Vista - iPod Killer?

JMB wrote us with a dire warning, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. Apple is cautioning its Windows-using iTunes customers to steer clear of Vista until the next iTunes update. The reason for this is a bit puzzling. Apparently, if you try to 'safely remove' your iPod from a Vista-installed PC, there's a chance you may corrupt the little music player. They also claim that songs may not play, and contacts may not sync with the device. Apple went so far as to release a detailed support document on the subject, which assures users that a new Vista-compatible version of the software will be available in a few weeks. Is this just some very creative FUD? If it is not who do you think is 'at fault' here, Microsoft or Apple?

Comments

It's apples fault

[wardk]

for not being able to predict what parts Microsoft would focus on breaking

Re:It's apples fault

[riscthis]

A clean install of Vista uses 544meg ram without any applications running - completely ridiculous IMHO.

Some of that may be for caches which would be released if an application requested more RAM. The OS might as well make use of it to reduce latency of other tasks whilst nothing else wants the RAM.

Re:It's apples fault

[malfunct]

Its worse than that. There has been a fairly stable api in vista for the last 6 months and even before that there were little changes for the last year. Apple just decided not to fix thier software for whatever reason and now they are trying to make Vista look bad instead of taking the blame for being slow to support windows users.

Re:It's apples fault

[malfunct]

With visual studio and a few other small apps running I regularily thrash the hard disk with memory paging under vista. That said I don't think its so horrible for the OS to use more ram if it gives features that are worth the cost (What, like $200?). That said I haven't been convinced that I get those features yet but we will see. I am lucky enough that by accident I already had 2 gig of ram in all the pc's that I own and it is only my work machines that only have 1gig.

Re:It's apples fault

[slipperman]

I agree with the parent - Apple had all the beta versions, documentation and access to the RTM since October (like the rest of us). This should be a non-issue. And I haven't yet gotten Vista to even run with apps as simple as SQL Server's Enterprise Manager! :) how depressing!!

Re:It's apples fault

[kripkenstein]

Some of that may be for caches which would be released if an application requested more RAM. The OS might as well make use of it to reduce latency of other tasks whilst nothing else wants the RAM.

That is how Linux reports memory usage (in 'free', for example). But Windows has never done so, at least not Windows 95 til XP. Used RAM was RAM used by applications, not caching. However, perhaps Vista changes this, I don't know - never used it.

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

Of course, if they just implemented the iPod as a USB mass storage device, there would probably not be any issues at all. They could still have a fancy front-end that loads files onto it.

It drives me nuts when you need to use fancy software to download/upload from your camera/mp3-player/etc. It isn't like there aren't standards out there that would work perfectly well...

Re:It's apples fault

[nostriluu]

You are trivializing this. I recently built a PC with 4 GB of RAM, and have been introduced to the world of pain this means in the mainstream PC world. Starting with the fact many boards only have two slots, and 2 MB chips are incredibly expensive, next on to BIOS compatibility issues, then on to operating system compatibility issues. Maybe in a year this will be a non issue, but for now it's painful, and it means so many more PCs are effectively obsoleted by "improvements" that can't even be explained clearly. http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Re:It's apples fault

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

You can access it as a usb mass storage device. Either after ticking a setting in itunes, or when plugging it in I believe you hold the menu and play/pause buttons at the same time.

You're generally better off letting itunes handle it though, as it does a much better job. Now if only I liked itunes enough to use it for anything other than an interface to my ipod.. (or foo_dop would become stable enough and featurefilled enough to trust it with my ipod)

Re:It's apples fault

[GarfBond]

How are they making Windows look bad? It's a very cut and dry support document. "You have an iPod or iTunes. You might have Windows Vista. Here's what doesn't work right now and here's what you should do. We will fix these things fully in the near term."

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

At least for the new iPod Shuffle that's not true.

I can't just copy music onto it, and it does not even work with GtkPod on Linux, so I dumped mine.

After two years of Apple-exclusiveness, my home is now 100% Apple-free.

Re:It's apples fault

[lordmatthias215]

I think what the GP is saying is that you can't simply upload songs to your ipod by dragging and dropping them to the iPod as you would a USB drive. The iPod won't show any of its uploaded songs as files, and will only allow songs added via iTunes to be playable. Anything you add via USB MSD functionality can only be accessed in the same way. It's basically like two seperate partitions on the iPod, where the iPod can only use one, and Windows can only use the other. It'd be much nicer if I could access my songs on any computer I plug my iPod into, without having to duplicate the files. Apple will never allow this however, as it just makes piracy too convenient. Like I said, however, the simple workaround is just to put your friend's music folder onto your iPod as data, then copy it into your iTunes and put it right back on your iPod. It's just annoying. Also, if the iPod simply treated songs as files, the device would always be a backup of your library, in case something happens to your hard drive. I think there are one or two programs that will let you pull songs from the iPod, but I don't know anything about their quality.

Re:It's apples fault

[4iedBandit]

There has been a fairly stable api in vista for the last 6 months and even before that there were little changes for the last year. Apple just decided not to fix thier software for whatever reason and now they are trying to make Vista look bad instead of taking the blame for being slow to support windows users.

And Microsoft has never purposefully designed their OS to interfere with another competitors product.

Re:It's apples fault

[Mattintosh]

My iPod can't be a USB mass storage device. It's plugged into the Firewire port. Now you know what complicates it, so let's focus on what to do about it.

1) Check the checkbox (in iTunes, just this once; theoretically you'll never need it again) that lets you use your iPod as a hard drive.
2) Place files into a folder inside the hidden iPod Control folder on the iPod itself.
3) Update the .xml file that tracks what songs are where on the filesystem of the iPod. It too is located in the iPod Control folder.

Or better yet, use an app to do all that for you. Like, say, iTunes. It handles this process regardless of which bus you use, and it does so in an elegant and easy-enough-for-a-moron way. Of course, you could always use the Creative MediaSource/Media Explorer/ZENcast Organizer/Audible Manager/Yahoo Music Engine/WMP10 suite that comes with a Zen. Ah, but it won't work with your iPod, now will it? Oh, but wait... if you have a Zen, it works with iTunes.

Now, please, remind us why you're bitching about better-than-average software that you aren't forced to use for a device that you aren't forced to use.

Re:It's apples fault

[dan828]

Maybe they aren't trying to make windows look bad, but it seems odd that a company like Apple, that had access to all of the betas and should have had the RTM for the last three months, didn't have this fixed prior to product launch. New PCs are shipping with Vista now, so a not unsizable chunk of people are going to run in to this problem.

Re:It's apples fault

[sqrt(2)]

It might not be much of an improvement for you, but if you can stand to use Winamp5 (or use it already anyway) there is a plugin that allows it to sync with the iPod. It works a lot better and has more features than iTunes, including the ability to take songs off an iPod. Still short of true drag and drop compatibility, but that's all Apples doing trying to tie iTunes and the iPod together (thus getting more market penetration for their ITMS).

http://www.mlipod.com/

Re:It's apples fault

[jZnat]

The songs are stored in a hidden folder: /iPod_Control/iTunes/Music/ or something like that. No separate partitions required; just enable the viewing of hidden files, and you're good to go. Be warned, however, that iTunes renames files to random 4 letter names for database efficiency (which is why you can't just drag and drop music and whatnot; iTunes (or another third party program) edits and builds the database for the iPod, and the iPod just reads the database).

Re:It's apples fault

[malfunct]

I probably shouldn't address this, but if you notice I said 2gb of ram is the magic number I've found for Vista which most modern motherboards support fairly well. 4gb of ram, so far as I know, would only be well supported in a 64bit version of Vista which I have never personally tried.

Re:It's apples fault

[that this is not und]

Be warned, however, that iTunes renames files to random 4 letter names for database efficiency

Wow. That's even more efficient than the old 8.3 filenames in DOS.

Did they really need to be that efficient, or is it just part of their DRM scheme, the same as the design to make it impossible to 'drag-n-drop-n-play' files?

Re:It's apples fault

[Dahamma]

And Microsoft has never purposefully designed their OS to interfere with another competitors product.

Who cares? Does that mean Apple needs to sink to their level? The vast majority of iPod owners use it on Windows, so it really doesn't seem to be best for the customer (as Apple is always claiming to be their motivation) not to support Vista properly. I'm a bit disappointed by Apple's obvious attempt to make Vista look bad on release at the expense of their customers.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Quicktime that looks alien in Windows and STILL doesn't support ClearType that debuted in 2001.

Re:It's apples fault

[nostriluu]

Oh. Sorry, I must be obsessed with my own woes (and anyone else's who tries to go to 4GB for development, virtualization, etc).

By way of a feeble attempt at recovery, you are paying too much for RAM. ;)

Re:It's apples fault

[that this is not und]

So you're conceeding that Apple has pulled a nasty, but it's okay because Microsoft has also done so in the past.

Good to know we've established at least that. Those of us enamored with neither Microsoft nor Apple appreciate your candor.

Re:It's apples fault

[jbrader]

Microsoft had more money than many of the worlds countries combined and a gigantic army of developers and it still took them the better part of a decade to ship Vista. Sometimes software can be tough.

Re:It's apples fault

[zr-rifle]

>A clean install of Vista uses 544meg ram without any applications running - completely ridiculous IMHO.

I use linux, you insensitive clod.

Re:It's apples fault

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

There are free utilities out there PodPlayer is one that I often use - it allows you to copy all of your MP3 files off of your iPod onto another PC and it renames the files back to their original names in the process. It also allows you to play the files off of the iPod through the PC. The program is an executable that doesn't require installation so you can keep it on the iPod and run it directly from there.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I alone in the interpretation that the parent meant to say "yes, the api is stable - except for this small, obscure tweak Microsoft might have inserted at the last possible moment to make sure that the iPod doesn't work with Vista"?

Re:It's apples fault

[monomania]

"Some of that may be for caches which would be released if an application requested more RAM. The OS might as well make use of it to reduce latency of other tasks whilst nothing else wants the RAM."
And what idiot was in charge of that code? Could we have a name, or just a mail-stop?

Re:It's apples fault

[psychokitten]

A clean install of Vista uses 544meg ram without any applications running - completely ridiculous IMHO. You're right - that is completely ridiculous and also not-at all normal for Vista. Have things you added later running in the background perchance? On my notebook, with both gaim and ventrilo currently running, I'm sitting at a 313MB memory usage. Pulling up my Vista VM on my desktop (also with 1 gig of ram allocated,) gives quite similar results. This is running Vista Ultimate on both. Comparatively, my desktop, running MCE2005 uses up about 420MB at boot-time - but sure, I have a little bit more stuff running on it.

Re:It's apples fault

[belly917]

the parent is unaware of how the ipod stores it's data, so to stop spreading misinformation:

"It's basically like two seperate partitions on the iPod, where the iPod can only use one, and Windows can only use the other."

the ipod's data & itunes transfered content all exist on the same partition. Itunes hides & obfuscates the songs so that the average user won't find them. All you music is inside the hidden folder "ipod control" (IIRC) and then the songs are give cryptic filenames and randomly distributed in folders which also have cryptic names. Getting the music off your ipod is as simple as drag & dropping those folders into your music collection. The problem with that is you now have messed up file names, so you would need a program like the Godfather to rebuild the filenames/folder structure from the mp3/aac tags. Another solution is to use the latest version of Winamp which has ipod support "out of the box" so you could also upload music to your ipod and download music back to your (or a friend's) computer.

Like I said, however, the simple workaround is just to put your friend's music folder onto your iPod as data, then copy it into your iTunes and put it right back on your iPod. It's just annoying"

Annoying is a common issue with itunes, but that's a rant for another thread. Winamp will allow you to load music freely at your buddy's computer. The downside is that iTunes will get pissy and trash all the music on your ipod if another program has uploaded music, the next time you try to sync with iTunes.

Also, if the iPod simply treated songs as files, the device would always be a backup of your library, in case something happens to your hard drive.

Again.. they are simple files, (see above), you just have to undo the obfuscating of folder/filenames that iTunes does as a small annoyance to deter piracy

Re:It's apples fault

[belly917]

"but if you can stand to use Winamp5"

I can't stand to use anything but Winamp! Well, that's not true, but I won't go anywhere near the limited functionality that is iTunes. No ogg vorbis support out of the box, etc.

there is a plugin that allows it to sync with the iPod

The newest versions of winamp5 include an updated version of this plug-in by default.

Another great reason to use winamp5 with your ipod is that it'll transcode songs that the ipod firmware can't handle for you. (yes I know it's bad.. but I don't notice the difference when I'm jogging) So all those wma's & ogg vorbis files will at least be playable on your yet again limiting apple ipod.

if you really wanted to make your ipod useful, you should check out rockbox.org

Re:It's apples fault

[MichaelSmith]

2) Place files into a folder inside the hidden iPod Control folder on the iPod itself.
3) Update the .xml file that tracks what songs are where on the filesystem of the iPod. It too is located in the iPod Control folder.

Why can't the iPod find the files on its own? I might be out somewhere and not have the software. The fact is that the IPOD works that way to give apple control over the content people put on the device.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually thats exactly what Vista is doing. It's called SuperFetch You can read more about it here: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vis ta-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/page2.html#su perfetch_the_uumlbercache

I've been using Vista at home for a week now and the result of Vista caching is that applications load much faster than on XP, provided you have at least 1GB of ram.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

That's weird cuz I have a vista install in vmware with only 400megs of ram allocated to it and it runs just fine. It runs suprisingly smooth nd doesn't appear to be continuously swapping.

Re:It's apples fault

[dabraun]

What are you doing? Looking at task manager?

Task manager never was and still isn't an accurate picture of physical memory in use. It's total combined address space, it duplicates the counts for standard system dlls, it counts stacks that are reserved but not committed - and among other things microsoft significantly increased the default (reserved) stack size for every thread of every process in Vista to decrease the incidence of stack overflow problems in applications. This doesn't cost any "real" memory, though it does cost address space within a process. Processes which may actually run out of address space on a 32-bit machine (like server apps) typically specify the stack sizes they want, and they are lower than the OS default. Server apps are rapidly moving to 64-bit anyway where this is a non-issue (for now).

Now, Vista *does* consume significantly more memory than XP at idle, and certainly needs more memory to run well - but it's not using 544mb without any apps running and, remarkably, it is extremely difficult to answer the question "how much memory is in use" in part because that question isn't specific enough to give an answer.

- Pages in memory?
- Does cache count (windows uses *everything* left as a cache, and in Vista it proactively fills that cache before you even run apps based on your page-usage-history, that is, what apps you tend to run though vista is not considering "applications" here but rather a much more generic concept of image-backed pages)
- Does it count if it's been written to the page file but is still in memory as well (like most OS's, windows proactively writes out private pages to the pagefile before it really needs to so that it can free physical memory quickly when needed - this also helps the system reach hybrid sleep state faster)
- Does it count if it's image-backed (sharable)? What if it's still in memory? What if it was never read into memory or was read into memory at process start and will never be touched again, thrown away as soon as memory pressure reqires it?

There is no easy answer other than "add memory until it performs well" and for Vista that seems to be a minnimum of 1GB, depending on the system, more "real" graphics card memory lowers the requirement, slower hard drives (and thus greater need for caching) increase the requirement.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!!

That's the sound of the sarcastic joke went over MS fanbois. The parent is not engaging in tu quoque, but to point out that MS in the past has implemented features to enhance sabotaged rival products. It is in response of the GP poster who has an insider knowledge that:

Apple just decided not to fix thier software for whatever reason and now they are trying to make Vista look bad instead of taking the blame for being slow to support windows users.

Oh wait. How did he know that?

Re:It's apples fault

[DDLKermit007]

You can do that already with iTunes. You can take an iPod to another computer, drag the music files into iTunes, it'll copy them to it's managed folder on the HD, sort by folder, and rename based on the tags. As for playing music directly from the iPod you just plug it into the PC or Mac, and un-check the box for the iPod for the machine to manage the iPods music. Once thats done, you can suddenly play directly from the iPod in iTunes (I found this about 2 months ago by accident on my Macbook).

Now if you want to get the files from an iPod onto a Mac thats another story. They get hidden easily, but many apps out there can help you get the files off eaisily like iPodDisk.

Re:It's apples fault

[rsclient]

(ahem)

I have been up to my ... knees ... in Vista ever since January. Hi, I'm Peter, and I work for a company that ships on OEM computers. My company got a clear mandate from them: work with Vista, or we don't ship you any more. Needless to say, this was taken to be Very Important.

The (deleted) APIs are certainly neither (deleted) stable nor (deleted) documented. Every time Microsoft came out with a new release, it would be fun, fun, fun times while we tried to figure out what had (deleted) changed, and why the programming documentation didn't (deleted) mention it. Many of the APIs that we want to use don't (deleted) work the way any self respecting programmer would (deleted) expect.

Normally a pretty placid person. The amazing (deleted) of Vista continues to astound me.

Re:It's apples fault

[falcon5768]

Still short of true drag and drop compatibility, but that's all Apples doing trying to tie iTunes and the iPod together (thus getting more market penetration for their ITMS).

Nice try, but no.

That was a DRM requirement put forth by the music companies to prevent people from loading up their iPods and copying them to other computers. Easily bypassed, but just enough to not freak out the stupid record execs.

Re:It's apples fault

[MWoody]

Rockbox makes the device work exactly as you describe. As far as I know, it works on most modern Ipods. The exception is the absolute newest version of 'pod, 5.5, though as I understand it they've discovered the problem there and it should be fixed very shortly.

Re:It's apples fault

[evilbessie]

I just don't install iTunes on machines (other than the one to upload music to the Ipod (deliberate miscapitisation, grammar is NOT exchangeable just because the Americans think so) even that hasn't had it re-installed since the hard drive went on the fritz) so I can just use it as a portable hard drive to move files, useful as I don't have a USB flash drive. Explorer just treats it as a removable disk. Your music won't play, if you just drag it on, but then you bought an Ipod so really it's your own fault (I'm assumming that as you are reading Slashdot you know Apple are just as bad as microsoft for vendor lock in).

Re:It's apples fault

[miscz]

How hard is it to implement a USB MSD-like driver for Firewire? This is not an excuse.

iTunes is not better than average software, it is crap, all other mentioned apps are crap. The difference is that Creative doesn't force you to use this shit, it doesn't screw up directory structure or file names. iTunes way is not easy-enough-for-a-moron, it's designed-for-a-moron and most likely will drive other people crazy.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been a fairly stable api in vista for the last 6 months

Yeah, I like how well that "fairly stable" API worked for NVIDIA.

Re:It's apples fault

[gnasher719]

'' Of course, if they just implemented the iPod as a USB mass storage device, there would probably not be any issues at all. ''

Yes, this should be modded as insightful, except that the iPod _is_ a USB mass storage device...

For every problem there is a solution that is obvious, simple and wrong.

Re:It's apples fault

[gnasher719]

'' Did they really need to be that efficient, or is it just part of their DRM scheme, the same as the design to make it impossible to 'drag-n-drop-n-play' files? ''

Since my iPod has never, ever in its life seen any files with DRM, it can't be part of any "DRM scheme".

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, why should the iPod support Vista? It has only been out for 3 days and most large businesses I have talked to are waiting until the Service Pack release to even think of deployment. Home users may want it for whatever reason (to know that Microsoft lies in its Upgrade Advisor about what hardware Vista is compatible with?) but Apple has never advertised any of its products as being Vista compatible. Even the most die-hard fan of Microsoft has to admit Microsoft never ships a usable product on the first try. Just look at the trouble Nvidia is having for claiming Vista support: a full-on class-action lawsuit after just three days of Vista on the store shelves. Sheesh. You would think people would learn their lesson by now about how going Microsoft early is going to burn you. Even Microsoft's own also-ran iPod, the Zune (have you been zuned today?), does not properly work with Vista. Crikey!

Re:It's apples fault

[gnasher719]

'' So you're conceeding that Apple has pulled a nasty, but it's okay because Microsoft has also done so in the past. ''

You are misunderstanding the original poster completely.

What he was saying was that if Microsoft had ever in the post done nasty things like changing their operating system to prevent competitors' software from working, which shurely they have never done, then it wouldn't be completely inconceivable that they would have pulled something like that again. If we can't find any reports that iTunes ever had problems with any pre-release beta version of Vista, but has problems with the released version, that would be suspicious.

Re:It's apples fault

[admactanium]

Maybe they aren't trying to make windows look bad, but it seems odd that a company like Apple, that had access to all of the betas and should have had the RTM for the last three months, didn't have this fixed prior to product launch. New PCs are shipping with Vista now, so a not unsizable chunk of people are going to run in to this problem.

you're joking right? microsoft's own zune player and software didn't even work with vista until the final retail release version! it hardly seems like everything was completely sorted out early on.

Re:It's apples fault

[itoledo]

The latest Winamp includes an iPod plugin by default. No need to install anything. Works great with my 1st gen Shuffle.

Re:It's apples fault

[Dahamma]

Um, why should the iPod support Vista?

I already explained that.

It has only been out for 3 days

The beta has been out for a year - much of the point of that being to give hardware manufacturers a chance to support it. Don't tell me 1000 other companies are able to develop drivers to support Vista on launch but not Apple.

Home users may want it for whatever reason

That reason being it's now installed on new PCs they buy.

a full-on class-action lawsuit after just three days of Vista on the store shelves

No, in fact that's totally untrue. RTFA next time - the /. was misleading (big surprise), but all it was is some guy who created a web site called NVidiaClassAction.org. Far from "full-on", he doesn't even seem to have representation or a real interest in suing, let alone filed a suit. It's a publicity stunt, though I agree he has a right to be pissed...

Re:It's apples fault

[lachlan76]

You don't need iTunes to copy things to the iPod. The only Ipod-related lock-in is the iTunes Music Store. There are lots of applications around to copy music to the iPod. Gtkpod, Ephpod, Amarok, a Winamp plugin according to another poster.

The reason that you don't just have drag-and-drop is for performance; a database is much faster than reading every file.

Re:It's apples fault

[pubwvj]

No, no, no. You've got it all backwards. Vista isn't an iPod killer. The iPod is a Vista killer. Now 50,000,000 Windows users won't upgrade to Vista for fear of losing their tunes. Apple slipped in the knife quietly. Now they're twisting it.

Re:It's apples fault

[NoMaster]

Why can't the iPod find the files on its own? I might be out somewhere and not have the software. The fact is that the IPOD works that way to give apple control over the content people put on the device.

You're right. It's so totally unlike the iRiver H10, which only requires you to be running WinXP & WMP10*!

(* US models only, I know - but even on the non-US firmwares you still need to use the iRiver Plus app or a 3rd-party loader if you want to search, browse by artist, etc...)

Re:It's apples fault

[mattgreen]

Kudos for an actual informative post on here. Most people just spout off anecdotes as if they somehow mean as much as actual facts.

Re:It's apples fault

[WgT2]

No:

• it's Microsoft's fault for sucking, and
• it's Apple's for not programming well enough around the suck

Re:It's apples fault

[Prof.Phreak]

Why can't the iPod find the files on its own?

I thought exactly the same thing when I read all that. I don't have an ipod, so all this is news to me. Wow. What a crap/unfriendly setup for a product! And people claim they're engineered well. Ha! I've tried out many other MP3 players, and most work as USB mass storage drives (iriver), where you just drop a file into a folder, and... well... the player just finds it. No hidden folders, etc., or any other similar crap.

Re:It's apples fault

[that this is not und]

When you layer your comment so deep in sarcasm, it's hard to want to descramble it for meaning.

Obviously Microsoft have done 'nasty things' in the past. So have Apple. They've worked in collusion in many ways, mostly indirectly, i.e. Apple drove all Microsoft's GUI competitors out of the market (the GEM desktop, among a few others).

They're both capable of doing that sort of thing again. However, in this instance, it seems more likely just a case of sheer incompetence on the part of both companies. Which marketing types and fanboys all over leap on for all the fun.

In spite of all the marketing huff that we have to endure, both companys produce rather mediocre products these days, compared to what could be. So be it.

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

I dunno - my iAudio G3 plays mp3, ogg, and wma, and I can drag/drop files in any way I want into its file structure and it finds them just fine. Works great from linux. Sure, I can use any of that other fancy software, but I don't have to.

It isn't like it can't be done...

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

You're generally better off letting itunes handle it though, as it does a much better job.

If only that were true. Go ahead and let me know how to use itunes to handle this:

I have a collection of files in ogg format. I want to download them to my iPod. I realize that an ogg->aac conversion will lose some quality, but we can bump up the bitrate a little to compensate. Tell me how to do that with itunes.

I couldn't find any way to do it. I ended up batch-converting the files on my linux box, and then uploading them. Then when I deleted all the aac files that I no longer needed itunes was helpful enough to go ahead and delete them off the ipod on the next sync. Apparently I'd need to keep a whole set of aac junk files lying around just to keep itunes happy even though I'd never listen to them on a PC.

And yes, I did find a plugin that plays ogg in itunes - pity that it won't do a conversion when uploading to an ipod.

Suffice it to say the ipod was returned. It was actually a friend's device and not mine - I had advised against it all along figuring it would be a pain to get working...

I love my iAudio G3 - just copy files and it works. If for whatever reason I have to convert a file to upload it I don't need to keep the converted file on my hard drive. And I don't need any fancy software - works on any OS out there that handles USB drives...

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

Well, this certainly didn't work on the shuffle I tried to get working in exactly this way. Sure, you could copy files onto it, but they couldn't be played as audio. I guess I can use it as a massively overpriced thumb drive, but that wasn't the point...

Re:It's apples fault

[Tim Browse]

You can do that already with iTunes. You can take an iPod to another computer, drag the music files into iTunes

Which part of "The program is an executable that doesn't require installation" didn't you understand?

iTunes is a large and complex app, which on Windows requires the installation of QuickTime - another intrusive piece of software - that's not the sort of program to install on a system at the drop of a hat, just because you want to drag some tunes off an iPod.

Re:It's apples fault

[MojoStan]

"Did they really need to be that efficient, or is it just part of their DRM scheme, the same as the design to make it impossible to 'drag-n-drop-n-play' files?"

Since my iPod has never, ever in its life seen any files with DRM, it can't be part of any "DRM scheme".

