Slashdot Mirror
Plugin For Winamp Allows Downloading From iPod
slicenglide writes "A newly released plugin for Winamp allows you to copy music from your iPod to your computer. Wired has picked up the story and includes a link to the WinAmp plugin page where you can grab yourself a copy. "
I for one never realised that iPods wouldn't let you copy music *off* them. Thank god I never bought one, that would annoy the hell out of me.
How long will Apple take to *fix* this?
I think my grandparents use to use that back in the early twentieth century.
And yet, there's been no significant improvement over it since then. Pretty crappy showing, you youngsters.
Maybe you should spend less time posting dumb comments and more time coding, like the oldsters did.
Sorry, but how is this not just a blatant piracy tool?
For what possible reason would I need to use this? My computer can always access the same music the iPod can, seeing as it came from the computer in the first place. My other machines can access the same music either through Bonjour music shares, or by connecting to the file server the files are actually stored on. If I ever lose the machine, I restore from my DVD-R backups. If I'm away from home, it's still not a problem, since that's the whole point of the iPod.
The only use I can see for such a feature is to warez music off a friends iPod - the functionality is utterly redundant otherwise.
they want to steal music from friends
Dude, it's called sharing!
The thing is though, right, who actually cares?
You *can* get around this if you want. They just haven't put an automatic feature in iTunes. Why?
Think, really think, about what would happen if iTunes had simple functionality to move files back onto the hard-drive.
You'd go to all your friends and plug your iPod into each of their computers. They'd plug each of their pods into yours.
Given a normal group of five friends, you would have pirated perhaps five thousand songs in the space of fifteen minutes.
No company that's actually involved in selling music can afford to make a player that transfers music off the drive as easily as iTunes transfers it on.
Remember too that my estimate is based on current library sizes... if you could do this, pretty soon everyone's library would be the size of the average iPod, which is about 30 GBs right now.
Insanity.
So in the end, this is a fairly reasonable restriction. You can actually copy the music back off if you care enough, but they're also not selling the world's single most effective piracy device which would eliminate the music market in about ten weeks.
Someone will eventually make a popular player that syncs both ways, just plug it in and go. It's going to be a fun mess.
Most reviewers who do demand direct directory access are generally clueless about how metadata, organization or both combined work with the devices. Even the iPod shuffle needs to store play order when used in the playlist mode - how do you suppose you put a few songs to the top of the list using folder structures?
Low-level mavens might be more comfortable with folder arrangements as they involve 'less magic'. But things that can be in more places than one at the same time are just not good things to run directly on folder structures, because they'd require maintenance. I guess playlists are doable via folders of aliases/shortcuts/symlinks, but anything more complicated than that is just not tenable - like smart playlists.
You from Korea by any chance?
It's called playlists.
3: not bothered at all; thinks id3 is the right way to do it anyway due to cross platform filename hiccoughs.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.