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Will OSX Build In Torrenting?
Cjattwood writes "Mac OS rumors has an article describing a possible implementation of a Bittorrent client into Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", including a unique sharing reward system where the user can share bandwidth and get rewards, such as credit in the iTunes store."
You upload a little and you get infinite download credit for whatever movie you want. Sometimes even before it's out in the stores!
Beep beep.
imagine getting credit for itunes music for torrenting itunes music... what fun.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
When will we see codename "Kitty"
or OS X "Domestic Cat"
or even OS X "OMGmewmewmew"
RTFA. Traffic would occur on non-standard ports and you wouldn't be able to share anything you wanted. You would donate your bandwidth to share content Apple approved like software updates. It makes perfect sense and I'd certianly donate my bandwith at home when I'm at work in exchange for iTunes credits.
The rumor goes that they will give you credit for uploading their software updates to other people (thereby reducing their bandwith bills); they won't offer you anything for uploading anything else...
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Perhaps they intend to make torrents a legitimate method of delivery of purchased iTunes songs. So, you purchase an iTunes song, seed it as an 'iTunes torrent.' Then you get some amount of credit for more iTunes songs. Someone else who buys the first song you bought downloads it as a torrent from you (and others).
It's a way for Apple to expand their ability to deliver content without having to drastically upgrade their own network infrastructure. You get a little iTunes store credit for being part of the delivery system.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Credit for torrenting? Why would Apple give away iTunes music just for people to run torrents? Well, maybe because those torrents will serve up iTunes movies. Dedicated bandwidth has been the greatest obstacle to getting a full iTunes HD movie store (well, that and the movie companies' agreement, but if the tech is there and economical, the content will follow).
I can see Apple doing this for movies since they're so large size-wise. I wouldn't mind using half of my upstream to earn credit at the store. Good way to defray the cost of my internet bill - and since I'm on a comercial account my ISP doesnt say anything about me using a lot of bandwidth.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I don't think that the legitamate uses of BitTorrent come close to equaling the bandwidth wasted on downloading pr0n, music and the latest blockbuster movies. So why would Apple build this into thier OS? Will it help legitimize BitTorrent? I doubt it. It would be interesting to see them distribute updates via bittorrent though.
I just type my sig in the reply form...
Help us take our hosting cost and we'll help you negate that bill you pay for 30 tasty megabytes of fiber... Yesss...
Personally, this is the best implementation of the BitTorrent technology yet.
$eeding.
> I don't care how many good uses there are, Bit Torrent will always be labeled as a piracy tool.
... it's just a goddamn protocol. WoW uses it for updates, and it's catching on elsewhere. They just won't call it BitTorrent, and it might not even be perfectly compatible. Just call it an "exchange-interlocked pareto-efficiency protocol" or something.
The name, sure. Otherwise
Man, every time RFID or the BT protocol comes up, slashdot gets its collective panties in a wad.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
2. Legal downloads of Linux/BSD CD's.
Somehow I have never seen this as Job's first priority on the list of things to make easy in OS X.
Beep beep.
This sounds like a great thing, since it would make BitTorrent more available for non-techie users and add another vote to the legitimacy of BT.
However, if there's a crediting system, does that mean that Apple is watching your BT usage? If I'm not mistaken, Apple has some interest as a content producer and may not like what they see BT being used for. Is this going to be yet another organization watching what people transfer and ratting them out to the RIAA/MPAA/CIA, or will they be Not Evil (tm) and keep their noses out of people's business?
Beyond that, it's an interesting concept, but one that could seriously botch up torrenting as it is. Bittorrent works so well (with both legal and shady source material) because every user gets the combined benefit of getting what they want, and helping thers who want the same thing to get it. At the very most, a big ratio gets you get bragging rights on some tracker site. My inner folk-song-singing hippie cringes at what result throwing monetary things like iTunes credit into the mix would have.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Except Apple is the one that dictates what it is you'll be sharing. You're simply donating some disk space on your computer and bandwidth. The traffic will also occur on non-standard bit torrent ports so admins can tell the difference between the Apple feature and standard bit torrent traffic.
If we can share the software updates between macs, it would be a good thing. With 3 macs in my house, why should I have to download the updates 3 times? I should be able to get a copy from the mac on my local net that downloaded it first. I just hope they allow the torrent client to have a throttle on it.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
You mean, like the Internet?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
It can easily be done. Many private tracker sites require a login and track user U/D ratios. Perhaps Jobs can give a call over to the admin at the empornium to see how he does it ... or perhaps he already has an account and could just post on the forums ;-)
DRM? just curious, I can't imagine that they would let you offer the pirated music and movies and then get itunes credit for it...
I think you're confusing the term upload. They aren't talking about you uploading some data you have to get credit to download other data. They are talking about you authorizing Apple to use your machine as a node in a bit torrent network that distributes data of their choice. Thus you click "yes" and they use your spare upload bandwidth to more cheaply and quickly send software updates, podcasts, iTunes downloads, etc. to other computers. The data is all encrypted and chunked so it is not useful to you at all, even though it is on your hard drive. In excahnge, they give a free itunes song or something every month or year or something.
You win, because you weren't using all your hard drive and bandwidth anyway (and presumably it gives your data precedence). Apple wins because they no longer have to pay as much to distribute iTunes data and software updates. Theoretically, they could even expand this to third party software, cheaply distributing up to date version of any software companies want to give Apple a copy of. Hopefully it would be tied to a full service to keep all your programs updated.
The risks are legally, Apple might have copyright challenges to copying little chinks of encrypted music, even if it is unusable, and the security risk of people masquerading as valid nodes to disrupt the network or try to inject fake data (unlikely unless the implementation is very weak).
Just call it an "exchange-interlocked pareto-efficiency protocol" or something.
From the company that brought you the AirPort(TM)? I think not. Maybe "iGetFiles"?
why? forty-two.
People said the same thing about CD burners.
I don't know if P2P built into the OS makes any sense, but certainly it makes sense to build it into iTunes (the application). Some people have claimed that Apple's margin on iTunes content is razor thin. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I certainly know that bandwidth -- when you want the best possible access to your customers, no matter where they are -- doesn't come cheap.