I think you're being pedantic. The GP was talking about DRM in iTunes, not in any files on the iPod. "DRM scheme" is not the best choice of words, but an accepted definition of DRM is "a system of managing digital rights." This system can include how iTunes restricts users from easily transferring MP3 files from iPod to computer.

Even if your narrow definition of DRM is accepted, I think everyone on Slashdot knows what he/she was talking about. Apple is limiting functionality to allay the fears of copyright owners. Your files without DRM can still be restricted by a "DRM scheme" if you use iTunes.

Re:It's apples fault

[code shady]

The beta has been out for a year - much of the point of that being to give hardware manufacturers a chance to support it. Don't tell me 1000 other companies are able to develop drivers to support Vista on launch but not Apple.
What, you mean like nvidia?

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. Not to be a PITA but ... why would I want to switch to Vista? I realize that this is only tangentially related to this topic but again, why?

I've read up on Vista (a bit) and haven't yet seen a compelling reason to switch. Rather than trying to push my POV I would like (read: love) to hear what Vista can do for me that makes it worth the $100-$300 (or so) to upgrade.

I have XP running (fairly) well on two PCs at my house and can't imagine why I'd want to risk upsetting the apple cart.

So ... to contrast Apple's suggestion to hold off ... any compelling reasons to opt-in?

(seriously)

:-) [long time listener, first time caller]

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a bit disappointed by Apple's obvious attempt to make Vista look bad on release at the expense of their customers. Disappointed? You must have been devastated when Apple tried to shift some of the blame on Windows when some iPods shipped with a Windows virus installed.

I'm not surprised when Apple acts in such a classless fashion after they fuck up.

Re:It's apples fault

[Hal_Porter]

My iPod can't be a USB mass storage device. It's plugged into the Firewire port. Now you know what complicates it, so let's focus on what to do about it.

No, but it could be an SBP-2 device.

SBP-2 is a standard for passing SCSI commands over Firewire. It's supported by default on Windows, Linux and Mac, so SBP-2 hard disks will be recognized on all platforms.

So it's technically possible to build a device which allows Mass Storage Class type access over Firewire. What I, and I guess the GP, want is a device where you can copy a load of mp3s and maybe an m3u playlist and have it recognize them. Since m3u playlists are easy to generate (eg with a dir *.mp3 /s /b > playlist.m3u in a batch file), it means you can drag'n'drop files from your friend's MP3 collection to the device, run the batch file and have it play them. Whereas iTunes has to be seen to discourage people doing that because it's illegal. Plus, I can't install iTunes on my work machine. And all the music management apps I've seen, including iTunes, annoy the hell out of me.

That's the problem, and the reason that people don't like it.

Re:It's apples fault

[wkcole]

Still short of true drag and drop compatibility, but that's all Apples doing trying to tie iTunes and the iPod together (thus getting more market penetration for their ITMS).

That might make sense if the iTMS was a serious profit center. iTMS is a low-margin draw (maybe a true 'loss leader' when fully accounted...) for the masses that gets them to buy highly profitable iPods and to lock them into iPods for the long term. The path of least resistance is to get an iPod and use iTMS to buy songs/videos and to subscribe to podcasts. If you have a lot of iTMS music, you have a lot of music that will play in iTunes or on an iPod and won't go anywhere else unless you go hunting down methods that are explained on web pages that talk about legality and pirating and RIAA suits. It does not matter what the real legality of making liberated copies is so much as it matters how close the bulk of users are willing to come to the edge of consensus legality (where consensus includes the RIAA and MPAA) and engage in behavior that seems evasive to get to that edge.

Bottom line: The iTunes/iTMS/iPod tying is not about getting iTMS sales, it is about getting iPod sales. It works because Apple makes it intrinsic to their mediation between Big Media and users.

Re:It's apples fault

[Petrushka]

my iAudio G3 plays mp3, ogg, and wma, and I can drag/drop files in any way I want

You forgot flac. (Damn, I love my iAudio ...)

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... it's in the iTunes preferences thingy. The bitrate changing option, in the import tab under advanced. Gives you the choice of AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless (a few of these are used on iTMS), MP3 and wav for the encoder dropdown box, then ya select custom in the setting dropdown box, max bit rate is 320 kbps, with the option for variable bit rate (which I've never seen used).

As for the 'pod wiping itself on a resync with those AAC files gone... did you clear the sync ipod on connection option & clicked manual, cause that'd kept 'em.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy up! They probably did this so they could use a fixed 4 char field in the database file instead of variable names that could be as long as 255 bytes.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

"Starting with the fact many boards only have two slots, and 2 MB chips are incredibly expensive...."

Not only are 2MB chips "incredibly expensive," but I'm sure they're virtually impossible to find.

Re:It's apples fault

[stevencbrown]

does anyone else just stop reading whenever there is a comment about how iTunes/etc sucks, and they hit the word "ogg"?

Re:It's apples fault

[Kpau]

If the replacement OS breaks the applications that ran on the old OS... its the new OS that is broken unless the OS manufacturer published clear documentation on the application interface libraries and what had changed.... just ANOTHER reason not to blithely upgrade your OS without testing every application you care about beforehand... but of course they make that annoying as well with their install restrictions. It looks like if I mess with Vista.. it'll be by building a new box with Vista on it and then carefully installing each program I care about from my old box and testing it (temporarily violating # of install limits, of course).

Re:It's apples fault

[Illume]

if they just implemented the iPod as a USB mass storage device

You can't update your library, but an iPod is a mass storage device. Microsoft rewrote the MSC driver for Vista and now the power-management doesn't work if you safely remove MSC devices. That's also a problem for other companies. Vista users should "eject" the drive first to get the old "Windows suspends your USB device" behavior. I think Apple waited for Microsoft to document (or fix) this "feature".

Re:It's apples fault

[passthecrackpipe]

I think you will find that is pretty much standard OS design.

Re:It's apples fault

[jacksonj04]

Whilst Vista doesn't use massive quantities of RAM for its own devious schemes (Absolutely speaking, relative to XP it's quite a bit) it still brays hell out of my hard disks when doing anything more than browsing the web. Strange thing is, the Business release worked much better. Then the Tuesday before commercial release a load of updates were made available and suddenly my system is running slow.

It's an evil plot!

Re:It's apples fault

[Ilgaz]

For the record, I would never buy an iPod unless they invent a massive new thing. So, I am an Apple user but not iPod fan. I don't "love" iTunes either, I don't like OS X coder companies chicken and don't release a true competitor which they would sell for $$$.

What makes me (and others) wonder is, the only, single media player breaks is the Apple Inc., a serious MS competitors product and especially its paid library.

If Winamp 5 and Realplayer (they got drm stores too) broke too, nobody would raise eyebrows.

I don't remember Windows XP, another massive launch had that much compared to OS X but it is not the deal anymore. Even at European media, everyone compares this billion dollar product to Apple OS X. It is really time to wonder these conspiracy theories.

Re:It's apples fault

[psiclops]

winamp 5.32 comes with iPod support.

Re:It's apples fault

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

after you install ogg support for quicktime itunes automatically gets the ability to convert from ogg to MP3.

uncheck the option "copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library" in the "advanced" tab of itunes preferences. after that, drag and drop the folder with your .ogg files on itunes, select all of them, then go on the advanced menu and select "convert selection to MP3". itunes will convert all your .ogg songs and save the resulting .mp3 on it's own itunes folder (in windows this is usually My Documents\My Music\iTunes.

after it's done, remove the OGGs from your library and let it sync the MP3s to the ipod.

or just do what i did: install linux and use amarok for all your musical needs. it converts, it plays, it organizes, it downloads lirycs and it manages your ipod in a much better way than itunes could ever dream of.

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

after it's done, remove the OGGs from your library and let it sync the MP3s to the ipod.

Actually, I WANT to keep the oggs - that is my primary library. The mp3s are the files I don't want to keep around - I just want to copy them to the ipod and then delete them - since in theory they aren't needed any longer...

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

The reason that you don't just have drag-and-drop is for performance; a database is much faster than reading every file.

Why should a database and drag-and-drop be mutually exclusive? The iPod firmware should be running any time it is powered on, and it should index files as they're copied/deleted. Or, upon first reset after copying files it could re-index them.

My understanding is that Rockbox handles this just fine on the same hardware - so there is no reason Apple couldn't have just done it that way.

The thing that annoys me about Apple (and a bunch of other vendors) is that they get this idea into their head that their interface software is the best one out there and consequently everybody should just be using it for everything. Suppose I have three mp3 plays of different brands - that means I need three library management programs and I need to maintain my library three times. With some of the lousy software out there I might potentially have to maintain 3 COPIES of the whole library.

The way such programs should work is thus:

1. I have a library - it is a directory structure on the disk IN WHATEVER DESIGN I WANT IT TO BE. Perhaps it is just one HUGE directory with a bazillion files in it.
2. The library is generally untouched by the program unless I explicitly ask the program to reorganize it.
3. The program maintains a database index of the library in whatever format it likes. New files get indexed, if I delete a file it will be configurable as to whether it stays in the library and just gets marked to no longer be indexed, or whether the file gets purged.
4. No matter what formats the associated player handles the library stays in its original format. The interface program will convert on the fly as needed, and not keep hundreds of intermediate files around. The interface program will support plugins (preferably standard ones) to convert formats so that new ones can be supported in the future.
5. The player associated with the program will be designed to handle drag-and-drop file transfer - so that I can just maintain it manually if I prefer. Now, I realize that this would probably lose some benefits of the interface program (auto-conversion, some fancy indexing, etc) - but it should be functional.

It doesn't seem that hard to accomplish all of this. And it would eliminate half the mp3-player hassles I've had. Sure, everything is seamless right now if you only buy one brand of player, and keep your library in its preferred format. However, in the year 2007 we should expect more from our software than that. Amarok seems to work really well compared to my ideal requirements, but I can't vouch for its player syncing since I haven't used it - I just copy my files to my iAudio G3 manually.

Re:It's apples fault

[Der PC]

That's actually very plausible. I do consider myself to be an (ex)Apple-user, and my experience is that Apple focuses way too much on form and way too little on function - outside of the basic function of the form. So the basic 2 or 3 things you really must do, do function well since they're part of the form. But once you have to do anything that's outside the box, you can't, your'e not allowed or, best of all, you can, but it won't work - at least not as you expect it to. I know very well that you can find plenty of situations like that with Microsoft. But it's not Microsoft that we're complaining about here, is it ? Apple has long ago lost their touch. I say hand Jobs a shovel. Have Scully help him dig their collective grave.

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

Why should they? I didn't ask for the iPod to play ogg files - I asked for its software, running on a powerful desktop computer, to be able to figure out how to convert it so that I could play the corresponding aac on the ipod. There is no reason this shouldn't be possible without major hassles.

Gosh - I'd have been happy if it just didn't delete all my files whenever I synced it after deleting the originals on my hard drive. I can easily bulk-convert ogg to aac/lossless/whatever - but I'd rather not keep those files around just so that itunes doesn't just delete them.

Re:It's apples fault

[BrokenHalo]

Since my iPod has never, ever in its life seen any files with DRM, it can't be part of any "DRM scheme"

Same here. Which is why it would be nice to just drag my mp3 library on to the iPod without messing around with interfaces such as gtkpod or iTunes.

Yes, I have heard of Rockbox and Linux for iPod (Q: can you do a simple drag/drop with those?), but have been too busy using the gadget to have time to mess with its operating system.

One thing I am curious about, and that is how well they fare as far as battery use is concerned. I gather that Apple have gone to some trouble to optimise power usage with spinning up/down the hard drives, but I haven't seen any stats showing how usage with Rockbox or Linux compares,

Re:It's apples fault

[Dahamma]

What, you mean like nvidia?

Touche! Oh wait, I ALREADY commented on that at the end of the post you replied to. So your point is about as effective as...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHFphYifXKo

Re:It's apples fault

[teflaime]

Hah! Apple doesn't need to make Vista look bad. Vista looks bad all on its own!

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...the RTM didn't come out until november. I know you're posting on slashdot, so therefore know EVERYTHING, but is it possible they changed something that took more than 2 months to fix? they did say a release was coming in weeks, not months.

And they aren't just being SILENT about the issues, so what's the big beef? there are even WORKAROUNDS in the KBASE article...so sync your ipod now, and be happy with it for the next 2 weeks, or don't upgrade yet.

Re:It's apples fault

[dr.badass]

There has been a fairly stable api in vista for the last 6 months and even before that there were little changes for the last year.

That doesn't mean that the GM release hasn't broken something new.

Apple just decided not to fix thier [sic] software for whatever reason and now they are trying to make Vista look bad instead of taking the blame for being slow to support windows users.

It isn't terribly uncommon for compatibility updates to software to not be available at launch of a new OS. If you think iTunes is the only Vista-incompatible app out there, you're nuts. Also, if you think this is a stunt to make Vista look bad, you should probably not the fact that Apple is the one writing the support page. The same support page that begins with "iTunes 7.0.2 may work with Windows Vista on many typical PCs.", and then proceeds to list a number of fairly minor issues, and usable workarounds. There is no "Vista Sux0rs" anywhere on the page.

Re:It's apples fault

[Deliveranc3]

I think the parent was suggesting that most slashdotters are using winamp 2.71(x) before the monstrosity that was winamp 3.

Winamp4 and 5 both play video files and have about 2-3x the memory footprint, the video files thing is annoying because I like to open directories which sometimes contain video files as well, it's distracting when a video window pops up during my music.

Re:It's apples fault

[shaka999]

Wish I had some mod points for this one!

Most of the issues with Vista's launch are because other companies haven't spent the time to properly support Vista. Vista is going to be used by a large number of PC users. There is not excuse for Apple, ATI, or Nvidia to be so far behind.

I'll give Creative some credit here as Vista completely screws up the audio subsystem and Creative has been working hard to get around the braindead decisions from Redmond...

Re:It's apples fault

[nostriluu]

Yes, and it makes getting to 4 GB with two slots so much more difficult.

Re:It's apples fault

[JohnFluxx]

Hi,
    We had a similar program in KDE for how to sensible talk about how much memory apps use. For KDE 4 I have recently implemented some features to give a more accurate picture of how much memory apps use (I'm the maintainer of the KDE task manager app)
    Gnome does something similar as well.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

When you layer your comment so deep in sarcasm, it's hard to want to descramble it for meaning.

Yet, somehow, the rest of us managed to do it.

Re:It's apples fault

[PygmySurfer]

I say hand Jobs a shovel. Have Scully help him dig their collective grave.

Indeed. I mean, just look at how poorly the company has performed since his return.

Re:It's apples fault

[Der PC]

Mankinds collective stupidity has helped elevating Jobs bottom line. I still have faith in that mankind isn't going to play stupid forever, even if they choose to do so for a decade or two ;)

Re:It's apples fault

[belly917]

I think the parent was suggesting that most slashdotters are using winamp 2.71(x)

He said winamp5

Winamp4 and 5 both play video files

There never was a winamp 4, then went straight to 5 (their thought process was 2+3=5)

and have about 2-3x the memory footprint

I don't recall how much memory Winamp 2.x used, but winamp 5 is running right now and it's only using 7.5Mb. That's pretty impressive for all the extra features in winamp 5.

the video files thing is annoying because I like to open directories which sometimes contain video files as well, it's distracting when a video window pops up during my music.

I have a very organized folder structure too.. but I find that with winamp 5 the media library allows me to get tot the music I want to listen to faster. For example, I can load up just 3 artists, create a smart playlist to listen to all the music of a specific genre from 1984, and it will also filter video files and maintain a separate list. You should really take a week and force yourself to try the library, if you don't like it at the end of the week, that's fine, but you may find that you like it.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the record execs must be terrified of someone buying DRM music from a non-Apple source, and people using music purchased from Apple on a non-Apple product?

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the 21st century... in my day we identified files by cylinder, sector and offset... and we love it. And I remember counting the holes in the punch paper tape to get to the right file...

Re:It's apples fault

[Steve001]

Illume wrote and included with a post:

if they just implemented the iPod as a USB mass storage device

You can't update your library, but an iPod is a mass storage device. Microsoft rewrote the MSC driver for Vista and now the power-management doesn't work if you safely remove MSC devices. That's also a problem for other companies. Vista users should "eject" the drive first to get the old "Windows suspends your USB device" behavior. I think Apple waited for Microsoft to document (or fix) this "feature".

I may be in the minority on this, but I don't see the iPod not being compatible with Vista as much of an issue right now. Vista has been out less than a week and I doubt that many people who were using Windows XP had to update to Vista immediately. By waiting until Vista has been released, various software/hardware companies can see what it actually is instead of what it's supposed to be, and update their software correctly. What would the reaction be if an update, based on what was supposed to be in Vista, ends up being wrong because of necessary last-minute changes in Vista?

Just like another OS change it will take time to fully transition to the new version, and some things will not be ready immediately. The key now is to release updated versions soon.

Re:It's apples fault

[belly917]

Yes, I have heard of Rockbox and Linux for iPod (Q: can you do a simple drag/drop with those?) Yes (at least with rockbox, I've never used ipodlinux) and then you can browse for you music by folders, or if you prefer the database, you can rescan your files right from the rockbox interface. No need for a computer app (such as iTunes) to build the database file.

One thing I am curious about, and that is how well they fare as far as battery use is concerned. I gather that Apple have gone to some trouble to optimise power usage with spinning up/down the hard drives, but I haven't seen any stats showing how usage with Rockbox or Linux compares, At it's current stage, rockbox isn't heavily optimized for the ipod series yet. So battery life is currently worse than with the ipod firmware. Give it time and chances are that battery life with rockbox will surpass the origional firmware, as it has with other targets.

Re:It's apples fault

[Have Blue]

The fact is that the IPOD works that way to give apple control over the content people put on the device.

Any file in any format iTunes plays can be added to its library, and any file in any format that the iPod plays can be synched to an iPod. Where' the control?

Re:It's apples fault

[Drakino]

My iPod can't be a USB mass storage device. It's plugged into the Firewire port. Now you know what complicates it, so let's focus on what to do about it.

No, but it could be an SBP-2 device.

Ok, quick iPod lesson. The first iPods out the door were firewire only, and act as an SBP-2 device. You plugged them in, iTunes would see the iPod hard drive and load music onto it. If you enabled disk use via iTunes, the Finder would stop hiding the drive when it was connected, and not automatically disconnect the device when a sync was complete. Then the iPod also shipped as a Windows version. What was the difference? The hard drive was formatted FAT32 instead of HFS, so Windows computers could see it. Same trick, iTunes would see the device when connected, sync, then disconnect unless disk use was enabled.

Then one day Apple shipped devices that had a "dock" port on them instead of a standard 6 pin firewire connector. This new dock port supported both USB2 and Firewire, and the firewire continued to be a standard SBP-2 device. The USB, well it turns out it is a standard USB Mass Storage device. And iTunes kept doing the same thing, it would see an iPod, sync, then disconnect when it was done unless disk use was enabled.

Now, iPods ship with USB2 support only. They know when they are connected via firewire and alert you on the iPod screen that the device is only going to charge via firewire and not sync. So all current iPods are USB mass storage only.

As other people have explained, the iPod reads music out of a hidden folder, where all songs are stored with the 4 character names and info is in a database allowing for quicker access. iPods, and all MP3 players have slow processors when compared to PCs, so having a single database to access ends up being a lot quicker then parsing out every file. True, the iPod could theoretically build it's own database, but the process would be slow. The old empeg-car does this, and when it came out the 200mhz ARM processor didn't seem too bad to build a database for 6 or so gigs of music. But now with people sticking 2 160gb drives in, the database updates can be painfully slow. The Rio Karma allowed either the device to rebuild the database, or the computer to do it, but never supported USB mass storage. In a perfect world, a device would always use a database, generated either on a PC for those that don't worry about software loading their music, or on the device for people that do, and everyone would be happy.

For me, I just want a device that lets me build my own hierarchical playlists, and doesn't have a crappy UI. MP3 playback is the only codec I need, since that is still the codec to choose if you want to play music on any device. If I had the hard drive space, I'd rip my collection to FLAC, and use a Samba VFS plugin to encode into format X on the fly.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually wrong. Zune worked with Vista all the time, but since the team was unsure (i.e had to package software up early) they specifically tested for it during install to disallow installation. The update came in December which is at least 6 weeks prior to "final retail release" was made available to customers.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

In the lab we have a dual-opteron that has 8GB of ram. It took only 30 minutes to install linux, and I had nothing to do to make it recognize the ram.

Where are the difficulties??

Re:It's apples fault

[reanjr]

Yes, because adding an additional 252 bytes to my 6 MiB song is terrible...

Re:It's apples fault

[reanjr]

Better than average? It's crap. I want to drag my files from Nautilus or Explorer to the iPod drive and go. That's it. Any additional steps are a pain in the ass.

Re:It's apples fault

[reanjr]

How about if I can't stand using iTunes library? I don't want to add files to a library before listening to them on my portable digital music player. Libraries may be useful for incompetent people who can't organize their own files, but for me it's a huge hassle. If I want to find Michael Jackson songs, I can go to the Michael Jackson directory. If I want to play a particular song, I can find it alot quicker by a standard file search than through some backwards library management software that is designed so that idiots can use it.

Re:It's apples fault

[Vokbain]

1. I have a library - it is a directory structure on the disk IN WHATEVER DESIGN I WANT IT TO BE. Perhaps it is just one HUGE directory with a bazillion files in it.
iTunes can do this.

2. The library is generally untouched by the program unless I explicitly ask the program to reorganize it.
iTunes can do this too.

3. The program maintains a database index of the library in whatever format it likes. New files get indexed, if I delete a file it will be configurable as to whether it stays in the library and just gets marked to no longer be indexed, or whether the file gets purged.
iTunes sort of does this. It doesn't automatically read new files added to the folder, and I don't know if it can automatically remove a missing file from it's database.

4. No matter what formats the associated player handles the library stays in its original format. The interface program will convert on the fly as needed, and not keep hundreds of intermediate files around. The interface program will support plugins (preferably standard ones) to convert formats so that new ones can be supported in the future.
iTunes does this too.

5. The player associated with the program will be designed to handle drag-and-drop file transfer - so that I can just maintain it manually if I prefer. Now, I realize that this would probably lose some benefits of the interface program (auto-conversion, some fancy indexing, etc) - but it should be functional.
iTunes doesn't really do this. You can drag and drop whatever you want from within iTunes, but not from the outside.

Re:It's apples fault

[Trumpet of Doom]

Deep? By what standards? All I saw from the sarcasm department was: "...which shurely [sic] they have never done..." and that was it. Perhaps my sarcasm sensors aren't as finely honed as yours, but I kinda doubt that.

Re:It's apples fault

[danheskett]

Wishful thinking my friend.

Your iPOD in aggregate with all it's bretheren has allowed DRM to be imposed across about 90% of the digital music landscape. Your device is laden with it, and your small part of Apple's marketshare enables Apple to keep DRM as an industry standard.

Re:It's apples fault

[The One and Only]

My Mac won't compile my Brainfuck source but you don't see me complaining. If you pick obscure formats for silly ideological reasons, don't complain when the market doesn't cater to your needs.

Re:It's apples fault

[00lmz]

I can't stand to use anything but Winamp! Well, that's not true, but I won't go anywhere near the limited functionality that is iTunes. No ogg vorbis support out of the box, etc.

Running windows as administrator? Or have they fixed that bug already? I now use foobar2000 as a normal user. It's nice, but I miss AVS...

Re:It's apples fault

[will_die]

That whole apple is making money from selling the iPod not the music has been proven false by people who read the Apple stock report and did not number crunching.
Apple makes its money from iTune sales the iPod sales are nothing compared to the profit from iTunes.

Re:It's apples fault

[iainl]

Wha? So the fact that you _can_ play back DRM tracks makes the device inferior to one that just looks at it and goes "Sorry, no idea what the fuck that is; pass me an mp3" instead?

Let me guess, you're happy that your Linux install isn't 'infected' by the ability to play back HD-DVD, either...

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

If you pick obscure formats for silly ideological reasons, don't complain when the market doesn't cater to your needs.

Ah, but it has. The iPod certainly hasn't, but there are a number of players out there which do support ogg, and as a result they've gotten my business. They also support drag/drop/etc.

Hey - it wasn't my brilliant idea to buy an ipod in the first place - I was just in the unfortunate position of trying to help out a friend...

Re:It's apples fault

[Weedlekin]

"I still have faith in that mankind isn't going to play stupid forever"

We've been consistently stupid about far more important things than Steve Jobs for thousands of years, so I predict with utter confidence that we will continue to do stupid things for the next few thousand. Some examples:

"The slopes of that mountain with smoke coming out of the top are really fertile. Let's build a town there, on top of those burnt roofs sticking out of the rock."

"Anybody who can't see that our king / god / culture is better than theirs is evil."

"Oh look, there's a thunder storm coming. Lucky for us that this tree was nearby to shelter under, because there aren't any others for miles around. Ha ha, look at all those stupid animals lying down in the rain instead of being dry and cosy under this tree like us clever humans..."

"But he had such an honest face!"

"If we do the same thing in exactly the same way enough times, but try a bit harder each time, we will eventually be successful".

"The authorities, from their special safe place that is reserved for those in authority, assure citizens that there is no need to be alarmed."

"I actually (insert task that requires excellent hand-eye coordination, concentration, and temporal awareness) better after a few drinks."

"My mum says you can't get pregnant if you pee / stand on your head / pick petunias afterwards."

"He said that if we gave him all our earthly possessions, we'd be rewarded after we die, because the meek are really favoured, and the only to be totally meek is by having bugger all and doing what you're told."

"It must be true, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to put it in a book / on TV news / in a newspaper"

"Of course there's no evidence. That's how you know it's a real conspiracy!"

"You shouldn't believe everything you hear unless I'm saying it".

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the Zune Marketplace software worked fine with Vista, but they CHOSE to make _the_installer_ abort when it detected anything but XP until they were ready to support it.

Which is what Apple should have done.

