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Apple Cuts Off Linux iPod Users
Will Fisher writes "New iPods will no longer be able to work with Linux. iTunes now writes some kind of hash (SHA1, md5?) to the iPod database which new iPods check against. If this check fails then the iPod reports that it contains 0 songs. This appears to be protection against 3rd party applications writing out their own databases. We haven't found out how to generate our own valid hashes (but we do know the hash includes the database itself, and possibly the iPod serial number), and are looking for help."
First, I applaud your determination to uphold the implied freedom to do what one will (within reason, of course) with something that someone owns.
However, if you are in the USA you are running the risk of Apple invoking the DMCA.
I hope they don't. I hope you succeed. I firmly believe from a technical standpoint it can be done. My concern is the legal ramifications.
If you're using only Linux, then you're not using iTunes, and unless you have a some separate access to a computer with iTunes you're not using ITMS. So why use the proprietary database format of iTunes at all? Just use rockbox and treat your iPod like what it is, a mass storage device. Easier manage your files that way anyway. Headline really should read Apple Cuts Off ITMS From Potential Users.
Putting in cryptographic hashes isn't just "breaking the interface". It's called locking down the entire bloody thing and making life miserable for anybody trying to reverse engineer it.
Granted, Apple is well within its rights to do such a thing, but it's bad PR. People are starting to warm up to the idea that once you buy something, you should be able to use it however you like (since you BOUGHT it). Apple has no obligation to support 3rd party software, but neither are they obligated to break 3rd party software. Without any other explanation, it looks like it was a deliberate attempt to lock out non-Apple software. And that's why people are upset - it's the same reason DRM riles so many people.
I see a crowd mentality at work here -- people buy and then vigorously defend having bought an iPod, not because it's better than the competition, but because it's what your friends have.
While I can't argue that many people may have done that, I went from swimming upstream to something that was designed to work with what I had. I had a Rio Karma from a few years back, specifically for the Ogg Vorbis support, but once I made the transition from Windows to Mac, I found that I was swimming upstream in my insistence on using this device. Still, I persisted until the hard drive died, and once the time came to buy another device - well, since I already had and really liked my iBook, I decided to go along with the design flow and picked up an iPod Nano. I wish I hadn't had to re-rip my collection, but I've been very happy with the aesthetics and the usability, given that I use a digital audio player specifically for working out, running/biking, or long drives.
A number of people will complain about iTunes and how it manages files and playlists - and I agree that it doesn't do things the way I want, the way I'd done them before. It is very easy to use, but does some things I don't like and doesn't present the flexibility or power in use. Do you know what I discovered after a short while? I didn't care - it did a good enough job, and it wasn't worth the effort of micro-managing my playlists in painstaking detail the way I'd done before.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
Price was no object. The main reason I went for a linux laptop was simple---pixel density. I work with very large images, and the more pixels I can see at a time, in better. Even back in 2001, you could buy a cheap 14" Dell with 1440x1050 resolution (128 pixels/linear inch). By contrast, in 2007 you cannot buy a 15.4" inch MacBook pro with similar pixel density. The best Apple can do is 1440x900, which comes to a crappy 110 pixels/linear inch. Simply put, the pixels on a MacBook/MacBook Pro are just way too big.
My current laptop is a Dell Precision M70 (top of the line in 2004) with a screaming graphics card (NVidia Quadro FX 1400 Go). It runs Ubuntu. Since it's a Pentium M, I can undervolt it in linux and it runs fairly cool. Wireless, everything works out of the box (though WPA didn't work until the most recent version of Ubuntu, 7.04). I love it.
For things like iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD, you can't beat a mac---I still go back for those. But I'm starting to get sick of this iTunes nonsense, and if there were suitable linux alternatives to iLife (which there aren't, no matter how much we'd like to think so), I would completely ditch OS X.
Yes, casual users don't care for the technical details, so they want something usable and stylish. The fact that many of their friends have one too probably doesn't go amiss, since they'll no doubt need help with it or itunes now and again, and want to be confident that they own a machine that must be good because everyone else has one. Usability and marketing were the two edges that pushed the ipod ahead. Having said that there are many equally usable devices out there, but it's no coincidence that the ipod was and still is the most heavily marketed portable media player.
This is a symptom of exactly what I was talking about.
Why do you want your music files organized a certain way? The point of iTunes and such software is that you shouldn't need to care how it's organized- you should be able to focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish: 1) Find specific music. 2) Play said music. 3) Put a subset of your music on an mp3 player. 4) Burn cds of subsets of your music.
Having to organize files is a problem, not part of a solution to a problem- you should simply be able to perform the above tasks without needing to worry about the details. That's the philosophy of software design with systems like iTunes.
That's one of the things that has really pushed me away from Linux and toward MacOS X for everyday usage over the past years- the focus on actually getting something done rather than worrying about the stuff that I have to do first in order to subsequently get something done.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
They've also made it currently impossible to use alternate OSes on the iPod by encrypting the firmware on the 2nd gen Nano and all subsequent iPods, which is a much more difficult obstacle to overcome. I'm surprised there isn't as much of an uproar about this on Slashdot.