So adding P2P to iTunes could be one area where Apple could improve their margins. I guess the credit system would be a way to secure that people actually kept on sharing their files after they were downloaded/bought from iTunes (the store).
It's an interesting idea (if it's true).
Why? Well, Apple are trying to get in the movie business, and the only efficient scalable way to distribute huge files is, frankly, P2P, and giving people incentives such as free credit is cheaper than providing the bandwidth themselves. It also partially legitimises P2P, which is considered a "bad thing". About time more companies caught onto it
I am producing this comment out of uncertainty, but I think that downloading iTunes songs via torrent would be impossible because, unless I am mistaken, every DRMed song is different because the protection scheme is bound to the iTunes account. Am I right?
perception is reality
OS X: Pussy
What do you consider a "non-standard bit torrent port?" Most modern clients, the first time you run them, open a config dialog that asks you what port you want to use... I'd think that this makes all 65536 ports pretty "standard" for bit torrent.
More likely, any apple torrents would be signed somehow, making it easy to identify Apple torrent packets. Of course, with the upcoming balkanization of the internet, this might not be a good idea.
The other thing is that this feature probably won't implement carte-blanche torrenting... expect it to work on intranets and with the Apple iTMS feature length movie torrents (requiring your iTMS key and the iTMS central key in order to use it). This way, they could sell full length films on iTMS, and offload the bandwidth requirements onto the internet as a whole (while making the content unplayable if you don't have a key).
But it probably won't happen. Not anytime soon at least.
The name "torrent" would scare off the few IT managers willing to play with Apple: they wouldn't dare put anything that even suggests P2P on a company system (their VP may not know what a torrent is, but he's heard the name and thinks it's bad.)
If Apple distributes this and then some sleazy congressman manages to make it illegal, they'll have a big media (if not legal) problem and have to disable high profile system services.
If Apple distributes this, it will poison their relationship with the gangsters who control ITMS content (whether it has any bearing on song sharing or not.)
What possible use is it? Apple owns Akamai. Their updates download faster than just about anyone's. If they use a torrent system it _will_ be slower (end user upload speed), not faster, and someone will sooner or later figure out how to upload trojans in place of updates and really wreck their day.
If Apple wants to hurt themselves, it would be easier and cheaper to just start donating computers to Al Quaeda.
Dude, you just shelled out a few thousand dollars for his computer. You can install AmigaOS for all he's gonna care. That's why Apple didn't do registration for Panther or Tiger on PPC, because the real money was in the computer you bought in the first place.
"...including a unique sharing reward system where the user can share bandwidth and get rewards, such as credit in the iTunes store."
If Apple is really this desperate for bandwidth, could this be a sign that we'll finally see higher-bitrate content on iTunes?
I suspect to credit people for uploading content for them, Apple would set up their own official BitTorrent tracker(s), which would also probably enforce some sort of DRM (possibly in the same vein as those trackers that require you to log in before they will connect you to other peers.)
Mac OS Rumors has a long history of being the most uninformed, random Mac rumor site in existence. Its predictions are rarely accurate, and when they are, they have generally been mentioned on another site first.
This is a fairly typical MOSR pipe dream.
Apple does not need my unreliable, low-speed bandwidth. They deliver 100+ MB software updates to thousands of users without blinking. Given that most of their iTMS downloads (music, movies, whatever) are from Windows users, they would see little gain by offering software update credits to Mac users. In fact, for their paltry savings on the cost of bandwidth, they would have an administrative nightmare to face.
I file this one under bullshit.
FTA: Rewards would include[...]free airtime minutes for Apple's forthcoming "iPhone" and the like.
Free airtime? Last I heard, they were just going to be making the phone, not becoming a carrier. Motorola doesn't include the minutes, Verizon does.
Based on some rough math estimated for the proposal, the team pushing this concept believes they could cut Apple's bandwidth costs by hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars per year.
TFA makes it seem like the project is rather far along. Too far for them to still be working on 'rough math'. Also, millions of dollars per year? I know that Apple sends out a lot of content, but still, that's a lot of bandwidth.
[T]he system would also save terabytes of Internet backbone bandwidth that is now used for Software Updates, QuickTime Movie Trailers, and iTunes Store downloads among other things.
Internet backbone bandiwdth, yes. But again, terabytes?
Another thing: How would the client computer report to Apple that the data of X size was received intact?
AC's modded -6. I don't see you, I don't mod you, anything you say is lost. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Trying to get X windows in OS X configured correctly. Whoops, misread the title.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
No, abusing your monopoly is bad.
If MS did not abuse their monopoly, then no problems would have occurred and no one would have complained.
What MS did, specifically, was to extort Compaq by threatening to withhold OS licenses if they shipped systems with Netscape Navigator as the default and on the desktop.
In other words, if Apple threatened Best Buy and Walmart into stopping sales of competitive MP3 players, or PCs, with their iPod dominance then Apple would be in the same boat.
They don't, so they aren't.
GPL Deconstructed
I know I speak for most of us when I ask you, Sir, what are these "panties" things you speak of?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
I live in halls of residence at the University of Manchester. As I work on the support team, I know that all P2P applications, inc. torrents, are blocked by the network packetteer. So if this feature does get put in, we'll get all sorts of complaints from users...
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In other news, Microsoft is accused of mass torrent poisoning of MAC OS X patch system...
They're there affecting their effect.
You seem to have no distinction between technology and use. BitTorrent is a technology. Using it for copyright infringement is a use of that technology.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I would argue that the difference is in how opaque the integration is. The interfaces to WebCore (or is it WebKit?) and other Apple-provided frameworks are well-defined and in known locations. There is nothing preventing someone from (for example) writing a facade for Gecko and changing html rendering throughout the system. I don't believe (but don't know) whether that would be possible in Windows.
I'm hoping this torrent technology is used for downloading podcasts. Currently, the Apple Store does not host the podcasts it's listing but links to their direct download links instead, which can kill their servers.
"Sufferin' succotash."
