New iPod Checksum Cracked, Linux Supported

An anonymous reader writes "After 36 hours of reverse engineering, the method for producing the checksum on new iPods has been discovered." You can also get linux support working if that's what you crave for your shiny new toy.

Comments

What's the draw?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Is it the iTunes store? Is it the sound quality? Is it the looks of the device?

What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?

I don't get it at all.

What I don't get more than that is the people who buy the iPod just to put Linux on it. That actually causes negative understanding.

Re:What's the draw?

[Poromenos1]

It's the scrollwheel.

Re:What's the draw?

[mrchaotica]

What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?

Integration with iTunes (not necessarily the store), such as syncing Smart Playlists, and 3rd-party accessory support that's an order of magnitude greater than for any other music player.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple: The click wheel is a better interface than anything else on the market. And when I'm in my car trying to choose a track, the speed and ease of the inferface is critical. Until someone invents something better, people will continue to buy iPods.

Re:What's the draw?

[Mwongozi]

It's two things, but of those two, primarily only one of them.

The iPod, if not the best sounding music player, is easily one of the best. But mostly it's the UI. It's difficult to explain why if you haven't used one for a few days, but the iPod UI, to use a cliche, just works. Other players just seem clunky and awkward by comparison.

I'm sure for many others the looks of the device play a big factor as well, but I'd still be using an iPod if it was brown.

Re:What's the draw?

[Andy Dodd]

It has a more polished user interface and more third-party accessory support than any other player.

When shopping for an MP3 player, I considered alternatives (and in fact looked at alternatives first), and in the end went with iPod because:
1) Most of the alternatives I looked at weren't any cheaper than the iPod
2) Most of them got slammed in reviews for bad user interfaces
3) Most of them were not available in B&M stores allowing me to return it easily if I hated the UI.

In short, in the end the iPod wound up being the "safe bet", and unlike most Apple products, wasn't grossly overpriced compared to the competition. (Disclaimer: This was over a year ago, things may have changed since then.)

Re:What's the draw?

[91degrees]

Nice UI and the fact that everything that's designed to work with an mp3 player works with an ipod.

Another way of putting that second one is "It's popular because it's so popular".

Re:What's the draw?

[Poromenos1]

It's not actually integration with iTunes (it's the most bloated piece of crap I've seen since RealPlayer), but the fact that there is any integration at all, i.e. a database of songs you can search and sort any way you want. Plus there's a really intuitive interface to control it. If there was another company that had that I'd buy its offer, I don't like Apple's overpriced hardware.

Re:What's the draw?

[timster]

I don't know about everyone else, but I use an iPod to personally annoy you.

And because all of the alternatives with a screen equivalent to the one on the iPhone are nearly an inch think, and I don't want to carry a purse. There's also that.

Re:What's the draw?

[kannibal_klown]

What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?

It isn't that they're the best at any one thing, but it's that they manage to combine a whole lot of things together really well. Though I hate the analogy, let's look at a car. You don't pick one simply because it has the best engine, you try to get one that's put together well and scores high on all major categories: safety, handling, stability, etc.

That, and iTunes lock-in.

All in all, they're decent pieces of hardware. I finally broke down and bought myself my first iPod a couple of weeks ago (the new Nano, super-thin flash-based). My entire music collection is either ripped from old CDs or purchased via iTunes, and I wanted to start listening to my purchased stuff at work without worrying about breaking company policy by installing iTunes at work.

Other companies, like iRiver, offer a couple of superior units while others sell trash. So, I guess the draw of Apple of the other good ones is simply iTunes.

Re:What's the draw?

[Rik Sweeney]

Integration with iTunes (not necessarily the store), such as syncing Smart Playlists, and 3rd-party accessory support that's an order of magnitude greater than for any other music player.

You forgot DRM and a quick and dirty Gapless Playback solution.

If you just want to have some music playing, get an iPod.

If you want to actually listen to the music the way it was intended to be, put Rockbox on it.

Re:What's the draw?

[Lumpy]

It's compatability with 3rd party devices.

I can take an iPod plug it into a connector in my car and completely control it from my steering wheel and see the info on the stereo's display. works perfectly. I can do the same with my Crestron Whole house audio system, my alarm clock, etc...

No other mp3 player on the market can do that. NONE. Apple opened up the connector interface and had a rs232 control interface down in that connector so other devices can control it, All other mp3 makers sit in the corner curled up screaming "MINE MINE!" or are not smart enough to think about 3rd party control like that.

That is why I use it, my daughter uses it, and I reccomend the iPod to all my clients what are doing whole house automation and audio integration. Only the ipod can do advanced integration that is seamless from the car to the home to the bedroom. (even the wife if you buy a iGazim attachment)

That is why.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The iPod, if not the best sounding music player, is easily one of the best" are you trying to say the iPod produces better sound quality than the majority of the other mp3 players out there? You're kidding right?

Re:What's the draw?

[widdma]

I've tried a lot of the competition, but the iPod seems to be simplest to use. This is probably their key selling feature... that and their hype-machine.

Re:What's the draw?

[leuk_he]

I think you do not actually want to put linux on it, i think that the issue here is that the iPod is linux supported, meaning that you can transfer music from and to your linux desktop.

Linux support is so obvious for 99 out of 100 usb mp3 player out there it is not even worth mentioning. These mp3 players just behave like a generic USB pen disk. That you need a special (circumvention?) program for a iPod is the strange issue here.

Re:What's the draw?

[jimstapleton]

Serious question, not intended to be a Troll.

My player has a little joystick nub on it. I push it left to go back one song, right to go forward one song, up to turn up the volume, and down to turn the volume down. If I wan to navigate my playlist in a more complex manner than next/last song, I press the joystick nub in, like a button. I figured all this out in under a minute without even opening up the manual.

May I ask how the clickwheel is more obvious and user friendly than that for normal use?

Granted, having to press/hold the nub in and hold it for a few seconds to get to advanced settings was less than intuitive and I did have to open the manual for that. But that was the only time I used the manual.

Re:What's the draw?

[tgd]

Here's a few reasons that are valid to those who don't have Macs anyway (and its a no brainer if you use other Apple products):

1) Easy connection to cars. My iPod plugs into my truck's (factory) radio, and I get all the music info on there as well as easy browsing of the music. All the factory controls work, and its hidden in the glove box.
2) Lots of 3rd party speaker/dock solutions.
3) The iPod camera adapter.

The iPod camera adapter is really a very under-reported item, I think. I recently was in Alaska and didn't want to bring my laptop with me. My iPod has about 25g of free space on it, and I burned through 2/3 of that pulling pictures each day off my two digital cameras, and was able to use it to show pictures to my family (although it'd be nice if they added RAW viewing to it).

If you use it as a stand alone player in your pocket, then you're absolutely right.

Re:What's the draw?

[Pojut]

You have quite obviously never used a Rio Carbon or a Rio Karma...Always has had and always will have a far, far, FAR simpler and easier interface than an iPod.

Re:What's the draw?

[supremebob]

Exactly. Shouldn't the KDE team be putting their development efforts behind an MP3 player that's "Linux friendly", rather than help a company who's trying to screw them over by locking out their products?

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Acceptance, insecurity, pretty much sum it up.

If you dont have an iXXX your not cool and have to sit at the nerds table for lunch.

Re:What's the draw?

[nsanders]

Never looked at the Sansa's huh? $50-$100 cheaper, they have a voice recorder, SD expansion (extra 2gb of space!), great accessory choices and a great product. The thing I like most is that there's no "disconnecting" with the Sansa. Just unplug it and go.

When my iPod died I got a Sansa and I love it. My 10gb Sansa (8gb + 2gb SD) cost $100 cheaper than a 4GB Nano.

Re:What's the draw?

[Jimithing DMB]

At least on my iPod, I can get true gapless playback by simply using an encoding scheme which isn't affected by gaps. That is, either plain PCM or Apple Lossless. Sure, it's not gapless playback of MP3 or AAC but it does the job and the types of music I want to listen to gapless I also usually want to hear in their original fidelity.

For what it's worth, the older models (I previously had a 2G) would put little gaps in even when playing WAV and didn't support Apple Lossless at all. The new ones (I now have a 5G) seem to no longer have this problem presumably by simply concatenating each song without any silence gaps in the buffer. Couple that with a simple cable from SiK that gives a pure line out from the dock connector and you've got a great way of playing tunes through a good stereo without losing any fidelity compared to playing them using a CD player.

Re:What's the draw?

[walt-sjc]

4) Availability of accessories.

That's huge. You can get iPod interfaces for most higher-end car stereos for example, not to mention the plethora of docks, cases, etc.

Re:What's the draw?

[Spirilis]

For me, it's the connectivity. I have an Alpine headunit in my car and a major part of my decision to buy the ipod was the fact that they sold an interface which allows me to dock my ipod such that I can control the ipod's interface through the headunit, while charging it at the same time. I like this because it allows me to use the ipod as an external music source for the headunit, allowing me to continue using the Alpine interface which is far easier to use while driving (IMHO).

I've heard that they make headunits which allow connectivity to USB-based music players; if that's the case, then this point is moot.

Re:What's the draw?

[Just Some Guy]

What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?

More broadly supported? What everyone else said. Better? Nothing. My wife has a Nano and I have a Sansa e280. Interface-wise, they're nearly identical except that my scrollwheel is an actual rotating disk instead of a touch sensor. Honestly, it basically comes down to taste and budget.

Re:What's the draw?

[damaki]

Best sounding? The bundled earbuds are a piece of crap and, until the 5.5 ones, the ipods were not even gapless. And what about the infamous vbr skipping bug of the older ones? Sure, it has improved, and these sound great with good earbuds or a headset but it is not the. I think, the selling points were and are still the design and the UI. It's just great, easy to use, nice looking. Mp3 players had horrific UIs, these text only ugly with wacky menus, definitely not what you little sister would use.
Apple invented the usable mp3 player.

Re:What's the draw?

[AmaDaden]

It's not that the iPod is great it's just that it has nothing major wrong with it. I've seen a lot mp3 players that were ok but had one glaring flaw. Battery life, UI, file accessibility, storage size...etc. Plus at this point there is so much extra software and hardware for it that any other player would have to do a lot to break in to the market.

What I don't get more than that is the people who buy the iPod just to put Linux on it.

If you are referring to the story that was not the issue. The problem was that the default iPod software on the incoming generation of iPod would ignore a play list not made by iTunes software. So all Linux users (who can't use iTunes because it's not on Linux) would have been left in the dust. The headline was a bit misleading.

Re:What's the draw?

[TheRaven64]

The biggest thing is the size. Find any competing device which has the same amount of storage as an iPod classic or iPod nano, and isn't at least 25% bigger.

Re:What's the draw?

[Sciros]

Only the ipod can do advanced integration that is seamless from the car to the home to the bedroom. (even the wife if you buy a iGazim attachment) WHAT THE... seamless integration with the wife?... Just what exactly is an iGazim attachment and would one have to take his daughter to the doctor if she asks about getting one...

Re:What's the draw?

[RabidMonkey]

For me, it's iTunes. I know that sounds crazy, but if you get beyond the bloat and horrible interface ...

I don't have a lot of free time to go hopping from store to store looking for CDs, and I don't listen to regular radio (CBC or bust), so I don't get exposed to a lot of new music. But, when I do have some free time, I can fire up iTunes and checkout music at home, quickly. And, if I like it, in a matter of minutes I can have the music on my desktop and iPod, for less than I would pay in a music store. Sure, theres DRM, but I don't care, I'm playing the music on my iPod. And, if I don't want to play it there, I convert to mp3, or burn it directly from iTunes.

Yeah, it's not fantastic, but I want to support artists whose music I like. Since I'm much more likely to do that in iTunes than in a music store, and I'm not going to just download their music and not have them get paid for it (however little they make off an album, it's still money in their pocket they wouldn't get if I .torrent'd it), I stick with my iPod and their stupid bloaty software that frequently uses up more memory than even memory sucking firefox or WoW.

Plus, theres the scrollwheel.

$0.02 CDN

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The 6 and 8 gig Sansa I've seen are going for ~50 USD more then the 4Gb Nano. And that's without the SD card.

I urge moderators to check the parents "facts" before they mod. Maybe there are cheaper ones out there but my fast research shows that the parent is spreading FUD.

Re:What's the draw?

[Doc Ruby]

The white earbud wires signal to people (especially the cuter ones who can't think so good) that they can have sex with you before they notice that you're a geek with a "LiPod".

Re:What's the draw?

[Zonk (troll)]

When I was looking for an MP3 player a few years ago, it had the best price/storage ratio. Everything else I looked at either only had half the storage for around $50-100 less, or was the same and cost $50-100 more. So, I got the 60gb 4th gen iPod. To this day it still works fine, in fact I'm listing to some Static-X on it at the moment. I use it most of the day, even when driving (through the line in port, I had to replace the stereo for that).

The only thing that was a disappointment with it was the headphones, which, IMHO, sound awful. So I had to spend another $20 on a decent set of portable headphones. The iPod's sound quality is decent, though I greatly prefer the M-Audio Delta 1010lt in my home computer...

I'm probably going to buy something new around May, something that's 80gb+ and ideally something that supports Vorbis. As I'm fed up with using GTKPod to manage it, ideally I'd like to be able to manage it with rsync (all of my music is properly sorted, tagged, and has the artwork embedded in it). Does anyone have a recommendation?

Re:What's the draw?

[yo_tuco]

"If you want to actually listen to the music the way it was intended to be, put Rockbox on it."

From Rockbox web site:

"Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players:

Apple: iPod 3rd gen, 4th gen (grayscale and color), 5th/5.5th gen (video), iPod Mini and 1st gen iPod Nano (not the 2nd gen Nano)"

Does this mean you're currently SOL for the new releases of the iPod line?

Re:What's the draw?

[Constantine XVI]

Sansa View.
Launches October, roughly the size/shape of old Nano, 3:4 screen taking most of the face, plays most sane video formats, retains muSD slot, gains SDHC support
8GB for 150, 16GB for 200

Re:What's the draw?

[metamatic]

Find me another audio player which:

• Has good sound quality (please cite reviews)
• Has a capacity of 80GB or more
• Plays MP3 and MP4 audio
• Has an easy to use UI
• Fits in a pocket

...but doesn't require proprietary software, and I might switch.

If you can't find one, then you've answered your own question.

Re:What's the draw?

[LWATCDR]

I have a Karma. I have to say that I didn't use it as much as I do my Ipod. I think the Karma could have been a world beater but they did some dumb things right off the bat.
1. It had Ethernet! Brilliant but I couldn't mount it as a shared drive and I couldn't stream from it! What a waste.
2. It didn't work as a Mass storage device.
3. Lack on integration. Why didn't they open up the interface so car stereo people could interface to it.
4. ITunes was better than the interface software that came with the Karma.

I have a real love hate relationship with the Karma. They don't make them anymore so I will probably get an 80gb IPod soon.

Re:What's the draw?

[east coast]

I can't speak for anyone else but for me it came down to capacity, battery life and exclusive iTunes content that got me going with the iPod. Granted, the iTunes content thing can be worked around but the convenience of not having to while looking for a new portable player is a plus.

As for all the "it's the interface" talk.... I'm still really not sold on it. Not that I'm having a problem with what it can do but rather what it doesn't seem to do:

1. No track/folder/album repeat.
2. No exclusive on/off switch.

Ok, the 2nd one isn't a big problem but there are times that I think I'm doing a shut off only to find that my iPod suddenly wants to play every song in my library. It's easy enough to work around but a switch is more convenient, IMHO.

And if anyone has a solution for a repeat play option that would be great but so far I haven't seen anything that easily does replay. Granted, I haven't bothered with it much.

Re:What's the draw?

[pthor1231]

Both you are your parent are wrong. Neither one is definitively better than the other, for simple fact that people like different interfaces. A lot of people I work with seems to like the nub mouse on ibm laptops. I personally can't stand using it. Does this make the touchpad style of laptop control better or worse? No, it just means they are two effective methods of input that people can use, similar to the Rio / Apple issue.

Re:What's the draw?

[compro01]

another sansa fan here, though i like the m200 players better, as i need something more durable (i have a tendency to forget stuff in my pockets when i do laundry), though the simple interface would get annoying for much more than 1GB of music

Re:What's the draw?

[AmaDaden]

But was it around when the iPod came out? From what I remember the iPod was the only decent mp3 player out there for a long time. People who were getting their first mp3 player would talk to their friends who had mp3 players and most of them just suggested iPods. At this point it's moving on momentum and the fact that they did not screw it up yet. People tend to stay with what works rather then go out and try something new. If it was not for this new UI that the iPhone/iTouch has I think the iPod would have slowly started to lose the market.

Re:What's the draw?

[desenz]

Yes.

Re:What's the draw?

[cromar]

I think the poster was referring to the iGasm.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely; It's the 3rd party device support. Sound quality doesn't hurt, either. 30G + video/DVD is useful. Lack of MS involvement means stability and peaceful coexistence with the non-DRM world. Some people are motivated by the cool design or the interface -- not me.

I have the iPod interface for my BMW with I-drive. Although the I-drive system is routinely criticized by the automotive press, it works great with my Ipod. Instead of fumbling with the Ipod display and scroll wheel, I can use the BMW's built in scroll wheel and the display is the big LCD mounted on the top/center of the dash. This is way better than just a mini stereo auxiliary input jack.

Time has proven the Ipod to be the most open platform music player. Granted, it could be more open than it is, but it seems Apple has done a better job than most in understanding the limitations of the "walled garden" approach.

Re:What's the draw?

[LWATCDR]

Lots of reasons.
1. They don't cost a lot more than any comparable player.
2. The ITunes Store does allow an easy painless way to buy songs. So easy and painless that it is easier to buy them than to get them through P2P a lot of the time.
3. Integration with car stereos. Just about everyone works with IPod these days.
4. Accessories. Want a carrying case for it? Just go to any store and pick one out. And I do mean any store. IPod Accessories are everywhere and you can always find one that you like.
5. They are very popular. That means that you can expect support for them for a long time. I can not go to Radio Shack and get an igo plug tip that will work with my Rio Karma.
It comes down to a good product at a reasonable price with lots of support.
Now as to sticking Linux on one. Well that is just because you can. It also allows for you to add support for things like Speex and Ogg.

Re:What's the draw?

[Otter]

The link is about supporting an iPod on Linux, but you can, in fact, install Linux on the device. (You need Linux installed to play Doom -- not sure if that reasoning seems any more sane to the OP, though.)

Re:What's the draw?

[jimstapleton]

I doubt it was, but I guess my point is that the iPod isn't the only thing with a good user interface.

And the ogg/flac support on my player is nice too :-)

Re:What's the draw?

[JonathanBoyd]

The clickwheel allows you to navigate the interface a lot faster while maintaining precision.

Re:What's the draw?

[yo_tuco]

"I think you do not actually want to put linux on it, i think that the issue here is that the iPod is linux supported, meaning that you can transfer music from and to your linux desktop."

From TFA:
"Note: You will need to do the process of getting the hash on your iTunesDB every time you even so much as change a song name, or upload new music or video files."

You have to apply the hack each time? It doesn't sound too convenient just yet.

Re:What's the draw?

[norminator]

It means it hasn't been tested yet. It probably will be tested soon, and if there are any problems, they will probably be fixed fairly soon.

Re:What's the draw?

[Winckle]

Got to settings in the ipod menu, the repeat options are in there.

Re:What's the draw?

[petermgreen]

Out of interest how long did you try the little nub in the middle of the keyboard for? My experiance with them is that they take longer to learn than a touchpad but are much quicker to use once you do.

Nowadays though unless i'm in a really tight space I just use an optical mouse (which in my experiance work acceptablly on a far greater range of surfaces than a ball mouse.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can take an iPod plug it into a connector in my car and completely control it from my steering wheel and see the info on the stereo's display. works perfectly. I can do the same with my Crestron Whole house audio system, my alarm clock, etc...

You can control your Crestron Whole house audio system from your steering wheel?

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

The scroll wheel actually tends to piss me off. Especially if you're doing something like exercise, it's all too easy to overshoot with the dang scroll wheel.

Re:What's the draw?

[timster]

I propose Timster's Law: in every argument about the iPod, someone will eventually resort to bringing up a product that is not available, either because it was discontinued or hasn't been released.

I also suggest that once this has occurred, the discussion should cease (much like a Godwin). My hope is that such a rule would put an end to the pointless arguments over the device. People buy the iPod because they like it, and they pay for it themselves; why is this a problem?

Re:What's the draw?

[Sciros]

Ohhhh, ok now it makes sense. Well actually that's quite cool.. is it still available?

Re:What's the draw?

[Poromenos1]

That's true, but I'd rather not spend three days pressing the "next" arrow 800 times like I did with my MuVo. Much faster to go to the song's general vicinity and slow down.

