Slashdot Mirror
iTunes Stops Working For Windows XP Users
An anonymous reader writes: iTunes users who still run Windows XP started to experience connectivity issues this week. As documented in an Apple Support Communities thread, they can't log into the iTunes store, meaning functions like buying content, watching already purchased movies and TV shows, playing DRM-protected content, backing up, updating, and syncing all do not work.
This is precisely why you should never OWN your digital content, but rather LEASE it from trustworthy companies like Apple... Oh wait! =)
iTunes continues to work horribly for ALL other Windows operating systems...
This could be related to encryption ciphers not supporter with xp.
As in that they disabled the one xp support
It seems unlikely that development support of XP is more costly than the revenue generated by XP users. And Apple has plenty of cash. But this may still be shrewd - let's see if there's a bump in Mac sales this quarter. These users represent existing Apple customers running an OS that Microsoft abandoned. They don't need to know about how fast Apple abandons hardware, but to be fair Apple does upgrades pretty nicely. They can blame MS and gain the customer, all by hosing said customer. Devious and clever.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As the anti-piracy crap is going by, and then the mandatory previews, I say to myself "If I had only pirated this, I'd already be watching the movie."
Whenever I go to itunes store, I say to myself "this would be so much easier to pirate than to buy. Less time, and I'd already be listening."
It's not about the cost. It's about the convenience.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
This may well have less to do with Apple being mean and cutting off XP users from their fix and more with Apple dropping support for ciphers that are anything but secure anymore, with XP simply not supporting the more current ciphers with better algorithms and more robustness (like forward secrecy). If they didn't, the rant would not go away but simply shift to "Apple's sloppy handling of security puts your content at risk".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To be fair, Apple supported XP longer than Microsoft did. Microsoft has already stated that if you choose to continue using XP, you do so at your own risk. That not only means potential exposure to malware, but also the distinct possibility that third party stuff may at any time stop working. I don't see this a fault of Apple in any way whatsoever.
Did iTunes ever really work on Windows?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Which "better players" lawfully support iTunes purchases? Or from which store should one have lawfully purchased movies instead?
Ah, but the people suggesting moving away from both Microsoft and Apple all run DRM free ogg-vorbis, and like to build their environments from a collection of parts.
The idea of actually using software for an extended period of time and needing it to work with devices is a foreign concept.
If they want music players they build their own using a Raspberry Pi and some chewing gum.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The software probably works just fine. It's interacting with Apple's online services that doesn't work anymore.
Yes, because I am very anxious to buy more shit from the company that just locked me out of content I purchased from them prior with a forced upgrade.
Oh wait...
That's a distinction without a difference.
When people buy stuff from you that requires "phoning home", no one should let you off the hook for dropping "legacy support". People whine about things like "support" but this isn't a computing frame of reference here. This is consumer media.
The idea that your copy of the White Album suddenly stops working should not be tolerated.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Funnily enough, the iPod which did not work as a removable HD is the thing that made me switch away from apple, some 12 years ago.
Funnily enough the iPod has had disk mode for about 12 years. They must have enabled it right after you switched away...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
And sometimes, even on a more modern OS, Apple's stuff can fail for no obvious reason.
I recently swapped out my Vista box for Windows 8 (yeah, yeah, whatever) .. on both platforms I had the problem of getting an HTTP Error when trying to lookup tracks to rip the CD. No fix can be found for this which I can identify as working.
I gave up and busted out the evil Windows Media Player to rip a bunch of CDs I'd bought .. and then magically iTunes started being able to look up track names. How this could work, I have no idea.
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure Apple knows how their software works or why it fails.
I miss my old iPod classic, which didn't have an OS to update ... because it would never get upgraded to the point of broken with the assumption I'll just go out and spend a few hundred bucks on a new device.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, Apple knows how many XP users use iTunes. They know how much those XP users spend and can easily determine if they're just a tiny fraction of those using Vista or later, or significant enough to continue supporting them. Apple has all that data.
And I've seen it too as my main machine is XP. I'd love to upgrade it if I had the cash (I do have a Win 7 machine used for other purposes so I'm not SOL). Thing is, iTunes still does work, it's just crapping out randomly a bit more than usual - Monday was plagued with the inability to log in (but closing and restarting iTunes several times fixed it), and app updates seem to be an on and off thing (mostly off).
And how fast Apple abandons hardware? Maybe for iOS where you get 50% more support time than the main competition (at least in cases where you get supported updates). Macs that can run Yosemite date back to 2010 or so.
Apple though, does abandon older software a lot faster - they only do support the last two versions of OS X and iOS in general.