FTA:
...the system would also save terabytes of Internet backbone bandwidth that is now used for Software Updates, QuickTime Movie Trailers, and iTunes Store downloads among other things.
Uploads would use a unique port from other types of BitTorrent traffic so that network administrators can see it as separate and handle it accordingly.
If ISPs recognize Apple's "iTunes BT port" as empirically a no-pirating-zone and remove any packet filtering, then I predict it'll be a prime target for "illegal networks" to use thus effectively making this whole "unique port" deal a flop from the first turn at the track. Because, after all, you can't just run any protocol you want on any port number, especially when the server and client have a mutual understanding (which is all your standard ports are)...
Taking "handle it accordingly" another way, I can forsee that to mean "we [the ISP] want a dime on every 100 MB you send because of increased network load." Nevermind this bit:
So if it does nothing for packet filtering and is just begging for ISPs to charge users then exactly what good is using a "unique port" gonna do? My prediction: not a damn thing!
:wq
My download is capped now at 250KB/s. That was the slowest I could download as far as I can remember. Is it our bandwidth to share? Is it our to use? If we upload even 20KB/s will other ISPs start capping everyone.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Who says they'll build it into the OS? Did they build Safari into the OS, or did they create a web-browser framework called WebKit?
Aside from the fact that these are only rumors at this point, with no confirmed feature set for OS 10.5 except a newer version of Boot Camp, what's to stop them from building a TorrentKit, that's usable to create torrent-enabled applications for 3rd party developers just like WebKit?
Not every, dare I say, most, of the features touted by Apple's OS upgrades are not built into the OS. iChat isn't AV was not -- its an application. Safari is also an application. You are right that there are instances of OS features, i.e. Spotlight, Dashboard, Rosetta, and Expose, but many features/bug fixes that come with their OS upgrades are also done at the application level (Front Row, PictureBooth).
he mean knickers.
The day MOSR becomes a credible source on /. is when not only toasters fly but water flows uphill.
"You win, because you weren't using all your hard drive and bandwidth anyway (and presumably it gives your data precedence). Apple wins because they no longer have to pay as much to distribute iTunes data and software updates."
Who do you think ends up paying for the bandwidth?
Your ISP doesn't expect everyone to fully saturate their given bandwidth. If they did, they would probably charge more. Do you think Google would offer as much space for Gmail if they thought everyone would use all that is given to them?
So what happens when this gets off the ground and everyone starts using all available bandwidth?
Oh wait. We're talking just Mac users here...
Nevermind.
Or at least, that's what the rest of the industry keeps trying to tell MS. So if it's Apple doing it, it's okay?
1.) Apple isn't a monopoly.
2.) It's not like there's a commercial market for torrent clients or anything that will be threatened. Bittorrent is an open protocol.
3.) What the industry is telling Microsoft is that they can't leverage their monopoly to damage free choice. For instance, making IE default to MSN Search on all new installations, even though MSN Search only has 11% of the market and Google is #1.
4.) This won't be allowed to be used for illegal piracy anyway.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's WebKit, and yes, that's possible. You can also replace the Finder if you want (I have, with Pathfinder), and the Dock, and probably anything else outside the kernel if you know what you're doing.
Oh, that's thrilling.
[/SARCASM]
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Anyone wanna take bets on how fast the RIAA is going to start yelling? If this rumor becomes true of course.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
Dude, what are you talking about? IF MS had the foresight to do this, it would be great. Imagine getting WinXP SP3 at the full download speed your Internet connection is capable of. Heck, MS could save thousands, if not millions of dollars in server and bandwidth costs if they used BT to distribute their service packs and updates.
But, all MS has done is to try to sell BT-like vapor ware. Apple has the vision, if they implement BT they will be the ones saving millions, and getting my respect.
"Consider the lillies of the goddamn field."
The folks at Azureus could partner with the folks at Apple/iTunes to create a really great combination torrent/itunes client. The Azureus team would be able to offer an incredible insight into the torrent distribution technologies and the expertise to have a truly OS transparent iTunes client.
I know, it'll never happen, but I can dream can't I?
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
First, nobody even knows what "this" is yet (other than a vague rumor posted on an unreliable rumor site). Apple hasn't announced anything. Second, when Apple has 90+% of the operating system market and a criminal history of anti-competitive practices, they will be subject to strict scrutiny also.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I would do it in a heart beat. As it is, my computer stays on all day. If I could build iTunes credit towards all that idle time, I would go for it. Too bad the service will never be used on the Windows Platform. Guess its time to buy a Mac Mini with the media center enhancements and just let it sit there and earn me...auctually my wife...some iTunes credit. She loves that damn store.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Id rather not share my bandwidth with anyone. Its mine, i paid for it.
As the threat of 'metererd service' looms over the horizon, this might be a great idea anyway.
Yes i know you can just choose not to use it, but it becomes a useless feature.. wasted effort..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Probably because with this technology their systems and infrastructure will be exploited by commercial entities.
Not meaning to troll, or flame; but if this is the case it seems like a legitamate concern of ISPs.
He's just making up crap. The site is only right by accident. Why the hell does /. link to that?
It's a way for Apple to expand their ability to deliver content without having to drastically upgrade their own network infrastructure. You get a little iTunes store credit for being part of the delivery system.
.Mac free again... or some subset of .Mac free in exchange for this. The iDisk might be more useful if it was some sort of torrent... 100 MB in exchange for XX MB stored on your own computer, etc, etc.
They should just make
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I don't really know what else needs to be said. If the guy who runs MacOS rumors told me the sky is blue, I'd check. What's sad is he used to be reliable. Now he's just a washed up has-been who fabricates stories to drive traffic to his site. He's as reliable as Hussein's old minister of information, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
"build in" was the wrong terminology used by the poster.
"Included with" is what he should have said to be more accurate... and is exactly the termniology Apple uses when they talk about Mac OS X... as in..
Safari is included with Mac OS X - but you can delete the app in one step.
iChat is included with mac OS x - but you can delete the app in one step.