Re:What's the draw?

[Andy Dodd]

2GB expansion on a 60GB iPod = tiny drop in the bucket.

As an additional disclaimer in addition to the fact that my purchase decision was made over a year ago, I was looking in the "large hard-drive based" not "small solid-state" category. Sandisk does not appear to compete in this segment, or at least they did not back when I was looking at portable players.

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

The clickwheel allows you to navigate the interface a lot faster while maintaining precision.

Precision? It's the most annoyingly inaccurate thing I can imagine if you're actually doing something (like walking or in a car that's bumping around on a dirt road). Even if I'm not in such a rough environment, I can't even imagine how many times I've overshot what I was looking for, then had to go back, then go forward.

The clickwheel might be novel, but I'd hardly call it precise.

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

No-one says you'd have to press a "next" button 800 times. The firmware of the competing MP3 player could just as easily detect a sustained button press as a request for an accelerating scroll through the song list. Essentially, you can do exactly what the iPod's scroll wheel does with the scroll wheel. Whether or not any competing device has actually done that is another story. But there's nothing inherently special about the scroll wheel. You can accomplish the same functionality and more precision with standard buttons.

Re:What's the draw?

[Warui Kami]

Once you get used to carrying a purse, it's very convenient. Somehow the keys always end up in the bottom, though.

Re:What's the draw?

[jimstapleton]

The joystick allows for pretty fast navigation, and is quite precise.

Re:What's the draw?

[fastest fascist]

And on my Zen V, that's exactly how it's done. Also, the longer you press to scroll or fast forward/rewind, the faster it goes. It's not perfect, but it works.

Re:What's the draw?

[slim]

In my case, I've looked at a couple of iPod competitors, all of which had terrible UIs. I didn't have the energy to keep looking and settled on the iPod, which has a "good enough" UI.

Once you've bought one, you're locked in by the accessory ecosystem. If I replace my old iPod with a non-iPod, I have to replace my spare charger, my car connector etc.

The one thing I reckon Apple's myriad MP3 competitors should do is form a coalition and define some hardware and software interface standards. Then you can benefit from a shared accessory ecosystem that could grow big enough to compete with Apple's.

Re:What's the draw?

[RockyMountain]

What's the draw?
It's not the quality or reliability! That's for sure.

My wife's Ipod died after only 11 months. They replaced it with a refurb, because it was under warranty, although they did not make the process easy.

My own Ipod died after 13 months. It was out of warranty -- and I was out of luck. I managed to get it sort-of working again myself, but now it's intermitent... It locks up solid in hot or cold weather, sometimes pauses for several seconds in the middle of a piece of music, sometimes freezes for several seconds while scrolling the menus. I've also had to re-flash it's firmware several times.

Averaged between our two Ipods, we've achieved a 1year MTBF. A product with 1 year MTBF, a 1 year warranty, and a $300 price tag. Never again!

There are some very nice, reasonably-priced non-Apple flash-based mp3 players on the market now. I'll miss the hard-disk capacity, but I'll gladly trim my portable music collection to fit, so as not to have to deal with the portable-hard-disk reliability problems again.

Re:What's the draw?

[mrchaotica]

As I understand it, it has been tested and is known not to work because the new iPods have completely different hardware than the old ones.

Re:What's the draw?

[fastest fascist]

I'm not sure what it in your description of the software that other software like Amarok on Linux, or Mediamonkey on Windows(not the best I'll admit) can't do... Both can build a database of music stored on your computer, both support MTP devices, is there something else you want?

Or maybe you're a Mac user, I don't know if there's anything for OSX that does the trick other than iTunes. If there is, let me know, please. I occasionally have to use a Mac at school and I can't abide iTunes, personally.

Re:What's the draw?

[jamus]

The iPod camera adapter.

They removed support for the camera adapter in the current generation of iPods, including the Classic. I was quite disappointed with this decission.

Maybe they'll come up with something more elegant, like a simple dock connector to camera cable, instead of an attachment.

Re:What's the draw?

[jo_ham]

Read the sentence again.

"The iPod, if not the best sounding music player, is easily one of the best."

Means that it is NOT the best sounding music player.

You make yourself look less like an idiot if you actually understand what the original poster is saying.

Re:What's the draw?

[jo_ham]

Which, if you read the OP's post more carefully, is exactly what he said.

"The iPod, if not the best sounding music player, is easily one of the best." says exactly that.

"It might not sound the best, but it is the best player"

Re:What's the draw?

[poetmatt]

You can get that stuff easily for any player. Chargers, cases, FM transmitters are not special to ipod. It's just that IPOD ones only work with IPOD (proprietary connection) whereas a non-Ipod transmitted (which is usually less expensive) will work with anything including the Ipod. That's called lock-in, ala microsoft.

example: Itrip - 50$. Same transmitter @ ebay = 6$. Non Ipod ebay example? 10$ w/car charger. Similar non Ebay? 20$ .

Trust me, IPOD isn't special. I like the wheel, its a great thing that stupidly no other MP3 player has decided to support, aka "hmm, maybe they want to jump through the playlist really fast". Apparently that logic never caught on, instead it's "hmm, maybe after holding down next for 10 seconds we should speed up the search", as well as pitiful playlist support. I'll still never buy an IPOD, but people really need to realize the true benefits. Also, Ipod's don't play a lot of formats that other players (such as creative vision) do, and apple DRM's the stuff so that you can't transfer it to other people (creative could care less).

Re:What's the draw?

[init100]

That may apply to the iPod Nano, but it sure does not apply to the large iPod, now called the iPod Classic. I know many nerds/geeks that have iPods, but all of them (including me) have the large iPods. But looking around on the underground (subway to you americans) train, the "cool" people have all iPod Nanos.

Re:What's the draw?

[Carrot007]

As is the ogg/flac support on my iPod (albeit though the rockbox firmware and if your player is as I suspect an iaudio player then go put rockbox on it! my last player before the ipod was a iaudio and when i put on rockbox I only wished i had earlier. unfortunatly i squashed the iaudio and the ipod was a better price/gb than the iaudios and suported rockbox to so there was no contest)

Re:What's the draw?

[fastest fascist]

For me, personally, the way those things look has been one of the major reasons I've never really even considered getting one.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't like the ipod and you don't like iTunes, yet you bought an iPod?

WTF?

Re:What's the draw?

[NiceGeek]

"It's not actually integration with iTunes (it's the most bloated piece of crap I've seen since RealPlayer)"

Only on Windows. It runs very, very nicely in OS X.

Re:What's the draw?

[Antique Geekmeister]

He meant "Igasm".

Re:What's the draw?

[EggyToast]

iTunes on a mac isn't the "bloated," error-prone kludge it is on Windows. I'm not sure why that is, especially since it's supposed to be some sort of trojan horse for the Mac lifestyle or some other marketing thing, but iTunes on OS X is nice 'n speedy.

It also comes pre-installed on all Macs, so there's that going for it.

Re:What's the draw?

[Durzel]

Just to chime in on this - this was the selling point for me too.

My Alpine double-din unit in the car has an interface which basically means searching & playing songs is as fast as playing them on the iPod itself. You can't really put a price on having a single removable device in the car that has the capacity of several hundred CDs, CD changers and having a glovebox filled to the brim with scratched CDs is yesterdays tech.

Re:What's the draw?

[fastest fascist]

Ever tried loading a .m3u playlist from a web server?

Don't. In my experience, iTunes will A) place the files listed in it into your existing playlist in a seemingly random place, and B) fail to sort them by track number. I had to manually arrange the tracks into the correct order every single time.

Re:What's the draw?

[MBGMorden]

I run on both platforms and honestly, I can't tell much of a difference between the two (as far as iTunes goes). It seems to behave well on both, an it's one of the few "jukebox" programs that I like. I used to be a huge Winamp fan - didn't want a fancy app, just something I can open and play song with. iTunes is one of the few programs whose interface is clean and streamlined enough to be to my liking though. PARTICULARLY the "smart" playlists. Once you get your meta-data correct (which is naturally already done for tunes purchased from the iTunes store), they VASTLY simplify creating categories. I used to do that in folders but the smart playlists allows for overlapping categories without needing to store separately.

That smart playlist feature in iTunes along with the tagging feature of Gmail just has me salivating for a tag/metadata based filesystem.

Re:What's the draw?

[Clock Nova]

Actually, you can't achieve anywhere near the same precision with standard buttons as you can with a scrollwheel.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why I got an Ipod. 80 gigs of mp3's that I can select from and charge from my car stereo and from HK home stereo. I do not even use Itunes. Just Vpod to put songs on and off. I drive a lot and it is worth it. I previously had a creative player and liked the fact that it had an actual volume control on the side of the player but the wheel on the ipod makes it easier to select music. I could drag and drop music folders off of the creative player which is better than being locked into using some program because Apple acts like its player is so much better than the alternatives but it is not. It is just the 3rd party integration that does it for me.

Re:What's the draw?

[EastCoastSurfer]

I have a 30gb video. I got it for a few reasons...

a) It just works....put songs in itunes they show up on the ipod. I don't have to think about it.

b) The scroll wheel interface is very easy to use.

c) Third party support. One of my goals was to rid myself of all CDs, especially in my car. So, I also have an Alpine head unit in my car which plugs into the docking port on the ipod and allows for full control through the HU itself (not the one I have but this one is very cool). This feature alone pretty much locks me into using ipods for the foreseeable future. It also, to circle back around a), just works.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not any way you want. I still want to be able to have a selected Artist display the associated Album list in chronological order rather than alphabetical. I've requested the option before, but it hasn't been added (to my knowledge).

Re:What's the draw?

[WatertonMan]

I know that interface is often a subjective thing. But am I the only one who finds iTunes fantastic compared to other media players? I've used the main Windows and Linux media players (and most of the non-iTunes players for OSX). I don't like them. I love iTunes. And I love the integrated store. Yes, if you don't use it then I can see calling it "bloat." But considering how many do use it I've never understood the "bloatware" mentality. Obviously it's a subjective thing, but it does everything I want. Especially for podcasts.

Re:What's the draw?

[TrevorDoom]

The Creative Zen Stone or Zen V.

Good UI. Similar, if not smaller form factor. Same, if not more, space. Less price.

Re:What's the draw?

[fastest fascist]

Right, because KDE is so much bigger than Apple.

Let's be serious here: you really think Apple needs to be fishing for KDE users? I'd say it's the other way around.

Re:What's the draw?

[OrangeTide]

When the iPod first came out other MP3 players on the market had just terrible interfaces, buggy firmware and were either big and heavy or small and cheaply made. Apple fanbois still believe this is what the mp3 player market is like, but times have changed somewhat. There are still a lot of bad players out there, but there are some good ones now too.

People get an iPod these days because they are not willing to research a different brand. They've come to trust Apple's brand. I would warn you not to just go buy some mp3 player without going online and looking at a review first though, I've tried a few and some are good some are pretty bad. example: I really liked the player from Transcend I got, but I didn't like that after 3 months it locked up and refused to reset. something happen to the FAT file-system that caused it to get stuck in a loop every time it powered on.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't get more than that is the people who buy the iPod just to put Linux on it. That actually causes negative understanding. Actually, noone is putting Linux on the iPod itself. This allows someone with a Linux-flavored OS to connect their iPod and transfer songs without iTunes.

Now they just need to work this code into Amarok or something similar.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the scrollwheel.

Note that Apple is moving away from the scrollwheel with the iPod Touch. Even they know that linear motion (slide to select, hold to scroll fast) makes more sense than circular (around and around and around...)

Re:What's the draw?

[MrCrassic]

It just looks better than anything else that's out there. It's UI is also really well developed (albeit very restrictive to more adventurous types).

Re:What's the draw?

[Hal_Porter]

Both you are your parent are wrong. Neither one is definitively better than the other, for simple fact that people like different interfaces.

Don't say that. Make them fight to the death with gardening implements. Winner puts the video on youtube and gets to decide the best UI.

Re:What's the draw?

[MrCrassic]

Correct.

The Apple Classic line suffers from the same fate as the 2nd generation iPod nanos. They both use a completely new chipset not based on PortalPlayer, which is the platform that Rockbox uses. I'm sure it will get ported over time, but it probably will not happen any time soon.

Re:What's the draw?

[cromar]

I can't seem to Google one up (maybe you could look for a used one ;)

There is a similar product available called the OhMiBod, if the brand isn't important...

Re:What's the draw?

[jimstapleton]

Aye, the old was an X5 (excellent portable MP3 player). Current is an A2. I like the X5 better for it's MP3 related uses. I like the A2 better for video...

Re:What's the draw?

[xENoLocO]

I swear to god i'm the only person on this website who sees a flaw with the "it's not X, its you!" argument.

Same thing with linux. It's not linux, it's you! You're the problem!

No, guys. Things should be usable in a natural state. You should be comfortable with something as soon as you start using it. If you're not, then the products usability has failed you. If someone thinks the scrollwheel is better, that's a perfectly valid opinion. You can't tell them their opinion is wrong because YOUR mp3 player works just by holding down a button instead of the scroll wheel. Guess what... that's not natural to this person.

And no, I don't own an ipod. Yes, I've tried linux. No, I don't use a mac. I'm just a usability guy who builds websites.

And sorry if this seems like a rant. :)

Re:What's the draw?

[zx-15]

Oh yes, I bought 1 Gb Scandisk Sansa a year ago (was it c140?) - and it wasa total crap, cluncky user interface even if it had a colour screen. Really bad battery life, so I had do carry around 3 spare AAA rechargeables, it had all kinds of nasty MS DRM so transfer speed from my linux box to the player was around 250 KBps, that meant if I wanted to fill it up, it took 1 hour just to copy the files. And after 5 moth of use "volume increase" button broke. In fact this player was the final and biggest reason for me to stop bitching about "evil apple with their no-choice interfaces that everyone so ooohing and awhiing about" and actually buy one.

Now I have 2GB ipod nano and I must say it's pretty good. At least it's way better than Sanas or anything Scandisk ever made. And it works with amarok like a charm.

Re:What's the draw?

[Kohath]

iTunes IS bloated.

But "bloated" isn't a consumer-focused criticism. I don't know who it's focused on, actually. But normal computer users don't see "bloated".

If they have too little memory, they see their computer going slow. Not just for iTunes, but for everything. It's a consistent user experience. iTunes isn't any slower than any of the rest of their bloated software -- which is probably all of it.

iTunes generally looks good and does what you expect it to. That's what computer users notice.

Re:What's the draw?

[proxy318]

The draw is mainly marketing. Most people don't even know that "iPod" is a brand name, not a type of device. I've got a Creative Nomad Zen, and people are like "what kind of iPod is that?" Tight integration with the store, and polished interfaces do help, but mainly it's that Apple's convinced everyone that the iPod is what all the cool kids are buying.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

But mostly it's the UI. It's difficult to explain why if you haven't used one for a few days, but the iPod UI, to use a cliche, just works. Other players just seem clunky and awkward by comparison.

Someone is bound to mention the Creative lawsuit at some point. Let's just say, though, that wherever that classic iPod UI came from, many players now use something similar. Some of them (Creative's current players and the iRiver Clix come right to mind) even get great reviews for their UIs.

And there's the other thing. Notice also how the Touch and Classic/Nano have different UIs, but people still talk about the great "iPod UI", as if there were only one of them. See, I think they're promoting the iPod's UI out of habit, without really thinking things through too much. _Which_ iPod UI is so great? A little "why" would be nice too -- familiarity and quality are easy to confuse.

Re:What's the draw?

[Tacvek]

There are some other reasons too. First of all, take iTunes. iTunes may not a real windows-like interface, and some apparently consider the Windows version to be bloated, but it does organize music well, and is easy enough to teach to people who are not computer literate. Some other players have good software, but others have software that is terrible.

iPod is easy to use. There is no denying that the scroll wheel interface is highly intuitive, and accessing features is fairly easy. Some other player do have interfaces that are just as good.

The iPod does not have feature bloat. Many other mp3 players have many extra features, but most of the times those features are very poorly implemented, and has the effect of just wasting menu space. These poorly implemented features also tend to drag the perception of the whole player down.

The headphones. For low to low mid-end earbuds, the ones that come with the iPod are some of the best. Of course, many headphones, or high-end earbuds are better.

The iPod has many accessories. It is one of the few players to support near full integration with some car head units (receivers).

It's name. Tell somebody you want an "iPod Nano" and they will be able to remember the name. There is no part of the name that looks like "z647", which people are quite likely to forget. Even if you wanted to specify the capacity it is still easier to remember. Many of the generations have distinct names like iPod Color, and iPod Video, which are easy to remember.

It has Apple's reputation for ease of use and reliability behind it. Most of the other closest competitors are marketed under brands with well known poor models, which can really hurt

The simple fact is that while many players are as good or better in some of those categories, they are lacking in one or more of the others. The combination of these atributes is why the iPod is the leading mp3 player.

Just a side note: people who are mentioning gap-less playback, please realize that many people have no such albums, and have no interest in this feature, so it should not be surprising that apple waited for so long before implementing.

Re:What's the draw?

[rtyall]

The iPod, if not the best sounding music player, is easily one of the best.
You sell their "marketing speak" very well. I could have sworn you were quoting an advert.

Re:What's the draw?

[Lars T.]

Is it the iTunes store? Is it the sound quality? Is it the looks of the device?

What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?

I don't get it at all. Well, neither do the makers of "iPod killers".

Re:What's the draw?

[Lobsang]

I cannot understand why would someone spend 36 hours hacking something they *PAID* money for, and should work out of the box.

Sorry guys, kudos for your intellectual powers for doing so, but I just don't think it's right to put any effort into a company or product that is deliberately designed to take my freedom of choice away from me. In the end, we may be rewarding a bad deed.

-- Lob

Re:What's the draw?

[walt-sjc]

The direct-wire full interface type of connection is what I'm talking about. Those FM transmitters SUCK, but work in a pinch. Other stereo's at least have an AUX connector, but you can't control the iPod (or other player) with your stereo or steering wheel controls, which is a Very nice thing to have, like you can with a full iPod interface.

While there are lots of third party accessories for non-iPods, it's a very poor selection compared to what is available for the iPod. That's what I'm talking about. The difference isn't even close. There are more accessories for iPod's than there are for all other player brands combined.

Re:What's the draw?

[rapiddescent]

ex-Rio Karma owners who want Radio, USB mass storage, full support for Linux, gapless, colour screen, Ogg Vorbis - should really look at the Trekstor Vibez. It has the same software and sounds excellent - it's like a 2007 Karma.

If you just want to connectup the old karma to linux then look no further than the splendid karma on linux project. It's amazing what some seriously clever people, fuse and some helpful hints from Sigmatel folks can produce. it integrates with Amarok as well!

rd

Re:What's the draw?

[msormune]

It's all of them; it's the average quality of the package. How is that so hard to "get"? I own an Ipod Nano. It is very good for what it does. It's really that simple.

Re:What's the draw?

[Kohath]

People buy the iPod because they like it, and they pay for it themselves; why is this a problem?

Hey! It's a problem because we are the experts, ok? People should ask us what to buy. And we'll suggest some sort of unheard-of niche device, because that's why you asked an expert. Do you need an expert to suggest the most popular device? No. Do you need an expert to configure something that's easy to use? No. We're important. Don't you know that? We know better. We can't look down on the ignorant masses when we acknowledge they made the right choice. So they didn't, no matter how happy they are.

I can't believe you even asked.

Re:What's the draw?

[AusIV]

You can get that stuff easily for any player. Chargers, cases, FM transmitters are not special to ipod. It's just that IPOD ones only work with IPOD (proprietary connection) whereas a non-Ipod transmitted (which is usually less expensive) will work with anything including the Ipod. That's called lock-in, ala microsoft.

You're missing the point. We're not talking about car chargers and FM transmitters, we're talking about plugging your iPod directly into your car stereo and controlling it the same way you control your radio. When I bought my stereo, I also bought an adapter for my iPod. It plugs into the iPod dock, lets me browse artists, albums, playlists, and individual songs. Then I can play them, and it will display the Album, Artist, Title, Track Number, and distance into the song.

Now, my car stereo also supports USB mass storage devices and data CDs, but if it uses those, it can only play mp3, wma, and wav files. Since much of my music is AAC (I used to be an iTunes user), and I'd rather not reencode and lose quality, my next music player will probably also be an iPod. I would only be compelled to get a different player if it would let me start encoding any new music as OGG vorbis while continuing to let me play all of my music through my stereo. Since such a device does not exist, I'm sticking with the iPod.

Re:What's the draw?

[JazzLad]

Exercise? You must be new here.

Re:What's the draw?