Here's the thing - iTunes runs on a virtual version of OS X - one of the reasons it's so big is that it brings with it a bunch of OS X libraries adapted for Windows. Things like ciphers and SSL and all that, Apple already has ported versions of the OS X libraries for that they update - it doesn't use the OS libraries for it.
And in fact, there's nothing wrong with iTunes itself - my version of iTunes worked perfectly until the past week or so - and no, I didn't install any new version of iTunes. So Apple changed something that broke iTunes on its end because iTunes worked before and it wasn't changed
Movies and TV shows are still DRMed.
Eh? XP doesn't support *any* of the HTTPS ciphers that haven'te been utterly and completely proven worthless. This has nothing to do with DRM; the software works just fine locally (including playback of DRM'd media), the only thing it can't do now is connect back to Apple's servers via HTTPS.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Funny. It was probably fixed before this was even posted on Slashdot.
Apple updated their services to exclude those clients, probably to fix an SSL exploit by turning off older SSL protocols for all clients. If Apple really wanted to, they could have left that version of SSL running only for XP clients and updated iTunes to not use that protocol on any non-XP OS, but they didn't. Poor customer service if you ask me.
The services fail intermittently, which means they still work intermittently. That strongly implies that this wasn't an intentional change by Apple, but instead is a bug introduced with some other change. Said bug was likely not caught, in my opinion, due to limited access to test equipment running XP. Apple, like my employer, likely has IT policies that exclude XP machines from the common intranet, and it's a hassle to set up, maintain, and access the separate XP test lab. A bug that only occurs when an XP machine tries to access an online service is exactly the kind that would be missed by such a test farm setup.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
so I just moved iTunes to the windows laptop and will have to re-rip the material not bought on the iStore. my iPod mini's third battery is about gone, so I'm picking up a Shuffle on the way home from work.
you know, it's funny, shit dies. my Atwater Kent 20C works, but the newer stuff dies.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
They don't DRM music anymore but it's still present on things like Movies and TV shows. Apple, like everyone else (Amazon, Google, etc) are at the mercy of the studios that create the content who demand DRM on their content.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I, along with many others I know, only "upgraded" from Snow Leopard (10.6) because Apple dropped support for it. 3 days after I paid to upgrade to Mountain Lion in order to continue receiving support, Apple announced that future versions of OS X (including the then soon-to-be-released Mavericks) would be free. <sarc>That didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth or anything.</sarc>
No version of OS X since Snow Leopard has been as stable or performant. Because of this, I know a number of people who actually still use it despite the lack of security updates. Of them, only a couple use it in an offline-only capacity. I'm sure that's lightyears better than the decade-long support you say isn't necessary, though. Right?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
This.
You can't have an app that uses secure SSL/TLS protocols on XP SP2 or older. It likely won't be long until the same applies to SP3 (i.e. if they disable TLS1.0 - a good idea).
I suppose they could write their own TLS stack into the iTunes product for XP, but that just seems overkill. If an app relies on the system-wide security libraries then you are out of luck supporting this (officially unsupported) OS.
I have no clue if this is the problem at hand but it's a good candidate.
If you're going to mandate that everybody upgrade, then cough up the cash. I have no reason to trash a perfectly functional machine.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And that has precisely what to do with the point I was countering? It's a basic needs machine. Yes, it's a luxury item, so we'll call it a luxury basic needs machine, but it's still a basic needs machine, plain and simple. You didn't even attempt to argue, you only agreed with me without realizing it.
People still on XP are not buying a $1300-2k laptop, when there are laptops available for $300 with better performance / storage / features.
Unless they care about point #5.
But you still seem to have missed my point. There really is no market for the new MacBook. You're absolutely right that there are better machines available for 1/4 the price. Even people who buy luxury for the sake of luxury aren't complete morons and they'll seldom pay more than 2x the price of the "common person's" equivalent version of something, so this isn't even targeted at that crowd. It's the absolute most basic of basic needs machines, coming to you at a mobile workstation price; I'm too lazy to search out sales figures for it, but I'd be surprised if they've covered R&D at this point.
It isn't a basic needs laptop. It is a specialized needs laptop: a customer who needs the absolute minimum amount of weight and thin. As for OSX being closer to Windows XP than Windows 8, I'd say that's not true.
There is nothing like this. There is nothing at 2lbs that offers anywhere near this level of performance. That's the point. The custom is someone for whom 2 vs. 3 lbs is worth a lot of money. That's the feature they want.
As for sales figures. Apple is currently 6 weeks backordered on the new MacBook. They've sold every laptop they can make for the very least all through this quarter. But the sales figures aren't going to be what's critical. This laptop represents the future of their lower end product. They are going to get all their consumer laptops down to 2lbs over the next few years. The whole thing is R&D for the change to the product line.