The only "built in" things Apple has been doing lately are...
building in cameras into their computers (you can't take them out - boo!)
building in bluetooth (to the point where its nearly impossible to remove)
When Apple hands out software, you don't see anyone complaining... because you can get rid of/delete whatever you want
like Widgets? Hell, i hate em - and therefore, i deleted them, and diabled Widgets with one System Preference.
Try doing that with Internet Explorer, ActiveX, and the billions of crappy services that cmoe running by default ni Windows.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
This may be a little OT, but I'd like to see Apple offer advertisements for download on the iTMS in exchange for store credit. They could make them interactive or something if they want to make sure you watch them. I don't mind commercials, I just mind that they interrupt whatever I'm trying to watch. I'd gladly sit and watch/interact with commercials for 20-30 min if it got me $2-3 to spend on commercial-free TV shows like Lost or The Colbert Report. There's a strange bit of psychology that makes me despise spending $2 out of my pocket for an episode of Lost but be fine with watching 20 minutes of commercials for it, even though my time is worth more than that.
'Appleseed', duh!
You must think in Russian.
FYI- his name is Steve Jobs, not Steve Job. I'm sure you know that, but clearly you don't understand how apostrophes work. When doing a possessive of a word already ending in s, you put the apostrophe after the s. So you'd say "Jobs' first priority". Some people say you should add an additional s, as in "Jobs's first priority", but we all know that's just silly.
how long do you think it will be before comcast...etc throttle / block this traffic? or start charging you per mb easily costing more than any credit the apple store might give?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
This is just the perfect story for me to plug my latest research, a couple of crypto protocols to help ensure P2P users behave honestly when uploading and storage rewards of some kind are involved, and there exists the incentive to cheat. Hope someone puts them to good use.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
Apple call up a few of the really big ISPs, and arrange to co-locate a couple of servers, with unlimited bandwidth to that ISPs customers. Should be brilliantly cost effective, and save both parties money.
Don't get me wrong, BitTorrent is a great way of getting files around, but not for something as big or well funded as Apple...
The difference:
:-)
I can delete Safari from any version of Mac OS X it runs on. Can you uninstall Internet Explorer from your current verion of Windows XP?
What I am leading to here is that Apple builds features into Mac OS X, and then creates modular applications that take advantage of them, or allows you to disable these features in the operating system. Plus, other applications built by third party developers can take advantage of the features (such as OmniWeb with WebKit) as well. No one who installs Mac OS X is forced to leave Safari, iChat AV, Mail, iCal, etc installed on their computer. They can delete them and then choose to install Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium, and Sunbird, and there is no penalty to the user.
Again, try doing that to Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or Microsoft Messenger, without a third party XP hacking tool. You can hide those applications to the user, but can never fully delete them.
If Apple builds torrenting into 10.5, I'm sure there won't be anything that prevents you from running the normal bittorent clients that are already available for your standard pirating needs.
And that, my friend, is the difference between good and evil
Safari is included with Mac OS X - but you can delete the app in one step.
Let's not be intellectually dishonest. Safari is just a front end to WebKit, much like Internet Explorer is a front end to MSHTML (or whatever they use now.) You can delete WebKit, but that's removing functionality from the OS that other apps expect to be present. The situation is almost exactly the same as with Windows.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
that website is totally unreliable.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I mean, bittorent has illegal music downloads on it, right? So why on earth would apple want to promote that, considering the iTunes store?! Unless they took the bittorent protocol and modified it into something of their own, and then filtered any music sharing on it, they would be working against themselves. I think this "rumor" must have been started by the author of the article.
This is not a sig. This is a llama-duck. Quack.
This is yet another reason that unlimited broadband will soon disappear. Now Apple is planning to exploit DSL accounts to max out the traffic for their own benefit. I would imagine, looking at the costs of bandwidth, they'll use about $5 of bandwidth and credit the subscriber around a nickel to the itunes music store. IT's a total win for apple as they now won't have to increase infostructure and can ride on all the ISPs infostructure instead and their credit is a mere 1% (guessing) of what their cost to deliver it themselves would be. ... the beginning of the end of unlimited broadband.. it happened to dialup, and broadband is right around the corner because of exploitations of the service just like this.
Peer Impact's patent on Incentives for p2p
0 05038617&F=0
Here's the Patent
COMPUTER SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ENHANCING THE DISTRIBUTION AND REVENUE STREAMS DERIVED FROM WORKS MADE AVAILABLE IN DIGITAL FORM
Abstract of WO2005038617
Methods and computer systems for increasing the revenue stream from a work made available in digital form are provided. The methods and systems of the invention are particularly useful for musical, video, interactive game files, and artistic or commercial works that can be digitally copied and transferred or distributed, such as via the Internet. Embodiments of the present invention advantageously can form part of a greater system that provides access to digital forms of numerous works or groups of works, such as those that are copyrighted, to thereby extend the revenue-producing capabilities for the copyright holder of digital or digitized works to bona fide purchasers of those works. In turn, bona fide purchasers of a work who later provide copies of that work or other authorized works, or provide transfer or distribution bandwidth with respect to that work or other authorized works may receive incentives. Advantageously, no central warehouse of digital content is necessary with the present methods, and users may introduce authorized content into the present system in a controlled manner, through peer-to-peer systems, while realizing economic incentives for doing so. The present systems and methods also provide a myriad of embodiments of incentive and apportioning payment schedules, configurations and properties.
Data supplied from the esp@cenet database - Worldwide
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO2
Even tho in theory I'm 'not using it', almost any upstream useage totally hoses my total bandwidth.
So my 'sharing' greatly effects me. So ill pass.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Podcasts should be automatically fetched by torrent. This may require yet another extension to RSS for podcasting, but the benefit for creators of all size and bandwidth budget would be totally worth it.
So, based on what I've seen Apple do with things like WebKit, is that they'll have an implementation nicely packaged into a library and one killerexample App which uses it.
Start Running Better Polls
Perhaps they intend to make torrents a legitimate method of delivery of purchased iTunes songs. So, you purchase an iTunes song, seed it as an 'iTunes torrent.' Then you get some amount of credit for more iTunes songs. Someone else who buys the first song you bought downloads it as a torrent from you (and others).
