting to me that some people want Apple to tell off the other music companies, buy refusing to sell their songs if they don't agree to looser terms. Why don't those people just tell the record companies themselves, buy refusing to buy until the record companies loosen up? Why should Apple be their defender?
And don't get me started on the pirates. They're the ones who are telling the record companies that there is a market for the songs, and have convinced the companies that all they need to do is crack down. It's just self-defeating.