Yep. Only movies are DRM, but all purchased movies are DRM at least for now.
The only ones which aren't are pirated or purchased on media and a digital copy is made by the person owning the media.
I saw that.
It's bullshit. I've been dealing with Microsoft since they were born and they are the worst source of information regarding practices that hit their bottom line.
Windows XP enjoys second place in market share for operating systems.
Microsoft is motivated to:
1.) Supply embedded machines with updates
2.) Convince those people to buy new stuff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I think I have about six songs in itunes that are in "protected AAC" format, as I stopped buying stuff in that format early on, as soon as I realized the limitations. I still have a (gen3) ipod in the truck but the sound system in the other car and in the motorcycle understand thumb drives, and once you have that why the heck would you use an ipod? Most phones these days will play music and have removable storage -- why would you carry an extra device?
Once you realize that only Apple products will play "protected AAC" files, why the heck would you buy content in that format?
I guess the point I'm making is that if you lost access to content you paid for because itunes no longer supports your OS, this might be a good time to at least re-evaluate how you purchase content. If you must use itunes, it'll rip CDs just fine, and used CDs are available, often for a pittance, at Amazon and other places.
I can't believe in 2015 we're still saying "just say no to DRM content". That question should have been settled a long time ago.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's bullshit. I can keep a working system imaged. So, it's basically screw you. My system works. It's clean. I don't need any damn upgrade. I don't use iTunes.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No mostly (or ever) they haven't done that before. That would be stupidly expensive for almost no benefit. The numbers will be out in July. Apple is going to want April-June sales to be high not low when they release numbers.
As for hatred, I don't think your comments sounded like you are hating Apple. I just don't think you understand the product line and how Apple is evolving it. Like I said above look at how the Air evolved 2008-2011 that's the pattern they likely follow. The need to get the weight down to make the advantages of OSX for battery life clear, they need to get retina and they need to not lose the $800 price point on the low end. They can't do all those things at once so they have forking lines.
I don't see that. What I've seen from Apple for the last 6 years or so has been a shift towards massive innovations in manufacturing and logistics and a move away from a focus on "insanely great" software. Manufacturing and logistics is Tim Cook's baby. The 2015 MacBook may not be your or my cup of tea, but I can unquestionably say its the most complex laptop to manufacture on the market today bar none. I can't really think of much that's even close to that level of complexity. The Microsoft Surface 1, and the Chrome Books are about the only product I can think of that's pushing the envelope in manufacturing even close to the degree Apple is.
As far as being useful. In a world in which PC sales have been slipping for 6 years they have grown their sales. The results on marketshare are pretty good. http://cdn.macrumors.com/artic... That graph is the unit numbers. The ASP gap has been growing till it is approaching almost 3x what it is for PCs, and of course in terms of margin Apple has consistently pulled 85-92% of the margin from PCs sales for many years running.
They aren't failing to be useful they are exceptionally useful to end users. That doesn't mean they fit everyone.
I find it odd that there isn't a well known man in the middle SSL-> TLS 1.2 proxy for XP that can fake things enough to work for most programs.
The entire XP TCP/IP stack can be replaced and there are replacement WINSOCK versions for XP.
With the large number of programs that talk to specific hardware that simply won't run on anythign newer than XP, combined with how many machines are still functional for their users, it will be around for a very long time. Remember that Microsoft has only dropped free support for the consumer version of XP and paid support (and some free support) will be going on for another 4 years.
Well, it was a concession to the music industry to make it hard to copy other people's music. So, yes, they have done it differently.
But, for me one of the best features is that special DB ... I have playlists based on the metadata which only Apple keeps (as far as I know at least) across devices. Like "songs I haven't played in six months or haven't played at least five times". You practically have a query language ... so you can pick all of your punk rock which isn't also Christmas (and, yes, I have that problem).
Sure, if I wanted to grab my music folder out of iTunes and import it into another player I could go back to the same level of technology I was using on FreeBSD in 2001 ... but honestly, I'd rather stick with iTunes and the playlists and metadata that special DB give me.
I don't ever manage my music by dragging and dropping ... so while your way is good for you, I'd rather just select which playlists to sync.
Me, I just load on a half dozen playlists, put it on big random, and let the playcount cycle them out on the next pass so I can work through all my music and hear it all. :-P
For me, the massive time investment I have in iTunes means when I rip a CD and assign a genre like "cuban/hip-hop" or "punk/xmas" they magically fall into the playlists where they belong because rules put them there ... and I won't hear a punk version of Silent Night in June. ;-)
My playlists are almost self curating now precisely because of that DB. And when you have Cuban hip-hop and punk Christmas albums you really want that.
At least I do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.