Wasn't that called Napster?
With lots of ISPs restricting the ports that BitTorrent clients generally work on to preserve bandwidth often on the premise that bittorrent is used for illegal file swapping. So with the option of using your 40 Gigs a months bandwidth to get yourself a substantial volume of music/whatever, it would be an attractive offer. But I can see that with a legitimate use of such huge amounts of bandwidth being used, is this going to point out the naughty tactics that Broadband ISP sell services that their network couldn't sustain given higher usage.
These are the same high-speed access ISPs who would want to charge Apple for "preferred speed" for providing content to consumers on their network. ISPs like BellSouth or SBC.
But with BitTorrent distribution it doesn't matter much if traffic originating from apple.com is slowed on the network, because the bulk of the actual file data is coming from hundreds of other servers, some of which probably from within the ISP's own netblock. Apple's Web page might load a bit more slowly but their heavy content (iTMS) would still download fast. Apple would be free to thumb their nose at the ISP's "preferred speed" extortion attempts.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't bittorrent be much less efficient for sending an encryped file to someone?
Badass Resumes
more like "i for an i" ...
nuucp?
If my torrent program can de-DRM my iTunes song, and re-DRM it for someone else, wont this be easily exploited by DRM crackers?
This is apple, they have more lawers than the Bush administration.
If apple won't let a settled lawsuit over branding with apple music to get in the way of their music service why would they let such an obviously debatable patent stop something that could save them millions per year.
This patent wreaks of prior invention and other clauses that cause a patent to become invalid the moment someone has enough money to fight it. It just wouldn't hold up to apple's lawyers.
The real question is will apple do something that legitimizes a p2p protocol that the RIAA and MPAA are gearing up to fight. Apple's relationship with RIAA isn't too great right now, and they are just starting to get in on some of the movie money from the MPAA, are they really going to risk it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't bittorrent be much less efficient for sending an encryped file to someone?
I'm no expert, but I'm not sure why it would be, provided they keys are in Apple's hands and not the end user. For example, I buy a new song or movie from iTunes. At this point they transfer a key directly to me. My computer grabs the data from bittorent and unencrypts it. If the key is tied to my machine somehow, such as the way iTunes works now, I can watch the movie or listen to the song on my authorized machines? Am I missing something? We're not talking about securing a 1-to-1 data stream like SSH here, rather this is a one to many with a "hidden" key embedded in the end user's machine.
Of course, because MS has demonstrated anticompetitive behavior in the past. A link to a similar response to a similar post in this very article thread here!
The gist is: Microsoft threatened Compaq to pull their Windows license if Compaq installed Netscape Navigator. Apple has not done any such thing with their OS, so they aren't under scrutiny.
If you're going to complain about how people treat MS, at least understand WHY people treat MS differently too.
GPL Deconstructed
Legal problems and DRM won't make torrenting iTunes music easy and thats an understatement. In other words it would be ideal for Apple's own software, previews and the free stuff.
:)
WoW uses it for the updates and it works perfect for all i know so bring it on Apple.
Of course, iTMS isn't the only app with podcast support. I'd wager it's by far the most popular, but there are plenty of other apps that are meant for podcasts and whatnot. If Apple does something like that, you can be sure that they would eventually, but provided there's some sort of fallback (meaning, exactly what goes on now), I don't see what's to lose. Provided two things, naturally: 1) It throttles its own bandwidth intelligently, meaning lowest priority and 2) ISPs don't start blocking port 27753 (which, of course, is APPLE on a phone)
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Some of the noisiest network traffic is caused by BitTorrent. It's responsible for so many false alarms that organizations tend to ban it completely.
I'm sure ISPs will hate this and/or forbid it... so I must support it.
Can't you see that there is no difference ? Sure you can remove safari, but can you remove webkit, no.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
When NeXT came out every box shipped with ZILLA installed. It was the forerunner of modern screen-saver grid computers. You donated unused cycles to the Zilla organization and they did intersting stuff. In particular they allegedly did much of the four-color map theorem proof on Zilla and some of the early movie CGI work was done on Zilla. Another example of how far ahead NeXT was at the time. (another groovy thing on NeXT was it's early use of Mime and markup formatting for e-mail, something we take for granted now. e.g. all the NeXT e-mail clients had built in voice recording. Neither mac, windows, linux or sun had that at the time. And these days it's not even built in.) The neat thing apple brings to the table here is not the technology to do grid computing like this, but to do micropayments. This has been worked out via the apple stores and even better for them is if they can do barter (itunes) rather than cash. Someday they could do much more than torrent. Maybe they will lease xgrid to say airline companies to do scheduling. You get paid too!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Is that like a cross between legislate and refrigerate?
There is a difference. Microsoft integrates both the library and the application, where Apple only integrates the library; you can choose to remove the application if you wish.
In addition there is a crucial difference that he failed to mention, and is why Microsoft is in trouble where Apple is not, and that makes all the difference.
Microsoft was found guilty of abuse of their monopoly, chiefly for threatening Compaq with withdrawing their Windows licenses if they bundled Netscape Navigator.
So three key differences now:
A) Microsoft is a monopoly, Apple is not
B) Microsoft integrates applications, Apple integrates libraries
C) Microsoft abused it's monopoly, Apple has no monopoly to abuse
A) is starting to change with the increasing popularity of the iPod. It remains to be seen if Apple will refrain from anti-competitive practices, such as bullying Walmart and Best Buy with the success of the iPod.
GPL Deconstructed
It depends on how the file-sharing will be implemented. If the sharing is restricted to the local network, then the ISP's have nothing to complain about and in fact this will save them some bandwidth.
Consider the case of A, B, C, D, E on a local network. As it stands now if they all use Software Update, then they all go outside their local network to get it from Apple. Under file-sharing, if A gets the update from Apple first, then B, C, D, E get the update from A or from each other, so Apple and the ISP only have to supply bandwidth for one update + a small reward to the sharers instead of 5 updates. The ISP can't complain because it is perfectly OK to share files inside your local network.