[Hal_Porter]

What about a Cowon iAudio D2?

http://www.google.com/products?q=iaudio+d2+Cowon&btnG=Search&hl=en&show=dd

$185 for 4GB, $150 for 2GB. It has an SDHC slot though, like the Sansa, except it is full size SD slot not MicroSD.

Re:What's the draw?

[Kohath]

It works fine out of the box. It works exactly the way Apple intended it to work.

If you want to use it in a way it's not designed to be used, then don't be surprised if it doesn't "work out of the box" for that.

My efforts to use my iPod as a waffle-iron have met with little success so far.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

check the new creative zen 16gb also....

Re:What's the draw?

[Zenaku]

I don't think he was talking about FM transmitters when he talked about integrating with high-end car steroes. He was probably referring to car stereos that you connect to the ipod via that proprietary connector you mentioned, and then play the music at line-out quality with the controls on the dashboard or steering wheel controlling playback (much easier when driving).

As for my own two cents, the first hard-drive based music player I bought was a Nomad III from Creative. I had to return the first two as they crapped out in a week, the third one survived but the interface sucked. And forget about using it while driving. The sound quality was phenomenal, I'll give it that, but the accessory support for the ipod is just amazing. It's ubiquitous now, and that alone makes it more convenient. I'm sure there are a few players out there that are "better" in their own right, but easily finding the accessories to plug them into your life is another matter.

I'm pretty sure the Nomad is still in my closet somewhere, if you want to make me an offer. ;)

Re:What's the draw?

[Provocateur]

The most expensive of which is this.

Re:What's the draw?

[jagdish]

My friend (an ipod hater) used the ipod earphones with a Sansa 4gb. When asked why, he said the earphones made him look cool and he could still use the sansa on linux.

Re:What's the draw?

[geekboy642]

Some people can't carry a purse. Not for any real reason, but the looks you get when you're a six-foot bearded guy in a sleeveless tee-shirt carrying a little black purse ... it gets a little annoying.

Re:What's the draw?

[Bellum Aeternus]

The iPod has taken on the role of status symbol. There's nothing "special" with it per-se, but since people attach a special value to owning one there is a certain social value to owning one. Since the iPod is so ubiquitous now, it won't be too long before something with more social value comes a long that's on the edge of affordability and that's what people will use as their new status symbol.

Basically, the iPod is a fad and if you don't own one then it must be because "you're too poor to own one". Or, at least, that's the going assumption among a lot of teenagers - which is what fuels the iPod craze. It used to be Nike sneakers, and someday it'll be something else. That's just how it goes.

Re:What's the draw?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

BUT, horrible reviews for what they sync against. Creative's player sucks. I only used it for syncing the Zen I used to have. Then I got rid of the Zen and bought a iPod.

Re:What's the draw?

[trickonion]

I think that, given this informal setting Clit mouse would be a more appropriate term.

Re:What's the draw?

[kidcharles]

The version for men is called the iJizm.

Re:What's the draw?

[nurb432]

The interface, and quality of the hardware, and the smooth use of the scroll wheel.

Re:What's the draw?

[somersault]

Sure you can make something natural to use, but that doesn't mean the end result will be useful. A tricycle is easier to ride than a bicycle because you don't really need to balance it manually, but in some situations a 2 wheeled bike will be much more useful, which makes it more flexible. Sometimes people have to do this thing called 'learning' before they can get the best out of a device.

Of course for a device that plays MP3s it should be simple to make one that people will just understand because most people already know how to operate a computer, but someone that has never used a computer isn't just going to be able to pick up an iPod and say "I know this! This is a scroll-wheel!" etc. A combination of a touchscreen with a slider bar at the side (like any OS window) to go quickly to a vague area, then a more precise area to scroll around locally would be an ideal option probably. Maybe 2 fingers for fast scrolling, and 1 for more fine control

Re:What's the draw?

[Britz]

Actually, IRiver has much better players than Apple, but they are also expensive. I guess a good player (or one hyped by marketing) comes at a price.

Re:What's the draw?

[vux984]

FM transmitters are not ipod integration.

Even those cluzy ipod adapters you can use that makes your ipod/generic mp3 player behave like a clunky cd changer aren't ipod integration.

This:
http://crunchgear.com/2007/04/18/alpines-ida-x001-ipod-deck-available-early/

is ipod integration. Nothing else, for any other device comes even within shooting distance. I bought one this spring. I was hesitant because it didn't have a CD player, but I haven't missed it.

real speed access to playlists, album art, browse by song, artist, genre, the works. The only thing it doesn't do is video. And frankly, I don't think that's a loss on a 2" screen in a car where I should be looking at the road anyway.

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

Actually, you can't achieve anywhere near the same precision with standard buttons as you can with a scrollwheel.

I call B.S.

Feel free to make the argument that you like the scrollwheel better. But more precise? Nope, not at all. At least not in all cases.

If I'm running down the road or in a car on a bumpy dirt road, it can be damn well near impossible to do a single click up or down on the list. A button-based system would be cake: Tap the button and you're golden. But if you're in an environment where your body is anything but still, trying to move the scrollwheel exactly one notch can be a frustrating exercise in futility. Plus there's no tactile feel that tells you where your fingers are in relation to the scrollwheel, so you have to look at it to skip to the next song or whatever. And when I have my iPod in an arm-strapped case, I can't reliably interact with the scrollwheel through the plastic, I have to take it out of the case. None of these would be issues with a button-based player.

If there's one reason that I've considered ditching my iPod and getting some other MP3 player, it's the scrollwheel.

Yeah, the scrollwheel is nifty, it's different, and it's novel for about 5 seconds... thereafter, it's a pain in the *ss.

Re:What's the draw?

[PopeRatzo]

Integration with iTunes

This is what makes the iPod preferable to the record companies, that's for sure.

They don't want you to get your music anywhere but from a very narrow distribution channel. The iPod integrates very nicely with iTunes, but I won't use iTunes. It doesn't recognize my ogg files, or my flac files, and if I make it recognize my iPod as a hard drive, I lose all the playlist functionality. Not to mention that I don't like the way it tries to organize my media files in a manner I dislike.

Yes, I know that there are 3rd party tools available that will let me do all these things on an iPod, but if I have to do things that are different from the things the manufacturer intended just to make it usable for me, there is a design flaw. Or perhaps, the flaw is in me and I'm just not well-suited to conform to corporate-led consumer culture. There are plenty of people who are more than happy to behave in whichever way this company or that tells them, so I'm the anomaly.

The iPod is a very nice gizmo for people who are ready to sign on to the whole Apple/Record Label "program" and not deviate in any way. I have found my 80 gig iPod very useful, but only by wiping every trace of Apple from the way I use it. For all I know, I'm violating half-a-dozen end user agreements by forcing my iPod to do things for which it was not designed.

For those of us hairpins that would rather do things the way we want to do things, instead of getting in line behind someone else's agenda, the iPod leaves something to be desired.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a usability guy yet you don't use a mac? You don't own an iPod?

That's weird. Seriously.

Re:What's the draw?

[ZorinLynx]

The new earbuds are an improvement over the older ones, but they slip out of your ears unless you get foam covers for them.

In any case, earbuds are easily replaceable, and if you buy an nice high end set, you'll have great sound quality.

The earbuds that typically come with ALL MP3s players suck; typically. It's always best to upgrade them if you're anywhere near an audiophile. And of course, you have to use lossless compression because if you're an audiophile, MP3s suck. Not to mention you have to listen in a soundproofed baffled room, and you have to have not flown on an aircraft recently so your ears haven't been subjected to pressure changes.

Heh, I'm going too far. In any case, default earbuds suck. Buy better ones. :)

Re:What's the draw?

[wushuchicken]

160 GB and h.264. ...but I agree that the ipod isn't the God of mp3 players, but it works for me because of it's size.

Re:What's the draw?

[commodoresloat]

and its hidden in the glove box. Not hidden anymore -- now everyone on slashdot knows about it!

Re:What's the draw?

[Constantine XVI]

The c1xx series sucks. The c2xx series is MUCH better, has a rechargeable battery and works perfect with just about anything (thanks to UMS support). And I know the e2xx series (which the View is likely based off of) is even better from a UI standpoint

Re:What's the draw?

[tehmorph]

Really, I quite like iTunes. It's a very sorted program- yes, it's a bit fatter than is could get away with, but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages imho. I'm not too concerned about losing 25MB (It's never gone over that) memory usage on XP, even with a 512MB system. It's a fantastic interface, very clean and smooth, and it's well organised.

Re:What's the draw?

[mrchaotica]

They don't want you to get your music anywhere but from a very narrow distribution channel... The iPod is a very nice gizmo for people who are ready to sign on to the whole Apple/Record Label "program" and not deviate in any way.

Way to take my quote out of context! What part of "not necessarily the store" did you not understand? Aside from the "free music Tuesday" stuff and a few Pepsi caps, I've never used the store and I don't intend to start!

if I make it recognize my iPod as a hard drive, I lose all the playlist functionality

That's not true. If you enable disk use it has to be unmounted before it's unplugged, but it still functions as an iPod.

It doesn't recognize my ogg files, or my flac files

That's the only complaint in your post that makes sense.

Re:What's the draw?

[pyite]

Averaged between our two Ipods, we've achieved a 1year MTBF. A product with 1 year MTBF, a 1 year warranty, and a $300 price tag. Never again!

You might be unlucky, but please don't claim that your problems represent a statistically relevant sample.

Re:What's the draw?

[kb0hae]

The draw is that the iPod has become a status symbol for a lot of folks through (Cr)apple's marketing. This even though the iPod has ALWAYS been an infferior player that sells for a highly inflated price. There are now players out there that have better sound, play almost any music format, and are in every war better than the iPod, yet sell for a lot lower price. Oh and another thing, most players now can show up as a USB storage device without using any special software.

So people need to get smart and dump the iPod (and iPhone too!!!!!) , and get something better!

Re:What's the draw?

[dmsuperman]

I have a dual core @ 3.2GHz w/ 2gigs of ram and a speedy SATA HDD, and iTunes STILL runs like absolute shit. And guess what? Yup, big surprise, it's the only thing that runs like that. Everything comes up instantly. It runs like shit on Windows, it's a fact. Perhaps it runs great on OS X, but on Windows it does not.

Re:What's the draw?

[BrentH]

I'm crossposting here (across sites!), but on LAS/forum I just made a post about exactly this: Show me a device that has 160GB, ~55hrs of playback (yeah, I couldn't believe it either), supports MP3 and a lossless format (apart from wav of course), is as thin/small as iPod and costs 350. Only iPod. Archos has one or two devices that have 160GB, but neither supports a lossless format, get only like 10-20 hrs, are almost as big as a VHS casette and cost somewhere around 500, at least. The only thing missing on the iPod is FLAC support, but since you encode only once, and ALAC decoders are abundant, I can live with that. I've got 165GB of music, so you can see why I'm interested in the 160GB, but the 80GB's specs arent shabby either and at 250, I can think of only a Creative player, which is much bulkier and gets 10-15hrs. Long story short: there is no competition. I agree that in the area of the nano there's a lot of good other options, but still, the nano gives you excellent value for the money.

Re:What's the draw?

[Trillan]

Actually, yes, you can say with certainty that the scroll wheel is better.

Why? Because the operator can move her finger slower when she approaches the song she wants. The scroll wheel can detect the speed the finger is moving at. In short, not only can you accelerate as the operator continues to spin the wheel, but when she starts to slow how fast she's spinning the wheel, you can detect that and respond appropriately. The finger speed is something the operator is aware of. If the screen scrolls too fast, she'll slow down. If it scrolls too slowly, she'll speed up.

With a button, in the best case you have a button that can sense not only if it is being touched, but how hard it is being touched. The feedback isn't as direct, though. There's a reason the steering wheel in a car hasn't been replaced with two buttons, and the gas and brake with two more each. (Not to mention, most buttons have only two states. The really good ones have three states - off, light touch, heavy touch.)

Re:What's the draw?

[tgd]

Are you SERIOUS?

If anything, they should put a "lite" version of a photo editing package on there so it can view raw and do basic adjustments right on the iPod, especially if they get a large multitouch screen on them eventually.

I don't think they marketed the adapter well, at all. Hell, I'd like to see it on the larger iPod support DV/HDV as well -- at 13GB per tape, you could easily do a few thousand pictures and a half dozen hours of HD video on there where you can watch it back more easily than in-camera when on vacation.

Thats very disappointing to hear.

Re:What's the draw?

[bsmart]

Sound quality has no part in consumer interest in the new iPod. Digital encoding is no better than before, and it is no secret to many of us that the iPod never has been and is not universally compatible with most lossless formats, and even some of the compressed too. Much of the iPod's excitement is due to a larger screen, the incorporation of a web browser(safari) & WiFi, a sleek iPhone-esque exterior design/user gui, etc. Some of the new features on the new iPod make using alternative OS to the apple/iTunes appear less practical , but not necessarily if you are not someone who uses iTunes store, and don't even run OSX/XP for that matter. Apple offers a very desired portable media player, but it is an expensive one.

Re:What's the draw?

[Wordsmith]

No, there are two of us. I was just having a similar debate in my industry, newspaper work. A copy editor, who also works as an adjunct professor, was arguing that today's young adults and teens aren't capable of telling the difference between user-generated media with no proper sourcing and news judgment, and professional, properly vetted journalism. I argued that we, as the mainstream media, weren't doing enough to make the difference obvious (or to make sure there really is a substantial difference). She could only fault the users; I thought it was pretty clear that we were the ones failing them.

Re:What's the draw?

[MoxFulder]

Yeah, I tend to agree. The physical user interface is very nice and convenient, and the software interface is very responsive.

On the other hand, I hate everything else about the iPod:
iTunes,
the fact that you can't just copy MP3 files on and off from the command line,
the stupid clicky noise,
the hard-to-replace battery,
the easily-scratched screen cover,
the lack of FM radio which every other player has,
the high prices

I'm told the Rockbox firmware fixes all the iPod's problems except the battery and high prices, which are still sticking points for me. I have a Sansa E130 which cost 1/2 what the cheapest iPod Shuffle does... except mine has a screen, uses a standard battery, has an FM radio, can expand memory with SD cards, and you can just copy MP3 files on and off. While the user interface is GOOD overall, the menu button is placed poorly, and the response to the arrows/scroll wheel is sluggish... unlike the iPod.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not any way you want. I still want to be able to have a selected Artist display the associated Album list in chronological order rather than alphabetical. I've requested the option before, but it hasn't been added (to my knowledge).

What you want is easy enough if you're willing to use foobar2000 with your ipod with foo_dop and its metadata remapping option.

For example, to browse by year or shuffle artists, I set mine to rewrite as

ALBUM = %ARTIST%

TITLE = %TITLE% ['('%DATE%')']

ALBUM = %ALBUM ARTIST%

COMPOSER = %DATE%

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

Actually, yes, you can say with certainty that the scroll wheel is better.

No, actually you can't.

Why? Because the operator can move her finger slower when she approaches the song she wants.

Oftentimes after the thing has overshot the target. And then you get back into a zone where it can be hard as heck to target a single entry--I can't say how many times I've seen what I want on the screen, I scroll up only to end up a song above it, then scroll down only to end up a song below it. And that's when I'm not moving. Doing any of this when you're running or on a bumpy road is simply frustrating.

Perhaps you can make the claim that the scrollwheel is better for quickly getting into the general area of a song, but it's certainly less precise when you're in the general area of the song and you want to select it. The claim has been made that it's more precise than buttons. No, it's definitely not. It may be faster at general navigation, but it's not more precise.

There's a reason the steering wheel in a car hasn't been replaced with two buttons, and the gas and brake with two more each.

Yeah, because you don't need to navigate your car to a millimeter accuracy nor adjust your gas to within a milliliter/minute accuracy. Like the scrollwheel, the car controls are great for general navigation but not for precise control.

Re:What's the draw?

[Mix Master Nixon]

Well there's always Amarok running in X11 on Macintosh... works (almost) flawlessly for me.

I used to be a staunch supporter and long time user of iTunes, but version 7's preference-ignoring crash-happy ass sent me away determined to get Amarok loaded on my Mac. Maybe they've fixed those countless bugs in iTunes 7.whatever by now - my God, one would hope so. I don't plan on finding out, because Amarok is far superior. It works with me to do things my way, it doesn't force me to do things its way as iTunes does.

Re:What's the draw?

[Bassman59]

As an additional disclaimer in addition to the fact that my purchase decision was made over a year ago, I was looking in the "large hard-drive based" not "small solid-state" category. Sandisk does not appear to compete in this segment, or at least they did not back when I was looking at portable players.

Note that Sandisk is a manufacturer of (partnering with Toshiba) of NAND flash memory, and as such have a lot to gain with the sale of flash-based players and nothing to gain with a hard-disk unit.

Re:What's the draw?

[MichaelWhi]

You can just change behaviour in the Preferences...

Re:What's the draw?

[RockyMountain]

please don't claim that your problems represent a statistically relevant sample.

Of course not. I'd never claim such a stupid thing.

But the experience is quite enough to convince me not to gamble yet another $300 on an ipod.

We all frequently make buying decisions based on my own prior experiences of products, or those of our friends or acquaintances. We don't always have the luxury of access to unbiassed, statistically valid studies on the products we buy. Sometimes, common sense is enough. For me, two lemons in a row is enough to convince me not to buy a third.

The following study bears out the claim that ipod have pretty dismal reliablity, and the 40GB model that I own is indeed the worst:

http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/ipodfailures.html

Re:What's the draw?

[datapharmer]

As someone who works in production for a print newspaper and does website design for several larger blogs I say amen to that!

Re:What's the draw?

[Trillan]

Trivial to prove wrong. You can overshoot with either. With the scroll wheel (only), you can slow as you approach what you want. The handle on a gas pump is a better analogy, really. Sure, you can (and frequently will) overshoot, but it will be by only a small amount. And unlikely a gas pump, you can rewind. Compare that to a button, where you'll end up several hundred songs past if it supports any kind of acceleration, or with 800 pushes if it doesn't.

Re:What's the draw?

[Quidpro]

The entire car stereo interface thing has been a sore point with me for many years now. Cars are sold w/"ipod interfaces" that somehow translate your car stereo's Fast Forward to an "Apple Fast Forward"? "Random" has to be translated to "Shuffle"? What the hell is that? And doesn't the ipod already have an interface? If you're stuffing it in a glove box, well why the hell can't it just act like a regular old hard drive or exactly like an mp3 cd, etc? Track info should be displayed the same regardless. Skip on your stereo, whether you're doing it through your steering wheel or straight from the stereo itself should still be SKIP when reading from an ipod! Why do you need an interface for an interface for an interface? Ridiculous.

Then there are the stereos with aux inputs (though there aren't enough) which are described as ipod interfaces. Why did it take so long to put in an aux input in a car stereo? And what do they have that is specific to an ipod? They could have been used long before the first mp3 player came about. People could have been plugging in their walkmans in the 80s if they wanted. It's not as though the input is a new technology. Regardless, this is the preferred input as far as I am concerned. There is nothing going on between the devices other than audio I/O, which is exactly as it should be. Myself, I don't sit there interfacing with my ipod as I drive...at the most, I skip a song I don't feel like hearing at the time.

I'm sure there are a few car stereo models out there that allow plugging in a USB key by now, simply reading the files off the drive...But why isn't it more ubiquitous? And why has it taken so long? I should be able to go buy an external HD of just about any type, put crap on it, and plug it in to the stereo with USB. Any usb. Not just some company's weird proprietary connection. If the crap on the drive is tagged, then the info will show up in the stereo interface, just as it would with a data cd. All these third party devices are stupid. FM transmitters suck. All of them. Give me a direct audio connection that doesn't spend more time checking the law than it does playing audio. That's all I want. Who the heck cares what someone is listening to in their car? This should be one of the loosest environments for media that exists! My 15 min drive to work should belong to ME, not a record company, not a computer company, not a tv network. If you need to listen to Apple's format in your car, then get apple to make a car stereo! Or allow car stereo manufacturers to put the codec in their stereos. It's the way it always has been (Well, since the cassette anyway). But now there are companies actually convincing people that they are somehow making things more convenient for them with these plastic add ons that get traded for other addons whenever there's an ipod upgrade, filling landfills everywhere. It's insane. The entire INTEGRATION concept has been hijacked. There is no good reason to even NEED to connect to a RS232 controller interface, whatever the fsck that is...

ME: Here's my data. Can you see my data?
DEVICE: Yes.
ME: Do you have what you need to play the data?
DEVICE: Umm. Some of it, Yes.
ME: Well then play what you can, and show me the tags as you do it.
DEVICE: Sure thing. You're the boss.

It's insane that it doesn't work that way.

Or maybe it's just me.

Re:What's the draw?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

I hope you see the irony in pointing out the 'great' third party support, on an article about how Apple had locked down the new iPod for that very thing.

