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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[psiclops]

winamp 5.32 comes with iPod support.

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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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 :)

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...

[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...

[Shippy]

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

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?

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.

[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

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..

[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..

[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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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.

[The_DoubleU]

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

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.

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?

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.

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: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?

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...

[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: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: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.

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.

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.

STOP the FUD Appl provided a fix already

[aristotle-dude]

Enough already.

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

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

[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.

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!

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: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.

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.

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:Tagged appleduh

[dangitman]

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

Added more kittens?

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.

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

[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: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!

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.

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: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.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[The Dobber]

Couldn't afford either, huh?

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.

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.

Actually, 2MB chips are pretty cheap right now

[EXMSFT]

The hard part is finding them in the antique shop.

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.

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.

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

[DuckDodgers]

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