The local network administrators have little to complain about either, since these are things that would be downloaded anyway, so it is the same number of bits being exchanged, only now the bandwidth is mostly distributed across local computers instead of coming entirely from the gateway server.
We are all speculating at the moment, but think how well this would work on a college network, where multiple labs are updated regularly and there are many students listening to the same few popular songs.
Warning: The intelligence of this post may be larger than it appears.
It's /Library/Packages
Microsoft would not have this problem if they did not abuse their monopoly. The idea is not to force Microsoft to allow the removal of every single feature, but to prevent them from abusing their monopoly. If they wrote their OS as independent and interchangeable components then it means Compaq, if they so wished, could replace IE7 with FireFox and everything would still work. Or HP could replace Windows Media Player with iTunes and everything would still work.
Apple actually does make it possible to delete everything; you'd have a fairly useless system, but just about everything can be deleted because everything is written as standalone components that utilize built in libraries. That is generally considered good engineering practice, while Microsoft's habit of integrating everything tightly is considered bad engineering practice.
Imagine if you couldn't replace your toaster without also replacing your fridge, oven, dishwasher, and smoke detector. That's how Microsoft builds Windows. Apple at least will create general purpose libraries that allow the application developer, including Apple, the ability to swap out libraries or swap out applications without interference.
GPL Deconstructed
I'm an Apple owner and the biggest thing that I absolutely hate about the Apple community are Apple evangelists. They are second only to Linux zealots in terms of making me want to punch them in the throat. You can't say hello without them insulting Windows and making "M$" jokes - it's extraordinarily childish.
Can you uninstall Internet Explorer from your current verion of Windows XP?
Why would I want to? I personally use Firefox when I'm browsing on Windows. Explorer doesn't do any harm when it's not running.
But application developers find it great to have a "known quantity" component such as a web browser installed on their target platform. It makes it possible to embed it into their own applications (which, via ActiveX, is often drag + drop) - and they know their application will now work everywhere.
When components are embedded, security is a non-issue since it's typically only viewing local, controlled content anyway (eg: Internet Explorer viewing documentation pages within the application). All I can say is: good luck embedding a web browser on OSX or Linux without compiling it in.
And that, my friend
I don't hate you, but I'm not your friend either.
is the difference between good and evil
But DRM is evil - except when Apple uses it in iTunes?
But suing bloggers over product announcements is evil - except when Apple does it?
So Internet Explorer is a commonly used and bundled OS component - and this makes Microsoft "evil"?
What does Apple have to do to be considered evil in your eyes? Genocide? Become successful and sell millions of copies of it's OS, gaining a significant proportion of the market share?
Doing that would be an insult to the many developers of FTP clients for the Mac.
If the command line is too much hastle (as it is for many) then download a free client such as Cyberduck.
Why must Apple supply everything?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
And they were right.
For those who are curious:
:)
Actually, I have removed the Internet Explorer active X component from windows. The only applications that complained were particulary, real player and x-fire.
Besides those two programs, other applications like winamp didn't complain (minibrowser was just a white window, showed nothing). I imagine MSN messenger and Outlook Express would complain too, but I don't use those applications.
ReactOS's IE active x replacement, which uses the Mozilla Gecko engine, also worked as a pretty good replacement
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
KDE apps can dynamically link to KHTML / Konq components, and GNOME apps can do the same with the GNOME HTML component.
Interesting idea for limiting infrastructure costs for content delivery. Alleviate the the bandwidth and server burden on the supplier end and leverage the good things in a technology deemed evil by the very content providers (i.e., the RIAA, and MPAA) you are serving. Nice little bit of irony there.
But when you can make your whole house wired with 1Gbps ethernet in 2006 for half the cost what it cost your home to be wired with 100Mbps ethernet in 2000, isn't it reasonable to expect that ISPs aren't paying the same peering fees they used to?
Isn't it reasonable to expect that the interconnections are faster, and can handle more? Isn't there a near zero cost of adding more users, as long as the pipe isn't oversubscribed?
I think a lot of it is that business models for ISPs are based around a much longer cycle than technology will permit them to have. Anytime a disruptive technology comes along, must we have a debate about how the old, no longer valid assumptions still hold true?
Distributed content replication is one of the key features of the Internet, which is why the MPAA/RIAA hate it.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If you consider asking a pointed question to be flame bait, then I suppose I'm guilty.
//c, a Mac SE, and own an eMac G4. I'm not anti-Apple. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from my Apple machines to that damn Mitsubishi built "Leading Edge" clone (the first one, not the Tandy 1000 clone they made later). Today, I have several Linux boxes -- and prefer them for server work hands down, but for workstation work, XP does what I need it to do.
The truth is, if Microsoft enters a niche currently served by freeware/shareware/open source, the assumption is that it is the evil empire out to squash all the little perfect peace-loving Linux and OSX people.
Frankly, I just want to see the same scrutiny applied universally.
Look for a second at Apple. The only reason they're not Microsoft is that they didn't do it well enough 20 years ago. The failed, they didn't "take the high road". Apple is pushed DRM down our throats more successfully than Microsoft. They also found a way to make downloading music workable for the record companies and for most of the customer base (at least for now). Apple's proprietary hardware and planned obsolecense has made upgrading their equipment nearly impossible for decades.
Hell, I had a ][+, a IIe, and a
If Apple builds a BT client into the OS and declares it "Part of the Operating System" because it uses that to obtain its patches, how is that different from Microsoft doing it with IE?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
...protective. They just saw it from a hardware perspective. How many people do you know (I know many) who got stuck with dead-end apple gear when they decided to go another way. They got left with hardware you couldn't upgrade. How much has iTunes pushed to be proprietary to iPods? Apple is just as anticompetitive as microsoft, they're just not as good at it and don't have the market leverage they could have had they been as good at it. They bet the hardware was more important than the software and LOST in the 80's. Its great that they're back, but give me a break, these are corporations not people. They have no soul, for good or evil.
If Apple builds a BT client into the OS and declares it "Part of the Operating System" because it uses that to obtain its patches, how is that different from Microsoft doing it with IE?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'm responding as if TFA is accurate. Probably that is a mistake right away.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Mod parent up please and grandparent down.