Re:What's the draw?

[Hel Toupee]

3) Most of them were not available in B&M stores allowing me to return it easily if I hated the UI.

I'm very glad you put that ampersand in there...

Re:What's the draw?

[mrchaotica]

Keyword: accessory. Not software.

Re:What's the draw?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Actually, they locked those down now, too, although that's another article.

Re:What's the draw?

[mstahl]

Sometimes people have to do this thing called 'learning' before they can get the best out of a device.

Sure. But you have to make an interface with a steady learning curve. If you have a bicycle, you can put training wheels on it right? Well, devices and interfaces have to work the same way. Also, the bicycle analogy is kind of flawed since every bicycle essentially has the same interface, so bicycle-riding isn't a very specific skill that you have to re-learn many times. With application interfaces, there really are no standards like that so you have to make it so that it's like an onion, with many different layers of functionality that are all easy to follow from one to another. You can't have totally counterintuitive things crop up because they make the user frustrated.

And while we're on the topic, I don't know how anyone could think that buttons you hold down (presumably accelerating the rate of scroll continuously like scroll buttons on a computer) could possibly be more intuitive to a user who's never used an mp3 player than a scrollwheel. Generally speaking, I think that any physical device that works by gesturing rather than pressing buttons is better. Provided, of course, that the gestures are intuitive (like the scrollwheel "gesture" is).

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Click/Scroll wheel?

AAC playback? (more important)

Re:What's the draw?

[Ansoni-San]

No, guys. Things should be usable in a natural state. You should be comfortable with something as soon as you start using it. The problem with this statement is that there are over 6 and a half billion "You"'s in the world, and we're not all the same. So if you follow this philosophy and never try to adapt to anything initially unnatural to _you_ (0.000000000000015?) you'll miss out on a lot of potentially useful(and superior) things. Not to mention that some things aren't intended to feel natural immediately, especially when we're talking about improvements over standard interfaces.

Re:What's the draw?

[Constantine XVI]

Just so you know, the "little nub in the middle of the keyboard" is called a Trackpoint (ThinkPad), Trackstick (Dell), or pointing stick (other peoples)

Re:What's the draw?

[lazy_playboy]

I'd say it is possible to use a car steering wheel to get millimeter accuracy, but only because you get force feedback. The ipod scroll wheel relies on visual feedback which esentially doesn't work in that context.
(I agree with you but for a slightly different reason :-)

Re:What's the draw?

[RabidMonkey]

I don't think that it's functionally bloated - it's got great features and is easy to use.

I think it's MEMORY bloated - the thing easily eats 300meg of RAM/SWAP every time it loads

Re:What's the draw?

[Constantine XVI]

The only "accessories" I've ever bought for a MP3 player are a pair of Sennheiser PX100 headphones and a standard 1/8 inch headphone jack to RCA cable, both of which have gone from my Muvo, to my iPod Shuffle, to the Muvo again (snapped the USB off the shuffle), to a 5G iPod, to a Sansa c250, to a Pioneer Inno. I've never really needed much more than the lanyard/belt clip that came with the player.

Re:What's the draw?

[illumin8]

Hey! It's a problem because we are the experts, ok? People should ask us what to buy. And we'll suggest some sort of unheard-of niche device, because that's why you asked an expert. Do you need an expert to suggest the most popular device? No. Do you need an expert to configure something that's easy to use? No. We're important. Don't you know that? We know better. We can't look down on the ignorant masses when we acknowledge they made the right choice. So they didn't, no matter how happy they are.

This is so funny because it's true. I swear this sentiment drives 90% of the iPhone haters out there. Most of the haters seem to work in corporate IT as Windows admins (aka the experts you are talking about).

Re:What's the draw?

[Constantine XVI]

It won't matter once it's integrated with your preferred music library app (which it sounds simple enough for a x.y.2 "bugfix" release)

Re:What's the draw?

[lazy_playboy]

The trouble I find is that I have to move on the scroll wheel quite a lot to get it to move only one item in the first place, but the difference between making it move one or two items is very small. Thus once I've actually gone far enough to make the highlight move up or down one, it's more often than not gone too far and gone two items.

Ummm, hope that makes sense ;-)

a bit like this (except in reality you move in circle of course):

Start ................ Move 1 .. Move 2
| -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> | -> -> |


I think the scroll wheel is superior, but apple's current implementation doesn't work.

Re:What's the draw?

[Burning Plastic]

Sounds like a messed up hard disk.... Considering a hard bump (drop) can mess up a HD it's not surprising that HD based iPods suffer this kind of issue - just as other HD based players do. In your case it might just be that the connectors have worked loose, so opening up the ipod and reseating the HD cable (both ends) might fix the problem, and if not, a replacement HD isn't particularly expensive.

Moving to a flash based player - Apple or not - would avoid this issue but it really doesn't sound like an iPod specific problem...

Re:What's the draw?

[mstahl]

It's because on a mac all the libraries and stuff that make the iTunes window look like it does are already on there and built in. On Windows they have to be ported, and I think there's quite a great deal of duct tape and chewing gum behind the scenes keeping that look together. It's a trojan horse, sorta, because it's styled like the Mac UI and it's in Windows, but it took a lot of effort to make that happen and it doesn't always hold itself together so well.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's a bloated, error-prone kludge on OS X as well, but on OS X, considering the rest of the system, you don't really notice.

Re:What's the draw?

[Hatta]

Sorry, the world doesn't work that way. As someone once said "The only intuitive interface is the nipple". Everything else is learned.

So if you have two GUIs, both are going to take some learning. You might prefer GUI-A because it's more like what you already know, but that's your issue. It in no way implies that GUI-B is inferior.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny? Why wasn't this modded insightful? :)

Re:What's the draw?

[Hatta]

Is there something special about the "iPod interface" that precludes you from using plain old RCA cables? If there is, that's a good reason not to buy an iPod. If there isn't, then there's no benefit to buying an iPod over another device, since they can all use plain old standard RCA cables.

Re:What's the draw?

[avirrey]

Dude, UID: 215841. His/Her daughter's been on /. longer than you. One of those 3733t-ist that actually does get off his/her chair every once in a while.
--
X's and O's for all my foes.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

IT'S TRENDY!

That's all there is to it. Granted, Apple created a very nice device and used their enormously talented engineers to create something that is both beautiful and easy to use, but it's not because it's the best player that it succeeded. It succeeded because of the brilliant dancing silhouette marketing campaign with a killer U2 song (Vertigo) to back it up. They stuck an odd-colored pair of white earbuds in there and all of a sudden it became trendy to walk around with gaudy white cords hanging out of your ears.

Because it was trendy and got so popular is why there is so much integration and accessories; you can't use them as the reason it succeeded so handily. And get out of here with your "best software" reasons too. iTunes sucks. It's only popular to Mac users because it's really all they have. People who think Windows iTunes is good software need a kick in the head. It's a bloated mess.

Get a Creative Zen Vision:M instead. Drag your whole library to ANY computer you want and drop ALL of your included library onto it without ANY problems. The video and audio quality is JUST as good as iPod and you can stick with standard format MP3's and AVI's rather than having to stick to Apple's proprietary stuff. Apple wants to trap you in their world of propietary formats and they're succeeding!

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst I applaud your reading ability, I am saddened by your complete lack of humour.

BTW: Learn the apostrophe. Used correctly, it is your friend. It currently hates you.

Stupid troll.

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

Trivial to prove wrong.

Then why haven't you done it? :)

You can overshoot with either. With the scroll wheel (only), you can slow as you approach what you want.

You can overshoot with either, but with buttons you at least have the option of precise single-taps when you're already in the right area of the list. The problem here isn't the fast-scrolling. I personally don't like the fast scrolling of the iPod, but I can live with it. My problem is that when I'm already close to my target song, it's still hard to target the song I want whereas just a tap or two with buttons would get me precisely the song I want and I'd be done with it--even on a bumpy road or while running.

The handle on a gas pump is a better analogy, really.

Again, you are seldom trying to get exactly 0.001 gallons of gas in the car. The scroll wheel and the gas pump is tolerable for general navigation and approximation, but not for when you're looking for precision. With the gas pump, you don't need it. With the scroll wheel to select a song, you do.

Compare that to a button, where you'll end up several hundred songs past if it supports any kind of acceleration, or with 800 pushes if it doesn't.

Please don't tell me that you really don't have enough imagination to envision any other type of button-based interface that could effectively navigate 800 songs without a scrollwheel and without 800 button pushes? If you can't, I assume you're not in the software or hardware design industry. You're probably an accountant since accounting is a great industry for people that lack imagination and originality.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! That's monies well spent. 36 hours of near godlike invulnerability and great PR. No wonder the itards have to pony up so many greenbacks...

"Apple. Just say no."

"How do you like your iShackless?"

"Steve 'blow' Jobs is da man!"

Re:What's the draw?

[colmore]

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned. - Bruce Ediger

Re:What's the draw?

[DeadChobi]

That's why I like my Zen Sleek. The touchpad is like a scroll wheel with the caveat that if what you're looking for is more than one or two traversals across the pad away you can just stop at the edge and it'll scroll extremely fast until you get where you want.

Mostly I just bought it so that I could have a picture of an ox licking the song I'm listening to as a wallpaper. Also, it was about $50 cheaper than an iPod and uses a 1.8" laptop hard drive which seems like it would be easy to hack.

Does anyone know if the Zen Sleek firmware supports hard disk sizes larger than 20GB? If so that means I can hack in a 32GB or 64GB flash drive.

Re:What's the draw?

[zyrorl]

actually the latest real player 11 is nowhere near bloated anymore... its really fast and tight... runs really well with its features... i think you'd be surprised.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can take an iPod plug it into a connector in my car and completely control it from my steering wheel"

You can do that by attaching the ipod shuffe to your steering wheel with duct tape...

Re:What's the draw?

[riceboy50]

Nope, because I prefer Winamp for that. :)

Re:What's the draw?

[RockyMountain]

I did reseat all the cables, and it does work some of the time. Just unreliable enough to be annoying. Not (yet) unreliable enough to have me out visiting Best Buy in search of a replacement.

About your suggestion to replace the hard disk: Why throw good money after bad? Consider:

• It's a gamble, I won't get a refund on the hard disk if it doesn't solve the problem.
  
• This ipod model is notoriously unreliable anyway (just google it -- battery problems, mechanical problems, connectors, etc), so the repair probably woudn't help for very long.
  
• After the repair, I'd still have an HD-based iPod. If the problem, as you suggest, is that HDs are too flimsy for portable use, I'd be setting myself up for a repeat of the problem.
  
• I've got better things to do with my time. Once a piece of consumer electronics requires me to open it up and mess inside, it's proved itsself to be junk, and it's not worth wasting my time on.
  

As for whether it's an ipod specific problem... Apple were the ones who designed it and sold it -- that makes it an Apple problem. I do share your opinion that their choice to use a hard disk was a contributing factor, so I'll also avoid hard-disk based portables in future, regardless of brand name. But the fact that Apple designed and shipped such a piece of junk tells me that Apple's QC is a problem. When I buy a flash-based replacement, why even consider Apple? You pay top dollar for an iPod, you expect top quality. Apple have already disappointed me in that expectation twice. I won't give them a third chance.

Bottom line, my next portable player will not be an Apple product, AND it will not contain a hard disk.

Re:What's the draw?

[petermgreen]

toshiba used to call it an accupoint (i'm not sure if current toshiba laptops still have them and if so whether they still call it that).

Re:What's the draw?

[Constantine XVI]

Yes and learn to transcode

Re:What's the draw?

[Trillan]

Yes, I am a software developer, and I've seen how they solve it: Either acceleration (which I mentioned, but you ignored because it didn't match your argument) or 800 button pushes (which I also mentioned, and you seem to have fixed your eyes on).

Re:What's the draw?

[Trillan]

Aha! I'm with you now.

Actually, I haven't noticed that behavior on my iPod, but it's probably something they've tweaked over the years. For all I know, it may vary on individual iPods (not just within models) as well. But I have no problem believing it could be wrong on other models.

Re:What's the draw?

[chapman_164]

I just installed RockBox on my 80g iPod video and it works great: no more having to use a program like iTunes or GTKPod to get music on it. Just plug it in, copy files to it, and listen. It also plays ogg and flac as well as mp3.

Re:What's the draw?

[SlashV]

It also comes pre-installed on all Macs, so there's that going for it.
A media player pre-installed or bundled with the OS ?? Whoops !

Re:What's the draw?

[Burning Plastic]

Which model is it? (you never actually said)... Have you tried the HD test in the diagnostic mode?

Re:What's the draw?

[Ash Vince]

Actually, yes, you can say with certainty that the scroll wheel is better. Thats fine for you, but some of use don't keep single tracks on our MP3 players. I usually have a few MP3's but each one about an hour long (DJ mixes). If I accidentally hit the next track button it is a right pain to get back where I was in a 50+ minute recording.

I know I could try and manually split them up into 3-4 minute songs but being that they DJ mixes blended together and alot of the enjoyment I get from listening is the mixing between two tracks that delay you usually get would piss me off. The fact is that each accidental click to skip to another track usually pisses me off no end.

Re:What's the draw?

[ncc74656]

What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?

The add-ons that are available for it, perhaps? What other portable media player can be integrated with your car's stereo system? A tape adapter or RF modulator with a mini-plug on the end doesn't constitute "integration." I added an adapter to one of my cars that ends in a plug for the iPod's dock connector. In addition to sending audio from the iPod to the factory head unit, the head unit can turn the iPod on/off along with itself, the seek/scan buttons skip between tracks, and the tuning knob moves around within a track. It also keeps the iPod's battery charged. Is there another media player for which that kind of integration is available?

What I don't get more than that is the people who buy the iPod just to put Linux on it.

I'll admit I tried Rockbox for a little while. The UI blows chunks, compared to the stock iPod UI. Dragging-and-dropping music (lack of which some people harp on as an iPod disadvantage) didn't work without a lengthy on-device database rebuild every time files are added (Rockbox maintains its own database instead of using the one iTunes already puts on there). Vorbis and FLAC compatibility aren't worth the hassle of dealing with the inferior UI. Maybe it's a different story on other devices. I wouldn't know, as my previous media players were a Palm Tungsten T (with AeroPlayer) and a Rio Volt SP90.

Re:What's the draw?

[Wdomburg]

In this case you could just as easily point to the released products. The 4GB, 6GB and 8GB models in the e200 series retail for $120, $140 and $150, respectively. So $30 cheaper than the Nano @ 4GB and $50 cheaper @ 8GB.

Not to say that people shouldn't buy the iPod if they want, but it definitely is priced at a premium over its largest competitor.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of the five or so MP3 players that I've owned in the past 5 years, the iPod has withstood the most damage and is overall the best. This includes MP3 players by Creative, iRiver and Rio. I loved the Rio Karma when I got it (I recommended it to everyone that I could) but between the poor support from Rio and how easily the top scroll wheel breaks, it loses a lot of points. Hell, if Apple would support dynamic playlists, then that would probably account for all of the features I miss on the Rio.

I don't really understand the compulsion to put Linux on everything either though. I use Anapod instead of iTunes, sure, but the iPod OS itself does everything that I need it to do. I installed Rockbox for the novelty of being able to play Doom on my iPod, but that wore off quickly and the less intuitive nature of the OS made me run back to the iPod OS.

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

A front-panel 1/8" stereo input is the only car stereo accessory I could ever imagine needing. That is, until the day when car stereos come with a solid-state hard drive and front-panel USB jack, and you simply copy your entire music tree over with a pen drive.

Re:What's the draw?

[EveLibertine]

The problem that you are getting at is the concept of universal usability. Many people will decide that something is easy for them to use, and therefore must be easy for everyone to use. If they find someone that finds the object difficult to use, and then often decide that that person is the exception to the rule, and aberration, and not the fault of the design. The more complex the system, the easier it is to avoid this flawed logic. For example, one person can claim that the ipod scroll wheel is easy for everyone to use, and is the most easily usable design on the market, and another person will find that they prefer the roller bar on the Dell DJ to the ipod scroll wheel. Then both of them go to slashdot and yell at each other. You find the same argument in OS discussions, macs are easy to use, linux is difficult, windows is counter intuitive, etc... Mac's may be easy to use, but I could never get ftp working on the damned thing, and that takes all of 5 seconds to do in linux in the unlikely scenario that it isn't configured by default. It's all really a pointless discussion that I find humorous because it seems that the people involved are completely oblivious to the fact that they are arguing about opinions.

It's like a guitarist and a pianist arguing that one instrument is easier to play than another. The concept of someone arguing about any this just blows my mind every time, and it always seems too ridiculous to take seriously. But hell, that's about 90% of the entertainment of reading the slashdot discussion.

Re:What's the draw?

[White Flame]

And sorry if this seems like a rant. :)

Of course it is a rant. It's also very egotistical. What a person is "comfortable with" depends solely on their prior interactions with similar systems. If somebody has no prior interaction with similar systems, they will draw on parallels from dissimilar systems or just plain learn something new. There is no objective way to measure how comfortable, intuitive, or easy-to-use something is. The closest thing we have is to drop something in the hands of testers or customers and see how they like it.

"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."

Re:What's the draw?

[Trillan]

If I accidentally hit the next track button it is a right pain to get back where I was in a 50+ minute recording.

Thankfully, the scroll wheel doesn't do that. That's what we were talking about. I agree it'd be nice to be able to disable the previous/next track buttons, though.

Re:What's the draw?

[SanityInAnarchy]

No, guys. Things should be usable in a natural state. You should be comfortable with something as soon as you start using it. If you're not, then the products usability has failed you.

Say I can't read, and I pick up a book. Has the book's usability failed me?

No, it's either me, or my education, or my parents. The book works for anyone who can read; it's not the book's fault, or the book's failure, that I can't read it.

Now, in the case of Linux, if Linux does something in a different way, one that's not natural to you... It could actually be a failure, like the nightmare that is configuring X, on the occasions where it doesn't just work. (I've gotten good at it, but whenever I get someone's graphics working, I tell them to save the xorg.conf, because I don't want to go through that again.)

Or, it could be something that was a conscious design decision, that many people -- including non-programmers -- find to be much more usable. Only it's not as usable to you, because it's not Windows. Windows is usable, because you've used it so much that so many things are second nature to you.

In this case, Linux is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't. If it's more like Windows, it's easier to use, but it gets accused of being a copycat, not innovative, no point in using it when you can just use the real thing (real Windows). If it innovates, it gets accused of being hard to use, because people who've used nothing but Windows all their lives can't adapt to a new interface.

So, sometimes, it is actually Linux that's unusable. But sometimes, Linux is actually doing the right thing, even if it's unusable to you. In these cases, I suggest you try to swallow your pride and listen to what these people are trying to tell you -- even if you're right, showing some humility is a lot more likely to get you help, even from people who were behaving like assholes a moment before.

Re:What's the draw?

[cecil_turtle]

Good analogy, the scroll wheel is only useful when you use it like a steering wheel - hold it with two hands out in front of you when you can see what you're doing. But if you try to reach into your pocket and do some searching / seeking it completely sucks. Assuming there is even enough room to move your finger around in a circle and you even know where the circle is, there is no feedback at all. I can't think of a worse control for an MP3 player, whereas a pressure sensitive button is ideal. Driving a car is an analog operation, selecting tracks is a discrete operation.

Re:What's the draw?

[toddestan]

That's huge. You can get iPod interfaces for most higher-end car stereos for example, not to mention the plethora of docks, cases, etc.

Apple did change the interface on the newest iPods, rendering a whole of those devices obsolete.

Re:What's the draw?

[ThePengwin]

Why do you care?

I fail to see that as a valid rebuttal to this guys complaints. I have a sansa and am very thankfull it has Universal mass storage support. I dont have to install a single driver on anything i plug it into, and it can refresh its library itself, meaning all i have to do is copy and paste and the player, no third party app, does all the work.

You can turn it off, stupid.

No need to insult them.

I have a 6 month old Nano which has never seen a protective sleeve. It has zero scratches on its screen, despite sometimes being carried loose in a pocket with my cellphone.

A lot of ipods do get scratched, its a known fact. Nanos are a little more resistant because they are small, but still can be. If anything i would get a standard ipod if i were getting an ipod, and they are horrible with scratches.

Why do you care? Honestly, what is left worth listening to on FM radio? Most things which I'm actually interested in listening to on radio are better in podcast form, anyways (no ads).

In Australia i listen to a radio station called Triple J a lot. They have upcomming bands and no ads, as they are run by the government broadcasting system. i use my sansa to record the songs i like and record the names of the songs, that way i can find new bands. I also hate the term "Podcast". Its just an audio stream, it didn't need a new name

Re:What's the draw?

[sladflob]

I can take an iPod plug it into a connector in my car and completely control it from my steering wheel and see the info on the stereo's display. works perfectly. I can do the same with my Crestron Whole house audio system, my alarm clock, etc... No other mp3 player on the market can do that. NONE. Apple opened up the connector interface and had a rs232 control interface down in that connector so other devices can control it, All other mp3 makers sit in the corner curled up screaming "MINE MINE!" or are not smart enough to think about 3rd party control like that. Are you sure this isn't Apple screaming "mine, mine!"? Case in point, I bought a new VW a few months ago and the only way I could get something resembling a factory aux-in was to get the stock iPod adaptor (which the dealer threw in for me). I didn't have an iPod so I had to go and buy one so Apple got a new customer, albeit a reluctant one. To make matters worse, the factory adaptor's navigation is pretty crappy (granted, not Apple's fault) and I'd be much happier if I could use my Zen player and continue to use it's controls which are much easier to use without taking my eyes off the road. But I can't because now I'm locked into the Apple universe.

Re:What's the draw?

[marco75]

You call that a rant? :-) Let me have a go! You wrote after my own heart; erm, I mean I agree with you. Have you ever read Alan Cooper's books on user interaction design? I think they are brilliant. I'm glad I found yet another sensible IT person. I hate evangelists, wether it's Linux, Religion or other irrational belief they try to ram down your throat. I'm happy with my current system, an Athlon 1800 with Windows XP. It's stable, runs the software I want, and I'm so used to the interface I don't notice it anymore. I just want something that works. And I have tried many Linux distros over the years, and they all took way too much effort to make them do anything useful or entertaining. I swear for every peripheral or feature, what can be done in one day in Windows will take a week in Linux. (My last Linux box was a RedHat Fedora Core 5 server) The worst thing about Linux... is that it's not an OS. Linux is a kernel. The distro vendor will patch some version of Torvald's kernel, the nerds will compile the Open Source Software Library, and the (l)users will install the distro on their PCs and then spend all their waking hours trying to get it to work. The Linux-based OS market is hopelessly fragmented -- not only are there over 100 distros, each of those distros typically releases a new version every 6 months. Each new version is completely incompatible with the software packages from the previous one, it will have new bugs (even some that were fixed in the previous release etc). No two distros work quite alike, either behind the scenes or in the foreground. Experience gained by a user operating Ubuntu is worthless when confronted with a box running RedHat, and vice versa. Oh, and than there's removable media... Linux just doesn't know how to deal with it, does it? Contrast that with Windows and Mac: Between 1995 and 2007, there's been Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and Vista. During that time, any given Linux distro would have released twice as many versions. Apple moves even slower -- there's OS9, and OSX. Slower is better, and less is more.

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

The problem definitely exists on my iPod Nano purchased last December and running the latest firmware.

Re:What's the draw?

[letxa2000]

Yes, I am a software developer, and I've seen how they solve it: Either acceleration (which I mentioned, but you ignored because it didn't match your argument) or 800 button pushes (which I also mentioned, and you seem to have fixed your eyes on).

I didn't ignore. It wasn't the issue. My question was not how others have done it. My question to you was whether or not you were creative enough to be able to imagine a button-based solution that would be both accurate and also allow quick navigation among 800+ songs? The scroll wheel has the "advantage"* of acceleration for quick general navigation while buttons have the advantage of precise navigation for specific selection. Can you imagine some solution that would provide both advantages? I'm sure you can unless you try to be intentionally obtuse.

* I say "advantage" because I really am not convinced it is one. When I'm at the top of the list and want to get to a song in the M's, I'm screwed. If I start going moderately fast, the dang thing zips into fast mode and zips me right on past M's into the O's, P's, or even R's. So I'm forced to carefully go slow so that the thing doesn't get into fast-scroll mode--and navigating 800+ songs with the scroll wheel in slow mode is no faster than doing it with a logical button configuration would be. About the only time the scroll wheel's "fast mode" is useful to me is if I have to be in the A's or B's and want to quickly zip to the Y's. For anything else, I find myself carefully moderating my speed so I don't lose control of the scroll and zip to the end of the alphabet.

The problem is that the alphabet is too short for it to work efficiently. If the alphabet had 100 or 150 characters, the fast mode would be great. But it's only 26 characters long. By the time the thing gets into fast mode, I'm usually 1/4th of the way through the alphabet. Once in fast mode, it seems I can almost immediately skip 10+ characters by the time I can respond to the fact that I'm now in fast mode. So getting into fast mode might take about 7 characters and then I almost immediately get another 10 added to that as I react to now being in fast mode. So by the time I "slow down," I'm already at the 17th letter of the alphabet. Again, the normal solution is intentionally avoiding fast mode at which point I'd rather have a semi-intelligent button design. And, no, 800+ button presses is not the most intelligent way to do it, even if that's the way it's been done by button-based units so far.

Re:What's the draw?

[DDLKermit007]

I've never had anyone ask me "how do you work this?" with my iPod. Even my grandparents knew how to use it when they picked it up. Not one other player has ever accomplished this. Everything is plainly labeled, the only thing that isn't (the click wheel) you figure in under 5 seconds of touching it, it supports enough formats (shut up before you bitch about OGG, less than 0.5% of MP3 buyers give a shit), and it works as advertised. Add music, plug in iPod, and it magically appears on the iPod without any question. None of the gimpy drag & drop into their own directory junk so many just have to have. It's called labeling your tracks with their ID3 tags. Otherwise, it looks a hell of allot better than anything else on the market. Not everyone needs to be an AC/DC fashion victim (yes I 3 AC/DC).

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

The scrollwheel is great for what it does... I'm one to argue in favor of it.

But I find some of this argument about buttons funny... It would only be a simple firmware update to provide an iPod with this button-press single step forward back behavior. The hardware to implement it is obviously there. And at some levels of functionality, it is being used. (FFWD/Advance, RWD/Back, Menu, Play/Pause all work that way.) The issue is just a matter of being able to use the button functionality for song selection from the playlist level. If Apple or the Rockbox folks are smart, this will soon be a nil argument with a fix available under the device options menu.

Only real downside with the iPod is the excessively smooth interface. (Probably even worse with the newer touchscreen ones.) Not much in the way of tactile feedback to use it without looking. Changing the texture over secondary function positions of the wheel or putting little bumps there would do a lot to correct that. Or better yet, put differing bumps just outside the wheel at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions. It stays smooth for a nice scroll, but there's still an effective tactile reference.

Re:What's the draw?

[somersault]

How is swinging your thumb round in a circle any more intuitive than pressing a button? A 'down' button is pretty intuitive. You could have it pressure sensetive to deal with the speed issue, as the holding it down thing isn't very precise at all..

Re:What's the draw?

[empaler]

In iTunes:
Select track(s), right (ctrl+) click, Get Info.
Set "Remember Position" to yes.
Works for my audiobooks...

Re:What's the draw?

[Matthew Bafford]

The alphabet mode was a faulty solution to a problem with an obvious solution. If they'd just made the alphabet mode a real mode so that you went:

Music->
        Artist->
                all->
                        <all songs, like current>
                A->
                B->
                        B song 1
                        B song 2 ....
                C-> ...

Instead of this psuedo-mode they have now the interface would be simple to work with. It's something I was hoping they would implement for a long time (after using a friend's audio player that DOES work like this). Instead they went with a piss-poor half-solution. I have the exact same problem you do - I always overshoot the first half of the alphabet letters and have to reverse. The threshold is too severe, and too hard to feel out. Same for the fast scroll threshold.

The scroll wheel has the potential to be better than a couple of buttons, but it needs more interface tweaking to be there. Lack of feedback, inconsistent sensitivity, and poor choice (in my opinion) of threshold levels all lead to a design that's just not quite there.

Re:What's the draw?

[quanticle]

It does vary from model to model and even from revision to revision in the same model. I have an iPod Nano (1st gen). I find the scroll wheel to be hypersensitive. Its way too easy to skip past the song you want, or mis-adjust the volume. The scroll wheel on regular iPods, or even 2nd gen Nanos is much easier to control (IMHO).

Re:What's the draw?

[RockyMountain]

Diagnostic mode reports no problems. (Except when the Ipod is hung -- at which time I have no idea what diagnostic mode would say, since I can't run it).

When it hangs, nothing, not even a reset, helps. The only thing that gets it out of the hang seems to be putting it on the shelf and coming back and trying a reset a few days later.

It's a 40G Ipod photo.

Re:What's the draw?

[Clock Nova]

Hmm. I have no trouble at all using the scrollwheel to precisely select the song that I want while jogging or riding my bike. Guess it's a matter of taste, although I think more people fall into my camp than yours. No evidence to back that up; it's just a feeling.

Re:What's the draw?

[mstahl]

I think that most people would not understand that a button they're pressing is pressure-sensitive. Most naïve users would just repeatedly press it then complain about how difficult the device is to use. If you're designing an interface for a device and you're putting that kind of nuance into it, you're really overestimating how much ordinary users are actually going to fiddle with it. The scrollwheel is more intuitive simply because the speed of scrolling does naturally follow the speed of the motion of your thumb.

When you're designing something like this you have to think of how spastic kids and grandmothers might approach using it. Grandmas would repeatedly press the buttons, spastic kids would just hold them down all the way and never care about the pressure sensitivity.

Re:What's the draw?

[WhiteDragon]

What I don't get more than that is the people who buy the iPod just to put Linux on it. That actually causes negative understanding. This article is not about running linux on your ipod, it is about using your ipod with linux on the desktop instead of windows/mac.

Re:What's the draw?

[MoxFulder]

Cheerful today, aren't we :-)

the fact that you can't just copy MP3 files on and off from the command line,

Why do you care? I care because it's the most convenient way for me to get music on and off my player! I decide what I want to listen to for the next couple of days and just do "cp coolmusic/* /mnt/mp3player" or whatever. Easy! And with a standard USB Mass Storage interface, practically any Music Manager software can access songs directly off of the player... no need to use a specific program.

the stupid clicky noise,

You can turn it off, stupid. Good to know.

the easily-scratched screen cover,

I have a 6 month old Nano which has never seen a protective sleeve. It has zero scratches on its screen, despite sometimes being carried loose in a pocket with my cellphone. Lucky you! My girlfriend, who is meticulous and careful with all of her possessions, has a regular iPod which she keeps in a protective sleeve when working out, but despite that it's very scratched up after about one year.

the lack of FM radio which every other player has,

Why do you care? Honestly, what is left worth listening to on FM radio? Most things which I'm actually interested in listening to on radio are better in podcast form, anyways (no ads). I listen to news and classical music on NPR (public radio, if you're not from the USA) *all the time*. I probably listen to it more than I do stored music files! Podcasting doesn't work if you want to hear the latest news or weather.

It's not so constructive of you to dismiss useful features with, "Why do you care?" Well, I do care about those features... and since Apple players don't offer those features, while nearly every other brand does, I take my dollar elsewhere.

Re:What's the draw?

[MoxFulder]

Why do you care?

I fail to see that as a valid rebuttal to this guys complaints. I have a sansa and am very thankfull it has Universal mass storage support. I dont have to install a single driver on anything i plug it into, and it can refresh its library itself, meaning all i have to do is copy and paste and the player, no third party app, does all the work.

You got it. UMS support is great. I can write a shell script to transfer music onto and off of my Sansa the way I want it. I can drag and drop from the Desktop. If a friend copies a song onto my player, I'm actually able to copy it *off* onto my home computer. I have more choices than just iTunes or GtkPod for music management.

In Australia i listen to a radio station called Triple J a lot. They have upcomming bands and no ads, as they are run by the government broadcasting system. i use my sansa to record the songs i like and record the names of the songs, that way i can find new bands. I also hate the term "Podcast". Its just an audio stream, it didn't need a new name The term "podcast" bugs me too, because it doesn't really have anything to do with iPods in particular. Nor is it much like broadcasting, since the audio is pre-recorded then distributed, rather than streamed live.

On the other hand, there is no other good term for such a thing. Hrmmm...

Re:What's the draw?

[cromar]

Watch out for the iAnal...

People on /. are sick. I always see them brandishing the devices name about as if ass play was commonplace...

Re:What's the draw?

[bandmassa]

Fashion. Purely and simply fashion.

I went iPod because it has the best _Mac_ support of all players, but I don't like the standard operating model (just that it's the best of a bad bunch on Mac OS X) I mean, if Fairplay is such a great DRM, why not make iPod just a simple external drive and allow easy 2-way music transfer like cheaper units? Why not make iTunes recognise USB devices with MP3s?

There, you heard it from a fanboi, iPod: best of a bad bunch on Mac side, not even that on other platforms. It's still sexy shiney, though (and I love my aging, pink mini, despite its flaws.)

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

My efforts to use my iPod as a waffle-iron have met with little success so far.

Do Sony make batteries for iPods?

Re:What's the draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

still using fvwm are we?

Re:What's the draw?

[petermgreen]

Sure you can route the output of practically any audio player including an ipod into any device with a suitable input using a simple cable (usually one with a mini stereo jack one end and RCA connectors the other for connecting a portable player to other audio gear) but that isn't what people who talk about integration want.

the car stereo is fitted into the dashboard where there is no risk of it coming out by accident and has controls suitable for use while driving. Sometimes it even has controls on the steering wheel. A portable MP3 player is not.

usable?

[lutz7755]

Does anyone actually use an ipod that runs linux, or is it just a "neat to have" type thing?

Re:usable?

[ls -la]

The "Linux support" mentioned in the summary is so that you can use/sync/update the iPod while running linux on your computer, not so that you can run linux on your iPod.
Although it would be interesting to have an open-source iPod OS...

Re:usable?

[morgan_greywolf]

Although it would be interesting to have an open-source iPod OS... Ask and ye shall receive!

Re:usable?

[dionoea]

Rockbox (or iPodlinux) unfortunately don't support the newer iPods (nano 2G and up, ipod classic and ipod touch) since Apple changed most of the hardware and added heavy encryption on the bootloader/firmware update mechanism.

Re:usable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got a 160Gb iPod classic for video content. Rockbox is no help (yet).

Re:usable?

[jbond23]

And note that the new iPods are new hardware and may have encrypted firmware. Making Rockbox and iPodLinux a non option. Perhaps for ever.

It makes me wonder

[rolfc]

why anyone bother to try to lock people in or out. I think that it would be better to open it up, and let everyone use the ipod like they want.

Re:It makes me wonder

[falcon5768]

because then you run into issues with the RIAA and MPAA who want the iPod locked down even harder than it is. At least by having it somewhat locked Apple can reasonably say that they tried to prevent users from hacking it so its not their fault if people do.

Apple rarely fights hard when it comes to hacking of their products. Often any "fix" they give out is easily removed by people in such a way that it is obvious Apple wasn't even trying.

You have little far to look at the "please dont pirate this software" code in OS X intel.

Re:It makes me wonder

[ivan256]

Really, I'm sure that this was added simply as a means of legal recourse against other companies that try to patch their DRM into the iPod.

hopefully

[russellh]

we'll get amarok on the mac soon, too.

Re:hopefully

[xophos]

1. Install Debian.
2. Install Amarok.
Shouldn't take more than an hour.
So: No hoping needed here.

Re:hopefully

[Constantine XVI]

Amarok 2.0 will be using KDE4/Qt4, which is going to be very cross-platform friendly (which means Win and OSX versions with minimal teeth grinding)

Re:hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite sure why you'd want to though - if the screenies on the Amarok blog, along with comment about "users with more than 30 tracks in their playlist are stupid", are anything to go by, the devs are on crack. Current interface snapshots I've seen mean I'll be staying on 1.4.x until the current interface is dead and buried.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/493-Weekly-status-update-II.html

How anyone can think that interface is anything even approaching an improvement on the Amarok 1.4 GUI is beyond me.

If you're an amarok user, please look at the new interface before modding me as a troll. Thank you.

Re:hopefully

[MarcQuadra]

I've been using Amarok on my OS X Mac for over a year. I have Fink and KDE installed and it works fine.

Re:hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Amarok comes for OS X and Windows, I doubt the latter programs will last very long... Then they'll have to have built-in Amarok support for their iPods.

Half way there

[phoxix]

Having to run commands, compile a prog, and do things manually .... kinda sucks ...

Cracking the stupidity was half the battle, making it easy to use is the other half.

Re:Half way there

[kebes]

Cracking the stupidity was half the battle, making it easy to use is the other half.

Seriously! And at this pathetically slow rate, we won't have that functionality until Wednesday!

Re:Half way there

[Constantine XVI]

Knowing the community, we can likely expect full integration with most (activley maintained) iPod libraries on Linux within the week.

Re:Half way there

[Scrameustache]

Having to run commands, compile a prog, and do things manually .... kinda sucks ... Kinda why linux never took with the masses.

It doesn't matter, due to the DMCA ...

[un1xl0ser]

I have the feeling that the DMCA may stop some distros from being able to include this kind of a hack. It does seem to me that it is circumventing some kind of security measure. :-/

In the end, it was great work to have it done, but I urge people to not buy devices that you have to hack around to make it work the way you want it. There are plenty of open devices that one can use without this kind of hassle.

Re:It doesn't matter, due to the DMCA ...

[Nextraztus]

IANAL, but couldn't it be argued this reverse-engineering is being used for interoperability? I mean, you shouldn't HAVE to run Apple's OS on their iPods -- you bought it.

Sigh, I hate the DMCA sometimes.

Re:It doesn't matter, due to the DMCA ...

[Mr. Underbridge]

IANAL, but couldn't it be argued this reverse-engineering is being used for interoperability? I mean, you shouldn't HAVE to run Apple's OS on their iPods -- you bought it.

Beat me to it. That's definitely the spirit of the law - DMCA isn't supposed to be used to prevent you from using a device you bought. It's supposed to prevent reverse-engineering to allow illegal copying or redistribution. Clearly that's not the case here, so I'm not a lawyer either, but this shouldn't trip the DMCA.

Re:It doesn't matter, due to the DMCA ...

[Anonymous Coward]

iANAL

When product "protection" becomes interference...

[downix]

DeCSS, iPhone/iPod hacking... when will media companies realize that limiting customer access will hurt their bottom line. When one must be a pirate to play, then all will be pirates, and why not just eliminate the middle-men?

DMCA violation?

[mi]

I doubt, Apple will tarnish its image by pressing it, but DMCA seems to apply. In fact, it may be out of Apple's hands. IANAL, but they may need to clarify, that they added the new checksum/whatever not to limit whatever it is, DMCA will try to help them uphold, but for some other, non-DMCA protected reason.

Otherwise, the prosecutors may have to enforce the Act whether Apple wants them to or not...

Re:DMCA violation?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

DMCA should not be in effect here. First, the hash isn't for copy protection. That much is clear. If it was, then you would not be able to see the song's unless the key was present. Besides, if it's SHA1, it's not very effective for copy protection anyway.

I bet that the only reason the hash is created is for some database integrity verification the ipod does.....just making sure everything is ok before writing data (play counts) to the database.

Re:DMCA violation?

[Tweekster]

Does this crack any security in the device that protects media? I could argue that it does not.
Specifically DMCA complaints have to involve that it was used as copy protection, what copy protection is this providing?

Re:DMCA violation?

[Poorcku]

Would you mind replacing Apple with Microsoft, Ipod with Vista and see if you still get modded interesting.

Re:DMCA violation?

[Arabani]

I bet that the only reason the hash is created is for some database integrity verification the ipod does.....just making sure everything is ok before writing data (play counts) to the database. If it really were just about data integrity, they wouldn't need to include the iPod's serial number hash; furthermore, a perfectly good database would work on every iPod, not just the one it came from. Since that is clearly not the case, the logical conclusion is that the hash was added for the sole purpose of locking out 3rd party software.

It's nice to see Apple's "hard work" broken in such a short period of time, though.

Re:DMCA violation?

[acb]

Apple could claim that they have an obligation to the RIAA/IFPI to control access to copyrighted material stored on the iPod. If the iPod can only be filled from one copy of iTunes, it becomes somewhat less useful as a means of (illegally) distributing music than if one can copy to it from anywhere; i.e., you can't go over to a friend's house and copy their record collection onto your iPod.

In fact, didn't the RIAA make noises about suing MP3 player manufacturers for "facilitating piracy" a while ago? This measure could be part of an agreement by Apple to prevent a lawsuit.

Re:DMCA violation?

[Sloppy]

Apple doesn't have standing to use a DMCA attack. The hash isn't a technical measure to limit access to any particular copyrighted work for which Apple holds the copyright. In fact, the device simply doesn't know who holds the copyright -- it might even be the user. Apple can't sue you (er.. and win) for accessing music that you recorded, and that you have authorized yourself to access.

Someone who claims to hold the copyright on all music that this hash gets applids to (the RIAA could fraudulently try to make such a claim, and possibly could mislead a court into believing them) might have standing, though. But not Apple.