Jorgie

Re:It's apples fault

[Weedlekin]

"Apple drove all Microsoft's GUI competitors out of the market (the GEM desktop, among a few others)"

This is a revisionist view of computing history. Although Apple sued both DR and MS for allegedly copying the appearance and feel of MacOS, this was right at the beginning (in the case of GEM before it was even being sold), and both companies (i.e. MS and DR) chose to settle out of court by changing certain things rather than fight, which was a tacit admission to having done precisely what Apple said (GEM in particular was originally a clone of MacOS appearance-wise). If anything, DR got the better deal than MS, because all they had to do was remove the trash can and change the way menus were activated, whereas MS removed overlapping windows, thereby crippling Windows 1.0.

Like Windows (which was also notably unsuccessful at that time) GEM also suffered from two major technical limitations that were inherent in IBM PCs and clones at the time: (1) few had enough RAM to run it, and even those with the money for a full complement of 640K didn't have a whole lot available for programs once GEM had loaded; and (2) the period's graphics hardware, if indeed such was present, wasn't usually up to running a serious GUI resolution-wise, and even if it had been, the fact that it wasn't hardware accelerated meant that the feeble 4.77MHz 8088 that most PCs had was doing all the drawing. Contrast this with the Atari ST 520, with its 8MHz 68000 CPU, 512MB RAM, high-resolution bit-mapped display and included mouse (very few PC clones came with mice at that time), and it isn't hard to see why GEM had a lot more success on that system than was the case with the IBM PC.

Note though that, even without the technical limitations, GEM on IBM PCs and clones would still have failed because Digital Research's marketing for it was (typically for them) so weak that it was obvious even to the programmers who were working on it(!!!), all of whom fled for greener pastures some time before DR finally decided to can the project. It did however continue on the Atari ST (the ST version was maintained and improved by an entirely different team within Atari itself) for several years until a series of marketing snafus killed that system, and Atari with it.

Re:It's apples fault

[nostriluu]

You probably have an established, server class system. I was using a desktop board, which claimed to support up to 8 GB but really doesn't. As more memory becomes more common, this kind of issue should go away.

Re:It's apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, your player doesn't support OGG audio files, so you create a collection of files your player *does* support. You then sync said collection across to your player. Then you delete those files and *again* sync your player with your collection.

I don't think the problem is your player. It did *exactly* what you told it to do each time. You synced your library with your player. It can hardly be the fault of your player that you *deleted* your library before the second sync.

I'll join you in wishing that the iPod supported OGG formats, but that doesn't make your scenario a good example of iTunes not managing a music library better than you can do manually. After all, you *deleted* your music library when you didn't want it to disappear.

Re:It's apples fault

[falcon5768]

Listen I know its fun to have this whole revisionist history of the DRM battles going around the net, but people forget iTunes was the first to sell MAJOR LABEL music on the net. When they did this the Napster battle had yet to come out of trial. Those labels didnt want ANYTHING on the net that wasnt protected. Apple showed them how futile it was but was still made to have DRM on their music through contracts.

There is a lot that is different about net and the labels outlooks on music on the web that didnt exist then. Dislike iTunes DRM all you want but there IS a reason why it was on there and why its locked how it is and why it hasnt been removed due to the contracts signed at the time. Im sure when the contracts are up for renewal in 2 years, things will change.

Re:It's apples fault

[default luser]

Yes, I have heard of Rockbox and Linux for iPod (Q: can you do a simple drag/drop with those?), but have been too busy using the gadget to have time to mess with its operating system.

Yes, unfortunately little seems to be known about the full capabilities of Rockbox, mainly because few people use it. I found the feature-list enticing, but ultimately the lack of first-hand feedback turned me off.

Instead, I picked up a Sansa e280, which has drag-and-drop auto-databasing built into the player, and I couldn't be happier. It's certainly slower than building the database on the PC (takes a few minutes), but since I typically update the tracks once a month, that's not a problem. Once the database is updated, it boots in 10 seconds.

It's nice not to have to muck around with proprietary music managers - the player does it all. I woulld hope Rockbox delivers a comparable experience.

Re:It's apples fault

[default luser]

Honey, if you intended to curse, then curse. It's not like the world will end if you throw around a few fucks and shits.

Anyways, it's not as if you removed the intent from the text, so in-effect you're still cursing.

EDITING REMOVED:

The goddamned APIs are certainly neither fucking stable nor fucking documented. Every time Microsoft came out with a new release, it would be fun, fun, fun times while we tried to figure out what had fucking changed, and why the programming documentation didn't fucking mention it. Many of the APIs that we want to use don't fucking work the way any self respecting programmer would fucking expect.

I'm guessing that's pretty close to the original.

Re:It's apples fault

[wkcole]

That whole apple is making money from selling the iPod not the music has been proven false by people who read the Apple stock report and did not number crunching. Apple makes its money from iTune sales the iPod sales are nothing compared to the profit from iTunes.

Utter bullshit. I can tell from your writing that English is not your first language (or even really your second) but that doesn't mean you have to tell lies in it.

Apple's total revenue last quarter was over $7B, which is more than the iTMS revenue for its entire history. The hardware is still high-margin (Apple routinely beats 25% gross margin overall) and iTMS margin low enough that in the current 10-Q Apple warns that gross margin could pbe pulled down by increased iTMS sales. Total iTMS sales for the past year were a bit over 1B songs after mtaking 3 years to hit the firrst billion, and the labels take all but a few pennies on each sale. Meanwhile they sold 21M ipods just last quarter, with an average price around $200 with that sweet 31% gross margin reported in their 10-Q. Anyone who cares about that question really should read the actual earnings report and do the real math, not just assume that any post on /. is truthful.

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0]

So, how do I keep adding files to the player over time, without keeping TWO copies of my library? Why do I need to keep files on my hard drive just so that they can exist in the player?

The problem is that there is NO way to accomplish this with itunes. It isn't even an option. I'm fine with it having a default behavior that I don't happen to like - but I should be able to copy files onto the player without having to waste space on them on a computer when they're not in my preferred format...

Re:It's apples fault

[overbom]

does anyone else just stop reading whenever there is a comment about how iTunes/etc sucks, and they hit the word "ogg"?

I should but I always end up reading it through, in case they say something about FLAC too. Part of me wonders what makes ogg worth the trouble -- I've never used it.

Re:It's apples fault

[stefanlasiewski]

My thoughts exactly-- If I pay $300 for a device, it should not lock me in to a proprietary interface.

If the iPod was offered as a USB Mass Storage Device, I could use Windows Explorer or the Linux Commandline, I won't be locked into their product line --- heck, Apple's competitors could create a user-friendly interface, so that I could easily download songs from Apple's competitors as well. The Competition will be good for consumers!

But then, will Apple drive everyone to their Tunes Music Store if my iPod interfaces with the Competition as well? Shocking!

Who to blame?

[falsified]

Hell, I don't know. How are we supposed to know that? And more to the point, does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway? Bunch of dorks.

Re:Who to blame?

[LiquidCoooled]

I never used to either.
Then one day my massive 256mb memory stick became corrupt because it hadn't finished copying.

I now do it with every storage type device I use and I haven't had a problem since.

Re:Who to blame?

[ScrewMaster]

Win2K had write-caching (lazy writes) on by default, consequently you needed to use the "Safely Remove" option to flush any open file buffers to disk. XP has write-caching OFF by default, so it isn't quite so necessary: just make sure your access LED stops flickering before you yank your stick out.

Re:Who to blame?

[kailoran]

I once pulled a USB stick out of the (front) port and my integrated network card stopped working. I shit you not. It was dead even after a reboot, but a hard power-off for a few second made it work again. No idea how that sort of thing is even possible.

Re:Who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, do I ever ensure the block cache has been flushed back to the device and the filesystem marked clean before I yank the device out of the machine? Er, yeah. If I didn't want to actually write the data to the thing in the first place I wouldn't have plugged it in.

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

and customers could corrupt their iPod unless they eject it from Windows using iTunes.

It's like ejecting a floppy on a Mac or *NIX except there is another layer of software that has to properly write to the device to close it. Windows has no idea that iTunes has not finished and using Windows to eject hardware will close the device without all the updates from iTunes. I suprised that is any diffrent from XP or 2K.

does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway?

You may get by most of the time if you don't have any applications such as a file browser open and was writing files that might be cached and not written. For example having a bunch of MP3's on a flash drive and unplugging it is not a problem most of the time. If you were writing new files and updating some files, such as a spreadsheet, may corrupt it if you don't close the application and use the eject option. Cached data might not all get written.

I don't understand why this is just an issue with iTunes and Vista. Maybe iTunes hooks into Safely Remove Hardware, and closes out writes before letting Windows confirm it's safe to remove the device. This is probably what's broken in Vista.

Re:Who to blame?

[Emetophobe]

And more to the point, does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway?

I do on any removable usb device. You can cause data corruption if you remove the device during a read/write. I didn't used to bother, but then one day my ipod got corrupted...

Re:Who to blame?

[AvitarX]

I don't think that's true.

It has caching off by default for devices that show up in the removable media section (flash-drives) but on for things that show up in the Hard Disk Drives section (USB Hard-drives).

I have had stuff "corrupt" on a few occasions, but chkdisk fixed it every time.

Re:Who to blame?

[Albanach]

Seriously though, Apple have full control over the ipod hardware and software. They really should have designed the iPod such that if, for whatever reason, the USB cable is unplugged while writing to disk, the operation is reverted and the iPod keeps working.

It's either laziness or, more likely, cost cutting that makes the iPod is so fragile. After all, Apple did design the new laptops with magnetic clips for the power cable - presumably because they get tripped over, knocked out etc.

Re:Who to blame?

[Joe The Dragon]

That sounds like a electrical problem not a software one.

Re:Who to blame?

[FiloEleven]

If I didn't want to actually write the data to the thing in the first place I wouldn't have plugged it in.

Exactly...so when the progress bar for copying data to the drive disappears, it should mean that the device is ready to be safely removed. Any other behavior is sneaky and unhelpful. If I plug something in and it "just works," it is reasonable to assume that I should be able to unplug it just as easily. Having a little taskbar button that you must right-click, select "safeley remove hardware," run through two or three dialogs, and then pull the drive out is incredibly counterintuitive.

Re:Who to blame?

[BeerCat]

Maybe, just maybe, it's a bit of both - MS would love to kill the iPod, while Apple would love to undermine Vista enough for people to consider switching (and let them use their existing XP under Boot Camp).

So, I think we are seeing a bit of brinksmanship from both sides - the one who admits first that their product is the one at fault loses mindshare.

Re:Who to blame?

[limecat4eva]

Word is Apple's cooking up a solution for that:
AppleInsider | Apple working on hot unpluggable iPods

The surprising thing to me is that it took so long for this to happen. What's the use of plug-and-play devices if you still have to manually dismount them before you go?

Re:Who to blame?

[Tim C]

does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway?

Yeah, I do. I prefer Windows to finish writing to the device before I yank it out of the socket.

Re:Who to blame?

[vally_manea]

I think the strategy has changed, at least in XP/2003/Vista, all the removable USB devices now are set by default to Optimize for Fast Removal.
And I don't know if you noticed but even if you have a long forgotten directory handle for the device it will not allow you to "Safely Remove" so it's quite improbable for Windows to mess things up when using Safely...

Re:Who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bought my wife an iPod last December. Five hours and a crash of iTunes during a song upload on a (spyware and virus free) XP system later the crashPod was stuck in an endless reboot cycle ... no way to turn it off, no way to even get into diagnostics ... got it exchanged but no way am I paying the Apple tax on my next laptop. I can get shoddy engineering for cheaper in the MS camp ...

Re:Who to blame?

[Nimey]

just make sure your access LED stops flickering before you yank your stick out.

I have nothing to add.

Re:Who to blame?

[hoggoth]

That reminds me of the good old days playing Castle Wolfenstein (1, not 3D) on my Apple II.
I played with one finger hooked under the floppy drive door. If Shultz popped up and shot me I could flip the drive open faster than it would write my death to the drive. Nowadays of course most games let you save your state and don't remove your saves if you get killed.

Re:Who to blame?

[koreaman]

Nobody was ever disputing its intuitiveness until you came along. They were talking about whether it should be done or not.

Re:Who to blame?

[markh1967]

I can't comment on whether safely removing USB drives is worth doing on Apple computers but it's certainly worth doing on Windows PCs.

There seems to be a problem with ntbackup (Windows backup utility) and unsafe removal of USB pen drives. Even though I haven't been able to find anything online about this problem, I've seen it too many times - dozens at least, maybe hundreds by now.

When USB drives are inserted they are listed as devices in the removable storage pools and unsafe removal of them doesn't remove them from the pools; they are just flagged as not working. For some unknown reason, ntbackup then refuses to mount any tapes until they are deleted from the media pools. Ntbackup doesn't even produce it log of the error; the log is created but is blank. Running ntbackup manually shows that it tries to mount the tape but then exits with no warning. After removing the USB device from the media pools it then works with no other changes.

Anyway, improper removal of USB devices does have a bad effect on Windows even if it may not be immediately apparent.

Re:Who to blame?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway? Bunch of dorks.

man umount

nuff said

Re:Who to blame?

[neoform]

Write Caching is only off by default in XP on USB drives, not internal drives.

Re:Who to blame?

[JoelMeow]

Do you have a reference for this? This would be a great bit of time-saving information, but you'll pardon me if I don't go entirely on the word of a random slashdot post.

Thanks.

Re:Who to blame?

[Malc]

If iTunes has a file open, Safely Remove Hardware refuses to eject the device and tells you that it is busy. Viewing a folder in Explorer or changing the current working directory in a cmd prompt to one on a removable device will result in Windows thinking it is busy. Maybe iTunes isn't holding files open - perhaps it should.

Re:Who to blame?

[TheRaven64]

The correct way, from a UI perspective, of implementing this would be for the OS to notice that the device had been removed with some writes not committed, and pop up a warning saying that the device needed to be re-connected or data corruption could result. Once the device was re-connected, the buffers could be flushed, and the warning changed to 'it is now safe to remove the device,' which would go away when you actually did remove it. Never ask the user to confirm, always let them undo.

Re:Who to blame?

[TheRaven64]

They do on OS X. My iPod uses journalled HFS+, so partial writes are just reverted. iPods tied to Windows boxes, however, use FAT32 so that the Windows user can use it as a generic mass storage device. If Windows supported a better filesystem for which the specification was publicly available, then the iPod could use that.

Re:Who to blame?

[iluvcapra]

They really should have designed the iPod such that if, for whatever reason, the USB cable is unplugged while writing to disk, the operation is reverted and the iPod keeps working

An iPod is a hard drive, as far as an operating system is concerned. File copying is an operation of the operating system. It is up to the operating system to detect a fault and recover.

An iPod or Ipod-like device could be made in such a way that it's a special peripheral, not a mass storage device, and thus you'd need a special client to talk to it, and it could handle such things more gracefully, but that would make the iPod much more complicated and less useful.

Re:Who to blame?

[JKConsult]

Now, I might be remembering Castle Wolfenstein's controls wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember using two hands on the keyboard. So perhaps Shultz wouldn't have been killing you so much if you hadn't wasted a hand on the drive? :)

Re:Who to blame?

[theshowmecanuck]

Thank you.

Re:Who to blame?

[cnettel]

Part of the problem is the internal cache in the disks. If you yank the USB HD out (not your common stick), the OS has hard time knowing how much of the data was actually written. Trying to resume could (at least theoretically) trash the FS up even more, as there would be a gap in what would otherwise be part of a perfectly fine journaling FS.

Re:Who to blame?

[dangitman]

What's the use of plug-and-play devices if you still have to manually dismount them before you go?

Yeah, it's so onerous to click a little "eject" icon. It takes whole fractions of a second! This clearly makes plug-n-play useless.

I say we go back to SCSI for our thumbdrives and portable external HDs. After all, you only have to power down your system, set the correct SCSI ID numbers, make sure the SCSI chain is terminated correctly, and then reboot your system.

Re:Who to blame?

[limecat4eva]

No doubt we've come a long way since SCSI. Still, it's inconvenient to have to hit Eject before you unplug. You mounted the thing by plugging it in; shouldn't you unmount it by unplugging it?

Anything else would be, just... un-Apple.

Re:Who to blame?

[neoform]

This just comes from having 8 hard drives on my XP machine.. I always turn off write chaching and it bothers me that it's enabled by default on my non USB drives..

Re:Who to blame?

[dangitman]

You put a floppy or CD into the drive by pushing it in. I guess you should remove it by pulling it out. And I don't mean using a physical eject button, I mean actually yanking the disc out of the drive directly.

Actually, the Apple way would be to throw the disk icon in the trash. It's always been an Apple thing to prevent inadvertently removing a mounted volume. It's actually more of a Windows/DOS thing to allow you to physically remove a volume without making sure it is unmounted.

Re:Who to blame?

[limecat4eva]

The Apple way would be to spit out the USB connection when you drag the icon to the Trash. Failing that, just make sure it's unmounted when you physically remove the drive—which is something PCs never did, as far as I know.

Re:Who to blame?

[jbrader]

Most US Navy ships have at least one gun known as the CIWS on board. It's a large gatling-style machine gun with its own radar system mounted above the barrels. The whole thing can swivel in either direction and pivot up and down, its purpose it to shoot down incoming missiles. Inside the radar dome is an electric heater for use in cold environments (to keep ice and snow from borking the radar). A friend of mine in the Navy was a technician who worked on these things and one of them on his boat started malfunctioning and would only rotate in one direction. he and the other guys who worked on it spent days trying to fix it but nothing worked so they finally called in one of the engineers who designed. He replaced the heater and it worked. This was in San Diego so the heater was not being used. Just some kind of weird electrical problem. Complicated electronics can be awfully weird sometimes.

Re:Who to blame?

[ozbird]

If Shultz popped up and shot me I could flip the drive open faster than it would write my death to the drive.

Ditto for Wizardry; once I saw that my party was being slaughtered, I flipped open the drive and rebooted; the party was listed as "out" (in the maze), but there's a utility to reset them to normal.

Re:Who to blame?

[bryan1945]

People have gotten Vista beta 2 to work on boot camp. Also there is talk that Leopard will include boot camp and will run release version of Vista.

Re:Who to blame?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

My iPod uses journalled HFS+, so partial writes are just reverted. iPods tied to Windows boxes, however, use FAT32 so that the Windows user can use it as a generic mass storage device.

Also: iPods start out life with HFS+ and reformat themselves as FAT32 the first time you plug them into a PC. Then there's no way back short of wiping and reinstalling them.

Or at least that's the story I got from the documentation a few months back when our company celebrated a good quarter by giving us all iPods. Which they had preloaded with a little video promo about the company's quarter. Which their vender had loaded into them using PCs. Converting them all to FAT32. B-(

Which turned out to be not all that bad a deal, since the iPod tools avaliable for Linux needed them preconverted to FAT32. B-)(

Re:Who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway? You may get by most of the time if you don't have any applications such as a file browser open and was writing files that might be cached and not written. Why doesn't iTunes write to a second database file, and then after finishing switch the names and delete the original?

It's pretty lame that it can so easily corrupt the data on your iPod.

Either way, from my own experience, the only times I lost my music DB was when disconnecting from a Mac without ejecting first. On Windows, I've never had a problem just pulling out the cable.

Re:Who to blame?

[Darby]

Do you have a reference for this? This would be a great bit of time-saving information, but you'll pardon me if I don't go entirely on the word of a random slashdot post.

Thanks.

Oh come on now. What could possibly go wrong?

By the way, did you know you can water your lawn with used motor oil?

Re:Who to blame?

[kminchau]

... So you are saying that instead of formatting as FAT32, it should be formatted as NTFS...?

Re:Who to blame?

[allgood2]

I think this Technician comment may only be part of the issue. Earlier this week, I was reading about Vista licensing and what is and isn't available to home versus professional users. While, I do not have a full version of the home user EULA, one statement in the professional users EULA stuck with me.

We advise against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption."

While, the statement was hidden under the Virtualization Technologies section, it did give me pause about how the Vista will handle DRMs other than Microsoft. If the system rewrites permissions, limits access, or re-encrypts other DRMs than this would not only be an issue with Apple, but other venders. Though admittedly, Apple is the largest third party vender, not licensing Microsoft's DRM.

Re:Who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather see them formatted to XFS and have Apple distributing an IFS-based driver for that.

Re:Who to blame?

[vakuona]

A journalling FS like Fat32.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

Five hours and a crash of iTunes during a song upload on a (spyware and virus free) XP system later the crashPod was stuck in an endless reboot cycle ... no way to turn it off, no way to even get into diagnostics .

It looks like a good time to pick on DRM and computer Lock-in sync software. I picked up a Coby MP3 player. It attaches as a USB drive. It also has a card slot (SD). Since the player is only 512 meg, most of the time I transfer tunes and lectures to a card using the built in reader in the PC. It has the advantages of no need to carry cables and a PC crash doesn't kill the device.

Needless to say, it does not support DRM in any format so iTunes, Zune, and Plays for Sure are all incompatible with it. The advantage is I can add songs and lectures from work and home. There is no problems with single computer associations and authorizations. I can also transfer files off the device. These features were more important to me than an online store compatibility. A couple other nice features are the ability to record off the radio and mic. The resulting MP3 files can be saved to a computer. No special association software is required. It is compatible with any PC with a USB port including Mac, Linux and Windows.

Where were the MS team when they did a usability study? Have you seen the very long list of requirements just to use the online Zune store? It's a Rube Goldberg chain of complexity, any step which can break it. It's already broken on Vists. Got a Passport account?, got a Credit Card?, Have you bought Zune Points?, Are you using a Windows PC?,

I prefer ripping CD's and just dragging a few MP3's to where I want them.

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

An iPod is a hard drive, as far as an operating system is concerned.

If that were true, you could just use any drag and drop interface. With DRM, it is much more than what it appears. When the Sync gets messed up, it can and does hose the iPod. This is not a simple format the hard drive and re-copy files back fix. The iPod has it's own OS. Messing that up screws up the ability to attach the iPod as an external USB drive.

I suspect the same is true for almost all other DRM media players in both flash and hard drive forms.

Re:Who to blame?

[Albanach]

An iPod is a hard drive, as far as an operating system is concerned. File copying is an operation of the operating system. It is up to the operating system to detect a fault and recover.

But the iPod is a removable device - the device itself therefore should deal gracefully with being removed even under non optimal conditions. Whether that means using NTFS, or another filesystem altogether I'm not sure - I'm not the hardware developer. I'm pretty sure that use of the iPod as a file storage tool is limited to a tiny percentage of Apple's customers though - if a sample of folk I know is anything to go by, probably more customers have lost data due to their iPod being unplugged than use it as a data storage device.

Apple could always have used another filesystem with a tiy fat32 partition to store windows drivers if they really wanted it to be accessible as a filesystem too.

And though the apple fanboys have modded my original post down, I'm not anti apple. I've bought an iPod a Mac Mini and a MacBook in the past twelve months. Not being anti apple does not, much as some would like to think, remove my right to criticise design decisions where there are faults.

Re:Who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason they couldn't do this on FAT32 too. Write the DB to a new file, and then rename them and delete the original when done.

HFS+ on a removable USB device is just dumb anyway.

Re:Who to blame?

[Derek Pomery]

You sure about that Linux thing?
Linux kernel has support for mounting HFS+...

Re:Who to blame?

[mgiuca]

Haha, great story.

It reminds me of a thing I used to do a little more recently with Diablo II. The game would only write updates to your character file every 5 minutes. So whenever I died, I would immediately alt+tab, make a copy of my character file, and quit the game. Then I'd copy my backup over the newly-flushed (dead) character file, to revert to a version pre-death.

Actually I had a massive folder of all my character versions dating way back .... of course if I was playing it nowadays I'd put them all under revision control :)

Re:Who to blame?

[Lehk228]

i have personally witnessed not 1, not 2, but 3 windows machines shit all over their boot partition to the point where it needed to be wiped and reinstalled in response to a USB device (keyboards and memory sticks) being removed or added during startup or shutdown.

Re:Who to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have nothing to add."

Well, I do. If you use a real OS, you can unmount the stick and you don't have to stare at LEDs to guess when you can yank the stick out: the OS will let you know.

Re:Who to blame?

[psiclops]

you can just left click, then click on the drive you want to remove. saves all the dialog crap.

Re:Who to blame?

[MtViewGuy]

I blame the mess on Apple.

The reason is simple: the final Windows Vista code was released to manufacturing way back in middle November 2006, and Apple should have gotten a hand on the final code back then to test and revise the iTunes software so they could have released on January 30, 2007 a new version of iTunes 7.0 that does work correctly with Vista.

Re:Who to blame?

[TogusaS9]

Maybe iTunes hooks into Safely Remove Hardware, and closes out writes before letting Windows confirm it's safe to remove the device. This is probably what's broken in Vista.

Maybe not. According to Apple's iPod and iTunes documentation, Apple recommends using the Eject iPod command in iTunes before using the Safely Remove Hardware command in the Windows System Tray. They strongly emphasize doing the same (among other things) in their technical bulletin regarding the iTunes/Vista issue. This suggests to me that iTunes doesn't hook into the Safely Remove Hardware command at all.

I updated my iPod yesterday using the latest version of iTunes running under Vista Ultimate, following Apple's instructions in the tech bulletin to the letter (including activating Disk Mode on my iPod). My iPod came through the entire process -- which included a much-needed iPod software upgrade and a complete restore of my iTunes library -- safely.

Maybe this problem isn't so much an Apple issue or a Microsoft issue, but a PEBCAK issue. ;)

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

which included a much-needed iPod software upgrade and a complete restore of my iTunes library -- safely.

That is the core problem with DRM formats. They are designed to break when copied or moved. When it is required to relocate them, you are flying with no solid backups in case anything goes wrong.

For the time being, I's still sticking with MP3's simply because they can be backed up anywhere and restored to anything without fuss. The only downer is it locks me out of most online music stores as they are all incompatible with my data security and hardware. Almost all DVD players and many car stereos will play MP3 CD's. Almost all portable music players will play MP3's. Almost none of the online music stores sell MP3's. Something is wrong with this picture.

Where is all the good music in MP3 format for all my hardware? I know, archived on my hard drive...

The market is split between the Apple format and everything else which plays MP3's.

Re:Who to blame?