Its one thing to be a grammar nazi, but it is MUCH MUCH worse if you are a grammar nazi and don't know grammar yourself.
One more semi-interesting thing about the apostrophe rules. They are the only english grammar rule I know of that has only one exception. (its / it's)
it's/its is not an exception. All the pronouns have their own possessive versions:
;)
he- his
she - her
it - its
they - their
you - your
I - my
This should be one of the first things people learn, yet most people can't even spell "your" correctly.
I think your confusion is because you're trying to add apostrophes to words that already have possessive forms.
When you see an apostrophe after a pronoun, it's probably "the apostrophe of omission" (I don't think it's called that, but you know what I mean — where an apostrophe is used to indicate that some letters are missing.) For example,
"he's" means "he is" (thus, "he's Dick" means "He is Dick", not "his Dick"
"she's" means "she is"
"it's" means "it is" (thus, "it's left" means "it is left", not "its left", etc.)
"they're" means "they are"
"you're" means "you are"
Unfortunately, its, your, and their sound similar to it's, you're and they're, but the least we can do to avoid the confusion is to write them properly.
The "rules" are actually very simple really, it's just that many people don't want to pay even a little bit of attention to how they write.
I don't care much for artificial grammar rules (not ending sentences with a preposition? WTF? What does Latin grammar have to do with English? "This is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put!", etc), but a lot of confusion can be avoided if everyone uses language correctly.
so, does apple use the same key for every copy of a song? It seems like that could be easily circumvented.
Badass Resumes
Why would it be? Encryption doesn't make stuff bigger (it should make it less compressible, but you'd want to compress before encrypting anyway), and sending chunks of encrypted stuff is no different than sending chunks of plaintext or random bytes. The only way it would be less efficient is if the protocol headers themselves were encrypted, and I don't think that's necessary here (though I could be wrong).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There is no reason for Apple to supply everything, but complete support for FTP in the finder would be an obvious extension of the finder's basic function: managing files. Why should the user have to use a different program and user interface to manage files depending what underlying protocol is being used? The finder should transparently handle FTP and SFTP, just the same as it handles Samba, Appleshare, NFS, WebDAV and local files (regardless of file system). User interface consistency is a good thing, even if it "insults" some developers. I suspect that many of those developers were promtped to write their ftp clients by this glaring deficiency in the finder. If Apple had done it right in the first place, these developers could have devoted their efforts to something more productive than re-inventing the ftp client.
Yep. I can't see the cable companies and ISPs being happy about their networks being lit up for something they don't make a profit on. All the clients on the networks suddenly becoming servers is not in their business plan, I think.
nice.. great animosity towards windows.. ;-)
hahahahahaha
Mac OS Rumors is, as usual, very, very high.
How about the name: Shared Technological Exchange Advancement Layer
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No they're not!
Your point doesn't negate mine. Just because Apple is proprietary and protective does not mean they have acted in an anticompetitive way, unless you happen to mean uncompetitive. Apple's behavior has hurt itself.
The reason Microsoft is in a class of it's own is that it is so dominant that it can choose behavior that would punish a lesser company, but get away with it because it is a de facto monopoly. An anticompetitive action from Apple might be if they, tomorrow, decided that all iPods would only support AAC and not MP3 and iTunes would automatically convert all user MP3s into AAC.
If Apple builds a BT client into the OS, how is it different than Microsoft doing it with IE?
Let us look at past behavior then: Safari vs IE.
Safari is an application that uses WebKit. As such WebKit is integrated into the OS, while the web browser is not. You are free to remove Safari, replace it with FireFox, or replace it with OmniWeb, which is another web browser based on WebKit. Apple also uses WebKit in Dashboard, Help, and probably Mail.
You cannot do so with IE; if Microsoft had developed mshtml.dll and then turned IE into an app, rather than an integrated part of the OS, then users would be free to delete IE.
So projecting with BT; Apple would release a library called NetGrid and on top of that build SoftwareUpdate. On top of that, for example, Opera or OmniWeb may use NetGrid as well. Adding NetGrid to the OS is a smart act, one not of bundling but of integration. Perhaps they would then integrate NetGrid into iTunes, iChat, Backup, and also continue to expose the library for other developers to use.
Microsoft, in comparison, would include msbt.dll into XP and add it to Automatic Update and Windows Media Player as well, and then threaten HP to rescind their OS license if they bundle their machines with iTunes, which uses NetGrid, a competing media distribution network library.
See the difference? Microsoft has in the past threatened their licensees in order to squash the competition. Apple has done nothing of the sort in their integration of WebKit, CoreAudio, CoreData, CoreGraphics, etc.
GPL Deconstructed
Spare upstream bandwidth isn't mine to "donate". The cable company actually resells it. The choices are they will block apple's "service" or be forced to raise my rate to provide more continous upstream bandwidth.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I reckon if Apple do this, it'll be a variation on BitTorrent (rather than a more generall torrent engine) specifically for making iTunes purchased downloads faster.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
So Apple is rewarding people who share music illegally...with more free music?
1. They are not talking illegal downloads, more software updates, and *speculated* itunes content. 2. It's not an upload for credit, it's a permission to use you as a node for credit. 3. MS has already bought groove networks and ray ozzie helped build p2p into vista - go look it up - Apple just following suit.
so, does apple use the same key for every copy of a song? It seems like that could be easily circumvented.
I believe it was Steve Jobs who said, "Every security mechanism based upon secrecy will fail." The DRM in iTunes is a speed bump to make some things less convenient. The whole concept of DRM as a protection mechanism is flawed. You just can't give people read access to data and prevent them from copying it. Nor is that the real purpose of the DRM. The purpose is to make it hard for the average consumer to move to a new format and to motivate them to buy another copy of the same data in the future.
You can download a little program to strip off the DRM from many foreign sites. Of course you can always burn a CD of the data too. You can also play it and rip the music going to the sound card with another program. You can also plug your speaker jack into a digital recorder. The encryption is just a way to make it less convenient not a real protection.