Re:DMCA violation?

[squiggleslash]

DMCA complaints can also involve access protection (DVD's CSS is such a thing, it does nothing to prevent anything from being copied, but attempts to ensure that the content can only be accessed by authorized software.)

That said, you're right, this CRC is neither an effective access control mechanism or copy control mechanism on any planet I've ever lived on. The system appears to be to prevent any kind of writing to add content, not any kind of reading. A judge would throw out a DMCA based attack in a heartbeat.

Re:DMCA violation?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Actually, it doesn't have to BE DRM if it uses the serial number. Why would you use something so simple to get for DRM? Just look at the back and there's your key! I still say it isn't DRM. It's data integrity. The serial was probably used because it was easy to grab. Remember, the iPod is pretty much a mature platform. If they really wanted to create a way to NEVER let another app to use an iPod, then they could, but then they'd have to redo iTunes from the start and then they would also have to orphan older iPods because any drastic change would require Apple to update ALL iPods from the first gen to the current gen and any new generation.

With the ease of piss off ability of the average Apple fan, well I don't think apple wants to go there.

Re:DMCA violation?

[makomk]

It doesn't use the serial number directly. It uses a key derived from the serial number via a complex algorithm involving three 256-byte tables and another smaller table. There's no doubt in my mind that it's intended to sabotage interoperability.

Re:DMCA violation?

[tlhIngan]

If it really were just about data integrity, they wouldn't need to include the iPod's serial number hash; furthermore, a perfectly good database would work on every iPod, not just the one it came from. Since that is clearly not the case, the logical conclusion is that the hash was added for the sole purpose of locking out 3rd party software.

Ever consider that it's an integrity check? Remember how Vista broke iPods? (Turns out "Safely Remove Hardware" doesn't - it on occasion fails to flush all the buffers. There's a patch out, but even then, I'm not entirely confident it works. I found filesystem errors on my iPod after hooking it to a patched Vista machine). It's a somewhat well known issue with Vista. Perhaps this is Apple's way of ensuring that even if you don't have a patched Vista install (hint: the patch is NOT INSTALLED via Windows Update - you have to download the patch yourself).

For the serial number hashing, maybe the user has multiple iPods. Could be possible they plug in one after another. Can't have the wrong DB on the wrong iPod, or write the wrong hash to the wrong iPod. There is a remote chance, after all, that hashes can collide.

Heck, maybe they want to have some fun with the Linux guys? Make them release a new version of their software for the new iPods. Or maybe the database changed subtly again, and they're afraid third party tools may not catch the changes, so they make a huge OMGWTF change?

If they really wanted to lock up the iPod, they could just do it like the iPhone and iPod Touch - deny USB Mass Storage access. Heck, the Zune even modified MTP so that you have to authenticate against the Zune before any access can take place.

Not only DefectiveByDesign ...

[Gopal.V]

I guess someone's been vindicated.

But I do have to wonder, does this violate the DMCA? (not that I care much, being in India). Now if they actually reverse engineer the whole daap:// protocol, I'd be more interested, having more friends who run iTunes (in office) than those who don't - being able to share music was one of the really cool things I used to enjoy with them. But looks like Steve Jobs wanting no DRM for audio was not really for us, but to get the antitrust monopoly stuff off his back *for* iTunes, not really to sell to songs to Joe Usb-Player-User.

Anyway, if you picked Apple - you've picked Apple all the way. There are no half-ways about it and according to a few of my friends - it's seamless and worth the price you pay (I don't agree, but ...).

Re:Not only DefectiveByDesign ...

[silas_moeckel]

You ever look at www.opendapp.org? I've been streaming from a linux media server to itunes etc for years now.

Re:Not only DefectiveByDesign ...

[fishbowl]

>not that I care much, being in India.

India sure is a strange place, with extremes all over the spectrum. On one hand, I notice that many Indians are quick and eager to accept authority. Enormous swaths of the culture of India seem to function with submission to authority as one of the fundamental precepts. On the other hand, much of India is essentially a lawless frontier, where individuals are free to do what they want, sometimes simply by virtue of being lost in the noise or by operating under a fundamentally dysfunctional government.

Re:Not only DefectiveByDesign ...

[Marillion]

I think people are also interested in going the other way around. Someone has a shared iTunes library and they want to be able to stream that content to a non-apple client.

Good because linux support is better

[Tweekster]

iTunes doenst even come close to the power of gtkpod

I hate poorly named mp3s, gtkpod can get my entire ipod properly organized in a matter of minutes because of the nifty variety of views.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[JonathanBoyd]

I just had a look at gtkpod and my goodness it's ugly. Aside from that, it doesn't seem to do anything iTunes doesn't. If anything, it seems less powerful. What exactly is the advantage you see in gtkpod?

Re:Good because linux support is better

[Tweekster]

You have to play with it, everything in the various lists is editable. Which means I can rename my "Techno/Trance" category to "Trance" in one single rename, extremely quickly. I can rename all the "Lincoln Park" to Linkin Park.

iTunes doesnt even come close to that ease of use and power.

itunes honestly isnt that great looking either but atleast gtkpod has features that take advantage of its layout (the multi tab panes and lists)

Re:Good because linux support is better

[JonathanBoyd]

You have to play with it, everything in the various lists is editable. Which means I can rename my "Techno/Trance" category to "Trance" in one single rename, extremely quickly. I can rename all the "Lincoln Park" to Linkin Park.

iTunes doesnt even come close to that ease of use and power.

If I had any Techno/Trance music, I could click on the relevant genre in the browse panel, select all the music and change their genre in one go. Similarly with Lincoln Park. Not terribly difficult.

itunes honestly isnt that great looking either but atleast gtkpod has features that take advantage of its layout (the multi tab panes and lists)

gtkpod is hideous. And from the looks of the screenshots, it's layout doesn't provide any more information than the iTunes layout and even seems to take up more space.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[Tweekster]

"If I had any Techno/Trance music, I could click on the relevant genre in the browse panel, select all the music and change their genre in one go. Similarly with Lincoln Park. Not terribly difficult."

which is exactly what I don't want to do, and that gtkpod makes a lot easier. Select the genre tab, start renaming the genres in that top panel. Done, that is a lot easier and faster than your itunes method.

that layout is exactly what makes tasks like I mentioned so much quicker.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[querist]

Except that even with following the instructions for gtkpod very carefully it still borked my iPod mini. And I lost some music in the process. Sorry. I'm not that confident in 3rd party solutions for my iPod quite yet.

I am glad that they're still working on it, because I feel that people should be able to do this (on general principle). It's an audio player. I don't see why it is such a big deal to Apple that it only work on OS X and Windows, but that's why I'm a scientist and not a business person.

-Q

Re:Good because linux support is better

[brainnolo]

You spend way too much time renaming things probably.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[JonathanBoyd]

SLightly different methodologies - iTunes leaves the original genre intact, whereas gtkpod doesn't. Can't say I've ever needed to rename a genre before. I make sure my music is tagged correctly and change the tags for incorrectly tagged tracks rather than globally changing tag definitions. If such a rarely used and unneeded feature is your evidence that gtkpod is way more powerful than iTunes, then you're sorely mistaken.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[Tibor the Hun]

poorly named mp3s

There you have it.. who the f*** worries about mp3s and their names in this day and age? What, you have time to sift through your whole library and examine song names?
That, exactly is why iPod is making a killing with the "I don't really care what an mp3 is, I just want to listen to my music wherever I go" crowd.

Maybe you're not sold on the idea of a DNS system either though, and you like to keep your personal translation list to keep track of names and IPs?
Sometimes easier really is better.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[Anonymous Coward]

his name is Tweekster, come on now. people would rather squeeze the best possible performance, even if just slighty, rather than do any real work.

Re:Good because linux support is better

[Blakey Rat]

But can I use it to buy David Carradine's masterpiece, Death Race 2000?

Re:Good because linux support is better

[hawk]

If I had any Techno/Trance music, I could click on the relevant genre in the browse panel, select all the music and change their genre in one go. Similarly with Lincoln Park. *shrug*

Suit yourself. I'd probably click "delete," then drop the iPod and hard drive into saltwater for good measure . . .

hawk

Re:Good because linux support is better

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet he compiles gtkpod with -funroll-l00p-t3h-l00ps -o99

Re:Good because linux support is better

[JonathanBoyd]

That is arguably the superior option. Actually, there's really no argument about it.

Erm... Quarts-wm?

[asphaltjesus]

It's an explitive laced how-to, but installing Amarok not hard to do. http://www.junkthatrocks.com/archives/000294.php

Good!

[thatskinnyguy]

I've been looking for a decent utility in Linux to sync my iPod Video. So far I haven't found a utility that's worth the powder to blow it to Hell.

Amarok has some cool utilities for stuff that's already on your iPod, but is very poor in the syncing department. I'll have to give this "iTunes 7 support" version of Amarok a try... after backing my iPod up via xcopy. lol

Three words: EASE OF USE

[mi]

That's the draw.

That, and Apple's managing to create the vast market for iPod addons. New cars come with option of being "pre-wired for iPod". You can buy an "iPod-ready" backpack. Various speaker-systems — portable and otherwise, including waterproof ones — come with iPod slots.

True, many of those accessories will work with any music player, but many would not, or not as well...

Why do it in the first place?

[scottsk]

It's not that it's been cracked, but why do this in the first place? Make people mad who use Linux which Apple isn't about to support anyway -- I mean, these are people who might buy iPods and MacBooks in the future, and doing this won't help Apple's cause any.

Re:Why do it in the first place?

[russotto]

It's probably intended only for integrity, not for DRM. If they'd wanted to lock the iPod down against adding music to it, they'd use some sort of encryption, not a mere hash.

Missing The Point Entirely.

[asphaltjesus]

The point is not that it can't be done. The point is it's a sufficient barrier to simple file sharing.

A reasonable guess is some combination of PHB's at Apple and the Media cartels are driving this kind of totally wasteful resource allocation.

It also is important to understand that the typical executive demanding these features:

1. Don't have a clue.
2. Wield so much power and money they are surrounded by yes-people.
3. Typical power personality lives in a reality distortion field that includes dismissing an informed opinion that is counter to their very basic drive for power and control.

Numbers 2 and 3 create a death-spiral too.

Unimpressive

[packetmon]

36 hours... Well after years and years most still have not cracked the method for avoiding the Slashdot effect

Re:Unimpressive

[steveo777]

Easy. Just write up some BS about a controversial subject. Make sure that it's about as redundant as can be. Now throw on a whole bunch of banner adds and make sure the click-through from Slashdot gives you lot's of user-specific hits. It'll never get past the editors... Or maybe the fire hose will stop it...

Okay, maybe just subscribe to Comcast internet!

Interesting article tags

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were a non-Apple story, the tags would have included "haha" and "defectivebydesign".

Re:When product "protection" becomes interference.

[Churla]

Well,

Apple, with all it's forced tie ins, lock in, lock out, DRM and other yadda yadda are still easily the number one mp3 player BY FAR. Even with all the far more open options out there (its debatable that even the Zune is even more open than the iPod.)

What incentive do they have to do differently?

You could potentially argue the "look at what happened to MS with Vista and all their DRM and rights management and WGA.." But the problem is that Vista has faltered to the degree it has because it's not that good an OS and not really a needed upgrade, not because of any amount of DRM in it.

there are other reasons not to buy a Classic iPod

[e40]

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/ipodclassic/
http://ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ipod-classic-tests-reveal-audio-problems

and the best list is here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070914_002928.html

Re:Good because linux support is more better

[morgan_greywolf]

The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis There. Fixed the subject line for you.

A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[victim]

The news around the web is all about this being an evil DRM checksum, but given how quickly the generation algorithm was found, isn't it possible that it is an integrity checksum?

A user can unplug a device at any time, even in the middle of a catalog write. It only seems prudent to checksum the data to make sure you don't have a corrupt file.

I'd be interested to hear if this is a tricky crypto algorithm, or the sort of simple MD5 or CRC of data that a programmer would whip out for integrity. This is important because if the intent was integrity we can expect it to not change. The problem is solved. If it was intended to detect reverse engineered and possibly incorrect files then we can look forward to more algorithms in the future.

TFA was silent on the matter. <wtbw> can i hear a fuck yeah? didn't really tell me much.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[squiggleslash]

It only seems prudent to checksum the data to make sure you don't have a corrupt file.

Well, yeah, but why would you want to actively disable access to the parts of the music library that aren't corrupt simply because some of it might be? It's not as if the iPod will explode (or become more corrupt) because of a bad read.

I'm having a hard time understanding the justification for this change, both the "It's just to prevent corruption" explanation, and the "It's a conspiracy by Apple against GNOME users" one. In the absence of anything concrete from Apple, it seems all we can do is speculate.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Rosyna]

A user can unplug a device at any time, even in the middle of a catalog write. It only seems prudent to checksum the data to make sure you don't have a corrupt file. Or the user could be using a piece of third party software that writes bad data to the iPod db, causing the iPod to crash when it tries to access said bad data. An integrity checksum would help prevent this as well (assuming said bad software doesn't include a checksum for a bad db write...)

I, for one, hate it when my iPod crashes and spontaneously reboots while I'm totally in the groove.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Constantine XVI]

That sounds more like it. I had a 5G of a friend's that I synced up using Banshee. I dumped the songs on, hit sync, waited, ejected it afterwards, and it got stuck in an infinite reboot loop. Had to find out how to throw it into emergency disk mode (I think it was toggle hold back/forth, hold back+select if it ever happens to you) and restore iPOS (pun not intended) from a Windows machine with iTunes.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[blargfellow]

If you download and read the code, it seems like they implemented a SHA1 hash.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Arabani]

It was a "tricky" hash in that they salted the DB with some additional data (in this case the serial number) before encrypting it. Had it been solely about data integrity, the DB would be transferable between different iPods. Instead, a DB that works perfectly fine on on iPod doesn't work at all on another. That's not data integrity checking. So that leaves the only other explanation - Apple was having a preliminary pass at locking out 3rd party applications (I say preliminary because it appears to me that Apple could've tried a lot harder).

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[hummassa]

I, for one, hate it when my iPod crashes and spontaneously reboots while I'm totally in the groove. Never happened to me. Serious. And I use Rockbox, exclusively (lots of FLACs and OGGs here), so I expected it to crash from time to time...

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Tim C]

How about a third possibility - it was done to tie the iPod to iTunes because of the tight integration with iTMS and the possibility of impulse buying of content?

After all, if you're using iTunes, then buying stuff is just a few clicks away. Using some other software buying stuff might *still* be only a few clicks away, but it most likely won't be from Apple.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Anonymous Coward]

They use HMAC-SHA-1. This is essentially a message authentication code or MAC: a 'checksum' which can only be calculated using a secret key. In this case, the key is derived from the unique firewireID of the iPod device. Conclusion: this has nothing to do with piracy or integrity checking. It's about Apple locking out software alternatives such as gtkpod and Amarok.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's HMAC SHA-1 of the DB file, with the key based on the FireWireGUID of the iPod.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Except Apple makes diddly on iTunes Music Store sales. Apple's whole reason for the store is not for us....it's for the users who have no idea how to rip a CD. iTMS exists so that the non techy can fill their iPod without having to spend alot of time ripping cd's and so Apple can sell more iPods. Us geeks know better.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[aliquis]

First thing I did was to hide the storepart of iTunes, I also blocked access to iTunes store in the parental settings of iTunes so now I'm sure I will never buy anything by accident either ;D

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[squiggleslash]

Actually, that's just a variant of option #2, that it's a conspiracy to lock out GNOME users. As I said, neither explanation appears rational, you wouldn't use this method to do either #1 or #2, #1 is useless, #2 is inevitably going to be bypassed.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[makomk]

I've taken a look at how the released tool calculates the hash. It takes the serial number of the iPod, runs it through a complex algorithm involving several tables, hashes the result, pads the hash to 64 bytes with zeroes to get pKey, hashes (pKey XORed with 0x36) and the file contents together, then hashes (pKey XORed with 0x5c) with that hash to get the final hash.

That's not something you do to protect against file corruption, it's something you do if you want to make interoperability hard. The speed with which it was found probably says more about the skill of the reverse engineers than anything else.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[miguel]

It is not just an integrity check; Had it been an integrity check, it would have merely used the SHA1 checksum over its contents. Instead it initializes the SHA1 state with a key, and then computes SHA1.

Miguel.

Re:A integrity checksum or a crypto checksum?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of that except the key generation is standard HMAC SHA-1, just FYI.

Interesting news but..

[suv4x4]

Don't forget what might be the real motivation behind said checksum. When devices such as XBOX360 "talk" to the iPod, without authorization from Apple, they now have to break also said checksum, which may be used to (ab)use DMCA and shut off iPod support in XBOX360.

Or in Linux. While I don't think Jobs will go after the Linux hack, I wouldn't be surprised even for a second if he does: he's pretty aggressive about protecting Apple IP as you know (even from random bloggers out there).

Re:Interesting news but..

[kannibal_klown]

While I don't think Jobs will go after the Linux hack, I wouldn't be surprised even for a second if he does: he's pretty aggressive about protecting Apple IP as you know (even from random bloggers out there).

I agree that Jobs is big on protecting his IP. But people need to cut some slack on the whole blogging thing.

1. Apple likes to keep things a secret until the show so they get the "oh my gosh" factor going.
2. As such they have tight NDAs.
3. Someone broke their NDA and gave info to a blogger.
4. Blogger posted the "secret" details.
5. Apple is ticked, and wants the NDA violator's head on a stick for being in breach of contract and spoiling the "oh my gosh" moment.
6. Blogger refuses to tell them who violated the NDA, and tries to hide behind the rights given to the press.
7. Apple puts pressure on blogger, which turns into PR fiasco.

Re:Interesting news but..

[suv4x4]

Apple likes to keep things a secret until the show so they get the "oh my gosh" factor going.

Not just the "oh my gosh" factor, but as we learned with the last iPod introduction, learning that there's something hot out there makes people buy Apple stock, and short right after the event for some speculative profit (which results in the Apple stock falling).

I guess this the Apple stock falling is what pisses him off most.

Bluetooth iPod

[Doc Ruby]

What I want is an iPod that can get its audio data from incoming Bluetooth. Then it could just be a "headphone adapter" (with a big cache, excellent DAC and UI) for either my PC, or my phone, or any other (Bluetooth) network device, without the other devices needing a DAC or headphone output (or to be mobile).

Re:Good because linux support is more better

[Tweekster]

Thank you, hah, damn I really should have used that, but I probably wouldn't have received a single comment regarding the article at hand

Yea

[PyrotekNX]

But does it run lin.. oh right.

Sansa what?

[penp]

I bought a 6gb Sansa (the e200 series) when they came out. I loved it. Until it broke. It turns out a lot of them have a problem with the phone jack, as it's not seated correctly, and plugging in your headphones causes stress on the jack that eventually causes one or both of the channels to go out. This is what happened to mine. I now have a 6gb USB drive that I can play music to one of my ears. People buy Ipods for a reason. They're well built, and have great sound quality (after my sansa died I borrowed my g/f's Nano for a little while, and I was surprised at how great it sounded in comparison). I have never heard of anyone complaining (with regards to the Ipod) of similar issues that come with buying cheaper players (such as cheaper quality hardware) If there's anything I'll give apple, it's that they know how to make sturdy hardware.

Re:Sansa what?

[fastest fascist]

Apparently that's a fairly common flaw in mp3 players, then. I had a creative Muvo 2 that developed a similar fault. Opened it up, re-soldered the plug, worked fine afterwards. Until the drive died after about 3 years of use... Bought another Creative with a microdrive, it died a year or so later. After that I decided flash memory is the way to go for me. I was kind of bitter about the Muvo 2 flaking out for some time, it was a really good player, no MTP crap, either.

Re:Sansa what?

[Tyr_7BE]

People buy Ipods for a reason. They're well built

Hmmm. People must be buying different iPods than me. Mine took exactly the duration of the warranty plus 2 days to completely have the biscuit. Hard drive failed, no hope of getting it back. Thanks Apple for a good 12 months and 2 days, but I don't think I'll be coming back for more.

Re:Sansa what?

[Ecks]

I'm glad I went from Sansa to iPod. For me the big issue was sound quality. You could play the Sansa through a car stereo but the output was always too low forcing me to crank the head unit past it's best quality point. The iPod on the other hand has a line level output which is perfect. And although it's subjective the iPod and iPod+iTunes user interface is great. Adding music is easy. Making playlists is a breeze. Fixing up broken ID3 tags could use some work but is okay. Once you have correct tags Smart Playlists are key. Subscribing to podcasts is drop dead simple. My two downsides to iTunes are: backup and DRM. I solved both by ripping all my music onto a private NAS.

-- Ecks

Re:Sansa what?

[penp]

Does anyone have any experience with installing Rockbox onto an ipod as to whether or not it would affect sound quality? I wonder if that would help resolve DRM / Itunes issues.

Re:Sansa what?

[heinousjay]

People must be buying different iPods than me.

You think?

Re:Sansa what?

[yotto]

I installed Rockbox on my 30GB iPod Video the day I bought it, and love the sound quality. If you can handle 6-10 hours of battery life (I can) and managing your music library with shell commands (I prefer it) and your player is supported, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a try.

Just read the manual twice before asking for help on the forum.

Sometimes

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly there are some features that are better, such as being able to copy off the ipod filesystem, which is not possible in Itunes. But in some cases, it seems to work only for English - I tried backing up my ipod with japanese song files using Amarok, and the japanese filenames and mp3 tags did not copy correctly.

Re:Sometimes

[ToasterMonkey]

Can't you just set your iPod to manual manage mode and drag & drop the music over? Or at least mount it as a disk and copy the stuff manually? Givien the drag and drop method, I'm not sure why iTunes even needs a manual file system copy mode. What's the point?

Just like Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a quick howto on using wtbw's code in linux to use a new generation iPod. I was answering this question repeatedly in IRC, so i decided to post this up:

1. Download the code.

2. Plug your ipod in and make sure it is mounted and run:

sudo lsusb -v | grep -i Serial

Look for your iPod device, and the firewireID should be the 16 character long hex string shown.

It should look something like this: 00A1234567891231

3. Edit main.cpp in the hash_crack directory and read the commetns at the top. You should insert your firewire ID where the comments specify, then run make to compile the hash program.

4. Next, sync your ipod with gtkpod, rhythmbox, banshee or Amarok, or whatever ur used to just like normal. Once this is complete, you should have an ipod with songs on it, that refuses to view the songs. To make it "see" the songs, u need to run the hash program we just compiled on the iTunesDB file. This should happen something like this: ./gethash /path/to/iPod/iPod_Control/iTunes/iTunesDB

This should output the proper hash for the current state of the iTunesDB, as well as the old hash for the previous state of the iTunesDB. We just need the first value.
5. Write this new hash value to the proper location in the iTunesDB where the hash is stored at address 0×58 of the iTunesDB file. This can be done with a program such as bvi.
Note: You will need to do the process of getting the hash on your iTunesDB every time you even so much as change a song name, or upload new music or video files.

Not just Linux, but any 3rd Party App

[j.sanchez1]

I use Sharepod and it cannot be used on the new iPods because of the database lockdown. I have no inclination to use Linux, but using a 3rd party app that isn't bloated or doesn't need to be "installed" is what I want to do. You just copy the Sharepod folder to your iPod and run it from the iPod itself. The download is about 600k.

iPods running Linux

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

Linux on the iPod? Hmmm. Could you imagine a Beowulf cluster of...

Re:iPods running Linux

[Antique Geekmeister]

There's at least one XBox Beowulf cluster I've seen. It was only 10 servers, since they're so light on RAM, but it was an interesting proof of concept.

Proof of concept.

[leuk_he]

This is just a proff of concept. With the C sources it ill be easy for a itunes sync program to Automaticallyu write the hash

iTunes can do everything you listed.

[juuri]

ITunes can do every single thing you just listed.

Perhaps you should actually use it* before being so disparaging?

Hey can you do this in gtkpod?

Every song from 1998-2001 that has Love in the title which was played more than 60 days ago, is over 2 minutes long, has at least a 50% rating, which isn't part of a compilation and has no comments, given an extra tag of "NEVERPLAYAGAIN"?

'Cuz you can easily in iTunes.

* By use it I don't mean fire it up, see the interface is different, and proclaim is to be sucktakular... *really* use it.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

Every song from 1998-2001 that has Love in the title which was played more than 60 days ago, is over 2 minutes long, has at least a 50% rating, which isn't part of a compilation and has no comments, given an extra tag of "NEVERPLAYAGAIN"?

Wow, that is such a useful feature, I mean I would use that every single day.

gtkpod makes renaming easier than itunes, it is as simple as that and that is why I prefer it to itunes.

Itunes can rename files in large quantities, gtkpod does it better.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the parent was pointing out that you keep saying it's "better," but so far you haven't given any actual reasons. Everything you've said gtkpod can do, iTunes can also do -- and the parent even gave an example of something iTunes can do that apparently gtkpod can't. Don't say iTunes sucks just because you don't know how to use it.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

I pointed out the renaming capabilities. the "ugly" interface makes it that much easier to rename. You can do it in itunes also, but by the time you have one genre fixed, I fixed all of the genre labels.

Please point out where I said itunes sucks.

Talk about some fanboys, if you point out that a different app is easier in one particular feature than itunes, they get all pissy. Itunes is good, it isnt the end all be all of music apps. gtkpod is far superior when it comes to renaming capabilities. unless you have tried that feature in gtkpod, kindly STFU

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

Please point out where I said itunes sucks.

Stop being a mindless fanboy just because someone likes a particular feature in a different app. itunes is not the end all of music applications, some competing products do certain tasks better, get over it.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[juuri]

Explain how it's renaming is better?

Say you have 217 songs in iTunes with various caps of a band name, with one word wrong:

ThreE SiX mafIaaa
3 6 MafiAa
three six mafiaa

In iTunes you enter "mafi" in the search field, glance down and if only the songs you want show up, hit AppleKey+A, AppleKey+I and change the band name (or any other field for all these) to "Three Six Mafia". That's 6 keystrokes+the meta info you enter to change all 217 tracks, four of which were the search criteria. Of course that's across the whole library if you only wanted to change one genre you would click it first, adding one more step.

What's the revolutionary step in gtkPod?

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[mbourgon]

Actually, his comment is more about the Smart Playlists. While that one seemed a bit much, I have several like that. Being able to create a playlist with "music you haven't listened to in 6 months over 2 minutes long that's either unrated or rated highly", is actually quite nice. Means that everytime I load up the ipod, I get new stuff.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

Technically gtkpod has that also, but I was pointing out one particular task that gtkpod makes extremely easy. The fanboys act like I just pushed steve jobs over and stole his stylish turtleneck.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[juuri]

Actually I was just hoping to catch you, like this.

You are a *fanboy* but of a completely different app. Irrational dislike of something you know little about? Check! Proclaiming that your solution is the most easy/best/far superior without acknowledging that something may be similar? Check! Resorting to calling people names when questioned or proven wrong? Check! Immediately discounting features of other software/products/goods because they don't fit *your* model of ideal? Check!

Hope this helps!

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

All because I pointed out that one feature works better in a non apple product. Wow.

You fail

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[zippthorne]

I don't have an apple key, you insensitive clod.

It's kind of silly to assume that everyone who downloads iTunes will buy an entire Macintosh computer to run it on.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[juuri]

I don't have an apple key, you insensitive clod.

Then... I dunno... use the window's meta key equivelant?

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[juuri]

Patiently waiting for you to point out/prove how it is better.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

I already have. Several times, try reading and not irrationally defending a product and putting words into my posts.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[juuri]

No you haven't, at least not in this thread.

Look boy, you've been called out and left wanting. I suggest you take your ball and go home now, it's getting embarrassing.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

"I pointed out the renaming capabilities. the "ugly" interface makes it that much easier to rename. You can do it in itunes also, but by the time you have one genre fixed, I fixed all of the genre labels."

from: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=299877&cid=20637295

You have to play with it, everything in the various lists is editable. Which means I can rename my "Techno/Trance" category to "Trance" in one single rename, extremely quickly. I can rename all the "Lincoln Park" to Linkin Park.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=299877&cid=20636711

The key point i was making was that all of the labels are editable. which is unique in the speed of use.

So yes I have, so why dont you STFU

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be different (although I don't see that it is remarkably different). But, I'm not convinced on better.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Tweekster]

You absolutely have to try it to understand. The rest of gtkpod is less than great. But to quickly rename stuff on my ipod i prefer this method because I can view all the genres, albums, artists etc grouped together and directly editable.

It is a different method than itunes basically. Itunes has methods for renaming en masse, I prefer the gtkpod style.

The key is that EVERY label is directly editable, in every single panel available.

Re:iTunes can do everything you listed.

[Anonymous Coward]

would that be, shift, ctrl, alt, "windows key", right-ctrl, right-alt (which are, inexplicably, not the same as their left-handed counterparts) or "menu key"?

Public-key cryptography

[acb]

Looks like someone at Apple hasn't heard of public-key cryptography.

Re:Public-key cryptography

[ekhben]

Or maybe they know that public key cryptography relies on a secret being kept, and you can't keep a secret from a user while also making it available to the software that user runs.

Re:Public-key cryptography

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem is that iTunes would have the secret key, which could then be extracted. The only way it would work would be to limit it to Intel Macs and use the TCPA chip to lock the iPod to iTunes.

Did everyone forget...?

[Dawizman]

Did everyone forget about iPod Lnux? Or have the majority of you guys just never heard of it? Its an open source project dedicated to running Linux on an iPod. Check it out, as it is very interesting.

iPhone

[b0s0z0ku]

can this be used to make a loader that'll load songs on the iPhone from a SMB share or play them directly from the share via WiFi? Having to use iTunes to manage something as powerful as the iPhone is really a pain in the butt, and it should only have to be plugged in to charge it, not to sync data. After all, it has a perfectly good WiFi link -- why not use it?!?

-b.

Re:iPhone

[beelsebob]

Why have use WiFi that consumes battery, and have a manual sync, when instead you could sync automatically with no user intervention during the 2 hour charge cycle? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to use WiFi for that.

Re:iPhone

[b0s0z0ku]

Why have use WiFi that consumes battery, and have a manual sync, when instead you could sync automatically with no user intervention during the 2 hour charge cycle?

Because I don't want to keep the dock near a computer all the time. Also, I may want to pull tunes from more than one source -- get music off a friend's box for example without having to carry a cable around all the time.

Not to mention if you could sync OTHER things like contacts and calendar over WiFi or EDGE, that would solve one of the main problems of business usage -- how to sync everything over the air for mobile users. Just set up a VPN and have a protected share containing contact and calendar data. Over the air sync is a big deal in the business world, and why not have the iPhone be sellable to as many people as possible? It's not like the code for air sync would be difficult to write.

-b.

Re:iPhone

[Constantine XVI]

Also, I may want to pull tunes from more than one source -- get music off a friend's box
There's a reason you can't do that with iTunes, it starts with R, ends with A, and has an IA in the middle.

Maybe it's for a faster sync

[ishmalius]

A third possibility is that it is for a faster sync with the host. If you maintain hash digests on the ipod and the host, then you can test for equality by just comparing the hashes. If they are identical, then there is no need to sync. You can skip comparing everything else bit-by-bit.

Re:Maybe it's for a faster sync

[makomk]

If they were hashing the music files, that'd be a good explanation, but they're not. They're just doing a single hash over the whole of the iTunes database - absolutely no use for telling what files have changed.

Re:Maybe it's for a faster sync

[Jonathan_S]

If they were hashing the music files, that'd be a good explanation, but they're not. They're just doing a single hash over the whole of the iTunes database - absolutely no use for telling what files have changed.

If you are going for a performance optimization, then the (possibly theoretical) advantage is you check a small hash of the db rather than comparing the whole db between the ipod and itunes.

If the db is unchanged (hashes match) you are done. If the db is different, then you fall back to the old method, and start comparing the dbs. That should tell iTunes which songs have been added, removed, or changed; since that is the kind of thing the db stores.

The only thing a hash of each song would catch is if something other than iTunes changed the song file on disk. I thinks it is reasonable for iTunes not to worry about that possibility. Any changes iTunes makes could be kept in the db.

Re:Maybe it's for a faster sync

[makomk]

I doubt iTunes keeps a copy of the iPod's database, especially as (thanks to the way the hash is calculated) it's now bound to one specific iPod. In any case, (a) that'd just require a simple SHA-1 hash over the file, rather than the convoluted multi-level monstrosity incorporating the serial number, look-up tables, weird algorithms and a secret string that they actually used, and (b) since the iPod apparently checks the hash on startup, it has to read the whole file then, which is worse than just having to read it all when syncing.

Re:Maybe it's for a faster sync

[makomk]

Oh, and to stave off the obvious potential justification - it's going to be slower than doing a SHA-1 over the whole file, since one of the things it does to work out the hash is calculate the SHA-1 of the whole file (plus some exttra magic).

Re:Maybe it's for a faster sync

[Alsee]

A third possibility is that it is for a faster sync with the host. If you maintain hash digests on the ipod and the host, then you can test for equality by just comparing the hashes. If they are identical, then there is no need to sync. You can skip comparing everything else bit-by-bit.

Right. Which is obviously why it refuses to play any music if the hash doesn't match.

-

Filesystem players / database players

[StreetStealth]

The devices that behave as USB class-compliant devices are filesystem players. The iPod is a database player, and thus resides in a different category altogether.

That is indeed one major draw (or drawback depending on your needs) of the iPod ecosystem. Everything is in a database that allows for quick searching and seamless organization, whether you're using iTunes or not (although it's certainly at its best in the first party app). In tradeoff, you need to have database access to manage the files.

It's kind of like flat-file versus SQL.

Re:Filesystem players / database players

[shimage]

The problem isn't so much that it uses a database (nearly all DAPs use databases), so much as it is that it can't rebuild the database on its own (the original neuros could, and my wife's iRiver iHP-120 and X20 can as well). Also, the overwhelming majority of database-using DAPs also allow for filesystem browsing in addition to using the database. My Rio Karma can't but it doesn't mount as UMS anyway (USB is unsupported on linux).

For some bizarre reason, Cowon's database software can't deal with non-id3 tags, which means no meta-information for ogg and flac files. Oh, and lastly, on DAPs that use filesystem browsing, it isn't flat-file unless you're disorganized. Obviously, this isn't the only way to do things, but I usually have a /music/<format>/<artist>/<album>/<track>-<title>.<format> type of file structure. I am ordinarily a disorganized kind of guy, but virtually all ripping software supports filenames based on meta-information, so I don't have put any thought into it.

Re:Filesystem players / database players

[ben there...]

Everything is in a database that allows for quick searching and seamless organization, whether you're using iTunes or not (although it's certainly at its best in the first party app). In tradeoff, you need to have database access to manage the files. Kinda sounds like BS to me. You're managing mp3 ("blob") files with a database. Every file can be identified by its hash, and includes most/all of the metadata in the id3 tag. You should be able to use something like iTunes and quickly transfer the appropriate metadata from the database OR transfer a file manually, with the iPod realizing it doesn't have any metadata from the DB and grabbing it from id3. Even my 32 MB Rio in like '98 could read id3 tags. Why is it so hard for the iPod, other than iTMS tie-in/lock-in?

Still a hack

[nurb432]

Do you want to risk spending that kind of money hoping the hack wont be undone next week?

Re:Still a hack

[b0s0z0ku]

Do you want to risk spending that kind of money hoping the hack wont be undone next week?

Don't update the device using iTunes and the hack won't be undone, since the firmware will stay the same unless you replace it.

-b.

Re:Still a hack

[nurb432]

I do agree, ( i did that for a long time to retain RA ability in the old gen3's, but then realized i never used it anyway so i let it upgrade at some point... )

But, sometimes firmware upgrades are needed to fix a serious bug.. then you are hosed.

Man

[phoenixwade]

I think we just set a record on "Offtopic" comments.

Back to the Article:

    36 hours? Most have been a slow weekend, and I'm aggravated, I just lost a sixpack to a buddy on a bet. And He drinks Coors.

I bet the crack would have been 24 hours or less. Given that we knew where the hash was occurring, had multiple iPods to test against, with large databases of songs to use as samples. I don't know what Apple was thinking, there was no way that security system was going to hold up. Unless of course, Apple was simply going through the motions to satisfy some DRM contractual requirements with their industry partners.

I don't get it anymore, either...

[rickb928]

I bought a used Toshiba Gigabeat S 60GB, and I love it. The x-control works, having a dedicated manu button (even if it does have the Windows logo on it...) is a blessing, and it's loud enough for an airplane, if you can find earphones that don't s u c k for less than $90. Which I did.

And then I got a chance to try an iPod Touch yesterday. Ok, slick, and a bigger screen. But... I fat-fingered most selections, it was an effort to hit precisely what I wanted. Scrolling was nice, but figuring out the menu button and then hitting it, not nice. Touch was too sloppy for me.

I'm not normal, I know, but I'm not disappointed that I got the Toshiba. And I'll maybe give it to my wife, if the next flavor is substantially cooler. I can live with WMP. Which, BTW, seems to let me sort and search for music just fine. I don't think it's as slick as iTunes, but then I could probably use something else too.

There is more to the PMP world than iPod. Trust me :-)

Re:I don't get it anymore, either...

[cayenne8]

" if you can find earphones that don't s u c k for less than $90. Which I did."

What earphones did you get?

I'm trying to find some good in ear earphones. I just tried some Shure E4c-n's, and was SEVERELY disappointed in them. They sounded muffled at best. I'd heard you had to break them in. I did for about 50 hours. They did improve, but, just no highs hardly at all...vocals sounded like they were in an echo chamber...again 'muffled' is the best over description of the sound.

Granted...I mistakenly ordered from an Amazon.com seller that I didn't know was selling and open box item, and therefore did not have the other earpieces to try...but, the stock one seemed to plug into my ears ok, so I don't think it was that.

I'm not too worried about price. The E4c's were $119...I read on Shure's site, that the E3c's were a bit brighter..so, gonna try to order those next to check them out....and will make sure they are NIB.

I've been listening on a regular set of Grado SR-80's which sound great...but, only for desk at work use...too bulky for gym or other exercise. The in ear are better for planes too since they 'noise cancel' by blocking outside sound.

Anyway, I'd be interested in your recommendation. $90 would be good, but, I'm not adverse to paying over $200 or so. I'd listed to a friend's E2c's, and they were nice..but, was very weird how you had to orient them to fit in the ear...I'd prefer to plug them straight into the ear...not having to wrap the cord behind your ears...just have them hang straight down.

Re:I don't get it anymore, either...

[rickb928]

I bought a pair of Phillips SHE9500's, $29.99 at Best Buy. You need to use the right size muffs, and jam them in there pretty tight, but they tend to stay in even while working out. Isolation sufficient for a whiny Southwest 737, and actual bass response you can discern. High end is fine, and the response is crisp enough for me to skip paying more for the phones than I did for the player. For the money, they work for me.

I've had Sony Walkmen since the TPS-L2, the first portable CD player in the bigger-than-a-loaf-of-bread battery case, several so-called shockproof thin CD players, and a couple of minidisc players. Up until the MP3 players, I could live with the bass response, which in the progression above went from marginal to fine to tolerable to great (The Sharp MS702 I went into and changed the bass EQ, not for the faint of heart) to, with MP3s, poor. I rip at 320kb now, since 128 stinks, 192 is passe, and 256 isn't different enough for me to miss the space. The Gigabeat EQ I thought was nonfunctional or superfluous until I tried my DJ phones, and there, there WAS bass in there! The Phillips are good enough for me.

I'm a bass freak, BTW. Listening to old Beatles or Who is fine. Bass305 doesn't quite get delivered with the impact it can have, but hey, these are phones. My Paradigms at home will set off car alarms across the street, despite the concrete floor. That's where the bass belongs. Earbuds that would do that would deafen me. Kids, you have been warned.

Re:I don't get it anymore, either...

[cayenne8]

"I'm a bass freak, BTW. Listening to old Beatles or Who is fine. Bass305 doesn't quite get delivered with the impact it can have, but hey, these are phones. My Paradigms at home will set off car alarms across the street, despite the concrete floor."

Hehe...I like bass myself...my home speakers are Klipschorns...and I have a Klipsch 15" powered sub that goes even lower than the speakers (which is saying something). That being so...I'm not expecting huge bass out of the earphones...and I guess with age...my high end hearing is fading a bit (from young days listening to even the Flintstones at concert volumne)...so, I'm also looking for earphones with will let me crisply hear the cymbal, and pick scrapes on the guitar strings.

Thanks for the advice..I may give these a try....

Re:I don't get it anymore, either...

[McKing]

The Gigabeat is a PlaysforSure/WMP11-only device, correct?

Wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Re:I don't get it anymore, either...

[rickb928]

PFS, WMP10/11.

Works for me. What, I should love Apple?

And I think I can use other s/w to load it. I know I can add/delete in Windows, I haven't bothered to try and sync art and all. I do want to listen to my music, looking at my music isn't so high a priority.

Not a good article

[massysett]

I didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with--that is, exactly what Apple did that was locking Linux et al out of iPod. I thought this article might help. Instead, it just claims that there was a fix developed in 30 minutes. It does not explain 1) the nature of the problem, 2) how it was fixed, or 3) when the fix will be available for end users. For all I know this was some people joking on IRC.