[hoggoth]

> Now, I might be remembering Castle Wolfenstein's controls wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember using two hands on the keyboard. So perhaps Shultz wouldn't have been killing you so much if you hadn't wasted a hand on the drive? :)

I'm tempted to say I played Castle Wolfenstein with one hand for other reasons, but I can't come up with any explanation that doesn't make me sound really creepy and perverted.

Re:Who to blame?

[Weedlekin]

"Needless to say, it does not support DRM in any format so iTunes, Zune, and Plays for Sure are all incompatible with it"

Whereas with any player that does support DRM, only two out of those three would be incompatible...

Re:Who to blame?

[bitingduck]

That reminds me of an inadvertant experiment I once did writing a large file to floppy on my Apple II and then printing it out. It printed about the same speed as it wrote to disk...

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

Whereas with any player that does support DRM, only two out of those three would be incompatible...

This is why some contries are threatening single vendor player/store solutions to make their store and players play fair with competing players and sources of content.

You can't buy a player which will play iTunes tracks and Yahoo music's unlimited monthly subscription library.

Re:Who to blame?

[Weedlekin]

"This is why some contries are threatening single vendor player/store solutions to make their store and players play fair with competing players and sources of content."

IMO Microsoft will be watching what happens to Apple in Europe before releasing their Zune there, because any countries who show a willingness to play hardball with the iTunes store will probably be even more harsh on a US-style policy for the Zune, because they'll regard it as an attempt to use the Windows monopoly to establish another monopoly in a different market, which is illegal in the EU.

"You can't buy a player which will play iTunes tracks and Yahoo music's unlimited monthly subscription library"

It isn't the players that are the problem, but the software that manages them. I thus reckon that an easy way around Apple's mounting European problems would be for them to license Windows Media DRM for their iTunes program only so that people could drag files on to it just as they can with non-DRM Windows Media now, and have them converted to FairPlay-encoded AAC files for uploading to an iPod. This would in all probability satisfy most European governments _and_ the recording industry while allowing Apple to maintain their iPod lock-in because the conversion would only go in one direction. IMO they'd sell even more iPods if they did this, because they'd then have the only player on the market capable of using the two dominant DRM formats.

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

I thus reckon that an easy way around Apple's mounting European problems would be for them to license Windows Media DRM for their iTunes program only so that people could drag files on to it just as they can with non-DRM Windows Media now, and have them converted to FairPlay-encoded AAC

Do you think MS would permit changing DRM formats. This is a format war. If MS would license the format to Apple it would be required to be suported in the hardware so an Apple iPod would have to connect to a Windows PC and use the Windows DRM client Media Player. This is something Apple would not permit, so we are in a DRM format standoff.

Re:Who to blame?

[Weedlekin]

"Do you think MS would permit changing DRM formats. This is a format war."

It is indeed, but any refusal by MS would be tantamount to playing into Apple's hands, because (a) they could use it to show national and EC legislators that their non-support of other DRM formats wasn't a matter of choice ("we tried, but nasty old MS wouldn't let us"), and (b) it would divert legal attention away from Apple and towards Microsoft, who the EC has already been bashing for anti-competitive behaviour.

"If MS would license the format to Apple it would be required to be suported in the hardware so an Apple iPod would have to connect to a Windows PC and use the Windows DRM client Media Player."

Which would again provide Apple with a very effective argument with European legal bodies, who have already ruled that Media Player was an illegal attempt at using Microsoft's Windows monopoly to dominate another market, and ordered them to produce an OEM version of Windows that didn't include it.

"This is something Apple would not permit, so we are in a DRM format standoff."

But one where Apple holds all the cards. If MS are willing to license their DRM on Apple's terms (i.e. the ones I described previously), then Apple will have the only player capable of using the two dominant DRM formats, and therefore get to sell more iPods while at the same time removing most of the grounds for reasonable European criticisms; an MS refusal on the other hand also gives Apple a very effective "out" with the Europeans without having to change anything about their store, player, or software, and has the added bonus of turning the Sauron-like gaze of the European Commission back towards Microsoft on the eve of their planned European Zune launch.

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician]

It is indeed, but any refusal by MS would be tantamount to playing into Apple's hands, because (a) they could use it to show national and EC legislators that their non-support of other DRM formats wasn't a matter of choice ("we tried, but nasty old MS wouldn't let us"), and (b) it would divert legal attention away from Apple and towards Microsoft, who the EC has already been bashing for anti-competitive behaviour.

I don't think MS is permitted to enable converting formats to export into iTunes. MS format supports subscriptions. iTunes does not. Converting and making it drag and drop will break the you don't continue to subscribe, your tunes break. On this point, MS won't or can't permit converting to another format that does not support the subscription model and they may argue that in court and blame Apple for not putting it in their hardware.

Maybe in this mess MS and Apple can find a cross license deal where Plays for Sure hardware will work with iTunes and iPods will work with Windows Media Player subscriptions.

Since Apple has the aces in this hand, I doubt they can reach an agreement.

Re:Who to blame?

[Weedlekin]

"I don't think MS is permitted to enable converting formats to export into iTunes. MS format supports subscriptions. iTunes does not. Converting and making it drag and drop will break the you don't continue to subscribe, your tunes break."

The solution is a simple one: refuse to convert stuff people don't own outright. As a licensee, Apple would have access to the relevant SDKs, and could thus easily detect and reject subscription files, which is essentially what some of the older players do (you can put subscription files on them, but they won't play!).

"On this point, MS won't or can't permit converting to another format that does not support the subscription model and they may argue that in court and blame Apple for not putting it in their hardware."

The point would however be moot if Apple don't convert such files, because iPods would not be able to play them.

Interesting...

[alshithead]

At least they must have some clue about fixes for the issues. It looks like they have a pretty good idea of where Vista breaks iTunes

Now, let me climb into my tinfoil bunker...

The evil that is Microsoft has intentionally released Vista just to break iTunes and promote their own music player!

Re:Interesting...

[Kemeno]

...except Microsoft's own music player doesn't work with Vista either.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the Zune doesn't work with Vista either. Or didn't.

Maybe the GUI sucks so many CPU cycles there's not enough left over to play music.

Re:Interesting...

[Shippy]

Uh, yes it does: From http://www.zune.net/en-us/support/howto/start/oper atingsystems.htm:

Zune(TM) software is compatible with the following operating systems:

• Windows® XP Home, Professional, and Tablet PC Edition Service Pack 2
• Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2
• Windows Vista

You must be referring to when Vista was still in Beta. It was not supported at that time and likely for good reasons.

Re:Interesting...

[mhmehkri]

A Vista compatible version of zune software was released http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2006/12/19/zune-com patible-with-vista-today.aspx in mid december.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

ACtually no this was the RTM vista, now they have patched the Zune software to run on Vista.

This is a good example of this company's internal red tape and the left arm not knowing what the right arm is doing.

Seriously, Microsoft internally is so disorganised and bloated by managers you wouldnt believe, I know because I WORK THERE EVERY DAY.

Re:Interesting...

[Shippy]

Seriously, Microsoft internally is so disorganised and bloated by managers you wouldnt believe, I know because I WORK THERE EVERY DAY. Me, too. :)

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

It does
I have one
With Vista Ultimate
The ZUNE
I have no regrets

Re:Interesting...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Vista wasn't in beta. It had already gone gold and been released to corporate customers.

Re:Interesting...

[mr_matticus]

And yet Apple is expected to have used the Beta period to make iTunes Vista compatible when Microsoft had "good reason" to wait for Zune? Assuming that's a valid reason, then it's a good thing Apple didn't waste time making it compatible with the beta, either.

Re:Interesting...

[LrdHghFxr]

Well, yes.

The iPod was a released product in the support phase, meaning they should have the resouces to dealing with upgrades and new feastures. Not a product still in development, as the Zune was, devoting resources to getting to launch day.

And the Zune - a consumer product - STILL had Vista support before Vista was released to consumers whereas the iPod still hasn't gotten there.

Re:Interesting...

[mr_matticus]

Zune was finished before 14 November; Vista was still in development at that time--both products were in the support phase. Meanwhile, iPod worked fine through RC2 and didn't break on my machine until RTM/GM.

Zune didn't support Vista until about six weeks ago, and Microsoft makes BOTH of those products...expecting a third party to meet or beat an internal accomplishment is unrealistic.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Zune - a consumer product - STILL had Vista support before Vista was released to consumers whereas the iPod still hasn't gotten there.

Conclusion: Microsoft had access to Vista before Apple did.

Move along, nothing to see

[Indiana Joe]

Windows gets an update, and some stuff breaks. It happens. Kudos to Apple for publishing a workaround.

Re:Move along, nothing to see

[oddaddresstrap]

Aren't workarounds a violation of the Vista EULA?

Re:Move along, nothing to see

[93 Escort Wagon]

"Windows gets an update, and some stuff breaks. It happens. Kudos to Apple for publishing a workaround."

Vista seems to break a lot of software. We're not planning to support it for quite some time; but one of our guys has been running a test box to see what software still works after the upgrade.

But I don't know that it's a big deal. When Apple upgrades their OS, sometimes software stops working too (and I say this as a Mac user). Usually the developers have taken care of compatibility issues ahead of OS releases on the Mac, though. I'm not sure if Apple does a better job than Microsoft in terms of communication with third-party developers, but it sure seems like a lot of vendors weren't ready for Vista.

Suits suits suits.

[GodInHell]

Suits are to blame either way.. for thinking that their job was to tie a software app to one OS or the other.

If it turns out that MS is keeping true to form from past abuses - using its control over the OS to submerge and destroy the oposition (see netscape) then Apple should probably start digging for evidence to back a differnet kind of suit right now. This kind of deliberate destruction of property that just happens to be manufactured by the opposition company (OS v Os, and now MP3 player v. MP3 player) is text-book anti-trust case material.

-GiH

Re:Suits suits suits.

[Khuffie]

Or rather...Apple had the APIs for Vista for a while. Had access to the RTM since October. And didn't bother to fix it.

Re:Suits suits suits.

[GodInHell]

Or rather...Apple had the APIs for Vista for a while. Had access to the RTM since October. And didn't bother to fix it. Yehp, that would be the apple suits.

-GiH

Re:Suits suits suits.

[westlake]

Suits are to blame either way.. for thinking that their job was to tie a software app to one OS or the other.

Fully half of Apple's revenues can be traced bank to the iPod and iTunes.

The suits' job is to see that cash flow contiues interrupted. How much do you think iTunes for Windows is worth to Apple? ---particulary in the world markets where the Mac has a 2% share?

How interesting --- and suggestive ---that Apple gets a pass on the Vista-unready product, but, if it's NVIDIA, the Geek screams lawsuit.

Re:Suits suits suits.

[dangitman]

How interesting --- and suggestive ---that Apple gets a pass on the Vista-unready product, but, if it's NVIDIA, the Geek screams lawsuit.

Huge difference there. Firstly, Apple never advertised iTunes as being Vista-ready. In fact, they stated the opposite. NVidia loudly proclaimed it, as part of their advertising strategy.

But more importantly, in the NVidia thread, people were not so much pissed off that there was a problem with the drivers - but that NVidia was offering no recourse for the customers, and was actually censoring customers and deleting their accounts when they complained about the bug. Apple is not trying to silence people who report a bug with iTunes on Vista, and is dealing with the issue frankly. Meanwhile, NVidia is stonewalling and being arrogant. That's why these two cases get different reactions. If Apple was acting like NVidia, they would rightly be lambasted by slashdot.

oh no

[macadamia_harold]

Apparently, if you try to 'safely remove' your iPod from a Vista-installed PC, there's a chance you may corrupt the little music player.

I shudder to think what would happen if you unsafely remove it. Especially from a Sony laptop.

Re:oh no

[kfg]

I shudder to think what would happen if you unsafely remove it. Especially from a Sony laptop.

You've got 10 seconds to throw it after you pull the pin.

KFG

Re:oh no

[Alsee]

...and you've got 30 seconds to throw if you don't pull the pin.

-

Re:oh no

[RebelWithoutAClue]

You've got 10 seconds to throw it ... The laptop or the iPod ?

Re:oh no

[kfg]

Don't tempt me.

KFG

Apple is spreading FUD

[HP-UX'er]

iTunes works fine on Vista. I've been beta testing Vista since build 5270, and each time I reloaded, iTunes on Vista worked fine for me, and my iPod. Thats my experience, yours may vary ...

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats my experience, yours may vary ...

Wow, you lost a lot of confidence after writing the title. Given how unsure you are as to whether it will work for anyone else, shouldn't you have said "Apple may or may not be spreading FUD, I really don't know"?

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[ZachPruckowski]

Yeah, but if it malfunctions only 1% of the time, that's tens of thousands of pissed-off users.

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[Tony Hoyle]

RTM of Vista has been available to developers since November. Apple would only hurt themselves by saying this now, since they'd be saying they sat on their arses and refused to fix it for 2 months.

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[Zephiria]

I love it.. Why is this guy being moderated as flamebait?
He's just pointing out his experiences with the product in question.
Stupid MS haters and apple fanboys :/

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[QBasicer]

I have had problems with iTunes on Vista. Since I'm dual booting Vista and XP, I don't want my iPod to erase itself and "bond" with Vista. In order to play my music on Vista, I had to manually go in and copy my music over. When I installed iTunes, disk access stopped working, however, when I went to enable it in iTunes, it would freeze up for 30 seconds, and then throw an error at me. Uninstalling iTunes worked.

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this guy being moderated as flamebait?
He's just pointing out his experiences with the product in question. While the post is more moderate, the title is Flamebait and FUD. Apple says that they have a reported (and apparently reproducible) problem with iPods on Vista. They can't guarantee that the iPod will be able to disconnect cleanly. This is not FUD. The fact that this person has not accidentally reproduced the problem (yet), does not make it impossible to reproduce. The plural of anecdote is not data.

FUD is Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. It's what happens when you say things like, Apple could have specially engineered the iPod/iTunes such that they wouldn't work with Vista. Maybe this will happen every week now. Note that there are no absolute statements there. All it is saying is that things could or might happen. That's FUD.

If the poster didn't want to get marked flamebait, then the subject should have been "I haven't had any problems."

Re:Apple is spreading FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's flamebait because there's no way that one users experience that iTunes+Vista is ok, can confirm that iTunes+Vista will work for everyone.

Obviously Apple has found one or more cases where that is not the case. As someone else in this thread pointed out, even if 1% of users are affected, that's still a lot of people.

Furthermore, he directly makes an accusation of FUD, and then at the end says 'YMMV'. So yea, the title is flamebait to get people to reply to his post.

Strange ...

[ta ma de]

The timing of the announcement seems a little convenient.

Re:Strange ...

[jlarocco]

The timing of the announcement seems a little convenient.

How do you mean?

Re:Strange ...

[ta ma de]

Vista is released, and though the beta has been available for some time now, Apple says, "hey don't upgrade - it will break iTunes." I would be surprised if the issue wasn't known to Apple for months now. However, the tech doc was conveniently provided just after Vista's launch. I'm not saying that it was evil -- just a well conceived competitive practice.

Re:Strange ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It should have been provided just before, then, don't you think?

Re:Strange ...

[deadmantyping]

This isn't strange, why would you publish this when the program that breaks it is in BETA still? Windows Vista was officially released and then they saw it was still broken so they released this statement. I don't see anything strange about that. In fact it seems downright logical.

Re:Strange ...

[ta ma de]

why would you publish this when the program that breaks it is in BETA still?

So that the final version would be fixed before it is made final.

Re:Strange ...

[mstone]

Hardly..

The past week has probably seen Vista running in a larger and more diverse selection of real-world configurations than all the beta testing combined. Some quirky little edge case that only crops up a fraction of one percent of the time is suddenly happening often enough to make the pattern visible. These things happen when new products hit the market. It isn't sabotage on either side, it's just a slight mismatch between the old and new configurations.

I dunno..

[benc]

Look, I think Microsoft's products emanate directly from Satan's butthole, just like the rest of you. I also secretly hump the boxes from which my purchased Apple products emerge. However, doesn't it seem like Apple probably had more than enough time to get this working on the beta versions, assuming this isn't some new, last-second bug?

That said, the Zune doesn't even work on Vista yet, as another commenter already pointed out.... Still, I'm inclined to blame Apple on this one.

Re:I dunno..

[lmnfrs]

In this case a 'new' or 'last-second' bug would translate to one that's been around for several months since that's how long the final build of Vista has been available. Taking that into consideration, Apple somehow missed an obvious bug for months, or they are lying through their noses to spread FUD, or it occurs a small percentage of the time or only in uncommon circumstances.
Probably it's the last one.. and (virtually) nobody has anything to worry about. They're just covering themselves to prevent a possible support flood that would hurt them and, in turn, their customers.
Oh and for the record, I hate Apple and think the parent poster is a delusional box abuser. I just happen to think this is the most likely explanation.

Re:I dunno..

[Farmer Tim]

Look, I think Microsoft's products emanate directly from Satan's butthole

They do not! You're seriously over-rating Satan's gastric emissions.

Re:I dunno..

[toleraen]

the Zune doesn't even work on Vista yet

Are you sure?

Re:I dunno..

[gnasher719]

'' In this case a 'new' or 'last-second' bug would translate to one that's been around for several months since that's how long the final build of Vista has been available. Taking that into consideration, Apple somehow missed an obvious bug for months, or they are lying through their noses to spread FUD, or it occurs a small percentage of the time or only in uncommon circumstances. ''

Who says Apple missed it for months? It was probably discovered months ago, duly reported to Microsoft, and Microsoft didn't fix it.

Alternatively, there is this tiny possibility that all beta versions that Apple ever received didn't have the bug. Now that would be nasty, wouldn't it?

Or maybe Apple took the very sensible position that they don't do any beta testing for Microsoft unless they get paid for it - which they aren't.

Re:I dunno..

[twbecker]

Or maybe Apple took the very sensible position that they don't do any beta testing for Microsoft unless they get paid for it - which they aren't.

I'd argue that the sensible course of action would be to make sure that your #1 money making product actually worked on a new operating system that was likely to gain significant market share in a very short time.

Re:I dunno..

[dangitman]

Look, I think Microsoft's products emanate directly from Satan's butthole, just like the rest of you.

Sir, I take offence to your suggestion! I do not come from Satan's butthole. I come from Cthulu's vagina.

Re:I dunno..

[mstone]

Let's assume Apple did know about this issue months ago. The list of problems seems to suggest some kind of mismatch between the iTunes code to sync data with the device and the Vista device i/o code.

If the solution to those problems involves architectural changes.. replacing XP/ME-specific device i/o code with Vista-specific device i/o code.. it makes sense for Apple to wait and release a Vista-specific version shortly after Vista itself goes into public use. it doesn't make sense for them to load a bunch of Vista code into the versions of iTunes that were running on XP or ME just so the program would probably survive the OS upgrade seamlessly.

It also makes sense for Apple to wait a few weeks after Vista goes public before releasing its Vista-specific version of iTunes, just to see if any edge-cases crop up when umpty-zillion users start upgrading upmty-zillion different XP and ME configurations. Give it a couple of weeks to watch the radar for bugs, another two weeks to solve them, and one more for QA testing, and you have a good Vista-specific version of iTunes coming out five weeks after Vista itself hits the shelves of Wal-Mart.

That isn't bad, as far as timing goes. There's always some ramp-up in new product adoption, and Vista is hardly the 'must upgrade as soon as I can get my hands on a copy' product of the 21st century. Even most of the early adopters will still be waiting to upgrade by the time Apple's Vista-specific version of iTunes is released.

IMO, the real story here is that Vista's iPod compatability is a big enough issue to be getting attention at all.

Re:I dunno..

[Lumpy]

Look, I think Microsoft's products emanate directly from Satan's butthole, just like the rest of you.

When did Dick Chaney start working for Microsoft? and how do they pull things of of his rectum?

Re:I dunno..

[Space cowboy]

I don't actually disagree with you, and I think Apple are probably working hard to get the fix out.

However, look at this from a non-techie point of view (ie; Joe Public) - do you think Joe has more emotional attachment to his iPod, or his computer. I'm not sure that's an easy call to make... The computer does a lot more, but to have his iPod corrupted would be a disaster for most Joe's I know...

So, you could invert that logic, and say the Microsoft's sensible course of action would be to make sure their OS works with the music-player that *currently* has ~70-80% of the market...

Just a thought.

Simon

Re:I dunno..

[2nd Post!]

If by "short time" you mean two years, yes Apple will have a fix within a month.

Re:I dunno..

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know the iPod is not advertised as Vista compatible?

Re:I dunno..

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst! I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Ready?

Dick Cheney == Steve Ballmer

Think about it.

You heard it here first!

Perhaps they are trying to keep from being swarmed

[Lotek]

I'm thinking that this is what it looks like: a support bulletin designed to keep them from being overwhelmed by people who fire up their iPods and can't get things to work just right, once they have installed Vista.

It's a new OS, with lots of restrictions that the previous version did not have, so naturally some things probably don't work as well as they should. Also, cranking out new versions for Vista may not have been the biggest priority around Apple, aside from the guys who knew that things were going to get busy there in apple support land.

unlikely microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think about it, how can microsoft release a product without testing its compatibility with one of the most common consumer electronic on the market today, even if it's apple's. Something fishy going on with apple methinks.

Re:Considering their own

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple?

Studios should object to Apple DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Studios should object to Apple's DRM and rewrite their contracts to make APple open FAirplay so that other video players can play their movies. Now, the studios are helping iTunes perpetuate its monopoly .. which in the long term is bad for the studios because iTunes can keep raising their profit margins and the studios will have nowhere else to viably sell their movies.

Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM

[Frequency Domain]

Studios should object to Apple's DRM and rewrite their contracts to make APple open FAirplay so that other video players can play their movies.

You've got it bass ackwards. If you had been paying attention you would remember that Apple couldn't launch iTunes until it had satisfied the studios by adding some form of DRM. Apple still managed to sneak in the work-around that you could burn your own DRM-free CD's. Has any other DRM provider done that?

Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM

[omicronish]

Apple still managed to sneak in the work-around that you could burn your own DRM-free CD's. Has any other DRM provider done that?

You can burn CDs of DRMed music with the Zune software.

Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM

[Frequency Domain]

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I still maintain that Apple, to their credit, did it from the get-go at a time when the recording companies didn't want to sign a contract unless there was DRM.

Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM

[Marcos Eliziario]

Don't be stupid. Studios WANT apple to distribute things with DRM, not the other way around. They don't want open standards, several vendors and shit like that. For apple it's basically the same thing, people don't buy iPods because only iPods play content bought on iTunes, people buy on iTunes because they have iPods. if iTunes sold content that could be played on other players, users of those other players would buy on iTunes, but then, apple would not get content so easily from the studios, because it would not look DRM-safe enough for them. If you want content that works with other devices, go buy it anywhere else but in iTunes. If enough people start buying content at other places, the studios will have a compelling reason to start working with those alternative channels, that is, if they think that those other places are safe enough.

Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM

[mac84]

Yes but how dare Apple create their own DRM. They should have rolled over and paid licensing fees to MS for their DRM. At the same time they should have killed quicktime and abandoned the industry standard .mp4 format and used .wma for the iPod. The nerve of Apple!!! Steve Jobs just doesn't know his place!

Tagged appleduh

[Anonymous Coward]

What could MS have possibly done between RC2 and release to break the iPod?

Apple just didn't do enough testing. Good job finding the bugs, guinea pigs!

Re:Tagged appleduh

[dangitman]

What could MS have possibly done between RC2 and release to break the iPod?

Added more kittens?

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Glonoinha]

Actually - I wonder if the iPod will be the 'Vista killer'.

Let's be real. A zillion people have iPods and run XP. Tell any of them that not only will Vista cost them an arm and a leg (need new hardware + new OS), it may have problems with their iPod and more imporantly may fuxor their iPod when they connect / disconnect it - and how many are going to be rushing out to upgrade?

Aero / glass is nice, but not nice enough to risk fuxor'ing my iPod over.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[The Dobber]

Couldn't afford either, huh?

Re:Tagged appleduh

[diersing]

Personally, we had discussed a new Vista PC with an expected tax return. With the W2s now delivered, I would suspect there is many in a similar situation. I had a Dell all saved up in the cart, and I for one will pause. If the Apple MacBook Pro where to suddenly go on sale...

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that those zillion iPod owners are stupid enough to believe that this is Microsoft's fault and not Apple's fault?

Re:Tagged appleduh

[blagooly]

Glonoinha said "iPod will be the 'Vista killer' This could prove correct if drawn out for some time, at least for a percentage point or two in converts to OSX by pissed of iPodders. Blaming big bad evil microsoft for the entire thing would be as bonus. I cannot see microsoft risking Vista to try and move Zunes, given as mentioned above the number of iPod fans out there. So if it is intentional, it is most likely Apple's work.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[walter_f]

Tell any of them that not only will Vista cost them an arm and a leg (need new hardware + new OS), it may have problems with their iPod and more imporantly may fuxor their iPod when they connect / disconnect it - and how many are going to be rushing out to upgrade?

This would be the message Apple would have to communicate to these zillions of "Vista plus iTunes/iPod" users in the next few months.

On the other hand, Microsoft will try to tell these people a different story, the MS version, blaming Apple.

So it's all about who, MS or Apple, will be able to reach those people better and add more pieces of propaganda to the end users' _perceived_ reality regarding who's at fault here.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Shads]

You know, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft is at fault here.

I mean, its obvious they wanted to create an iPod killer with the Zune... when they failed they decided to make Vista the iPod killer... albeit in a different way.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[sgt_doom]

Forgive a former M$ (Redmond campus) contractor's learned pessimism, but what version of Windows OS DID NOT contain code to disrupt some, or any (especially the Apple guys), competitors' apps???? Hullo???

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Falladir]

I doubt anyone will migrate to Mac over this, but this will certainly cause a lot of people to stay with XP for a while.

There might be more damage to Vista in terms of negative feedback than in terms of people making an informed decision not to upgrade. I know a lot of iPod users who won't be aware of this warning.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Neoprofin]

Assuming Apple never fixed this, which is unlikely, which is more likely: 1) The next time they buy a new computer everyone who owns an ipod will buy a Mac, because their new computer would come with Vista 2) Everyone who buys a new computer would replace their old MP3 player with a compatible one, having not known about this problem beforehand and being unwilling to send back their new computer My money would be on the latter, it assumes the least amount of knowledge and thought from the consumer, as well as being the less costly plan. Of course apple is going to fix the issue, because either scenario is stressful to the general populace of computer users.

I wouldn't worry about fuxoring your iPod either. If you're like most people (myself excluded, still rolling along with a 15GB third gen with absimal battery life) you're probably on your third iPod by now anyway. Of the twenty or so people I know with iPods, Mac and PC users alike, I'm the only one who hasn't had to rebuy because of burnt out batteries, faulty hard-drives, fauly screens etc etc.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[reason]

Definitely applies to me. I bought my XP machine mainly to support my iPod - otherwise, I'd have been content to stick with my clunky old machine for another few years. I went with Windows rather than a Mac because it was compatible with my machine at work and with the games I had, but my first criterion was iPod compatibility.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[pete6677]

I agree. Vista will be dead soon. Hell, the Zune isn't even Vista-compatible. How stupid can Microsoft be? It seems like they are trying as hard as possible to make Vista suck, as if that needs any special effort.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Demena]

I have seven of each and the only issue in 3 years has been one faulty DVD player replaced free of charge. You have to be kidding me.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[DuckDodgers]

Boy, I bet you convert 1 or 2 people to using Linux every day.

Re:Considering their own

[omicronish]

Zune software doesn't work on Vista, I suppose the one to blame here is quite obvious.

It does. They released an update supporting Vista back in December 2006.

Corrupting a little music player

[Ace905]

How can you even ask who's fault it is? Man, if the story-authors on slashdot spent like 10% less time blindly bashing Microsoft, the 80% of the time they spend accurately bashing Microsoft would actually be taken seriously. To say, "Who's fault do you think it is" doesn't imply Apple or Microsoft is at fault - but it opens up a debate that can't possibly be intelligently executed.

There's no evidence of anything ; we don't even know what happened.

You might as well sprinkle M&M's all over a busy freeway beside a Richard Simmons retreat. People are going to rush into this one and end up looking pretty stupid.

---
Don't even get me started on looking stupid.

Re:Corrupting a little music player

[Goffee71]

Don't get it, my iPod has been in and out of my Vista RTM for months with no problem, haven't seen any forum posts about Vista killing iPods, so this rates as Top-FUD (The Movie)

Re:Corrupting a little music player

[ScrewMaster]

You might as well sprinkle M&M's all over a busy freeway beside a Richard Simmons retreat.

That's really very funny but I could well live without the image it evoked.

Oh, the humanity ...

Re:Corrupting a little music player

[twitter]

They should have just blamed M$. Why bother with debate, you ask.

"Who's fault do you think it is" doesn't imply Apple or Microsoft is at fault - but it opens up a debate that can't possibly be intelligently executed. There's no evidence of anything ; we don't even know what happened. You might as well sprinkle M&M's all over a busy freeway beside a Richard Simmons retreat. People are going to rush into this one and end up looking pretty stupid.

The only people who look stupid are the people trying to sell a snazzy new OS that does not work with 80% of the world's digital music players. That's not really debatable.

Surprised?

[necro81]

Vista is, from all I've heard, a sizeable change for software developers. Its relationship and interactions to programs and hardware is very different. Problems are to be expected when you have such a tightly integrated hardware/software product like the iPod and iTunes. While Windows has doggedly tried to ensure that Vista is backward compatible with previous releases (and the software for those releases), it is hardly surprising that something like this is happening. It's happened with other Windows releases, it happened when Apple moved to OS X and universal binaries. Everyone is having difficulty getting things working on Vista, customers and developers alike, and will for months. I don't really think it's a matter of blame. It's one of the burdens of being an early adopter.

Bill Gates response

[edwardpickman]

"Oopsy, my bad. I just don't know how that could have happened since our Zune player works perfectly. I'm sure we can get the issue resolved by service pack 4."

Re:Bill Gates response

[micromuncher]

I'm not surprised iTunes wasn't tested in the lab. On Campus, you'll get stoned for the distinctive white headphones.

Re:Bill Gates response

[Bob of Dole]

My experience* is that on campus you don't even need the white headphones, students get stoned no matter what :)

*From observing other students, of course

DRM of course!

[UED]

Why don't you listen? Don't Remove Media! btw: Surely this deserves the haha tag?

I use iTunes on Vista

[Kraegar]

I've been running Vista (Business) for well over a month now, and use iTunes daily with my 4gb ipod nano. I haven't noticed any issues. Music purchased from ITMS plays fine, and I haven't (yet) corrupted my nano. So this news of it not working is a bit of a surprise to me.

This shouldn't be happening

[helmutvs]

The betas then release candidates of Vista have been available for almost a year for MSDN members and over a half-year for non-members. Apple should have had plenty of time to make sure that iTunes worked properly on Microsoft's new system. It is most likely changes aren't 100% complete, hence why Vista users should wait until the next iTunes update becomes available.

Smells very fishy in Redmond

[DreamerFi]

Given how long Vista pre-releases have been available, this issue either didn't occur in those versions, or was fixed in the most recent iTunes update. The windows market is too important for Apple to not fix this. Therefore this is probably something that only appeared in the release version, and not in earlier versions. And given the release date for Zune, I'd strongly suspect Microsoft, but with one anti-trust lawsuit behind them, they're probably too smart to leave a trail this time around.

Either that, or they're just incompetent nincompoops...

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[omicronish]

Considering it worked well enough in XP, I'm wondering exactly what they managed to screw up with USB handling...

I doubt it's USB handling; it's likely UAC and how everyone is a restricted user by default (even Administrators until they elevate). I got into this weird situation in XP where I was able to play and purchase music in iTunes under a restricted account until I mistakenly ran it under an administrator account one day. I was never able to purchase music again without logging on as administrator (it would fail to download the song).

Furthermore, I can't imagine them intentionally crippling iTunes. Apple has ~70-80% of the market of music devices. It would be suicide for Vista to intentionally block the software of the most popular music device out there. Regular users would blame Vista regardless of the underlying technical reasons.

KtkPod

[flyingfsck]

Well, if your Pod goes belly up, you can use Gtkpod to fix it. Thank Dog for Linux...

Both wrong... It's the USERS fault or it's the...

[Anonymous Coward]

For many users iTunes/iPod works fine. Therefore it must be something on the users side.

The user is too stupid to correctly understand how to use iTunes/iPod correctly under Vista's new security system or
The user has a piece of their party hardware that doesn't work correctly under Vista or
The Master Control Program and Tro... er iTunes are battling it out.

END OF LINE

Release version has been around for months

[D3m0n0fTh3Fall]

The release version has been all over the net for months, do you honestly think apple hadn't been testing with it?

Re:Release version has been around for months

[Yvan256]

Because, of course, Apple illegaly downloads software of their biggest competitor from the net, competitors who could sue them and wipe them out of the surface of the planet if they had a chance like that.

Yeah, right.

Re:Release version has been around for months

[D3m0n0fTh3Fall]

No, but perhaps they would have had access to it for testing purposes ? Moron.

Re:Release version has been around for months

[Yvan256]

The release version has been all over the net for months, do you honestly think apple hadn't been testing with it?

No, but perhaps they would have had access to it for testing purposes ? Moron.

Way to take my reply out of context from the parent I replied to, moron.

Well DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who here is surprised? I mean we have:

early adopter/bleeding edge issues

competitive products- music players, jukebox software, and media architectures

two arrogant vendors in a love/hate relationship

both systems full of DRM

I'd say it's both companies fault- Microsoft and Apple are developer partners, have NDA access to developmental software, and actually work pretty closely together. Fortunately, Apple is being responsible by supporting its Windows iPod users and this will all be straightened out in short order.

Disclaimer: I've worked for both Apple and Microsoft in the past

Of course it is Apple's fault.

[DinZy]

Vista has been in its finished form for months. There is no excuse for Apple not having iTunes ready. They are clearly just being coy here so they can maybe sell a few systems or something. On a side note. I have been using XP x64 since the start of last year. Apple released a version of quicktime that was broken on that system and since they bundled it with iTunes it actually broke that as well and they removed any link to the older working version. I updated to that and lost the ability to use my iPod and any software that used quicktime. It was yet another case of Apple failing to test their products thoroughly.

Re:Of course it is Apple's fault.

[ScrewMaster]

Personally, I stopped using QuickTime on the PC since Apple bundled it with iTunes. Sometimes I like to play .mov files, but (and this is probably hard for Apple's marketing people to believe) I don't use iTunes and have no interest in iTunes or FairPlay and I don't own an iPod. I tried iTunes once about year ago, it took out my XP system and I never bothered with it again. Since I found QuickTime Alternative for playing video I haven't looked back.

However, I do believe it is unethical for a software vendor to release software with serious bugs and simultaneously remove access to previous versions. I don't care if it's "free" software or not, if a user is unable to revert to a previous version (at least, the previous version) as a software vendor you're being very disrespectful.

Re:Of course it is Apple's fault.

[The_DoubleU]

You can have quicktime without iTunes.
You can't have iTunes without quicktime though.

Re:Of course it is Apple's fault.

[mr_matticus]

Oh, you mean like Vista's Sync Center? Never thought I'd see the day when I actually miss ActiveSync.

Re:Of course it is Apple's fault.

[strength_of_10_men]

i agree with the other replier's recommendation of quicktime alternative, but... here ya go

History repeating itself

[SierraPete]

Without accusing the crowd of being anything less than an ethical [insert gagging sounds here], this might be history repeating itself for competitive gain. With the Windows 95 upgrade came the "feature" that included the disabling of AOL software. Didn't M$ introduce M$N Network with Windows 95? So didn't M$ introduce the Zune this past Christmas season? Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, but given the track history of M$ (to include the now infamous Halloween documents which were recently acknowledged as authentic in court), a sabotaging of the iPod is not outside the realm of possible.

Re:History repeating itself

[BeerCat]

Without accusing the crowd of being anything less than an ethical [insert gagging sounds here], this might be history repeating itself for competitive gain. With the Windows 95 upgrade came the "feature" that included the disabling of AOL software.

And, further back, the windows 3.1 upgrade that broke DR-DOS

Re:History repeating itself

[Mex]

Not only that. When Win3.1 was released, they broke compatability with the DR-DOS, while their own MS-DOS still worked fine.

Re:History repeating itself

[koreaman]

When are you people going to realize that even if you have a well-crafted and pertinent argument, the use of the tired "M$" joke (I use the term liberally) completely ruins it?

I don't know if you had a good argument or not. I was too distracted by the same old cunning jabs against Microsoft's name to evaluate it.

Re:History repeating itself

[Anonymous Coward]

My MicroPenis is $oft.

Is that better for you?

Re:History repeating itself

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so hard to know which of Bill Gates shenanigans to directly compare the disabling of AOL to... Other anti-competitive acts like as this iPod issue might be. Or other community service work like giving millions to charities...

Re:History repeating itself

[Ash-Fox]

But Microsoft's Zen software doesn't work on Vista yet...

Safari and hotmail

[Scrameustache]

When Safari came out, I downloaded version 1.0 the very first day, and used it to go to hotmail, check out my messages, download attachement, everything worked fine.

Three days later, I could no longer download attachments... My version of Safari hadn't changed, but somehow, after three days, it didn't work as well as it did. Hmmm...

In a less anecdotal way, you might remember Microsoft "borking" Opera, or the infamous Microsoft hack that screwed with Netscape back in the 90s.
If we're lucky, "leaked" memos will show up in a few years detailing how Microsoft purposefully decided to screw with their competition for their new zune.

Re:Safari and hotmail

[Tragek]

" the infamous Microsoft hack that screwed with Netscape back in the 90s"

You mean IE?

Re:Safari and hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

I have problem sending email from gmail to my hotmail account. I tried some other accounts, some work, some don't. I'm fairly certain there's nothing wrong with gmail.

Re:Safari and hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we have enough leaked memos to be able to improvise this one.

Beta doesn't equal Golden Master

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista and iTunes were working together fine during the open beta but that doesn't mean Microsoft didn't make last minute changes that broke iTunes. Further, the fact that some people are using iTunes now without issue doesn't mean Apple is spreading FUD. An operating system is a complex animal, obviously there are differences between the various flavors of Vista so that iTunes might be fine on a Professional version but not work with a Home version. And while many people are using iTunes on Vista today doesn't mean some nasty bug (oops, I mean feature) won't rear up and bite their butt tomorrow.

Re:Beta doesn't equal Golden Master

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista and iTunes were working together fine during the open beta but that doesn't mean Microsoft didn't make last minute changes that broke iTunes.

There were reports of these issues long ago during the betas on the Apple forums.

Re:Beta doesn't equal Golden Master

[MtViewGuy]

Microsoft released the "golden master" back in middle November 2006. Apple should have gotten their hands on that code back then and went to work to revise iTunes so it works properly with Vista on the day of release (January 30, 2007).

As such, Apple will hurt itself until they release a new version of iTunes 7.x that does work correctly with Vista.

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[Xenographic]

> It would be suicide for Vista to intentionally block the software of the most popular music device out there. Regular users would blame Vista regardless of the underlying technical reasons.

I doubt that such things would stop Microsoft, honestly. I'm sure they'd tell people "it's just a bug, it'll be patched in a few months" followed by something trying to sell them a Zune.

pay attention!

[Hallowed]

What, didn't you notice that Vista said "Permanently Remove Hardware" instead of "Safely Remove Hardware"? It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Re:pay attention!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they are already well on the way to a solution to this problem - all they need do is change the wording - now there will be no "Safely Remove hardware" option, and in its place we will get a new button saying "Safely Ensure Monopoly"

I've got to lean towards this being Apple's fault.

[d_jedi]

Whenever there are upgrades to OSes there are going to be some incompatibilities. Knowing what I know of MS's internal practices, it's likely Apple knew of this problem quite a while ago (either through their own testing or MS's) and knew how to fix it. They just decided to sit on it for marketing reasons (OMFG!! VISTA breakz iPODzz!)

I find it hard to believe that such an issue was completely unknown before the release of Vista..

Ethernet cards stay on...

[Xenographic]

In my experience, you need to completely remove power in order to properly reset an Ethernet card. If you look at the back of the machine after you shut them down, you'll see the lights are still flashing and that the card still has power.

In a semi-related note, presumably due the the firmware on the buggers, I've had problems where booting to a boot CD broke the Ethernet card, too (because the boot CD's drivers downloaded newer firmware, I think). Then when I booted back into the original OS, the card wouldn't work until I updated the machine's Windows drivers. This was with a Broadcom 10/100 integrated Ethernet card, BTW.

Re:Ethernet cards stay on...

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

Somewhat offtopic, but many Broadcom cards have issues.
My Presario 2500 laptop came with a Broadcom mini-pci nic.
After updating the drivers, it would never accept a dhcp offer from some Linksys routers.
Other routers including same model Linksys, it was fine.
I had 4 different drivers handy - 3 exhibited this behavior - one did not.
All drivers had the same version number - one was preinstalled, one came from HP's site, one from Broadcom, one from Windows Update.
The only difference is that when I changed to the driver that worked, one file was overwritten.
The problem with Broadcom is that the hardware is ubiquitous. Unfortunately, the drivers are not.
It seems like much the same issue we used to have with display adapters where oems would venture so far off the reservation that reference drivers would no longer operate the hardware.

Re:Ethernet cards stay on...

[RodgerDodger]

This may sound obvious, but I'd say you've got the "Boot on LAN" support enabled in your BIOS. This allows your computer to be started in response to network commands (great for corporate IT shops, for example, where they push updates out overnight). However, it obviously means that your network card stays active even when "off".

Re:Ethernet cards stay on...

[Xenographic]

Yup, we do (although I don't think we use it for anything--it's enabled by default).

Who needs iTunes anyway...

[seadd]

...since there are several alternative applications for transferring music to your iPod.
There's a plugin for Winamp, there's EphPOD and at least two more applications. Plus, they are not 35 megs in download size and won't require you to install Quicktime.

Re:Who needs iTunes anyway...

[NoMaster]

...since there are several alternative applications for transferring music to your iPod.

How do you know they don't suffer from the exact same problem?

Ah, right, because one of them was once a popular "stick-it-to-the-man" product before it was fellated into crapulence by AOL, and the others are "open source" and therefore infallible. Now I see where you're coming from...

Winamp USB

[haijak]

If I have Winamp running and put in a USB CF reader with photos on it, I get a prompt about Winamp managing this possible media player. Of course I decline and copy off my photos, then remove the card. As soon as I remove the card, Winamp crashes.

So while I'm sure using iTunes will probably be fine, The USB media device management has some issues that ether Microsoft or the software makers need to handle. I would bet that is what Apple is talking about.

Never has happened to me...

[SilentOneNCW]

I've been using Vista & iPod together on my laptop for months now and have never had anything untoward happen -- has anyone here actually experienced this?

Apple's fault

[gsn]

Well
it
might
be
because
iTunes
sucks

I tried it so I could listen to some of the iTunes shares my housemates have but it kept crashing periodically and in the end I still prefer winamp's look and feel.

Re:Apple's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it might be because WINDOWS sucks...

iTunes works perfectly on all of my Macs. Anecdotally, in my time as a Mac Genius, we saw MANY more problems with Windows iPod users than Mac iPod users. Maybe it was due to the difference in installed base, but the skew was huge and almost every Windows system we saw was borked much worse than the typical Mac that came in for service.

Just sayin...

Re:Apple's fault

[imsabbel]

HINT:

Maybe because Apple programmers SUCK at doing stuff for windows?
Or is there any other reasons why quicktime has been digital AIDS for a decade, and now is joined in its suckitude by itunes (which gets installed as malware whenever you need to install quicktime for mov files, including autostarts and background services). Allthewhile every freeware mediaplayer manages to produce better results than the poster-child of a multi-billion $ company.

Re:Apple's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because Apple programmers SUCK.

There fixed it for you.

If only...

[dioscaido]

... Microsoft gave some sort of preview of the OS for 3rd parties to test and update their applications. Maybe then Apple could have done something about it. I blame Microsoft.

Re:If only...

[GodInHell]

... Microsoft gave some sort of preview of the OS for 3rd parties to test and update their applications. Maybe then Apple could have done something about it. I blame Microsoft. You mean like the many Beta versions they made available? (pst, your preconcieved notion is showing)

-GiH

Re:If only...

[Quixotic Raindrop]

It's funny you mention that ... because Microsoft has, in the past, done exactly this sort of thing before, and if you read Groklaw, you'll note that this very issue is a major factor in a lawsuit currently being litigated. Microsoft is well-known for providing different builds of Windows to different developers, and for changing system calls, hooks, APIs, and other such things at the last minute and only telling certain third-party developers, if any.

I don't doubt that Apple might have some dirty hands here, if only because they seek to embarrass Microsoft at any opportunity, and may have deliberately withheld some updates specifically to cause the most possible bad publicity about Vista, but more likely than not Apple was given one set of APIs WRT the safe removal of iPods, only to have Microsoft change them without warning.

Re:If only...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Well, that may be true, but it's not the case with Vista. Vista builds have been more or less publically available since Beta 2 through the CPP. It's hard to distribute different builds to different people when 5 million people are running your beta OS.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

*WOOSH*

Re:If only...

[Dan100]

Yes, of course. Microsoft have no understanding that the success of Windows was based upon the fact that it was an open software platform running on an open hardware platform, and do everything they can to make sure third party apps don't work.

Seriously, do you believe that? Microsoft are not fools and do not try to destroy what makes Windows great. The fact there's a lawsuit also proves nothing. If the litigants win, then it does.

Yes, surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPod is of the USB mass storage device class and as such should have no problem, unless Vista is broken for *all* USB mass storage devices.

I wish iTUnes on windows did not look so fugly

[modmans2ndcoming]

iTunes on OS X rocks.... on windows, it looks nasty!!!

keep teh organizational ideas and the general UI, but dump the OS X look and feel and go with the windows look and feel!!!

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember hearing that the Zune software won't run on Vista either, which significantly reduces the chance that this is malicious. More than likely it's just MS not releasing a product that's ready for public consumption.

Apple STILL doesn't have an update?

[Shippy]

I find that, honestly, the Windows version of iTunes is a buggy piece of crap. How long have betas of Vista been available? Did they really have to wait until after Vista has been released to post something about it? Look at a lot of other software (Nero, nVidia drivers, etc). They had Vista versions of their software ready-to-go before it even hit the shelves.

Re:Apple STILL doesn't have an update?

[Anonymous Coward]

And look, people want to sue NVidia for their "Vista drivers fiasco":
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37 396/

Re:Apple STILL doesn't have an update?

[Shippy]

I have an nVidia card and it works just peachy under Vista.

Microsoft must have forgotten to test iPod w/Vista

[bremstrong]

Oops, how could that have happened! What an incredible oversight! Heads will roll! Or get bonuses.

Luckily for Apple, there are probably relatively few customers who've upgraded to Vista.

Re:I've got to lean towards this being Apple's fau

[cryocide]

I have to agree with you here. Vista had been in Beta since mid-2005. If iTunes and its related services still have problems like these, why haven't they already been addressed?

Are we going to blame Microsoft for Creative Labs' lack of decent drivers, too?

Because things should work. iTunes = Vista killer.

[twitter]

Everytime there's an OS upgrade your peripherals often don't work until the drivers etc are upgraded as well. What's so damn sinister about that?!

It's amazing, but you can "upgrade" a kernel without breaking the drivers and device support. OSS/ALSA compatiblity is a case in point. The obsolescence of hardware in the M$ world is completely artificial and is one of the biggest betrayals of non free software.

In any case, this is detrimental to M$ regardless of who's fault it is. If M$ did it on purpose, they are crazy. iPod users wouldn't use Zune if M$ gave them away, so iTunes damage will guide millions of wealthy and influential buyers away from M$ right when they need such "enthusiast" to say nice things about Vista.

Apple is at some fault

[wootest]

Vista has been coming forever, the shipping version already shipped for some before the turn of the year. Apple is entirely to blame for not pre-emptively putting out 7.0.3 to fix these things, because boy have they had the time to do so. They *have* put out a fix by now for part of the problems, but it's not an iTunes update, and Vista may have botched these things, but it's not like they haven't had time or opportunity to fix them.

I do like Apple and I do like iTunes, but this is the same arrogant flank of the company that told you they were mad at Microsoft because Windows wasn't secure enough when they accidently shipped a batch of iPods with a Windows virus on the hard drive.

Re:Apple is at some fault

[Prof.Phreak]

Vista has been coming forever

Hmm... I'd claim it's Microsoft's fault for breaking backwards compatibility.

Before the shipped Windows 95, they ensured that all major software (and ipod support is `major' now a days) worked. Even down to fixing Windows to emulate old behavior for -that- particular instance.

Re:Apple is at some fault

[Weedlekin]

"Before the shipped Windows 95, they ensured that all major software (and ipod support is `major' now a days) worked."

Except for their own. I used an old version of Word to write help files because it was extremely small and fast. However, when Win95 came out, it would pop up a dialog saying "This version of Word isn't compatible with Windows-95. Please contact your dealer or a Microsoft representative for an upgrade". This seemed just a little too convenient for an OS whose usual response to a software incompatibility was a BSOD, so by way of experiment, I tried using a resource editor to change the "1.2" in a version string to "10.0", and Behold! It ran perfectly, sans warning dialogs, and continued to do so under Windows-98 (can't speak for XP because I haven't tried).

STOP the FUD Appl provided a fix already

[aristotle-dude]

Enough already.

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunesrepai rtoolforvista10.html

Re:STOP the FUD Appl provided a fix already

[Nezer]

Except this only fixes the problem of playing FairPlay files... Not fixing a corrupted iPod because Vista børked it.

Re:STOP the FUD Appl provided a fix already

[cryocide]

That function is already included in the "Restore iPod" feature in iTunes.

JMB must be an Apple user...

[Afecks]

OS X has several critical flaws published... damn you bug reporters for making the bugs public!

iPod may be corrupted when using iTunes... damn you Vista for doing whatever you did!

I'm sorry but I'm going to have to go with Apple as the guilty party here. They should have either tested their software properly on Vista or added some simple checks to prevent the application from being used until it's updated.

iTunes is very suspect here because the Windows version is a bloated piece of shit. There are only 2 applications that I simply dread installing. So much that I've spent money to avoid using them. That's iTunes and RealPlayer. They are the most invasive, unstable, bloated pieces of shit outside of Microsoft's own handy work, IE and WMP.

Once, I watched my friend plug in his iPod shuffle on a brand new installation of iTunes without turning off the autosync crap. Genius of end-user experience Apple decided that iTunes's default behavior would be to erase all his files so that it would be synced with his new blank library. He was pissed and has been using Anapod Explorer ever since.

Now please feel free to mod me down and hit me with a barrage of "but..but..but Windows!".

Re:JMB must be an Apple user...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, itunes is a bloated dog on windows, almost as bad as the office suite is on a mac

Re:JMB must be an Apple user...

[truespin]

"Once, I watched my friend plug in his iPod shuffle on a brand new installation of iTunes without turning off the autosync crap. Genius of end-user experience Apple decided that iTunes's default behavior would be to erase all his files so that it would be synced with his new blank library. He was pissed and has been using Anapod Explorer ever since."

When you insert an iPod (with music on already) into a vanilla iTunes - a nag box is displayed saying "Are you sure you want to sync IPOD'SNAME with this library? This will completely erase the current contents of your iPod."
I say your friend should learn to read what he is clicking OK for...

Re:JMB must be an Apple user...

[Afecks]

I asked my friend about that and he says that the iTunes wasn't blank it just had a couple of shit mp3s that were already on Windows. Maybe it will ask when it's blank but not when it has at least 1 song in the library?

Re:JMB must be an Apple user...

[truespin]

No, it displays this nagbox whenever you plug in an iPod that isn't currently sync'd to the library.

Now we know why...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...Allchin wishes he had a Mac.

Re:Now we know why...

[lxt518052]

Ballmer won't let his kids have iPod.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_arc hive/2006/04/03/8373041/index.htm

Re:Now we know why...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Poor kids. They probably dream every night of how their real father is Steve Jobs.

Microsoft is at fault

[dl_zero]

It has nothing to do with the iPod (unfortunately). The problem is the way vista sometimes handles removable mass storage. The other day, I had a 250GB external HD and when I used it with Vista, it corrupted the whole partition table. I was able to recover the data because only the partitions were deleted, but either way, its a flaw in Vista

Re:Microsoft is at fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. How can Apple have released a fix if Vista was at fault? Hmm? Wouldn't they have to wait for Microsoft to release a fix? They can fix it after the fact but they can't test their software thoroughly enough to catch this before pissing off their customers?

Re:Microsoft is at fault

[rsborg]

I call bullshit. How can Apple have released a fix if Vista was at fault?

Hey AC, RTFA, it's a *workaround*, not a fix. Like all the times I've had to get things to work in win32's broken APIs

Re:Microsoft is at fault

[LodCrappo]

How can Apple have released a fix if Vista was at fault? Hmm?

You apparently know nothing, and I mean nothing about how software works in the Windows world. Software companies constantly have to "fix" their software because of bugs or changes in the underlying Windows systems they rely upon. This is simply the way things are done in the Windows world.

Re:Microsoft is at fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Software companies constantly have to "fix" their software because of bugs or changes in the underlying Windows systems they rely upon.

Or in Apple's case, whenever the mood strikes them.

Re:Microsoft is at fault

[shadow099]

I thought we were going to wait for SP1 before installing Vista... don't you know that everything PRE-SP1 is really Beta code?

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but after all the dirty bastard tricks Microsoft has pulled in the past"

didn't apple once cripple usb2 performance in os x?
either way, they're both as bad as each other in my book and i hope they both dissapear up their own respective arseholes (or each others, i'm not fussy)

Havent had an issue so far

[SteveXE]

Yes yes i know i bought Vista berate me now...

I havent had a single problem with itunes or my ipod since upgrading, at least none that I have noticed. Well thats a lie the 1st time I ran itunes for some reason the audio would get kinda glitchy whenever cpu rose even if itunes was set to highest but that hasnt happened since day 1.

Re:Havent had an issue so far

[n0dna]

That took me some time to figure out too...

Set Quicktime's audio preferences to 'safe-mode.'
It comes from using a POS app under a POS GUI.

Sounds like FAT32

[Rosyna]

At least they must have some clue about fixes for the issues. It looks like they have a pretty good idea of where Vista breaks iTunes

It sounds almost like the fragile FAT32 format that iPods for Windows uses. The iPod driver dealie may not be able to properly close the files and ejecting them could cause the filesystem to get corrupted. At least, that's my opinion after seeing how easily the FAT32 format gets corrupted. NTFS/HFS+, FTW!

Re:Sounds like FAT32

[evilbessie]

I've seen more broken HFS+ files systems than I have in the 95% more windows systems I've used/seen. That could be because we rebuild Windows when it breaks rather than just fixing it but then again I don't think that the Mac fanbois can really say anything. I have never seen a broken ext3 file system except when the user has done a number of really stupid things.

Re:Sounds like FAT32

[rundgren]

No, ZFS http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ FTW!! Soon on Linux *drool*

The Average ipod Listener

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Apple's polite way of saying that most ipod users are fucking morons.

Re:Because things should work. iTunes = Vista kill

[koreaman]

Maybe you can upgrade from version 2.6.123456 to version 2.6.123457 and expect all your drivers to continue working, Twitter, but I doubt this is the case with major version changes. Correct me if I'm wrong (that is, someone who knows something, not Twitter).

Vista Killer

[Geckoman]

An iPod killer? Looks more like a Vista killer to me.

Honestly, which would you rather give up -- your iPod or Windows?

In all seriousness, though, if it'll mess up an iPod, what is it going to do to my thumb drive, digital camera, or other USB storage devices?

Who's gonna blink?

[PopeRatzo]

So, does the eventual fix come from Microsoft or Apple? Who needs who more?

It seems to me that Apple needs make it's iPod work with Windows more than Microsoft needs Windows to work with the iPod.

Especially since MS has a product that they position to compete with the iPod. You gotta give it to those hard boys at Microsoft. They don't play.

moo

[The Bungi]

There's a valid technical reason for that kind of shit that never seems to happen in the free software world?

Are you really claiming it *never* does?

who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Ipods are just over priced, over hyped junk anyway... the batteries suck, the LCDS suck, your better off buying something from Iriver or just a good flash player like a 4gig mobiblu... nevermind the fact that Vista won't really be ready for the public until SP1 comes out sometimes in 2010... as for
who is to blame? well blame yourselves for buying any of this shyte, its mostly just for the "cool" factor anyway, too bad noone seems to have any sense of individual anymore.

the other way around

[AceJohnny]

you got it wrong, it's "iPod, Vista killer?"

Re:the other way around

[stewbacca]

You might be on to something. If Apple could somehow find a way to say "Visa doesn't work with an iPod", and that turns the masses to OS X......that would be a great thing, (if not sneaky)

Apple at Fault

[Hangtime]

Yes, new versions of Microsoft OSs break some things but this is nothing new but its not like beta versions and the RTM haven't been around for over six months. This is irresponsibility by Apple plain and simple. Apple should have testing the product far ahead of time and had it ready for release anything else is irresponsibility.

Just more anti-consumerism

[nickheart]

Apples development team should have received the release version of Vista about 2 months ago, just like any other MSDN subscriber, and they should have had a iTunes update available for the consumer that wishes to use a MS OS, with a popular mp3 device from Apple.

However, they understand that many consumers will need to update computers, especially laptop/notebooks to use Vista. This places the consumer with options: get another MS (and i suppose -nix) only pc, or get an Apple and have the option to virtualize/dual boot for MS applications. By not supporting the iPod properly in Vista, they can force the consumer's hand towards a new Apple laptop.

I'm not saying that MS is any better in this situation, they released a new OS with convoluted security schemes that make it terrible difficult for developers to adapt, and in my experience, generally aren't that helpful. Try installing Flash for firefox in Vista.

Vista breaks an amazing number of applications

[robberbarron]

Typically, when an OS upgrades, applications that worked on the old OS are supposed to keep working. If they don't the OS team isn't doing their job properly. Did you need a new version of your app to migrate from Win95 to Win98 to WinME or NT to Win2K to XP? Very rarely was it the case. As a developer for a company with a Windows product, I'm amazed at how poorly Vista supports older apps. It's much much worse than the Win2K to WinXP migration or even the WinXP to XP SP2 upgrade.

Re:Vista breaks an amazing number of applications

[yodleboy]

now, just replace all occurances in your post of microsoft OS's with Apple and you may be accurate. i'd say microsoft has historically done a pretty good job of backward compatibility, maybe at the expense of a more secure, stable and speedy OS. Apple is much more inclined to modify their OS at the expense of compatibility. Microsoft can't win can they? If they limit compatibility with older apps to improve the OS they lose. If they keep allowing DOS programs to run, they lose.

I've had only 1 major compatibility issue (hardware) so far and no software issues. Apple should be flogged for this little publicity stunt. The RTM (release to manufacture, aka gold, aka final effing version) has been available for months. Seems pretty convenient that apple could pinpoint and fix the issue so quickly, but couldn't have done it earlier than this. Now, maybe the folks at apple didn't say "hey lets sit on this issue so we can get press", but maybe they said "hey, let's not mess with vista and see what the users flush out, we might get some press"

Re:Vista breaks an amazing number of applications

[robberbarron]

That's just what I said. Historically, Microsoft has done a pretty good job of backward compatibility. This time, they blew it.

Wait

[koreaman]

On the one hand, we've got the Microsoft apologists claiming that it's an Apple conspiracy, because they want to stem sales of Vista. This would be ridiculous, as although it would hurt Microsoft it would also hurt Apple's image, the use of iTunes, and the sales of iPods. Companies care about their own bottom line, they don't do stupid things to hurt other companies out of spite.

On the other hand, we've got the Microsoft-haters claiming that it's a Microsoft conspiracy because they want to push the Zune. Although this situation is more feasible than the last, it ignores the fact that such an act would also hurt the sales of Vista, not making the infintesimal gain in Zune sales worthwhile.

Why can't we all just agree that neither party has done this intentionally? Clearly the only logical analysis is that it's an accident.

Re:Wait

[solitu]

The issue here is that Apple has the audacity to tell people not to install Vista.
Instead of just saying 'don't install iTunes'

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[RightSaidFred99]

Haha, you're a cliche even among cliche-ridden Slashdot. Congratulations on being a total blowhard.

Oh!

[kosmosik]

It can't be Apple fault that they haven't tested and developed iTunes on Vista. It is not that Vista is quite new version and some stuff works different. It is not that Vista test versions were aviable from like half year which gives Apple plenty of time to actually *test* the software and issue new/corrected version timely.

To be honest I am to blame Apple for not testing their software with such significant (Windows is the biggest market for iTunes/iPod) OS release.

To judge technically there is not enough details - but given MS Windows quite good backward compatibility I guess that Apple did some ugly hack in iTunes (around the USB stack and similar things) and now it shows with new OS version.

Anyway if you are software vendor YOU NEED TO FUCKING TEST IT IN TARGET OPERATING SYSTEM.

Vista compatibility

[Jugalator]

After having actually used ( please don't waste your time commenting here if you haven't :-p ) Vista, I think the app compatibility has been as good as I can expect from a major OS upgrade. In other words, similar to where Windows 2000 was when it was fresh out the door. Lots work, some things don't. Especially if the applications are designed in a user-oriented way that understands Windows actually has a user home directory, they seem to work well. The most common problems seem to be software that work in a very machine local way. Compare to if a Linux application would try install things under \root\FancyApp instead of the home directory. Even here, Vista tries to resolve things in a clean way for backwards compatibility, but sometimes fail, especially when UAC prompts are active.

With that in mind...

If it is not who do you think is 'at fault' here, Microsoft or Apple?

Since Apple isn't whining about Microsoft's Vista compatibility (they would definitely be in a position to do so, especially with Microsoft's recent lashes at Apple), but taking full responsibility at fixing their app ASAP, and that application incompatibilities hasn't been overly common in Vista (it's far worse with drivers), I'd say that Apple has made a boo-boo at their software design. They aren't great developers of Windows applications anyway, as any user of Windows QuickTime vs Apple QuickTime should be able to confirm.

Re:Vista compatibility

[Mr. Underbridge]

similar to where Windows 2000 was when it was fresh out the door.

Should be better, considering that Win2K came from a completely different code tree than 98.

Re:Vista compatibility

[MojoStan]

similar to where Windows 2000 was when it was fresh out the door. Should be better, considering that Win2K came from a completely different code tree than 98. I think the GP was referring to Windows NT 4, not Windows 98. The names of MS's "home" and "professional" operating systems were unnecessarily confusing at the time. The GP could have made it more clear.

Re:Vista compatibility

[tres]

Now I know you said I shouldn't be replying since I haven't had an opportunity to suffer Vista.

I know, what could a lowly idiot like me know... I've only had to deal with problems that make Vista incompatible with WEP Enterprise 802.11G wireless networks that work for every other OS that supports WEP Enterprise. I only work with OS X, Linux, BSD, as well as (unfortunately) Win 2k3 and XP on a daily basis... but I thought maybe, just maybe this was a good opportunity to play...

FUN WITH LOGIC

Apple iPod ejects safely with Brand OS X
Apple iPod ejects safely with Brand RedHat Linux
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand SuSE Linux
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Debian Linux
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand FreeBSD
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand OpenBSD
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows 95
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows 98
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows ME
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows NT
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows 2000
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows 2003
Apple iPod ejects safely with brand Windows XP

Apple iPod doesn't eject safely with brand Windows Vista

(Oh, and by the way, FAT 32 Flash drives don't eject safely with brand Windows Vista)

<sarcasm>(just incase you need it spelled out)
It must be Apple's fault that the iPod doesn't eject safely under Vista
</sarcasm>

Re:Vista compatibility

[nwmann]

i think any linux application would have trouble installing under \root\FancyApp

Re:Vista compatibility

[Keeper]

Yeah, because Apple is too good to depend on undocumented behavior or make invalid assumptions ... Oh wait, their programmers are human, just like everyone else.

But it's Apple vs Microsoft; reason and logic left the building before you typed the letter N.

As opposed to any other reason they dont support?

[gelfling]

Anyone who commits to Vista before its obvious which apps MS intends to kill or pollute is a fool. iTunes won't be the last one or even the biggest problem. MS has a long history of releasing an OS and THEN months later coming clean that such and such app or database or device interface really doesn't work and really never will.

I love my ipod

[PlasticSquid]

I love my ipod, but Itunes has been getting worse and worse for running on ANY windows machine. I am not so sure this is Microsoft, I suspect Apple is only half trying. "See how buggy windows is, you should get a mac!" I am not having anything like this amount of trouble with any of my other software Itunes just gets buggier and buggier for me. So, no real surprise for me that it won't work on Vista. As for Vista, maybe in a couple of years Microsoft. I just can't get excited by it at all.

Apple @ Fault.

[ryanw]

How long has Vista BETAs been available to developers? Why was this not discovered until vista launched?

A similar thing happened when I updated to Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger). My VPN software I use to get into work was not "tiger compatible" for almost 5 months. I didn't blame Apple for this, this was the fault of the developers of the software not staying ontop of the game. Their excuse was that they do not develop on beta versions of an operating system because things tend to change too frequently for the final launch. So it was more efficient for them to wait for the final release of the OS and then begin development.

I suppose that makes sense for a small time company like Nortel, but not for a shop like Apple. They should have put this release out while testing with Vista betas.

Re:Apple @ Fault.

[VENONA]

I think you're cutting Nortel too much slack. They've a current market cap of nearly $12 billion. This isn't small time; they've been larger (for most definitions of large, not just market cap) than Apple for most of their history.

VPN clients are pretty much universally regarded as business software--often mission-critical business software. Once they made the decision to release a Mac version, they should have supported it as such. That might mean some slight delay, due to the differences in Microsoft/Apple market sizes, but *five months*? That's ridiculous. It's a significant percentage of a release's time as the current version.

Flawed Purposely

[ankleteeth]

In situations like this, I believe companies do this on purpose. If apple ensures the itunes wont run on vista, it makes microsoft look bad, because their OS is breaking things. Them apple eventually releases an update to make all happy, but still disgruntled with MSes incompatibility, possibily resulting in a OS switch. Thats the first thought that comes to my mind, I welcome your replies, I am curious as to if anyone elses sees it from my standpoint.

I suspect Microsoft's "security" model is to blame

[argent]

I suspect Microsoft's "security" model is to blame as usual.

Instread of letting applications that deal with untrusted documents take responsibility for sandboxing them, Microsoft rejected sandboxing in he '90s as too inconvenient, and having too great a performance cost. Instead, they assume that applications will use COM objects (ActiveX, Office documents, etcetera) and build the whole security model around assigning "security zones" to COM objects. THEN (a) assuming all applications are compromised, and (b) setting up traps to catch out compromised applications.

So every time they hike security, they end up breaking some software or some hardware that was doing things that look fishy to Microsoft. They broke Palm two or three times, so it's no surprised Apple's falling afoul of their stupid design.

A design that, by the way, has caused users immensely more inconvenience than any sandbox possibly could.

Re:Because things should work. iTunes = Vista kill

[TheRaven64]

With Linux, not only is there not a stable driver ABI, there isn't a stable driver API. Drivers from one kernel version are not guaranteed to be even source-compatible with the next. If it's a popular driver and is in the tree, it will be tested before a release and updated to use the new API. If it's not common hardware, and the maintainer is bored then it will just bit-rot and stop working eventually.

The kernel APIs don't change every minor revision, so you can usually compile drivers from the last version, but not always. The ABI changes quite frequently, so you may well need to recompile them. For most Linux users, this is not a problem since all of the drivers they use are in the tree and well-maintained, and the few that are out of tree are typically fixed up by their distribution so they never have to worry about it.

Given the liberal use of 'M$' in the grandparent post, however, I would expect that the author is probably about 14 and has just discovered Linux.

DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run

[PhunkySchtuff]

Or, Vista ain't done till iTunes won't run =)

What flamebait this is...

[Jahz]

The post was clearly craftd very carefully to spur head-on-head mud slinging... Why must we place blame for something so menial? There are so many more problems with Visa and third-party software that this is just pathetic to speak of. It just means you should charge your iPod via the included wall adapter for a little while. Or an even better strategy is to either dual boot vista+xp or JUST WAIT ON VISTA.

Why don't we talk more about how Nvidia promised us Vista support and largely failed. Note that Apple never promised us that... If you can't even install Vista on your computer, why worry about syncing your iPod with it. I personally just got vista on my high-end Nforce4 machine yesterday. I had to use these workaround drivers from a community website to get Vista to even install on my integrated nvidia RAID setup. Now with all the WHCL signed drivers and the machine all set up, it will periodically just crash. Works great other than that, except for using 515 MB of RAM just to boot.

Pick your battles fools. BTW, iTunes works perfectly for playing music on Vista.

Re:Because things should work. iTunes = Vista kill

[Vancorps]

You're right, you can upgrade a kernel without destroying drivers. This is my my NT4 drivers for my old ATI cards still work in XP and why my TWAIN drivers for my old arsed scanner also still work. When manufacturers take the time to develop proper drivers they almost never run into problems unless they want to utilize new features of the OS in which case this can be done with a driver update.

This isn't detrimental to MS in the least, Vista has been out for quite a while now and Apple has had ample time to correct whatever is wrong with iTunes. Considering what I've seen of iTunes on Windows this is completely not surprising since it is crap on XP so naturally it's going to be crap on Vista. Probably one of the reasons I refuse to own an iPod despite finding an iPod Video in some jacket some guy left behind at our site. The pron on it was nice but after that I just passed it on to someone that would appreciate the device itself. Personally I can't stand it, every iPod user I know has lost their music at least once and had to either restore from backup or call up Apple so they could re-download their music. It's great that Apple allows them to do it but they shouldn't have had to do it in the first place.

Influential buyers will just see this as another example of Apple dropping the ball on iTunes for Windows. Think of all the installation problems with version 6 on Windows. I ended up having to modify the local security policy of machines to allow the installer to complete. No other software has ever required this so I'm curious why iTunes does. Fortunately The newer versions I believe fixed the installer but there is still a whole range of funkiness with iTunes.

Vista is all kinds of pain but the majority of it is simple education.

Not necessarily.

[argent]

How long has Vista BETAs been available to developers? Why was this not discovered until vista launched?

Here's a handful of likely reasons:

• Microsoft's "security zones" are based on a continually tweaked ad-hoc set of rules. They can break software from one beta to the next.
  
• How many users are having these problems? What hardware? Apple may simly not have run into the problem.
  
• How long has Vista been running on Macs? Apple's had to get THAT working as well.
  
• Does Apple even have upgrading from XP to Vista running under Boot Camp?
  

I suppose that makes sense for a small time company like Nortel, but not for a shop like Apple.

Nortel's market cap is around $10B, Apple's is around $6B.

you are wrong, of course.

[twitter]

Maybe you can upgrade from version 2.6.123456 to version 2.6.123457 and expect all your drivers to continue working, Twitter, but I doubt this is the case with major version changes. Correct me if I'm wrong (that is, someone who knows something, not Twitter).

Ignorance is difficult, isn't it Koreaman?

I've taken computers from 2.2 to 2.6 with very few problems. The only issue I've ever had has been with a two really nasty old ISA sound cards that never worked well to begin with. The trend has been for each new kernel to support more, not less hardware, despite major design changes.

Re:you are wrong, of course.

[VGPowerlord]

Of course, an important side note is that under Linux, drivers are kernel modules and distributed with the kernel source.

Try having a device that requires a driver not present as a kernel module and see what luck you have with a major kernel upgrade.

Plea$e $top...

[feranick]

Oh go$h, could you please $top u$ing the $ sign in any word regarding Micro$oft? It's contagiou$...

Re:Plea$e $top...

[MysteriousPreacher]

It it weren't for sierrapete, I never would have realised that Micro$oft is interested in making money.

Pete, are there any other large corporations interested in making money? The people have the right to know!

ARTICLE SUMMARY IS A TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most blatent article summary trolls in, oh, a few days.

Aha!

[Rycross]

I've been running Vista for a couple of months now. Sometime in December, my iPod got bricked. I could operate the menus and everything, but all my music was erased, iTunes refused to synch with the iPod, and trying to restore it to factory settings failed with a generic error. Apple had to replace my iPod.

Hasn't happened again since then. Based on forum posts, it seemed like the culprit was a specific version of iTunes, so I don't know if it was fixed by Apple's side or if I just got lucky.

iTunes seems rather picky about synching up with the iPod in Vista though. I usually have to fiddle around with it for a while before iTunes picks it up.

brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. become a microsoft employee
2. change api so everything breaks
3. sue nvidia and apple because software don't work
4. ?????
5. profit!

No, remember this is slashdot.

[Monsuco]

This is slashdot, all things are only allowed to be blamed on a combination of Microsoft and President Bush!

And you are lying

[The Bungi]

I've taken computers from 2.2 to 2.6 with very few problems

Oh, I thought you said everything was "perfect" and much better than the "M$ shit". Well, it's certainly not, not by a long shot. Of course by making thse claims you force people to go into details of how a kernel upgrade might fail, which is not exactly a popular theme around here. I learned early that the best way to "upgrade" Linux was to just backup ~/ and do a clean install. Which is no different from Windows.

Bullshit is difficult, isn't it twitter?

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[dangitman]

Contrast this with Apples track record.

You mean, the Apple track record where I can take an application from 1984 and run it under MacOS?

Re: How much is Microsoft paying you to say that?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is Microsoft paying you to say that? Or their marketing and astroturfing agency? The connection is probably obfuscated.

With the aggressive anti-competitive monopolistic behaviour that MS is so well known for, they have a history of altering software and APIs to ensure that competitor's products don't function correctly. They break things, change things, keep some APIs hidden for their internal use only. They lie and spread FUD all the while putting on an innocent face for the ignorant public. Then people blame the 3rd party application developers for making substandard buggy programs with glitches and incompatibility... and then people use that as an excuse for why they switch to using the built in MS stuff instead. It's the same tired retread. Plus all the new defective-by-design built-in DRM crap that is hostile to users.

Because of all of that. I think the burden of proof is entirely on MS, not any 3rd party hardware or software developers. The reason is simple. MS acts in bad faith, it's been proven over and over again. Look at this other slashdot thread from today.

iPod - Vista Killer?

[mbaudis]

do i really have to comment on this? really?

iPod Killer?

[Infonaut]

Wiping the tears from my eyes after laughing too hard.

happened to me, too

[Anonymous Coward]

I even wait a couple of seconds before unplugging my iPod when I use it on Vista and it got completely screwed up. I was trying all sorts of things to fix it and when I mounted it from Ubuntu and looked at its content it seemed like Vista corrupted the filesystem. I had to go to the Apple store, wait in line, and get a new one. That is not even the worst but all my songs are gone!!! I think I'll only use Amarok with my iPod to be on the safe side. I like it more anyway.

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[jimbolaya]

You think that people will "ditch" windows for their iPod? Are you that disconnected from reality? The alternative is a Mac that is literally running on identical hardware but costs twice as much. You think people will ditch their 2 year-old $1000 dell for a new $2000 mac that doesn't offer them anything new?

Speaking of disconnected from reality, you really believe that an Apple today costs twice as much as a comparable Dell did two years ago? Aside from the Mac Pros, most Macs today sell for well below $2,000. The 24" inch iMac is an exception. But what you're telling me is that two years ago, you could have bought a Dell with a 24" LCD, 1GB RAM, 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, DVD burner, and 128MB video card, for $1,000? That must be what you're saying, because you claim the $2,000 Mac couldn't give you anything new.

I challenge you to configure a comparable Dell (or HP, etc.) today for $1,000 (Apple's are twice the price, remember?). Hell, I challenge you to find one for $2,000. I came up with a price of $2,308 at Dell's site. Granted, that was with a 256MB video card, which would bring the iMac up to $2,124. Far from being twice the price, the Apple is nearly $200 cheaper.

as in days of old, old dogs and old tricks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Window's ain't done until iPods don't run... :)

I agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that it's necessarily ugly; it just doesn't follow the Windows UI guidelines and as a result looks out of place. QuickTime is in the same category, as well. God how I hate the brushed steel look.

Re:I agree.

[Yvan256]

Not only should Apple's software follow the guidelines and the "look'n feel" of other Windows apps, but I'm also tired of the brushed metal look. And I'm on OS X, where even Safari is brushed metal. But not Mail. And Pages still uses the "horizontal lines" look.

I hope Leopard, iLife '07 and iWork '07 fixes all this mess.

That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Overly Critical Guy]

How conveniently people forget that Microsoft's own Zune player app wasn't Vista compatible either. If Microsoft couldn't support their own OS with these "stable apis" of the last six months that you refer to, how can you expect Apple to?

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[malfunct]

Zune client version 1.2 was fully compatible with Vista and released near the beginning of January.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Space cowboy]

Which, correct me if I'm wrong, was not 6 months ago. And (presumed) changes to API's (otherwise it would have worked) only 4 weeks ago isn't a sign of a "stable API".

So, when a third-party company finally gets the latest API info, specs out the required changes and their implications, codes it up, runs it through QA, gets sign-off from all the parties (HI, VI, Engineering, Management, X-functional team managers), and gets it out in a couple of months, it's not so bad, really. Oh wait, we're bashing Apple today. BAD APPLE.

Simon.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[romland]

Nice try.

The only thing that didn't work with the Zune software was that the installer had a version check that was wrong, if I remember correctly.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[malfunct]

My point was that if the software had be started at the same time time as the zune software it could have released in January as well and been ready for vista. Instead Apple waits until release to send out a bulliten saying how awful Vista is for thier hardware. I agree it takes a while for new software to get written but you don't start writing the fixes the day the OS releases to the mass market when you could have started 6 months before and been completely ready for it.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's follow Microsoft's lead. Release a product. Have it not be compatible with your upcoming OS. Wait 1 month to fix it. This is considering that they make both products and have insider knowledge. Not to mention that they have access to api's well before developers are granted access. And this is assuming they didn't include any breakme code to wreck iTunes. I know for a fact that MS breaks iTunes. Mine was working perfectly and then after a Windows XP Update, sound would no longer work properly on it. It would produce a loud, irritating screech. But, surprisingly every other media player and music player worked just fine. Geez, thanks Microshaft. -------- December 20, 2006 @ 7:11PM - posted by Matt Mondok Microsoft fixes Zune, Vista compatibility issues The Zune is finally ready for Windows Vista. In a 22 MB update (v1.2) released Tuesday, Microsoft fixed compatibility issues that existed between the portable music player and Microsoft's new operating system. Microsoft employee and Zune team member Cesar Menendez gave a very brief overview of the update on his blog yesterday. "Today we're issuing a 22 MB update to make Zune compatible with Windows Vista. The update also improves the Zune software installation process, addressing the issues that some of the known issues users reported." The Zune's incompatibility with Windows Vista has been heavily criticized since the device was launched last month. Although Vista is not even available to a broad range of consumers as of yet, members of the online media have ripped Microsoft for shipping the Zune without support for its soon-to-be flagship operating system. When the reports of problems with Vista first hit, Microsoft pondered waiting until January to release a software update that would make the Zune "Vista ready." Luckily for Microsoft, someone in the company was smart enough to get this fix out early and avoid a possible mess of problems by releasing it right around January 30, 2007. http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006 /12/20/6362

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[ronanbear]

Vista breaks iPod support. That's Microsoft's fault not Apples. Either Microsoft deliberately broke iPod support or Vista's hardware support is so bad that it was never tested with some of the most popular hardware out there. The second is more likely.

Apple will update iTunes but they have every right to let their customers know that Microsoft are responsible. This is another reason not to get Vista (I don't have enough RAM either). I don't like having to rely on manufacturers to update their legacy software if I want to be able to hook up my printers, scanner, wireless adapter etc.

Yes I've had similar problems on Apple too where manufacturers didn't update software but that was the intel switch combined with a mess of a driver not an OS update.

Recent iPods are more complex from a driver point of view because they use a HFS filesystem and then use a driver so that Windows can read iPods as FAT drives - that doesn't explain why the Zune wasn't initially compatible though.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I think microsoft has more important things to worry about than finding ways to deliberately brake iPod support. Apple is like a grain of and in microsoft's shoe. The spent years building an operating system with security and usability as the main concerns. They provided an accessible API for all the developers of 3rd party products, it is absolutely the responsibility of the 3rd party manufacturers to get off their asses and get ready for Vista. Its not like MS announced it as a surprise.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I love the smell of newly mown astroturf!

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[JebusIsLord]

How is this +5 interesting?? Zune (a consumer app, not a corporate one) worked with Vista on the consumer release date. The reason we've had public pre-releases of Vista for some 9 months now is so developers could have their shit together BY THE RELEASE DATE. Mission accomplished, Microsoft. Apple and nVidia get thumbs down from me on this one.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Space cowboy]

Your assumptions here are that (a) Microsoft told Apple about these API changes, and (b) it was even available for Apple to use/test against at the same time as it was internally at Microsoft. I'm assuming that (b) was not the case, and therefore it's not unreasonable for Apple to be later than Microsoft's own developers on this...

Simon

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[seriesrover]

Vista only breaks iPod support if it (officially) worked at one point AND THEN it didnt work with a SR\patch\update. Vista is a new OS with a new set of APIs and ways of doing things that Apple have had access to for months. Its Apples fault for not getting their act together in time.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[PygmySurfer]

Vista isn't a "new" OS, it's an upgrade of an existing OS - anything that worked in Windows XP and no longer works in Vista is broken.

Microsoft had access to the new APIs before anybody, I'm sure, and they didn't add Zune support until January. I think its conceivable it could take Apple a couple weeks longer to get it out the door.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever stop and think for a moment the reason why iTunes doesn't work is because it depends on unsupported and/or undocumented behavior in the OS? (ie: it has bugs that didn't surface in XP)

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[malfunct]

I have a funny feeling that Apple has at least 1 MSDN subscription that came with a full version of Vista in it.

The fix I read about today for at least part of thier troubles deals with UAC. That means that Apple made a bad (yet sickenly common across all software) assumption as to what rights they would have on a windows PC. At least that one problem has been well known for many months and quite publically announced.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Space cowboy]

What I heard was that the Zune issues were also UAC based. Perhaps they were tweaking UAC right up until the end - in any event, the new apple commercial doesn't think they did a very good job...

Simon

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Overly Critical Guy]

Vista RTMed last November. January isn't six months ago.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Overly Critical Guy]

Yeah, uh, Vista RTMed last November. Zune didn't work with Vista on release.

Next.

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[JebusIsLord]

Read more carefully, please. Zune is a consumer app, and Vista was released to CONSUMERS last week.

Re:End User's Fault

[bluetigerbc]

because http://rockbox.org/ has software to put in new firmware avoiding this big mess. I agree that it should just be usb mass storage device. This site can make that happen.

someone mod this up for "the peoples". I've hunted for something other then Apple's filename switching firmware for a while now. Easy drag and drop songs and delete/rename them from the ipod. There are even themes to make the ipod look like winamp or other skins from users.

rock box is like firefox for yer Ipod. Open code wins again!

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor....

[mrobinso]

... shows "no problem" with iTunes. Nero is toast. Webcam, gone. Scanner, gone. Internal nic on MB, gone. But iTunes, no problem. Yeah. Where do I line up for that? mike

Re:It's apples fault--and it's Novell's fault too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us who run Novell Netware networks will be waiting for quite a while for a Vista-capable NetWare client. Those API's haven't been stable enough for Novell. Why should Novell start writing code, only to find out it's been changed? Waiting for the public release to START writing the code makes complete sense from a don't-want-to-waste-the-developer's-time point of view.

Blaming Apple or Novell or any other software house is just silly.

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[that this is not und]

I have Windows 1 and Windows 2 applications archived away that are from... about 1984. Well, maybe 1986.

They didn't run well the last time I tried them on Windows 95. I doubt if Microsoft has been working in earnest during the last decade to make sure they now work properly under a newer Windows version.

Of course it's apples fault :p

[alisson]

Because naturally, Apple Inc. Should be concentrating on users who primarily use... Not apple products.

Who cares who's 'at fault'? It not a huge issue to begin with, and if you're already running Vista... I'm sure you have bigger problems.

Single, three-part solution

[Oblong_Cheese]

Step 1: Install Linux on your computer. Step 2: Install Rockbox on your iPod. Step 3: Be happy. ^_^

Apple...er...Microsoft...er...Apple..um...neither?

[davmoo]

who do you think is 'at fault' here

Technically, I'd have to say Apple, seeing as how betas where out for fully a year before Vista went RTM, and there were no significant changes between the third beta and RTM.

But ultimately, I could also argue the answer is neither one is "at fault". Its not Microsoft's job to make sure Apple products run on Vista, and its not Apple's job to make sure Apple products run on anything other than Apple hardware. To expect otherwise would be like expecting Ford to make it a simple "plug and chug" to drop a Chevy engine in to any of their cars, or expecting Chevy to design their intakes so you can drop one on top of a Ford block with no modification and expect it to work.

Developer Beta for Apple?

[hhawk]

I'd like to know if MS has a beta program for software developers. If Apple was in such a program. If it was open to them and they didn't make use of it, that would be an issue with Apple..

If there isn't such a program, do the EULA for the windows Vista beta that Gates spoke about allow a company like Apple to download it?

Basically, if Apple would have been allowed to download it, then they should have had a solution at hand.

This assumes that it was broken early in the development cylce and was never fixed.

Now, if the bits that are broken only got flipped since the last public or developer beta, that would be worthy of a law suit...

dog bites own tail?

[Kashgarinn]

I'm not sure of the exact figures, but doesn't microsoft own a substantial part of macintosh?

Wouldn't then any bad publicity from mac to M$ be like a dog biting its own tail, or as mac is so much smaller than M$, the tail biting the dog?

I seem to recall a vid on youtube of steve crying about having to work with M$ from around 2001.. plus, they both would suffer financially if they couldn't get each others products working harmoniously.

Of course, I would like vista to fail, and fail miserably because I tried it and I don't like it, but that's a personal opinion.

K.

Re:dog bites own tail?

[gnasher719]

'' I'm not sure of the exact figures, but doesn't microsoft own a substantial part of macintosh? ''

Microsoft probably owns a few hundred Macintoshes.

I have never heard that Microsoft has ever owned any part of McIntosh Labs, maker of fine audio equipment, and anyway, McIntosh Labs has nothing to do with iTunes, iPod or Apple Inc.

Microsoft does not own any part of Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer Inc.

Re:dog bites own tail?

[paulthomas]

Microsoft formerly financed Apple's operations by purchasing over $100 million of restricted Apple stock. They have probably liquidated this to private investors. The financing coincided with an agreement that Microsoft would release Office for Mac for at least x more years.

Re:End User's Fault

[Hes Nikke]

i'd mod you up, but i want to complain that they don't support my 80 gig iPod :(

sorry man

All I can see

[ajs318]

All I can see, looking at this whole sorry mess, is a good argument for why all software should be made available in Source Code form.
If Apple had had access to the Source Code for Vista, there would be no excuse for them churning out a shoddy product; but if the Community At Large had had access to the Source Code for iTunes, then it would have been patched in a matter of hours.

Concealing Source Code hurts users and developers.

Re:All I can see

[Yvan256]

Even if the source code for both iTunes and Windows Vista was available, there was nothing to prevent Microsoft from adding last-minute changes to Vista before releasing it on store shelves. Which I think is what happened, IMHO. Zune, anyone?

Source code would only mean the fix could already be available.

Re:All I can see

[ajs318]

Not really.

If it were law that Source Code must be available, it would also have to be law that the Source Code supplied must be buildable to the binary supplied. And that would deal with last-minute changes. Someone builds the Source, it doesn't match the binary, someone at Microsoft gets a ride in a police car.

Any last-minute changes to the Source Code would be fixable by Apple developers or the Community At Large, again in hours, and the fixes posted on the Internet. And iTunes is, by its very nature, not a hell of a lot of use without the Internet.

There is plenty of precedent to look at. Not only have you the modern Open Source community for a mostly-shining example; but before about the 1970s-1980s, all software was distributed this way as a matter of course. (It had to be, since even computers of the same make and model would not necessarily be able to run binaries compiled for each other if there were slight differences in hardware configuration.)

Re:All I can see

[Yvan256]

There's a huge difference between "all software should be made available in Source Code form" and "If it were law that Source Code must be available".

Sorry, there is no iPod Killer.

[ThreePop]

No matter how much you think it sucks (which it doesn't) or forwards the cult of Mac (which it does) or doesn't like PCs (it works great with Windows, actually), the fact remains that it is the first pervasive, useful mp3 player. Try to kill it all you want. It'll never die. It's part of our cultural DNA at this point.

Mod -20 Troll

[Archeopteryx]

No words.

Re:Because things should work. iTunes = Vista kill

[TravisWatkins]

Except that if you change an API you're responsible for updating all of the in tree users of that API as well. That's why getting your driver into the standard kernel is so important, it ensures API compatibility.

iSophagus

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Responding to your sig...

2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.

You DID see the Sluggy Freelance iSophagus thread, didn't you? (Where the sleepy main character mistakes his roommate's new "iPodling" for a vitamin pill and gets it stuck in his throat.)

(It's mixed with a couple other subplots so read forward for a total of 10 episodes to get it all.)

Re:iSophagus

[Hallowed]

Ya, I remember it...I think they might still have the t-shirts on sale...

Novell - lousy comparison

[The Second Horseman]

The APIs that Novell (and Cisco, and a bunch of other vendors need) did change quite a bit, and even the ones that didn't change much between May/June and release required a complete redesign of anything that relied on the GINA or implemented their own authentication mechanism (like Novell's NMAS). Cisco's had issues with their VPN client and its startup dialog as well.

If Microsoft doesn't relax how they're letting developers hook in for login and authentication (or add a significant amount of flexibility), a lot of third-party vendors implementing authentication or security mechanisms are going to have a lot of problems.

iTunes is "just" an end-user application, and the iPod just a device. There could be a change in behavior in Vista that causes a communications problem that can lead to problems. Of course, the Zune doesn't work yet with Vista either, so it's not too shocking Apple is having problems. I'm just surprised that they're not out in front of it more - it's revenue. Anyone who is getting a new computer with Vista is likely to postpone purchases from iTunes for a while.

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[Xenographic]

You buy a brown Zune or something? I guess people are sensitive about that or something :]

Re:dundant

[SlowMovingTarget]

...Apple's obvious attempt to make Vista look bad...

That would seem to be redundant effort as Microsoft has already bundled that feature with the OS; it's called "downsampling." Ooooh! I smell a new anti-trust suit.

How so? Re:And you are lying

[twitter]

Of course by making these claims you force people to go into details of how a kernel upgrade might fail, which is not exactly a popular theme around here. I learned early that the best way to "upgrade" Linux was to just backup ~/ and do a clean install. Which is no different from Windows.

but in the Linux world, when you are finished with your upgrade, your devices still work. Oh, and you don't have to backup anything. The files most people care about are in their home directory, which should be on a separate partition, and have nothing to do with the binaries. If you have fancy commercial software, you were careful to install it on /opt and it's a separate partition too and requires no further effort except the usual non free library dependency hell. Oh, and most distributions have binary kernel packages which just work and don't require any further effort. In short, a GNU/Linux upgrade is nothing like the reboot filled, driver floppy swapping, registration pained, occasionally binary registry hacking disaster a Windoze "upgrade" is. It is much better any way you like to do it.

and this has nothing to do with Vista not getting along with iPod. It should work right out of the box. M$ broke it, on purpose or by accident it does not matter.

Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?

[Yvan256]

It would be suicide for Vista to intentionally block the software of the most popular music device out there. Regular users would blame Vista regardless of the underlying technical reasons.

Exactly. Here's the point of view of the average user, IMHO:

yesterday: I have Windows XP, I have an iPod and iTunes, everything works fine
today: I upgrade to Windows Vista and now iTunes/iPod stops working properly

People will usually (and correctly) blame the latest change for the problem, which in this case is Windows Vista. Some will even try to downgrade back to XP, but they won't be able to do so (AFAIK, from what I've read). Another "blame Microsoft" problem in addition to the "my iTunes/iPod doesn't work anymore" problem.

If it's really Microsoft's fault (after all, we keep reading that iTunes/iPod worked fine until the latest beta version of Vista, but the final version has a problem), then it means they're trying to deliberately screw up Apple, but IMHO it can only backfire because they're the ones introducing the new component and breaking things.

All right..I admit it..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my fault.

It started way back in November. I'm sitting in my trailer up the coast from leatherville, waiting on the H2 to pull up. Across the valley a buddy of mine has a strip, handles biz jets. Ya, concrete is expensive but he charges pretty good to land, too, for folks looking for a little privacy. My trailer isn't fancy but it's roomy enough and if needs be I have my converted trawler over at the marina with the fishholds made into diesel tanks, I can go where I want whenever. Made my vig a long time ago, I'm comfortable now. I do favors for people, they do favors for me. That's all I do besides a little fishing and a little elk hunting. That and the local co-op keeps me fat, and the favors keep me happy.

Anyway, in the H2 are gill the g and stefanovich. Knowed them a long time now, they like to come out and kick back when the shit gets rugged.

They walk up and just open the door and come in. Stefanovich is toting some gawd awful cal drought red in a big jug. gill the g will want a fistful of my Scotch, natch, he is such a tightwad leech.

They sit down and start to jawin' away, cutting each other up. Not like they haven't been doing that the whole time on the plane, but it's what they like to do.

They're yammerin' away at crap I got no idea what they are talking about, some european peasant shit and stocks or...crap mostly. So gill the g says "Assholes are gonna wait to buy this new shit I got, this sucks, down ten feet in the money bin, and the crap still ain't done anyway.." Stefanovich starts bustin' a gut, says "You got more money than the next three states, what you bitchin' about?" "Jerk, you got almost as much" "Ya, but I know how to shut the fuck up about it!"

Then they both go off giggling some more and drinkin' some more, some fat spliff comes out, then it gets weird. A few rounds and S plops the short into gill the g's scotch and says "well, that's some tough shit you got there, nothing I can do about it". Gill the g fishes it out and flicks it like a booger at him and says "well, fuck you very much, too!"

So I'm pretty straight still,it's fun enough watching them two assholes, but I gets a brainstorm "Hey, you got all them baby boomboxes, right? They run on his shit, too, right?" "Ya..." "Well,break it." Break it?" "Ya, break it for a few weeks, that'll give him some slack to get his shit together better,and you'll still be rakin' it large either way, Who gives a crap?"

"Ya, that could work.."

So they both go staggering off giggling, and I don't wanna know who's driving, they are headed up to town, they both got the bone for the same big russian chick at the "flowershop", one of those places I got the return favors deal with.

So, anyway, ya, my fault. Sorry about that. Well...not really..but you'll get over it.

Jeebus...

[SvnLyrBrto]

> the limited functionality that is iTunes. No ogg vorbis support out of the box, etc.

Is it really that much extra effort for you to download a codec and just drop it in your '/Library/QuickTime/' folder??? I've more than half a dozen *other* codecs in there, as well, that also were not supported "out of the box". Adding them was no trying experience for me. It's simplicity itself, so far as I'm concerned.

BONUS: when you do this, said codecs are available throughout ALL of QuickTime, not just with iTunes (Which is just a fancy front-end to QT anyway, albiet with a nifty database thrown in.)

Personally, I'm still not at all convinced that vorbis, or even AAC, is all that superior to plain old MP3 anyway. Or, if they are, no set of speakers I own is good enough for me to be able to tell. I can, however, tell the difference between MP3/AAC/vorbis and Apple Lossless or the uncompressed CD; too bad I don't have a terabyte RAID handy. ;-)

cya,
john

Re:Jeebus...

[SPY_jmr1]

The GPP was referring to the fact that the firmware that apple supplies for the ipod doesn't support audio codecs besides mp3/mp4/acc as far as I know.

I believe that the ipod-linux folks have some solutions for this? I haven't been keeping up with that project... anyone know more details?

Spy

Re:Jeebus...

[belly917]

Is it really that much extra effort for you to download a codec and just drop it in your '/Library/QuickTime/' folder???

No it's not, for example I went out and got the flac & wavpack codec plugins for winamp. And I am aware of the Ogg Vorbis plugin for iTunes/quicktime (that's why I said out of the box) but it wasn't feasible because it didn't support reading the tag information, until just recently.

The codec issue was just one of the reasons that I don't like iTunes. I know that you can add other codec's, but the resistance to provide more features is a common theme with apple products, and it was the first to come to mind when typing. Other issues include: the ugly skin, the library isn't as tweak-able as winamp5's, the inability of the mini player to be a stick that sits at the top of my screen, the very large memory footprint (vs winamp5's 7.5Mb), and the lack of support for replay gain (not apple's version, I prefer the better functioning industry standard)

I commend apple on making a application that self contains the process of buying music, playing it, and loading it on an ipod. And if it works for you, that's great. I find it too artificially restricting, and I'd rather not live in the apple world.

Personally, I'm still not at all convinced that vorbis, or even AAC, is all that superior to plain old MP3 anyway.

at high bitrate's I would agree with you, but give me a mp3 encoded at 128kbps of a punk rock song with lots of cymbals, and with even a half decent set of headphones and I'll hear it. The cymbals will sound all tinny & raspy as if you were underwater. That same song encoded with ogg vorbis at 128kbps will sound much more pleasant, none of the compression artifacts in the high end and a fuller low end. aac is also a better codec than mp3, so I assume that you'll get similar results.

But the best thing about compressed music is that you can pick your own encoder/bitrate based on what sounds good to you. If you can't tell the difference, then that's all that matters. I find that I can't tell the difference above 160kbps with my equipment, so that's what's I use.

Re:Jeebus...

[Jesus_666]

Is it really that much extra effort for you to download a codec and just drop it in your '/Library/QuickTime/' folder??? I've more than half a dozen *other* codecs in there, as well, that also were not supported "out of the box". Adding them was no trying experience for me. It's simplicity itself, so far as I'm concerned.

Yes, it is. No matter what Xiph says, I've never managed to get the Ogg Vorbis QT component to work reliably. iTunes can read the metadata just fine, but playing a file often results in a crash.

By the way, where have you managed to find other codecs? I'd really like stuff like Modplug or a SID codec for QT, so I can listen to chiptunes on the Mac. Google searches for "quicktime codecs" or something similar obviously don't return anything useful.

Re:Jeebus...

[SvnLyrBrto]

> Yes, it is. No matter what Xiph says, I've never managed to get the Ogg Vorbis QT
> component to work reliably. iTunes can read the metadata just fine, but playing a
> file often results in a crash.

That's odd. The ogg plugin for QuickTime works just fine for me. ranted, that's in iTunes, and not on my iPod. But, as I understand it, that's more a hardware thing than anything else. Or did they ever create an all-interger version of vorbis? In any event though, I don't know what could be wrong with yours, but one simple download, and vorbis works fine in iTunes, and all of QuickTime, for me.

> By the way, where have you managed to find other codecs? I'd really like stuff like
> Modplug or a SID codec for QT, so I can listen to chiptunes on the Mac. Google
> searches for "quicktime codecs" or something similar obviously don't return anything useful.

I dunno about Modplug or SID, but in addition to ogg vorbis, I have 3vix, AC3, DivX, FFusion, Flip4Mac, and Theora; all sitting around making QuickTime work seamlessly for me. I think I found them all by searching on versiontracker.com over the years. But I'm not 100% sure on that.

cya,
john

Re:Jeebus...

[Jesus_666]

The Ogg Vorbis problem is with iTunes/OS X; I don't use an iPod as for now my CF-based player works well enough for me. The crashes actually got better when I tried it again yesterday; apparently one of the latest QuickTime updates seems to have fixed some bug I was running into. I'll have to perform some more testing.

As for the codecs: I do have Flip4Mac, but apart from that I don't really need any video codecs; VLC is a decent media player on OS X and comes with pretty much every codec under the sun. Audio codecs, however, are what iTunes is short on compared to other players like XMMS and Winamp...

Re:You missed the fucking point, moron

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, when you lose an argument resorting to swearing a lot does not make you win the argument. Just saying is all. Have a nice day :)

nothing to add...

[Anonymous Coward]

no comment.

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[prockcore]

You mean, the Apple track record where I can take an application from 1984 and run it under MacOS?

I've heard this claim multiple times, but I haven't seen any evidence of it. Even with classic mode, I can't run Shadowgate on my mac.

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just wrong because I say so.

Good to see the WinDell fan boys admitting they have no argument.

iPod: Vista killer?

[surfcow]

If this is true, it will really hurt Vista. Might be better to ask: "iPod: Vista killer". Skeptical? How big is the installed base of iPods? Now, how big is the installed base of Vista? What's easier, ditching your iPod or waiting up buy Vista? When enough people wait til later, a product doesn't sell. Ask Osborne.

Re:iPod: Vista killer?

[argent]

Don't be silly. What are people going to do, *not* buy Windows? Waiting to buy Vista was *always* the right thing to do, whether you had an iPod or not, simply because the dot-zero release of ANY new software is basically "extended beta".

I've been using Vista and iTunes since November...

[EvilSS]

...when I received my copy of Vista via MSDN. So far my Nano is far from a brick. Of course I just follow the iPod's prompts on when to not unplug it.

Re:How so? Re:And you are lying

[The Bungi]

but in the Linux world, when you are finished with your upgrade, your devices still work

And in the "Windoze" world they don't? Please twitter, who are you trying to convince? Me? Yourself?

M$ broke it, on purpose or by accident it does not matter.

This is just another FUD Slashdork post that gives you the opportunity to exercise your "M$ is teh sux" gymnastics. Of course as always you only pay attention to the parts that reinforce your hatred and insecurities, and conveniently discard reality.

You seem to be infatuated with the value of moderation here as validation of your theories - why don't you browse this article at +5 to see what the majority of your peers are saying about it? Maybe you'll snap out of it.

Its Not FUD

[gravis777]

Vista killed my iPod. Luckely I got the 2 year extended warrenty on it. It will not even boot up now, I get the Apple logo and then start getting lines and stuff. Its awful!

Why is nobody mentioning the Audible bug?

[goldcd]

I like Audible, I like their audiobook selection and was tired of farting about trying to find bootlegs of the books I liked. I signed up for Audible (£15 for 2 books a month) I could play on my ipod and was a very happy bunny.

Few days ago I upgraded to Vista x64. iTunes installs, but gave me errors when trying to verify the DRM on my existing audible books. Basically iTunes on Vista x64 refuses to work with audible at all - I can't download books I've paid for on my subscription and I can't sync my ipod as it'll remove the rights on the ones I've already paid for (they won't even verify just within itunes on my PC).

Seeing as audible DRM is built into iTunes, I'd have expected some info about this from Apple - there is none. The Audible website just says it's an Apple bug and will be fixed in the next release of iTunes.

So I'm now in the position where I've got 2 audible books owed to me on my subscription that I've paid for - and I've got nothing to listen to as I walk to and from work as Apple haven't managed to update iTunes for Vista x64 (which has been out in public beta for about a year now). Just to rub salt into the wound, after a week of trying to get around this, Apple today, are seemingly telling people not to upgrade to Vista - until they can sort iTunes out.

If ever there was a reason to force Apple to open Fairplay, this must be it. Currently every single person, who has decided to pay for audiobooks from audible (rather than pirating them) and has installed the latest version of the most popular DRM purchasing system on the planet - is unable to sync their ipod, or download anything they've already paid for on subscription.

I know Apple have no interest in plugging Vista, but I bought your iPod, I bought a subscription from your licensee and I want what I paid for.

I've never liked the idea of DRM, but this is the first time I've ever had it not work, and the fact Apple don't seem to give a shit just makes me ever so slightly angry. Vista wasn't a great surpise, vista didn't suddenly leap forward in release date - I cannot for the life of me see what their excuse is for this not working.

If anybody is feeling paranoid about this issue, go to Apple dicussions and search for 'vista' under 'iTunes for Windows' - it returns one result (look in the actual forum and you'll see a shit-load more complaints).

What a load...

[Shaltenn]

My iPod worked fine on Vista for the short time I bothered to use it.

precisely

[goldcd]

I upgraded to x64 vista - and it is indeed lovely. All my hardware was detected and drivers updated without me having to deal with any of it (well OK, I did have to download an Audigy driver, but that's it).
Apart from iTunes - all my Audible stuff now fails the DRM check. Just to clarify, all the audiobooks I bought for my iPod now no longer play and whilst I have a subscription for two more books this month (£15 I've paid) I can't listen to them.
All iTunes has to do is to decode MP3, M4A, M4P and AA files on my Computer - and map them to my ipod. The fact I can no longer do this either indicates that Apple are inept, or (taking into account today's press releases) they're holding me hostage to make a point.

Re:precisely

[TheNetAvenger]

Audible stuff now fails

An FYI, Audible has their own software, so you don't have to use iTunes, and they also have a plugin for Windows Media Player. Audible is far older than iTunes, and works quite well with WMP or their own software and any MP3 player that doesn't have an Apple Logo on it. You can even stream your books from Audible directly from the internet via WMP and your Browser.

Also doing an OS upgrade kills your activations with Audible, so you have to reactivate if when you upgrade your OS. This has been a thing going all the way back to when I was in the WinXP beta and would forget to deactivate my player between beta build updates.

However, if you have exceeded your 3 activations, just go to their support page, and email them, telling them you upgraded your OS, lost your HD, your dog ate your homework, anything actually, and they will reset them.

They have reset my activations numerous times over the years, and I have even emailed them at 1 am, and got a real person email response with my activations reset within a few minutes.

Audible is a top notch company, even though they have to heavily use DRM to control the audio book content. (And no, I have nothing to do with Audible, nor any investment; I just like their service, with almost 200 books in my Audible library.)

Needless to say Audible's software and their WMP plugin work flawlessly with Vista; you won't be able to load your iPod, but you can at least listen to them or load them on another MP3 player. I recommend a Creative Zen, nice little units and you can buy songs from companies other than Apple. ;)

Of course, apparently Audible noticed that Vista was being released Jan 07, like every other company in the world in the long delay for Vista, which is unlike Apple that still can't get iTunes to work properly on a product people have been waiting on for 6 years.

Maybe MS should have given Apple a 10 year notice about Vista, so Apple would of had time to make a software product that worked properly. Wait, even their OSX version sucks, let alone the buggy XP version.

But I guess it helps Apple to say, aw, our crap software doesn't work on Vista, so don't buy Vista.

(I would buy an iPod, but then I would have to use iTunes, and sadly I like the choice of software players and choice of music stores. I guess I'm just old fashioned in not going for the Orwell 1984 concept of who controls my songs and what I listen to them on and where I buy them.)

Good luck with your books...

Re:precisely

[msim]

(I would buy an iPod, but then I would have to use iTunes, and sadly I like the choice of software players and choice of music stores. I guess I'm just old fashioned in not going for the Orwell 1984 concept of who controls my songs and what I listen to them on and where I buy them.) you could use one of the alternates to itunes, if you can be bothered paying, Anapod is good, and has a good integration into windows. ephpod is a good freeware alternate, but like anything free, you have to get used to its quirks to work through the program smoothly. Hell until i offered to move all my girlfriends mp3's from her mini to her new video ipod, i had never even USED an ipod, and taking that into account, it took me a max of 3-4 hours to be able to move around efficiently in ephpod & work the damned ipod itself. So if you know what your doing, should be a peice of cake.

Re:precisely

[Sir Holo]

The fact I can no longer do this either indicates...

Usually, this kind of thing indicates that Microsoft is breaking their competitors' products on purpose, using their monopoly on the OS as leverage. Lots of examples came out in the antitrust case. This is probably one more.

Re:precisely

[TheNetAvenger]

Thanks for the info, I will check into the alternatives you mentioned. I always have friends that want out of the iTunes world.

Re:precisely

[tsrich]

Despite the overwhelming Msoft is evil vibe, I'm not so sure in this case.

I just got back from the Miscrosoft Vista Readiness Lab, which they setup and run for free to help ISVs port their apps to Vista. The Msoft engineers there were very helpful and seemed to be actually interested in getting 3rd part apps to work on Vista. Their statement was that it was in their best interest for everything to run seemlessly on Vista at launch time (no doubt to avoid press like this article).

I have no knowledge about this specific case, but my bet would be that Apple and Audible haven't gotten their act together on the port. Maybe there were specific changes in Vista that made it tougher for them, but they have had quite a bit of time to work on it.

Re:precisely

[EPDM]

M$ Zune doesn't work on Vista either so who's blaming who? Or who cares anyway. Just wait a few weeks and they'll "fix" it anyway... djeez. The damn thing is only a week released and already ppl are complaining.

Secondly it took just a few weeks from RC2 to RTM. So in essence if M$ had waited a bit longer to streamline RC2 then other parties would have had time to "fix" their stuff (including their own Zune-devision)

Also why should Apple support a competitors product? WHat's the use of developing your own OS and Music software if you're forced to adopt a competing OS and competing players. In essence Apple developped the Ipod, OSX, iTunes and Mac computers. In that combination works best certainly if you use it for what it was intended (which is to play MUSIC!!!)

Apple has the right to persuade ppl to use an OSX/iTunes combo over Vista/iTunes combination.

As for not liking the Ipod and the way iTunes integrate with it. Well I don't like this either. Unfortunatly I HAD no choice if I wanted to use an external audio-player in my car (I'll spare you the details). The only way to hook up a MP3-player to my car's audio system was through an iPod-adaptor. And hence THAT only supported... you got it... an Ipod. So in essence it was my car manufacturor that indirectly forced me to buy an iPod (and YES I ONLY use it in my car as a replacement for an expensive CD-changer which was the other alternative to my audio-system).And no my car has no aux-input nor aux-adaptors (then).

Regards

Re:precisely

[Anonymous Coward]

I always have friends that want out of the iTunes world

While I won't say iTunes is perfect, etc. a lot of you complaints are nonsense. There is no DRM if you don't buy from the iTMS (which has ground breakingly generous terms), while it defaults to encoding in AAC instead of MP3, its because the format is generally considered better, being based on the more computationally expensive MPEG4 standard instead of the ancient MPEG2 standard, its quite easy to change the preferences to encode to MP3 or several other formats/birates. Yes, for a while a default screen came up that suggested other songs you might like, and that meant sending info to the iTMS, but if you close the window (like most folks I knew who didn't care), it sends nothing.

Do what you want, just make sure you're not subjecting yourself to a poor user experience based on your own predjudices.

Re:precisely

[TheNetAvenger]

M$ Zune doesn't work on Vista either so who's blaming who?

Actually it does work on Vista, it didn't work before Vista was released, back in November, and was updated to work at the first part of December.

Are all Mac Fans so out of touch with tech news?

If MS pulled the crap Apple pulls all the time, and put out the crap software like iTunes and the horrid Quicktime they forced on people over the years, MS would have been put out of business.

Instead, people like you make excuses for Apple no matter what they screw up or do.

Want some more Kool-Aid, I hear Jobs is giving it away free in Jonestown next month...

I just can't bring myself to be dissappointed....

[JudgeFurious]

I just can't bring myself to be dissappointed in Apple over this. It's not that I don't agree with you because I do. I think I just like seeing this happen to Microsoft for a change. It's nice to see them take their turn in the barrel for a change.

  To you and I it's Apple's obvious attempt to make Vista look bad on release (not that Vista needed any help with that) but to the unwashed masses it looks like Microsoft just released a shitty OS that doesn't work with their iPod. I can't not love watching the great FUD machine take a shot in the face.

Actually, 2MB chips are pretty cheap right now

[EXMSFT]

The hard part is finding them in the antique shop.

Not malicious.

[WK1]

I think both Microsoft and Apple are evil megacorps, but this does not reek of sabotage by either company.

If Apple wanted to undermine Windows, they would have said something along the lines of, "Due to the history of Windows (in)stability, we are holding off on supporting the ipod on Vista until Vista SP1 is released." Apple doing this would seriously hurt Microsoft, but they would hurt themselves too. And besides, they didn't do that. They're fixing this bug as fast as they can.

Similarly, Microsoft sabotaging iPod just doesn't make sense. Sure, they've done stuff exactly like that in the past, but only when they have a reasonable alternative to sell, and not against something which has more market share than they do (More iPods out there than Vista.)

I know, it's only natural to immediately think, "Microsoft/Apple must be at it again." After all, history supports it. But I think that this genuinely is an accident.

Yet More Vista FUD...

[King_of_Crunk]

Hasn't corrupted my "little music player".
Get off the FUD people your making yourselves out to be worse then M$ and SCO when it comes to the spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Re:Yet More Vista FUD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't corrupted my "little music player".

Seems the DRM on your iPod isn't defective. Please send it to Apple to be fixed.

Ext 3 driver for Windows/Mac

[polyomninym]

There is an ext3 file system driver for windows. I don't own a Mac, but there's gotta be one for them, too. Has anyone tried this?

Re:Ext 3 driver for Windows/Mac

[miro f]

it's actually just an ext2 driver. So no journaling support from Windows.

Apple's not making Vista look bad

[suv4x4]

Some posts claimed that Apple didn't update iTunes so it can make Vista look bad. If you read the tech note you'll see it's not the case, they simply list the procedure for properly using and updating iTunes/iPod in Vista until they issue an update for iTunes.

Those things happen, no need to look for a conspiracy.

I suppose they learned their PR lesson from last time, when they shipped virus infected iPods and claimed it's the fault of Windows, for "getting infected so easily" (??).

Whatever...

[JM78]

Neither. Software bugs and breaks happen. Yeah, I know, it's /., but do we really have to treat EVERY tiny issue between M% and Apple as a full-blown conspiricy? So they're fixing a problem that's been discovered. WOW. I'm impressed with this kind of investigative reporting... *rolls eyes*

Yeah, like XP took over the market

[twitter]

I'll turn that one on it's head:

make sure that your #1 money making product actually worked on a new operating system that was likely to gain significant market share in a very short time.

How about the first mover advantage? You think people are going to rush out and buy software that breaks their favorite toy? No, M$ just sealed the deal for the huge iPod owning population - Vista will wait, and it might be time to check out a Mac or Linux. Not working with the most popular music player on the market is a bad move.

It took XP four long years to have more desktops than previous M$ OS. Vista is not going to come close and could undo M$.

Re:Yeah, like XP took over the market

[psiclops]

i'd assume most people upon learning vista will break their iPod, will just stick with their current OS until the issue is fixed. where's the incentive to spend a lot of money on a mac, or switch to linux?

Re:Yeah, like XP took over the market

[twbecker]

You think people are going to rush out and buy software that breaks their favorite toy?

How are they going to know? Most people aren't up on the latest tech news you know. Not to mention if you're buying a new machine, you don't have a choice. It's not about Vista having more marketshare then XP, it's about it having enough marketshare to piss off a lot of iPod owners. And it doesn't matter who they blame for it. Lost revenue is lost revenue.

blame DRM competition

[jsepeta]

vista, with its focus on DRM, and itunes, with it's "fairplay" drm, have competing interests, so it's no surprising that itunes and ipods would be undermined by microsoft, especially since their own player the zune was such a dog in the marketplace. microsoft for a long time has demonstrated that their "os ain't done til 1-2-3 won't run". why should vista be any different?

It's the TROLLs fault...

[amagine]

for even making this an issue...

I'll never understand what it is about Apple zealots and MicroSoft freeks, always arguing over who's 'hammer' is better.

This is a TROLL test friends.

I don't care what tool you people use, as long as you enjoy it, are creative/productive, and add to the construct in some tiny way to world of computing.

As far as iTunes and Vista goes, it'll get fixed if it has not already. And anyone has rock for brains if they really think first versions of ANY kind of software will not have the odd bug in them.

There is no conspiracy here.

Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like you to meet my friend, ,.

Here's the reference

[giafly]

And Microsoft has never purposefully designed their OS to interfere with another competitors product.

For younger readers, here's one famous example, via Dr. Dobb's Journal.

Apple's USB handling sucks

[oohshiny]

Apple's handling of USB mass storage devices sucks: you can't even unplug an inactive iPod from a Macintosh without it telling you that you have done something bad.

Vista caching or whatever may exacerbate the problem by making it really not safe to remove the device, but ultimately, Apple needs to make both their iPods and OS X more robust against device removal. Popping up dialog boxes is simply not acceptable.

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear! Hear!

In this battle-thread (starting with the GP of this post) of Apple vs MS fanboys, I declare:
APPLE fanboys
the winners! Best point: good counter-argument, with bonus for inciting nastiness from opponents.

Hints for the losers: less swearing and whining, more counter arguments. Also try changing the topic to something where you can "win" more easily.

sincerely,
your anti-fanboy head of jury.

So, who's fault is this really??

[mwbauers]

I see a lot of people blaming Apple for this one...........

This is a quote from within another current SlashDot thread........

"Considering Microsoft is still in the process of patching Vista, including a major patch issued just as Vista went out the door, can we really stick all the blame on Nvidia? "

I'll quote the first line from that thread...""Nvidia is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising by not providing stable working drivers for Vista "

Perhaps Apple is having troubles with the just released patches for Vista as Microsoft is still trying, [struggling perhaps...], to make Vista a fully working release ????? I hope folks aren't having too much problems with their Nvidia hardware under Vista as well as their iPods..........

I suppose having to sue over Vista performance with nVidia hardware shows what the situation is with the recent Vista release.

So it's not just the iPods that are choking over Vista.............

Whos fault?

[nurb432]

Do you even need to ask this question?

Microsoft has a directly competing product, and while it may not be intentional, ( if it was, they would be sued yet again by the FTC ) they arent going to rush out and fix the problem.

apples fault

[Anonymous Coward]

so sowey
if micro~1 puts out a dev kit for over a year before release and updates it. Then Apple can make a damn patch or upgrade itunes prior to vista release. since so many others have already done so makes apple the fritter here :P

Safely - and quickly! - remove hardware.

[Anonymous Custard]

I never used to back when I thought I had to double-click the icon, wait a few seconds, get the pop up window, find the device in the list, click the device, click stop, click okay, click close, remove the device.

Then I discovered that I could single-click the icon, click the device name in the small context menu that comes up, and then remove the device. Now I use this second method all the time, as it's basically just two obvious clicks.

make your bets

[Anonymous Coward]

Some questions that will help you form a pretty accurate opinion:

• Who is a convicted monopolist ?
  (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Micr osoft
  and: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?refe rence=IP/04/382&format=HTML&aged=0&language=&guiLa nguage=en )
  
• Who is still under investigation in at least U.S. and Europe markets ?
  (see: http://ww.iowaconsumercase.org/ )
• Whose mint new operating system is in direct competition with Apple's Mac OS X ? (see: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/macosx_leopar d_preview.asp )
• Who is trying hard to enter the mp3 player market with an iPod-killer ?
  (see: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/54786.html )

Easy as 1+1, at least two me !

This could backfire on Microsoft

[fz00]

People care more about their iPods than they do about Vista and if Microsoft wants to bet on this, it's at their own peril. My bet is that people will upgrade this less than they did XP. The problem with Vista in general is that alot of the "enhancements" are not visible to the average user. Upgrades also have a reputation of being a pain in the ass. Word gets out that it breaks the iPod... GAME OVER!

Fuck I-Tunes

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont need a 20+ gig PoS player to prove I have a dick between my legs. A normal 512mb to 1gig player suits me fine and I do not need the I-Tunes to do get my mp3s on it. Sure there is the Ipod shuffle but hence Itunes, so F you Apple, and F you M$!

DOS ain't done til Lotus won't run.

[Maxo-Texas]

It was well known in the 80's.

Not surprised a bit to see it updated for the 00's.

ipod / CD

[klubar]

The apple equivalent would be to require you to insert your ipod in a sealed container and then drag it to the trash to eject it. I never understood why to delete a file you drag it to the trash, and to eject a cd you drag it to the trash. Seems counterintutitive to me...

Like the pc approach better...it just works... hit the eject button on the cd and out pops the cd.... if the application locked the cd drive then it doesn't eject. Why should I need a software command to eject a read-only cd or dvd?

Re:ipod / CD

[Weedlekin]

"I never understood why to delete a file you drag it to the trash"

You mean as opposed to Windows XP, where you select "delete" from a menu and it sends the file to the recycle bin instead of deleting it. Of course, Joe Windows-user will know that this is happening because the icon for the recycle bin helpfully looks exactly same irrespective of whether there's anything in it or not.

"and to eject a cd you drag it to the trash"

Or use the "eject" key on the keyboard, or right-click / (ctrl-click for curmudgeonly one button mouse users) on the icon for the drive, and select "eject".

"I like the pc approach better...it just works... hit the eject button on the cd and out pops the cd.... if the application locked the cd drive then it doesn't eject."

Same with a Mac -- hit the eject button on the keyboard, and out pops the CD / DVD, unless it is locked by an application.

"Why should I need a software command to eject a read-only cd or dvd?"

Because you'd have a lot of trouble with modern small form-factor Windows PCs and slim notebooks which have slot-loading drives with no buttons on them if Windows didn't also have the ability to use soft commands, although these are of course a special variety of Washingtonian soft command that is of notably better quality than the Californian ones that OS X comes with.

Windows is not done till Lotus wont run

[baomike]

>

My, what a short memory. Maybe none at all?

hot swappable iPods

[ydeologi]

According to this article, it looks Apple's working on a hot-swappable iPod which would probably address at least one of the bugs involved here. Either way, Apple should have worked this out before Vista came out; there's a lot of cash from Windows users in their coffers.

Microsoft does exactly the same thing.

[argent]

Apple's handling of USB mass storage devices sucks: you can't even unplug an inactive iPod from a Macintosh without it telling you that you have done something bad.

You can't unplug any "inactive" but still mounted mass-storage device from any operating system without possibly damaging the file system, and without getting a warning that you did something wrong. I've had flash drives corrupted by users doing this on *every* version of Windows. This is inherent in the way computers and file systems work, and Apple can't wave a magic wand and fix it.

Audible is made of bugs.

[argent]

I went through the exact same kind of problem with Audible on the Pocket PC, and I had an inside line to Microsoft's Pocket PC support because this was when Microsoft was wooing vocal Palm users... so I'm pretty damn sure this wasn't Microsoft's fault (red letter day, folks, I just said something wasn't Microsoft's fault). And, yes, I was using Microsoft's media player on the Pocket PC to play the books.

I'm sure that Vista will be fine and everything will work on it pretty soon, but I don't recommend buying into the "dot zero" release of any new software or major version upgrade. Doesn't matter if it's Vista, Tiger, Pocket PC, Palm, Photoshop, or iTunes. I always assume that until the first or second service pack or patch kit that you're really dealing with an "extended beta".

where's the incentive to buy Vista?

[twitter]

most people upon learning vista will break their iPod, will just stick with their current OS until the issue is fixed. where's the incentive to spend a lot of money on a mac, or switch to linux?

So, they will then magically jump to the expensive option that had to be "fixed"? Dream on, Steve-o.

You can buy a mac for less than a PC and you don't have to buy anything to get GNU/Linux, and both have more going for them than Vista. A low end mini costs about $500. GNU/Linux costs nothing and runs on the user's current hardware. Both have performance, interfaces and programs that blow a Vista machine out of the water. "Vista premium" computers are being advertised for $15,000! A cheap-o vista computer is going to be a downgrade from what most people already have.

Re:where's the incentive to buy Vista?

[Keith Russell]

"Vista premium" computers are being advertised for $15,000!

What about an over-specced Ubuntu box? Or a fully-loaded Mac Pro? Or BeOS on an Alienware ALX? An over-priced, over-powered PC is what it is, operating system be damned.

Re:where's the incentive to buy Vista?

[psiclops]

a computer that you already own running the OS already installed on it costs $0, runs all the programs you're used to, and contains all your important files. it's not like just because vista is out everyone must upgrade.
and you don't need a whole new computer for vista, you can upgrade parts, even if you dont know anything about computers you can take it to someone. and noone is going to downgrade their computer for vista.

Re:where's the incentive to buy Vista?

[The Bungi]

Talk about pathetic grasping at straws.

Re:Apple...er...Microsoft...er...Apple..um...neith

[dragonbutt]

"or expecting Chevy to design their intakes so you can drop one on top of a Ford block with no modification and expect it to work."

Yes but I go to the fuel station and purchase fuel for ford or chevy and expect it will work the same in either.

It's like only chevy gas will work in my chevy and if i use ford fuel, my chevy is broken.

If you don't like DRM, vote with your pocketbook

[argent]

If all the peope bitching about what the combination of Vista DRM and Apple DRM is doing to their iPods, they should vote with their pocketbooks and spend their money at eMusic instead, and only use iTunes or Rhapsody as a backup for when they can't find a legal MP3.

works elsewhere

[oohshiny]

You can't unplug any "inactive" but still mounted mass-storage device from any operating system without possibly damaging the file system

Oh, come on, this stuff has worked for a long time using automount. When I don't access the USB drive, it's automatically unmounted after a few seconds and can be safely removed. When I attempt to access it again, it's automatically mounted within a fraction of a second. That setup works even for MSDOS file systems. Whether you use automount or not, there is no reason ever to leave a file system in an unclean state when all writes have finished.

Furthermore, with a correctly implemented transactional file system, you can simply disconnect the drive at any time, even in the middle of a write, and you'll be fine.

This is inherent in the way computers and file systems work, and Apple can't wave a magic wand and fix it.

There is nothing "inherent" about it; people figured out this stuff in the 60's and 70's.

But, don't worry, Apple will figure this out one of these days, patent it, claim that they invented it all, and people like you will be clapping their hands.

Apple can't program

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's programs for Windows have always sucked. Why expect Vista to be written any better?

If I had a dollar for every Windows machine which Quicktime destroyed, I could buy Apple, fire all their programmers, and hire some people who know what the hell they're doing.

Just like the old days

[Chomp]

Vista ain't done until Apple won't run!

Apple is at fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is definitely at fault. I have the same problems described above in Windows XP!

Vendor Lock in

[ProfessionalCookie]

Stupid ogg with it's vendor-lock-in. *wink*

apples fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never used an "iPod", but i do use an mp3 player, I could load,add,remove, and explore songs within windows, just by browsing to the g:\ path, i didn't install *any software* nor do did i have to buy any songs, or use a specific format.. It just works. I dont need to install special,hardware/software/song formats, thats not me.

the real news here

[entropys_cbn_dbt]

is that apple has announced a new version of itunes (7.1) No doubt one reason is for the release of the appletv, but what other hardware goodness could an update be for?

Re:No, remember this is slashdot. (OT: SIG)

[geoffspear]

If you think you are loosing your rights, ask your self, has your life been altered since you lost them?

You misspelled "since you loosed them". Hope this helps. I can only assume you're going to blame Microsoft for this one, since despite President Bush's complete inability to pronounce most English words, I'm not aware of him having much effect on anyone's spelling. Even journalists directly quoting him don't write "nucular".

Good idea, but it's Microsoft's job, not Apple's.

[argent]

Oh, come on, this stuff has worked for a long time using automount.

Interesting idea, though that only works in an OS where the applications and GUI are sane and don't randomly poke at devices on their own because the music player/antivirus/spyware/background search index/whatever daemon is feeling lonely and wants a crack at it.

When I don't access the USB drive, it's automatically unmounted after a few seconds and can be safely removed. When I attempt to access it again, it's automatically mounted within a fraction of a second. That setup works even for MSDOS file systems.

I'm sure Microsoft could implement something like that for Windows, but it would be Microsoft that would have to wave the magic want... it's not Apple's job to port automount to Windows. And my experience with Microsoft doing something similar for the Pocket PC has been less than thrilling. I eventually turned autosync off there completely, because that was the only way I could be sure some damn conduit didn't have something magic open on the handheld when I pulled it out of the cradle.

Furthermore, with a correctly implemented transactional file system

Apple has to use MS-DOS FS on Windows. They have HFS, which has journal support, but you can't use HFS on your iPod on Windows... Apple had to pay the MS-DOS file system tax to get the iPod working on Windows at all.

Apple will figure this out one of these days, patent it, claim that they invented it all, and people like you will be clapping their hands.

You misspelled "Microsoft". The disk format it's using is Microsoft's, and the file system it's using is Microsoft's.

Blame improved security...

[walbourn]

This article mentions "kernel patching" which is definitely an area that was locked down in Windows Vista for improved security. If Apple was hacking the kernel as part of their DRM implementation, their technique could well run afoul of this change. I personally equate the conspiracy theories in this thread with the idea that a secret cabal is really running the entire world. It's appealing to some people and it makes them feel safer than the more likely reality that nobody is doing this stuff intentionally or that any specific intellect is truely behind it all, much in the same way our ancestors found it comforting to think they were being boned by Zues or Hera on purpose instead of bad things just happening. Microsoft is not the same company it was in 1995, large numbers of the old timers from those days have retired or at least moved on to other areas of the company, and much of the daily work on the code is being done by people who've only been with the company on the order of 2 or 3 years. There is an entire department concerned with legal compliance, and between them and the security groups have most of the real authority these days. Microsoft did more than best effort to educate the world about the changes coming in the new OS. Lots of companies either convinced themselves that it would never ship, that their software was too "important" for Microsoft to break and not hack up their OS to make it work, choose willful ignorance, or saw it as an opportunity to shiv each other and/or Microsoft in the press for their own gains. The final builds of the OS were available to MSDN Subscribers and through the Beta programs in November of last year, so it was technically possible to have most compatibility issues resolved well before Jan 30th. The reality is that corporations do not typically operate on a rational, logical basis. More often priorities are set based on mandates from ill-informed executives in combination with reactive in-bound support issues. Even many Microsoft teams took the same "we'll deal with it after the building is on fire instead of before" attitude, so it really shouldn't' surprise anyone that the entire software industry has a similar attitude. Still, you have to start somewhere and after a five year lull, things in the world of Windows software has gotten "interesting" (in that Chinese proverb kind of way for some) again.