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ITunes 8 a Real Killer App; Taking Down Vista
CWmike writes "Apple 's latest version of iTunes crashes Windows Vista when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC, scores of users have reported on Apple's support forum. Plug in and Vista crashes and shows the 'blue screen of death.' The errors began showing up immediately after updating iTunes to Version 8.0, which Apple released Tuesday as part of its iPod refresh. 'I just installed iTunes 8 over my iTunes 7 on Vista [and] now whenever I plug in my iPod, I get a blue screen death. Three times so far. Even if it is plugged in on boot, I get a blue screen," said a user identified as 'sambeckett' on the support forum about 90 minutes after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapped up the iPod launch."
Expect Apple to blame Vista.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Yay!! I was getting worried I was never going to see the BSOD again.. Welcome back old friend
I thought you were going to say that Vista was causing the iPod metal shell to become highly charged and was responsible for electrocutions.
After all, Vista kills babies!
That really IS horrible. I did not know that anyone was actually using Vista. - Steve J.
That this wasn't caught in the testing stages?
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
What are the chances your 1,000 songs are also gone when you start your computer back up after it's done crying for mercy? I still haven't reloaded mine from the last time iTunes crashed windows. :(
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
iTunes ain't done, 'til Vista don't run!
It really seems that causing a BSoD is something that would have come up in testing, no?
Anything you say will be held against you.
well is it Apples fault OR is it MS Vista that has the problem . Apple would have debugged it on a vista box , But it is posable that a vista update killed it .By mistake or on purpose ,your guess is as good as mine.
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
This sounds like a feature, not a bug.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
You know, it seems like there are an awful lot of problems with drivers under Vista. Certainly far more problems than I've seen on Vista.
The thing that bothers me about that is the change in driver architecture was billed as a way to make Vista faster and more stable. Why, then, is it that most of the drivers for Vista are less stable and slower than the same hardware running in XP?
It's been a long time.
"iTunes has detected illegal music files. Now trashing your computer . . . please wait for the lawyers to show up."
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
AFAIK the only thing that can cause a BSOD is code running in the kernel space, ring 0.
Quite why iTunes affects stuff that runs in kernel space is another matter... but I suspect it's probably to do with the Protected Media Path stuff. DRM, in other words. I can't think of anything in iTunes that should be running in kernel space - in Vista, all drivers apart from a component of the graphics driver are supposed to run in userspace.
"Wow PC, it looks like your Vista users are really having headaches running great software like iTunes 8. Mac runs them just fine."
"You son of a bitch." (Pulls out a gun)
"Whoa PC, whoa, let's not..."
BLAM.
I had to switch from Ubuntu to check, but iTunes 8 with my iPod is definitely not crashing my Vista Ultimate (free from school, I only keep it because of software for class that requires windows)
This happened to me... I read the Apple thread, and followed simple instructions... unplugged my HP printer, and it stopped the BSOD's when I plugged in my iPhone. Most people are saying the problem is with the Apple USB drivers screwing with the drivers for HP printers and Logitech mice/keyboards. There may be other devices that cause the problem as well, but those two are the biggies.
So until iTunes 8.1 is released, I can either charge my phone or print... but not both at the same time!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
I went to RTFA. Before it showed me the article, though, I got a page that asked, "What are you waiting for? Make the move to Microsoft Vista with confidence."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
iTunes installs its own CD drivers to manage ripping and burning, as well as always-on "helper" and updater processes, in addition to drivers for the iPod/iPhone.
Asinine, but then again Apple doesn't follow Windows UI guidelines either.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Personally, I blame Linux.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Wow, and here I was thinking it's time to upgrade the media center from that elderly, barely supported (but solid) XP Media Center Edition, to Vista. 26 gigs of music, and no way to get it on our ipods... Yeesh. Oh, I know it'll be fixed, but stories like this give me chills.
Upon re-reading that, it sounded like I'm dissing Microsoft. Not really, just prudently waiting for these kinds of issues to settle -- no matter who's fault they are -- before thinking about upgrading. By then, the CPU upgrade necessary to run Vista should be really cheap. :-)
This is off topic, but I have to say it: I may have to turn in my Linux geek hat for saying this, but I've been running XP Media Center Edition 2005 since it came out, under heavy daily use, and have not had a single bluescreen of death. Not one. (Nobody is more surprised than me. :-))
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Tm
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Geesh the last three versions were bloated to the heavens. I think it takes about a minute to start now. A least few recent versions flat out crashed or did not update correctly. And is there any piece of application software that takes more time to update than iTunes? I don't think so.
...but what if Apple pulled a Microsoft and put an intentional bug into the app? Sure, it might seem a little too sophisticated for such a small thing, and people will still blame iTunes since it's the main application, but what if tomorrow Steve releases a press release apologizing to Vista users but blames it squarely on Vista "oh sorry something in our new version invoked a buggy piece of vista and we had to work around it." And what if that's what all the support people at apple are instructed to say? What if friends down the street say "oh dude I have a Mac/XP and it works fine for me" might iPod users say "fuckin' vista!" With a little careful preparation, I think this might be possible... maybe only a little bit of a stretch? :)
Sounds a little conspiracy theory-ish, but keep an eye out the next couple of days. You never know.
I am a mac fan, but I don't put evil past Apple by any means, they are a corporation after all. At the same time, evil attacking evil is loads of fun to watch, but I pity the people who get caught in the middle who can't sync now until a fix is released.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It's always seemed to me that iTunes for Windows was just slapdash kludge for allowing compatibility between iPods and Windows. My experiences with it have been nothing but buggy and slooooooow. Honestly, I think it just needs to be rebuilt from the ground up for Windows.
Mod this bullshit down. The iTunes DRM is 100% inside quicktime.qts.
(I'm the original author of PyTunes, the base for Pymusique -- I know a bit about Fairplay)
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
In other news 1000 Ubuntu users running under WINE without whining.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The tags right now are [+] bug, media, music, windows, haha (tagging beta)
Odd that Apple, iPod, and iTunes aren't tags for a story about a bug in their software?
Vista sucks for not encapsulating the exception, but it sure sounds like the bug is on Apple's side of the issue.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
WMP doesn't follow windows UI guidelines. I think the UI guidelines for Windows specifically give media players a pass.
I say that, not because of the code, but because of what itunes 8 is, it's Apple installing some more DRM to close a hole someone found, apple hates DRM, but then amazingly it spends a huge amount of effort maintaining it. Has anyone seen the NBC shows back on iTunes, they're CHEAPER than before, so turns out, Apple was inflating the price, not nbc. Just seems like apple screws you at every opportunity.
Itunes in past has:
- deleted your legit music
- Unstalled othe mac applications without asking you
- Hijacked volume control from windows
- Modified code specifically to make it hard to work with the ipod outside of itunes
- Is the largest pusher of DRM technology
Really a BSOD isn't that big of a deal. And incase you are curious NO it isn't windows fault. Why is a music player installing drivers overtop of standard drivers that work perfectly? Aside from their hatred of doing things the same even when they are better only jobs knows. If windows tried to pull even half the bullship Apple has they would have been sued into dust. I find it disgusting its ok since its mac.
On-topic enought to tell here: My computer won't even boot with an iPod attached. Might be just the shuffle, but I think having my old mini connected is a no-no, too. Won't even go past the BIOS screen, it hangs before the pseudo memory check at POST.
Sometimes I don't even get an image on the screen, I think because it hangs too fast for the monitor too sync. I found this out the (very) hard way: Computer didn't boot, no image on screen, seemingly for no reason, so I did what I had to do, basic troubleshooting. Remove power cord and reconnect after a while, didn't do anything. So I started tearing out extension cards, disconnecting hard drives, removing RAM chips. Had pretty much the whole thing disassembled, short of removing the CPU (because removing the HSF is such a PITA). Erased the BIOS using a paperclip, nothing. Only then did I notice, by accident, that some USB devices, including the iPod, were still attached. Disconnected them, and the system booted fine. WTF.
The whole thing is so strange that I promptly forgot about it and repeated the whole procedure half a year later. Doh!
Note that everything works fine once the POST is done, I bet I could even boot of of it if I wanted to, and I can use them in Linux or Windows just fine. So really just a minor inconvenience, albeit a very odd one. (I blame my motherboard, BTW, not the iPod.)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
! ! ! WARNING ! ! !
Reality distortion field is increasing!
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Is the largest pusher of DRM technology
You're saying that Apple has shipped more copies of iTunes than Microsoft has shipped copies of Windows XP and Vista (or Windows Media Player 9 for earlier versions of Windows)? That Apple has shipped more copies of iTunes than all DVD players combined (worldwide!)?
Well, no, actually, I think you're pretty far off base with that one.
Hehe, Apple doesn't follow Apple's UI guidelines :)
If iPods were simply accessible as a USB mass storage device, I don't think there would have been a problem.
From what I can see, Apple uses a proprietary device-type, so they can talk to it using an encrypted connection.
All that, simply to keep you from copying files you supposedly don't have the right to copy.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
HP Printer.
Drivers on windows can be troublesome. It would suprise me if usbaapl64.sys has some issue previously undiscovered.
This is fallout of shared component design MS uses.
Should Apple have tested with HP printers? Probably, but no one can test every configuration of a PC.
The USB set up MS is using is causing a fault in Ring 0. That's the only way I can see this causing a BSoD
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Most computers have 2-4 USB plugs on the motherboard. Each one is split into two ports(more?) you can plug devices into.
Be sure your printer is on a different USB plug.
This is a power struggle between HP and Apple..I mean electrical power between the devices, not corporate power.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Asinine, but then again Apple doesn't follow Windows UI guidelines either.
There are Windows UI guidelines? From the truly bizarre menagerie of inconsistent UIs I see in the 3rd-party windows software world, it wasn't clear to me that any guidelines even existed.
Certainly very few people follow them.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
He mixed Apple iTunes sloppy code with Microsoft Vista sloppy code.
That is why I don't use iTunes or Vista, both have sloppy code in them that cause crashed. When you cross both of them together you crash the system or at least cause it to lock up.
It is also why my G3 iMac was never upgraded to Mac OSX and still runs Mac OS9, because of Apple's sloppy code in OSX. If I convert it to a new OS it will either be Linux or AROS, because both of them are stable and being ported to the PowerPC platform or have a port already.
Apple "borrowed" a lot from Commodore, first it was the Vic-20 Commodore logo key copied as the Apple logo key on the Apple //e, then it was the Commodore Vic-20 and Commodore 64 compact design copied with the Apple //c, then it was the Amiga Workbench and co-processor support for 4096 colors and above with the Commodore Amiga in the Macintosh II (The Macintosh II was basically an Amiga 2000 rip-off after the Mr. Coffee Classic black and white Macintosh series was an epic fail), and then NeXT was an AmigaOS rip-off using BSD Unix (AmigaOS/AmigaDOS was based on the Unix-like TriPOS and Steve Jobs learned from his epic fail to use Unix as it is more like the Amiga to help make Next survive), Pixar ripped off the Newtek Video Toaster that Amigas had used (Steve Jobs saw how Amiga 2000s with the Video Toaster did great desktop video for movies and wanted to borrow that tech for Pixar), and then Mac OSX got the AROS and AmigaOS 3.X look and feel but with the Microsoft Windows bloat. AROS does not have the Windows bloat but still has the AmigaDOS/Workbench "less is more" approach in that it is memory efficient and doesn't need a high end processor with tons of memory to run it.
Basically Apple started to slowly evolve into Microsoft, and Amiga and the Amiga technology evolved into what the Macintosh should have been in 1985, and evolved into what it should be with AROS into modern times.
Apple even is suing people like Microsoft did like Pystar because of its EULA, which is very much like the one Microsoft has. Apple vs. Pystar is very much like Microsoft vs. IBM over OS/2, so Apple is evolving to what Microsoft was during the OS/2 years in the 1990's.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Try plugginh an HP printer into the same usb Channel as your iPhone.
This will cause the crash.
In the scenerio I presented to you, whose fault would you think was the crash if you ahdn
t read this story?
Probably HPs.
Just an example of how overly complex windows driver architecture is.
This is why I feel we should go back to the applications installing everything it needs under a directory it creates.
Less mess, easy trouble shooting easy uninstall, not files scattered all over your system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nobody follows the Windows UI guidelines. WMP doesn't, most CD burning apps don't, every single program you get with printers, cameras etc. insists on using what looks like its own private GUI toolkit... Consistency has been seriously out since shortly after XP was released. Writing a Windows app that looks like a Windows app is like using GTK+ 1 to write a new GNOME app.
Admittedly, I'm exaggerating -- but only slightly. The multitude of non-fitting UIs in Windows is getting annoying. One of the things I like about OS X is that the users are so rabid about integration most developers actually make an effort to make their native app look native*. The same goes for Linux, but there it's because people keep submitting GUI patches until the programmer submits to peer pressure.
* Of course the iTunes UI team is a special case. The iTunes UI team is special in many ways.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Maybe Apple did QA it properly.
THink of the bad press for MS this heaps ontop of Vista. What are people going to remember? iTunes crashes Vista? Or Vista crashes when you plugin an iPod?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The Mac Geniuses decided they needed to put something in Kernel space for their POS to take down the OS.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Please see this apple knowledge base page: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2280
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
I see plenty of articles about people wanting to run arbitrary software on iPhones (and the iPod Touch handheld) but don't see much about people having problems putting music on or taking music off of iPods using programs other than iTunes, which is what the person I was replying to brought up... along with some sort of "encryption" used on the USB connection.
I provided a nice list of ten programs other than iTunes that read and write music to the iPod. I think that pretty thoroughly debunks said point.
I just went over that list of 10 programs through some (admittedly not thorough) googling, and checked them for compatibility with iPhone/iPod Touch, which are the models that cause the issue due to the encryption/hashing used.
So perhaps your nice list of programs is less useful than you thought, and does not debunk the point.
As far as I know, there is no program other than iTunes that will let you put music on an iPod Touch/iPhone (with v2 firmware) without hacking the device's OS. iirc, hacking the OS voids the warranty, so obviously most people don't want to do this.
iTunes installs system level drivers. System level drivers by definition have the ability to crash the OS. And the reason for the system level drivers, the ultimate evil, it is DRM. You can't allow the user to easily get between the music files and the playback or burning, and you can do that only with system level drivers directly coupled with the user space software.
I think there is a Microsoft framwork for that too, but apparently iTunes doesn't use it, but instead wants to use it's own drivers for whatever reason.