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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

hopefully

[russellh]

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

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.

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?

[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.

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?

[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?

[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:Good because linux support is better

[brainnolo]

You spend way too much time renaming things probably.