Re:Not a good article

[Brane]

See: Apple Cuts Off Linux iPod Users

Re:Not a good article

[gnasher719]

>> I didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with--that is, exactly what Apple did that was locking Linux et al out of iPod.

iTunes copies two things onto an iPod when you sync: The files containing music, and a database of those files, so that the iPod can find the music quicker.

With the new iPods, the database has a checksum, which is based on the contents of the database and the serial number of the iPod. If that checksum is not correct, the iPod will refuse to play any music. Obviously iTunes knows how to calculate the checksum and stores it on the iPod.

Linux applications that could download music files + database onto an iPod didn't have the code to calculate the checksum, so after using a Linux application to fill a new iPod with music, the iPod wouldn't work. The hack that has been developed within 36 hours is really a hack: First you have to run a program that reads the serial number. Then you modify the hack program by typing in that serial number into the source code. Then you run whatever software you used to copy music onto the iPod. Then compile and run the "hack" program: It will read the database, calculate the checksum and add the checksum to the database, and everything works.

That is of course a horrible complicated way (for the end user) to do it. Expect all the Linux music players to be updated soon so that all this will happen automatically.

Smart Playlists FTW!

[stonefry]

I listen to a lot of audiobooks and using an iPod makes it really convenient. When I had an iRiver player back in the day, it was a pain remembering which file I was on. Sure it would resume fine when I would turn it off and back on at a later time. But when I wanted to listen to music, I would have to remember which file I was on. And if the file was really long, I would have to remember which point in that file I had left off. It also reset when I charged it or added files.

With an iPod OTOH, you can use smart playlists and remember playback position. For instance, I am currently listening to the "Saga of the Seven Suns" book #1 "Hidden Empire." I make a smart playlist that plays every file with the title "hidden empire" with a play count of zero. As I am listening to the book the files are automatically removed from the playlist because they are marked with a playcount of "1." If I want to listen to some music, I can go ahead and do so. When I am ready to go back to my book, I just load the first file on the playlist and it resumes where I left off in the correct playback position.

When my iPod video started to die, I got a Meizu M6 after reading many great reviews. I wish I had waited for the iPods to come out, because I really miss the smart playlist feature.

More importantly...

[Pausanias]

I hope this means they will also soon crack the DAAP hash so that non-iTunes clients can see the shared music libraries on their local networks.

Of course...

[NeverNow]

...this is good news, but really, like TFA says:

"Really the only "correct" solution is for folks to stop using Apple products."

iPods are crippled and overpriced. The only MP3 players that can't actually play MP3 files.

On a more mature tone, Apple sucks. And it's evil.

my eyes, the gogles they do nothing

[the_fat_kid]

we just had an iron man tri-athalon in the town where I live.
now all I can see is hundreds of skinny guys and girls racing down the street on tricycles.
thanks.

Re:there are other reasons not to buy a Classic iP

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's very interesting. I've been coveting the new 160G iPod (because my wife and I own over 2000 CDs, all ripped to 320kps .MP3s, and I like having all my music available when I travel), but I think I'll hold off a bit until "Rev. 2" comes out.

And frankly, as much as I've regained respect for Apple over the years as they're re-invented themselves as a consumer electronics company, rather than just a small-player computer manufacturer, it has to be repeated:

NEVER buy the first version of any Apple hardware product. It's that simple.

Apple invariably comes out with great ideas that are 90% Brilliant, and 10% WTF? right out of the starting gate, and it's the SECOND version of their products that gets it right, and eliminates the "10 Percent WTF?!" factor. They've been doing this consistently for 20 years.

Integration!!

[coogan]

I mean come on....what could be a better accessory than this - http://www.ohmibod.com/ ?

I see your point

[poetmatt]

I indeed understand where you are coming from.
FYI, there are car stereo units that read AAC. (or ogg, or both) There are many and they aren't rediculously expensive. Maybe 30-50$ more than just an MP3/WMA head unit. This one even supports ID3. Last I checked, that might be a tad cheaper than buying a new Ipod, no? Also AAC for head units has been around for as long as AAC's been around, just was only on like high end pioneer units and has moved down to mainstream as all technology evolves.

What's the enormous benefit of controlling that way through your stereo when your ipod does it better? I'm not a fan of the pod, but the way the wheel interacts can't really be matched on your stereo. Any stereo that supports ID3 supports directory up/down and sometimees playlist navigation. There are no systems that can mimic the Ipod via the car, because it simply isn't the ipod itself. Make a scroll wheel on the back of a car steering wheel and I would buy one and an Ipod myself. However, it might be hard to do (I wouldn't know).

Beyond that, cars don't play quality above 128kbps very noticably well. Even a $500 speaker system in a car coupled with a 500$ head unit won't match supersampled audio @ home theatre. What's the point of acting like Ipod represents some sort of extreme quality when even if you did 256kbps aac through your stereo, your audio can't truly play such quality? Reencoding from a lossy codec to a lossless, means you don't lose quality.You already lost your quality by the time it was encoded into the lossy format (aac). Where ya goin with that one? Also note the difference can (codec dependant) be beyond minute and still have a small amount of lossy quality going on. That is something certain types of AAC happen to be superb at, FYI.

Issues that become non-issues means they were trivial in the first place and unlikely that normal consumers will notice or care. I'm not trying to flame you, both of us perhaps have misconceptions to squash regarding the Ipod.

Re:I see your point

[AusIV]

It's great that there are head units that support AAC and OGG, but mine doesn't. I'm not interested in upgrading my portable music player and my head unit when I could upgrade just one.

There are several benefits of controlling my iPod through the head unit. First, my iPod stays locked away in my glovebox. I never touch it, and I don't worry that it's lying out in plain sight to tempt a thief. I agree that the iPod itself has an interface that is easier to use than a head unit, but my eyes stray from the road less to glance down and see a big, lit up display as opposed to small description on a screen with lots of other data. I also like having to just look down to see what song is playing, rather than having to find my iPod, get it at the right angle, and find the data I'm looking for on the screen. Before I bought an aftermarket stereo, I had a setup that involved controlling the music with the iPod, and I'm much more comfortable using the head unit.

As far as audio quality, I know my car stereo won't show much improvement above 128 kbps, but I have other sound systems that will, and I'd rather not have two copies of all of my music so I can play it through different sound systems. I'm not one to complain about lossy codecs (encoded at reasonable bit rates), but if you re-encode from one lossy codec to another the artifacts become more noticeable.

I know what the iPod is and isn't capable of. If anything, I have misconceptions about the capabilities of the other players on the market. The original topic was what draws people to iPods in the first place, and I find that they have a very good line of third party accessories. I'm not going to say it's unmatched, and I'm not going to say there aren't things about the iPod that couldn't be improved upon, but I find that the iPod fits my needs better than any other product I'm aware of, so when it comes time to replace my iPod, I'll probably buy another iPod. Also note that I've had my iPod for 3 years and don't foresee replacing it any time soon. That kind of lifespan reflects well when I'm considering my next music player.

The answer is simple.

[MstrMsn]

ipod does so well because it was designed to be simple. The majority of the population that wants a portable music player want something simple and nice looking. They are not audiophiles, and apple didn't market their product to audiphiles. Why? because they make up a very small percentage, and are much more demanding. I don't blame apple at all, I would have done the same thing. I'd much rather have a product with mass appeal enough to become a household name rather than satisfy a handful of perfectionist, because mass appeal is always gonna be where the money is. Very simple. And to the ones that find so much joy in pointing out what this product DOESN'T have: As a consumer, I look for the best bang for my buck, with the most like-ability I can find. Then I spend my money. If the ipod doesn't fit your needs, look the other way. Do you actually search out forums for other products you don't like just to name features and functions that the designer decided not to put in? seems like a waste of most or our time. Oh and by the way, the Zune (yes, I said it) is a very nice player for some of us, I love the way the alphabet is displayed on the side when I'm scrolling fast, makes it easy to find what I'm looking for. The audio is better than ipod, and the stock headphones are leaps and bound above what came with my 3G ipod. Thing is, it will never be an ipod killer because it came too late to the party. Like it or not, ipod is here to stay as the average joe's PMP de facto.

Re:Seems quite obvious to me...

[Khaed]

Or... people just want to use their iPod in Linux.

It's not that difficult of a concept.

I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

The meat of the code is pasted below - invTable, table and table2 are included inline. This shows not only a perfect translation of the hash-generating code as might be performed by duplicating the operations observed in a debugger, but a good understanding of the high-level semantics - taking LCD, GCM, invocations of the SHA1 algorithm, etc. Given that this allegedly only took 36 hours, something tells me whoever wrote this knows more than he's letting on.

Either this is a particular preamble to application of SHA1 that's been applied elsewhere (anyone know?), or someone with access to iTunes source has been more helpful than Apple might have liked :-).

//pFWID -> 8 bytes //pKey -> 64 byte buffer
void GenerateKey(unsigned char *pFWID, unsigned char *pKey){
        memset(pKey,0, 64);

        int i;
        unsigned char y[16]; //take LCM of each two bytes in the FWID in turn
        for(i=0;i> 8;
                unsigned char lo = lcm & 0xFF;

                y[i*4] = ((table1[hi] * 0xB5) - 3);
                y[i*4 + 1] = ((table2[hi] * 0xB7) + 0x49);
                y[i*4 + 2] = ((table1[lo] * 0xB5) - 3);
                y[i*4 + 3] = ((table2[lo] * 0xB7) + 0x49);
        } //convert y
        for(i=0;i iTunesDB //pFWID -> 8 bytes //pHash -> 20 byte buffer
void GenerateHash(unsigned char *pFWID, unsigned char *pDataBase, long lSize, unsigned char *pHash)
{
        long lSizeWithoutHeaders = lSize - SIZE_OF_HEADERS;
        long lSizeToUse = std::min((long)0x40000, lSizeWithoutHeaders) + SIZE_OF_HEADERS; //generate invtable
        unsigned char key[64];
        GenerateKey(pFWID, key); //hmac sha1
        int i;
        for (i=0; i 64; i++)
                key[i] ^= 0x36;

        SHA1_CTX context;

        SHA1Init(&context);
        SHA1Update(&context, key, 64);
        SHA1Update(&context, pDataBase, lSizeToUse);
        SHA1Final(pHash, &context);

        for (i=0; i 64; i++)
                key[i] ^= 0x36 ^ 0x5c;

        SHA1Init(&context);
        SHA1Update(&context, key, 64);
        SHA1Update(&context, pHash, 20);
        SHA1Final(pHash, &context);
}

Re:I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody HTML escaping.. anyway, download source and inspect hash58.cpp.

Re:I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[kill-1]

GenerateHash is a standard HMAC implementation. GenerateKey is the real meat.

Re:I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry dude, we're just good reversers. Points for the paranoia though ;-)

wtbw

(and yeah, GenerateHash is standard HMAC SHA-1, and no, I don't think the GenerateKey is standard anything.)

Re:I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry dude, we're just good reversers. Points for the paranoia though ;-)

You probably know as well as I do that certain sympathetic employees have let slip on certain algorithms in the past, and I wouldn't expect you to state this if it were true in this case. But the 13 days iTunes 7.4's been out is enough to translate a few arithmetic operations preceding calls to OpenSSL's SHA-1, so really it could go either way.

Anyway, as you've noticed from what's just been done with 7.4.2, the general aim is not to make restrictions uncrackable (a battle of wits is too resource-intensive), merely to degrade the user experience by forcing others to play catchup after updates; this is sufficient to deter commercial alternatives where they're not wanted.

(and yeah, GenerateHash is standard HMAC SHA-1, and no, I don't think the GenerateKey is standard anything.)

That's what I meant by "particular preamble to application of SHA1". Apologies for forgetting to escape the <>s.

Re:I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[Anonymous Coward]

You can happily ask anyone on #gtkpod on freenode for the logs of the relevant timeperiod and analyse our progress from understanding zilch (in my case) to the full solution in great detail, if you like. 13 days certainly wasn't the case - I saw the story on slashdot the day before, so 36 hours was indeed how long it took. That even includes me going out to buy a Classic, and having some sleep...

I haven't looked at 7.4.2 beyond checking that nothing broke.

Re:I am suspicious of the origins of this exploit

[dave_wmf]

>> Either this is a particular preamble to application of SHA1 that's been applied elsewhere (anyone know?), or someone with access to iTunes source has been more helpful than Apple might have liked :-).

I think the whole thing is just Apple marketing: release new iPod, doesn't work on Linux, storm of controversy, cunning patch released to get round security (nothing you Linux boys like more than getting home and compiling someone else's C code), more publicity etc.

They'll release a firmware update in a month and in the meantime a million Linux kiddies will have bought a new iPod so they can be a hacker and run the hashing algorithm.

And the best bit - Steve Jobs will still be a hero to all my white plastic loving OSS-wannabe colleagues!

What is the iPod you speak of?

[the eric conspiracy]

iPod is ok, but it seriously needs to get with the program. In particular that means FLAC support (hopefully somebody will tell me it already has this) and a SPDIF digital output so I can feed it into some serious portable amplification like the magnificent iBasso D1 and drive real headphones (not ear buds).

Then maybe the iPod will erase its tragic legacy of low bit rate mp3s and people will be able to hear music at a decent fidelity level.

Re:What is the iPod you speak of?

[xaxa]

It won't work. They can't tell the difference any more, because they turn the volume up to drown out the noise of the train/traffic/talking/TV/other iPods (delete as appropriate).

(I'm worried I can't tell the difference any more either, so I haven't tried to find out. That would be due to gigs, concerts and festivals. I haven't bought an MP3 player yet.)

Re:What is the iPod you speak of?

[Gothmolly]

Douche.

Usabilityp

[ultramkancool]

Fuck usability. Who needs that shit anyways? Bunch of noobs.

Re:Good because linux support is more better

[hawk]

Which makes your approach "most better"?

hawk, the sometimes grammar nazi

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[Yvan256]

Moe: Oh, boy! The deep fryer's here. Heh heh, I got it used from the Navy. You can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds.
Homer: Forty seconds? But I want it now!

Pedantic time...

[SanityInAnarchy]

First of all, take iTunes. iTunes may not a real windows-like interface,

I don't know if English is your first language, but every language I've actually bothered to look at has the concept of a verb. Please remember that.

Perhaps you meant "iTunes may not have a real windows-like interface..."

Re:Pedantic time...

[tuukkah]

I find it silly to complain about grammar in what is clearly a typo, but I'll comment since you seem to be interested in grammar.

I know there are grammars with various conceptualizations, but 'may' is typically considered a verb. Perhaps you were thinking of the month May, although usually people who speak English natively would expect it to be capitalized. Interestingly, many adjectives in Japanese can predicate a sentence without a verb.

Proprietary.

[SanityInAnarchy]

And that's what bugs me about the iPod.

I hate PlaysForSure, too, but at least there's competition on the hardware. But suppose I don't want to use DRM -- where's the standard for easy docking stations? Seems to me like the closest we have is USB and headphone jacks...

Amarok?

[SanityInAnarchy]

It looks like there is actually a Linux app that will manage your iPod for you -- basically doing this automatically on every sync. Here's the wiki page.

Skin it!

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm really tired of people whining about how ugly some GTK app is. Ok, it's brown, or whatever it is you don't like...

So here, knock yourself out. I'll bet it's easier than trying to skin Windows, and I'm not even sure you can skin OS X or iTunes.

Re:Skin it!

[JonathanBoyd]

There's only so much you can achieve with skinning. It's like putting makeup on a goat. I'm still not going to want to kiss it. The vast majority of skins I've seem are ugly and amateurish, especially the ones that try to imitate Windows or OS X. The trouble is that the interface functions in a different way under gtk and little things like the sizes of interface elements are all wrong. The skins that work are the ones that realise they're not Windows or OS X and go for a clean, simple approach that recognises how the interface the skin is going over functions. even then, I've yet to find one as pleasing as Aqua, but the people making skins are doing it fro free, so I'd expect Aqua to look a lot nicer.

Should we have A records for everything?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yes, I really do like having well-named MP3s -- it means I can look them up in any app, without having to use some database specific to that app. (Sometimes it's a proprietary database, sometimes it's open, but there's still not much chance of communication.)

What iTunes is doing here is essentially adding another naming/indexing system on top of the one you've already got -- the filesystem (and simple, text-only playlists). There's no reason for it -- I'm sure someone could make a system which was as easy as iTunes, yet actually exposed the filesystem and cleaned it up as you organized your music. (Yes, you do still have to organize your music. Filename or id3 tag, someone's still going to screw it up.)

Think back to DNS. I'm sold on DNS. I'm not sold on AOL Keywords. 90% of the time, they're exactly the same as the domain name, only without a .com or whatever, because the drooling idiots who actually use AOL can't handle .com, let alone a decent search engine. They're duplicating DNS -- and they don't even replace dns, because you can bet that AOL keyword foo resolves to foo.com, and not directly to foo.com's IP. It'd be stupid if it did, because then foo.com would have to maintain two separate mappings to that IP.

Having a database to manage your fucking music is the AOL Keyword system of the 21st century.

Re:Should we have A records for everything?

[Tibor the Hun]

You make good points, but iTunes doesn't do a bad job of organizing the actual files itself. ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/Artist/Album/Song.aac
Sure the actual ratings and info are in a database, but the files are not "databased" like exchange emails, for example.

Or, am I misunderstanding this, and you're talking about the music on your player, in which case, yes, a flat, open file structure is the way to go, or should I say would have been, the way to go.

xcopy??

[SanityInAnarchy]

You're on Linux. Why not cp -a?

Or drag and drop on either OS?

I mean, I realize it's a pointless debate, use whatever you want, I was just surprised to hear that anyone uses xcopy in this day and age.

Re:xcopy??

[thatskinnyguy]

I used to use drag and drop. But I found it took too long for large volume file transfers. Xcopy (When backing up directly to my Windows 2K3 Server) gives me the speed I want without the overhead of the GUI. I mean, how long are you going to look at a "Calculating time to..." screen before looking for a better way? Even some distros of Linux do that "Calculating [whatever]" crap.

Does anyone here seriously believe...

[jamrock]

...that Apple gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut what you do with your iPod, just so long as you paid for it? Jobs has repeatedly stated his opposition to DRM'ed music, and I suspect that this is just a fig-leaf to satisfy some ridiculous DMCA small print. Realistically speaking, this seems like a half-hearted attempt to lock the device to iTunes. I mean, come on: it's easily defeated by those who care enough about the issue to try.

The secondary effect of the lock-out is to entice the geeks with a semi-serious challenge so that they can continue to run Linux or whatever on it, boast about their mad skillz on Slashdot, and bitch about the lack of formats that the vast majority of users have never even heard of, much less care about. Sometimes I suspect that Apple is merely doing stuff like this for more free publicity for a device that's already the 800-lb gorilla of its market segment. We're still talking about it, aren't we?

HACK NOT WORKING

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone tested this or only the hacker did?

I CLOSELY followed his instructions with my new Classic 80GB and there's no songs shown on the iPod screen
even though I put ~100 songs in it earlier.

Have you timed it?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'd be curious to know if "calculating" is actually slowing things down, as opposed to, say, estimating download times. But I use the commandline because I actually prefer the interface, so I don't really know, it's been awhile since I've tried to drag'n'drop anything.

Also: You back up an iPod to a Win 2k3 Server??

Again, nothing wrong with that, it just strikes me as bizarre.

Re:Have you timed it?

[thatskinnyguy]

You back up an iPod to a Win 2k3 Server?? Absolutely! Just enable disk usage and it shows up like any USB memory storage. Set your Folder View preferences to show all hidden and system files and you can back up everything from an iPod.

Not iTunes, then...

[SanityInAnarchy]

In that case, I don't have as much of a problem with iTunes, just countering your point about not caring what a song is named.

And the fact that iTunes organizes it so well does kind of illustrate my point about AOL keywords quite nicely, I think. Even if you don't think the filename is relevant, apparently iTunes does.

Offline mp3 players are so last year.

[johnsie]

Many mobile phones can do anything the ipod can do and more. That's why apple have had to release the iphone. There's no way Apple will be able to dominate that market the way they dominated the now-dying offline device market. Sony, Samsung and Nokia already dominate the market for online portable devices. Apple have an uphill battle from now on. This whole 3rd party fiasco will only turn users away from apple products.

The user interface.

[jotaeleemeese]

It is simply a stroke of genius.

I have been willing to jump through the hoops only for that reason.

Also the form factor is quite well thought out.

Finally, you can go to the Apple stores and play with them to your heart content. No other shop I know of allows you that degree of freedom (no idiotic salesperson either checking you don't steal it or making a sales pitch).