Microsoft used their Windows OS monopoly to threaten Compaq to withdraw support for the competing Netscape Navigator when Microsoft wanted IE to win the browser wars.
Apple does not use their OS or their iPod to threaten anyone with anything if they install, integrate, or develop alternative BT clients and technologies because Apple isn't trying to win the P2P wars.
Do you see the difference yet?
Microsoft uses their monopoly in an abusive way. Apple does not.
GPL Deconstructed
I hate being in a position to defend microsoft, because I find them just as terrible in these practices as everyone else. I just don't see Apple in some kind of squeaky clean white hat in comparison. Apple has sued people where possible to protect what they consider their models, practices, or hardware business. Apple resellers have very strict rules about what can and can't be discounted from retail. Hell, its against license to make compatible hardware to run their OS if you wanted to.
Microsoft was WRONG to use its leverage to control its resellers. So would Apple be.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If Apple builds a BT client into the OS and declares it "Part of the Operating System" because it uses that to obtain its patches, how is that different from Microsoft doing it with IE?
MS wields monopoly power. It is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one market to gain in another. Thus bundling anything with Windows when a market exists for that product is illegal. This is because bundling does an end run around the benefits of the free market. Why should MS make a better or cheaper product when they can get everyone to use it even if it isn't better?
Apple does not have a monopoly on desktop OS's or computers. They have nothing to leverage. They are approaching having a monopoly on portable digital music players. If they were to bundle their bittorrent client with iPods and make all iPods require the bittorrent client then maybe you'd have a similar situation.
Apple right now can bundle or tie any products they want because they don't have a monopoly. If they bundle a bittorrent client with their OS, who cares? That doesn't force the market to use either their OS or the bittorrent client. If it sucks people will use a different one.
MS can bundle anything it wants, so long as it is not with their monopoly desktop OS. They can refuse to sell their mice without a copy of IE. They can bundle IE with Xboxes. They can bundle IE with anything but Windows. Bundling is not a problem unless it is with a monopolized product.
I don't see the problem then. Microsoft is under extensive scrutiny as a result of past behavior. Apple is not. Apple can integrate P2P functionality into their OS without issue because they have not done anything egregious enough to warrant extensive observation. Microsoft cannot integrate P2P functionality without at least a cursory review of whether they can/will use it to damage the market.
Case in point, they didn't "punish" HP for bundling iTunes or integrating iTunes into Media Center nor selling iPods as iPod+HP.
What is YOUR problem here? That Microsoft is being held to a different standard? You realize that if Microsoft were a person, they would currently be either under probation or parole, and as such would have review boards, parole officers, and live under higher scrutiny than Apple or most other people.
GPL Deconstructed
okay, but the guys posting after you say that the app points to the library webkit which is part of the system frameworks supplied by apple, which is rather (to my understanding of apple) like the way ms includes the apis for ie in the apis that run explorer. code-reuse used to be a good idea, and ms capitalized on that.
then they abused monopolistic powers
but the riaa and mpaa have been working real close with ms to guarantee that media player doesn't violate any rules as appropriate (but they still give the user some option to turn that "protection" off a little)
but nobody has stopped gnutella yet.
so these are the reasons why i'm confused my op was modded trolling
I see it as a legitimate point, and everybody that has replied at this point has shown that my original observation was correct, and that this is potentially a Bad Thing(tm)
2^3 * 31 * 647
Actually, if you snoop around the OS, you can remove many of the built in modules that you are worried about by removing them from the /System/Library/Frameworks folder. All of the web kit stuff is located in the WebKit.framework folder.
Although its not documented, many of these frameworks can be removed without harming the operating system as a whole, and, if you aren't planning on using any of Apple's pre-installed applications, then many of them can be removed. I have only done this to see what cripples the system, and what doesn't, during testing. On my personal workstation, I leave all of the frameworks installed.
Where I think people are missing the point is that Internet Explorer cannot be removed from Windows XP without crippling the user's computer experience. Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer share a lot of code, so removing one hurts the usage of others. On the Mac, integrated web browsing is provided by Safari and Web Kit. These tools are not used to browse files, which is instead carried out by the Finder.
Mac OS X is a much more modular OS than Windows XP. I think this is partly due to design, and party due to neccesity with Mac OS X being based on Unix.
Hmm, are you actually posting in regards to my response? I made no "M$" jokes, though I'm sure some were made throughout the thread. I have actually been a DOS/Windows user much longer than I have been a Mac user. Since my daily job involves technical support, I have had to learn both Windows XP and Mac OS X inside and out for several years now. Is the only way I cannot be considered a zealot is to not respond at all, when I feel misinformation is being written?
Actually it can. Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer can execute code in the background if a virus is written properly. This is how a lot of spyware works. Many of the spyware applications can launch pop-up windows in Internet Explorer, even when its closed. From what I understand, Mac OS X WebKit can't launch code itself- applications are written to take advantage of this code being available in the operating system, but the code itself isn't being executed. I know this sounds like its the same, but its different. Someone with better computer programming skills on both the Mac and Windows platform can probably explain it better.
Actually my reference to good and evil is directed more to the thread I am responding to, who states that Microsoft is considered evil by integrating Internet Explorer into Windows, and hence Apple is evil for integrating web kit. I feel neither company neither good nor evil. It's hard to qualify any multi-billion dollar corporation as one or the other. My main point is that though they both share common goals for OS integration, the two technologies being discussed are drastically different, and web kit is much more benign at this point than the technologies integrated into Windows. That may not always be the case in the future, but it is right now. Perhaps I used poor etiquitte in submitting a normal smiley face instead of a wink [
[sarcasm]Then again, i may not post regarding Apple technologies in the future, in order to avoid the punch in the throat that may be coming
Well the fact is that many (maybe even most) Mac users have little or NO use for ftp at all, and I'm pretty sure Apple knows this as it is their business to know it. Those who do have a use already know how to deal with it and already use the CLI, or a venerable old client such as Fetch. Offering a Finder version would be practically pointless, except for the lazy. That said if they did offer one I would use it, but since they don't I'm perfect happy use Transmit, which is WAY more than a finder would be.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY