I think he wants an on-off switch for the wifi ability that he can hit quickly, rather than the ability to turn the iPod completely off.
If the iPod controls were better designed, this wouldn't be as much of an issue... with a d-pad based control system, particularly one where it's supplemented by buttons or a jog-wheel you can learn to do an awful lot by feel. But on the iPod you'll need to take it out of your pocket, unlock the click-wheel, then scroll back through the menus to find the wifi control. And all of this is really hard to do with the click-wheel interface.
This is already a problem. I have a pretty wide variety of music on my iPod... I might get Bobby McFerrin followed by Chumbawamba followed by Bach followed by Ambrose Thibodeaux followed by John Lennon followed by John Coltrane followed by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones... and sometimes I find the contrast between two songs is too much for me. It's SO much easier to hit "next" on the shuffle than on the "real" iPods, and that's the main reason I gave my iPod to my daugter and "downgraded" to a shuffle. It's a better user interface.
One thing that certain Apple admirers do is to make up excuses for Apple's 'low hurdle' market-control restrictions on their products, such as "you can't put songs on your iPod without iTunes because the iPod's CPU isn't powerful enough* to read the song files if they're not in Apple's special hashed directories". Or "the labels won't let Apple give you the ability to transfer songs back from your iPod to iTunes".
A TMCnet article states that Apple has filed a patent for iPods that can purchase music wirelessly over the internet.
This explains why they added the ability to transfer songs from the iPod back to your PC after holding out for so long. But it does raise one question...
If they can do that then the iPod will need the ability to add items to the music library itself. If the iPod can add items to the music library by itself, then it should be able to import music you've put on the iPod yourself without using iTunes.
Hmmm... what was that about the CPU being too slow?
* A 70 MHz ARM is way faster than the 386/33 I was using back when we were all working on what became FreeBSD, or the 68040 in the NeXT, and they didn't seem to have a problem reading files.:)
I don't know, but one thing I have noticed is that you can get some cool features in flash mp3 players in Asia that you can't get in the US that I've been able to tell. One is the ability to "dock" two players together by their USB ports and transfer songs that way. Hmmm...
you can be sure that they're doing the very best they can to maximize their profits.
Hardly.
If Microsoft wanted to maximise their profits they would have jumped at the chance to split the company up so the Windows team wouldn't be able to piss in everyone else's milk, and all the other products they've had to drop or cripple because they couldn't be turned into life-support for Windows or Office could be created and sold. Microsoft is desperate for a way to get people to Buy More Windows, everything they've done since XP shipped has been tinged with "oh my god, what are we going to do now"... and Vista is more of the same.
Three or five "Baby Bills" would end up making more money for the shareholders than one big Microsoft.
Plus, this device will have access to someone who understands the language - the person speaking. If the person you're talking to doesn't understand, you can change the way you phrase the statement. With the right kind of feedback and some kind of cueing mechanism this could also turn into an effective aid to learning a language.
Why should the user need to manage and organize their own files when a program, such as iTunes, does it for them?
They don't like iTunes, and keep their music in another program.
They use Linux or FreeBSD.
They want to load some music from a computer that doesn't have iTunes installed.
You might as well ask "Why should the user need to manage and organize their own files whan a program, such a SoundJam, does it for them?"
And they have a Mac.
Why should a user need to drag and drop files and keep track of new files when a program, such as iTunes, does it for them?
Same answer.
Why should the iPod need to manage the database when a program, such as iTunes, already does it for it?
Same answer.
What are you suggesting, anyway, if the iPod doesn't go through the file system?
I'm not suggesting that it not use the file system, I'm suggesting that it not traverse the file system to open files it's already seen. There's no reason the version of the file system code on the iPod couldn't have "Get Alias for File" and "Open File by Alias"... with the Alias being the Extent on FAT32 or the (ahem) Alias on an HFS-formatted iPod.
It's particularly amusing to consider that Apple provides the equivalent calls in Mac OS and Mac OS X... and they have actually been the preferred format for programs to store references to files in. That is, Apple had already implemented this scheme on the Macintosh! Why not the iPod, which was originally using the same file system?
I guess what I'm saying is that this is entirely how I would expect a corporation to act with capitalistic motives.
The motives aren't the issue. There are many motives a group, coorporation, individual, cooperative, or company might have for wanting to limit the sale or use of their products or services... many of these motives are ones you would probably agree with, but someone else will always see the end result as an abuse of the system.
Besides... capitalism doesn't actually deal in motives at all. Companies do things all the time that significantly hurt their total profitability because someone or some group of people in the company wants it that way. For an example close to this case, Sony's schizophrenic relationship between its hardware and content arms is a perfect example of this: if they were interested in maximizing profits they would never have restricted the abilities of Minidiscs to satisfy their content division, and would have avoided all kinds of DRM-related fiascos since then. Microsoft's got some kind of problem with placing control over profits, and have trashed their share in many potential markets or only recovered a place in them at the last minute after someone in Microsoft managed to get them to back down. And all the way back to US Steel... when a monopoly is broken up the companies remaining usually end up making *more* money for their collective stockholders than they had any expectation of beforehand.
In fact, it's stock market regulations, set up to control abuses of the stock market by individuals, that have ironically created an environment that increases the focus on short term profit.
How do you feel a monopoly is being externally enforced?
By the UK government through the court system refusing to let LikSang sell Playstations in the UK. That mechanism would not exist in a free market.
Taking that mechanism away would probably be a bad idea overall, but the reactions that I see from people at both ends of the economic debate when something like this happens show an alarming misunderstanding of what's actuallygoing on.
From the right: "That's Capitalism, it's great, too bad for the losers but you gotta let this stuff happen". It's not capitalism, and in their ideal world it wouldn't happen.
From the left: "that's Capitalism, it's terrible, we need to stop them before it happens again". It's not Capitalism, and what happened is the result of a previous round of "we gotta stop them"...
This kind of thing may or may not be necessary, but let's not let the sloganistas confuse us about what "this kind of thing" is.
But how do you mitigate against this without additional regulation?
Mitigate against what?
I think you may be reading more into my post than is actually there. I'm not arguing that regulation isn't necessary, I'm just pointing out that it's regulation that makes Sony's actions possible... whether Sony is a capitalist corporation or a socialist cooperative. This isn't an example of capitalism in action, it's an example of how a mixed economic system can be subverted. Yes, of course, Capitalism can also be subverted by unscrupulous entities - as can any other system or any balance-point you pick between systems. Figuring out where to stand and where to place your board as you surf the shockwave is what makes politics and economics so engrossing.:)
Back to topic:
In a free market Sony couldn't (for one example) use the British government to prevent LikSang from shipping grey market Playstations to Britain, or (in the end) do anything but refuse to sell Playstations to LikSang. And the way you mitigate against THAT is to set up cut-out fronts to buy the Playstations for you.
So in honor of that, I'm going to dupe my comment on that story
As a true Slashdotter, you failed to check your links. Real Harmony was blocked by Apple a while back, and Real realized what you and (apparently) DVD Jon didn't: as long as Apple can keep breaking your product by tweaking theirs slightly, you're not going to have many customers unless your price is "free".
Individuals may be free-market true belivers corporations are not, corporations are entities designed to maximise profit not promote a particular belief system.
The original poster claimed that this was an example of capitalism in action.
This is clearly not the case.
The fact that a corporation is willing to take advantage of the monopoly-socialist handouts from the government doesn't change the fact that this is not "capitalism".
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned, and capital is invested in the production, distribution and other trade of goods and services, for profit in a competitive free market.
An externally enforced monopoly is not part of a free market.
In a free market there would be no mechanism for Sony to put LikSang out of business other than refusing to sell a product to them. This isn't capitalism, it's some kind of bizarre twist on protectionism by proxy.
you've ever used a Mac, you know control-click does the same thing as right click, but you almost never use it.
Control-click doesn't always do the same thing, and it CERTAINLY doesn't do the same thing in X11 based apps (like pretty much all the open source stuff). I only use control click by accident, when I lose track of which of the six modifiers Apple came up with to make up for their pig-headed reliance on the 1-button mouse I need to use, and hit control-click instead of shift/command/option/hold/double-click.
Do I need to install Linux to make it useful? I.e., on a Windows machine I install Cygwin and lots of Unix-like tools such as bash, gvim, putty, perl.
They're all in there or can be automatically installed via one of the package systems like Darwinports or Fink. I think these systems even use the debian packaging system internally.
How stable is it.
HFS+ isn't as stable as UFS, but it's a match for any of the Linux file systems I've used. The OS is good, it's not FreeBSD 4.11-class good, but what is?
How much Free software is available?
There's some Linux-specific packages that are supposed to have problems or don't have ports, but none of them are terribly portable to traditional UNIX or FreeBSD. Certainly anything that can run under Cygwin should be fine!
How solid is the workmanship.
Physically good, but it ain't no Thinkpad. The keyboard is mediocre and the single mouse button is annoying.
The Mighty Mouse is an appalling design. It has no actual buttons... the whole body rocks, and it's got pressure sensors on the sides and a capacitance sensor on the top, plus a teeny trackball.
1. It doesn't actually detect right-click. It detects "click with no finger on the left side".
2. The side buttons mean you can't pick the mouse up and move it during a long drag operation.
3. The "middle button versus wheel" problem, where you want to middle-click on something and you scroll, is ten times as bad with the tiny sensitive ball.
I have a Macbook Pro. In actual use the double-tap is finicky and tortuous and I forked out for Sidetrack which lets me tap in the corner to get a right-click... and then bought a compact USB mouse that fits in the space beside the trackpad.
The main reason AMD64 was so good is that AMD managed to build a faster and more efficient variant of the old x86 instruction set and *sell it* by pushing "64 bit". Intel doesn't seem to have actually taken advantage of the larger register file in their 64-bit clones.
Unless you're on an Opteron or Athlon, you're likely to lose performance going to 64 bit (yes, that's true for the Power PC too). If you're one of the 1% who really do need it, you already know the answer to your question.
Except you CAN access the hidden directory without any tools, you CAN copy the songs off the iPod, you CAN drag them back into iTunes or ANY other player that reads ID3 tags, and you CAN use them again on any system.
You're looking at it the wrong way around.
The problem I'm talking about is not that you can't pull the music off the iPod, the problem is that you can't go the other way. You can't put music on the iPod without iTunes or special tools.
If the iPod created it's own database, it means it would have to trawl through it's entire HDD to rebuild the database every time a file gets added.
It would only have to read the most recently changed files in the music folder.
At 70MHz.
70 MHz is pretty damn fast. We used to run multiuser systems with gigabytes of data on 286/12s. Since all it needs to do to locate the updated files is read file names... and do it *while it's plugged in*... the 'trawling through the file system' problem isn't a big deal.
The filenames DO matter if the files are Japanese, have spaces, or any other number of weirdness in them that a FAT32 FS cannot handle.
FAT32 actually can handle a lot of the weirdness you're talking about, and both Apple and Microsoft have ways to hide the stuff it can't (Apple certainly does, and you couldn't run Windows NT on FAT32 if Microsoft couldn't)... and how it handles it or how the file names are modified isn't something the iPod needs to care about: it uses ID3 tags, not file names. The user only even sees them *if* they're not using iTunes *and* they go and pull the files out *and* they put the files in on a Mac and pulled them out on a Windows box which doesn't know to look at the._xxx resource/finder-info files.
The folder names do matter. The iPod guarantees that every song is no more than 3 folders deep and that no more than 100 songs exist in each folder. This actually does speed up file access due to the way file systems are designed.
The start of each file's extent or the equivalent structures in HFS can be cached by the iPod.
The folder is hidden to prevent a user from accidentally messing up the control structure needed to ensure performance and battery life.
It's not as necessary as you seem to think. In fact if the iPod is really going *through* the file system for every song every time it's less efficient than it should be.
2-button mice on laptops are just annoying. I guess you haven't used OS X much -- the right click is not all that useful, and control-click is EASIER than finding the second mouse button on a laptop, where you have to move your hand to find it anyway.
I've been using OS X for years now, since I used XPostFacto to install Jaguar on my Powermac 7600 with a Sonnet G3/400 upgrade card. I've been using it exclusively for months. Control-click is not a complete alternative to right-click, by any means.
1. It means that you're using a different command at your desktop keyboard than on your laptop.
2. There are quite a few programs where control-click isn't the same as right-click. Sorry, while Apple has done a better job of making everyone hew to the user interface guidelines... they've not managed 100%.
3. Learning where the second button is on a Thinkpad is actually easier than learning where the control key on the Macbook keyboard is (hint, Fn-click doesn't have the same effect as right-click in ANY application).
My first Mac was a model M0001, the original 128K (not M) Macintosh. Not Macintosh this or Macintosh that, just Macintosh.
And the single button mouse bugged me back then. Don't tell me that was because I was used to a multiple button mouse on MS-DOS!
It's not "the Apple way", versus the "Microsoft Way", or else Apple wouldn't be going to all this trouble to let you perform all those essential operations that require a second mouse button with tricks like double-tapping or only pressing on the right side of the mouse.
It's not the OP nor I who have their head on the sand here. It's Apple.
#1 - If that was all it was, the database could have a name like "iPod Music Library", in a visible "Music" folder, that you could copy files into from any application, and it could index the files as they were added. This might be minutely less efficient, but a slightly larger seek every three to five minutes is negligible compared to the rest of the power budget... and it'd only be a factor if you never played the music by album and never shuffled it.
The points: * The iPod can create the database and keep it in a file on the disk. * The file names don't matter, and the directory they're in doesn't matter, if their metadata is stored in the database. * The iPod can cache the locations of the files, it doesn't need to read the directory, because it knows reliably when the file system has been modified. * The files don't need to be hidden.
All the music on the iPod is hidden off in an invisible directory, with all the song file names replaced with a database ID. The only reason for this is to prevent you from reading your music back from your iPod, to prevent you from using your iPod with anything but iTunes, and to basically lock you in.
#3 I mean without looking at the iPod.
You're driving, it's night, and a song you forgot you put in there is gravel in your ears. Skip to the next track without glancing down. This kind of situation comes up a lot for me, because I like a good random playlist but there's always songs that are a bit too energetic for when you're concentrating on something...
The iPod is styled like a PDA, which looks nice, but you don't need to whack a button on your PDA while you're driving or otherwise distracted. PDA phones that use touch-sensitive controls have the same problem... you can't dial or control them by feel. That's why I'm not using a T-mobile Pocket PC any more.:)
#1 - drag files to you iPod from Finder or Windows Explorer, or use a command line to copy them there, even putting them in the magic invisible directory.
Now make it play them without running any magic database tweaking application.
It makes an OK storage device, but that ability has nothing to do with its use as a music player.
#2 - you can't carry tape and CD players in most pockets, so you don't have to fiddle with the hold switch. I balked at adding my iPod to my belt, I'd look like Batman if I added anything more.
#3 - I bought an iPod Mini and I tried to control that beggar by feel, and threw it up for the shuffle which, thank god, doesn't have the damned twitch-wheel.
But then I'd had a couple of non-iPod flash music players before then. None of which needed locking but didn't try and jam a dozen operations into five buttons and a scroller.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he wants an on-off switch for the wifi ability that he can hit quickly, rather than the ability to turn the iPod completely off.
If the iPod controls were better designed, this wouldn't be as much of an issue... with a d-pad based control system, particularly one where it's supplemented by buttons or a jog-wheel you can learn to do an awful lot by feel. But on the iPod you'll need to take it out of your pocket, unlock the click-wheel, then scroll back through the menus to find the wifi control. And all of this is really hard to do with the click-wheel interface.
This is already a problem. I have a pretty wide variety of music on my iPod... I might get Bobby McFerrin followed by Chumbawamba followed by Bach followed by Ambrose Thibodeaux followed by John Lennon followed by John Coltrane followed by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones... and sometimes I find the contrast between two songs is too much for me. It's SO much easier to hit "next" on the shuffle than on the "real" iPods, and that's the main reason I gave my iPod to my daugter and "downgraded" to a shuffle. It's a better user interface.
One thing that certain Apple admirers do is to make up excuses for Apple's 'low hurdle' market-control restrictions on their products, such as "you can't put songs on your iPod without iTunes because the iPod's CPU isn't powerful enough* to read the song files if they're not in Apple's special hashed directories". Or "the labels won't let Apple give you the ability to transfer songs back from your iPod to iTunes".
:)
A TMCnet article states that Apple has filed a patent for iPods that can purchase music wirelessly over the internet.
This explains why they added the ability to transfer songs from the iPod back to your PC after holding out for so long. But it does raise one question...
If they can do that then the iPod will need the ability to add items to the music library itself. If the iPod can add items to the music library by itself, then it should be able to import music you've put on the iPod yourself without using iTunes.
Hmmm... what was that about the CPU being too slow?
* A 70 MHz ARM is way faster than the 386/33 I was using back when we were all working on what became FreeBSD, or the 68040 in the NeXT, and they didn't seem to have a problem reading files.
I don't know, but one thing I have noticed is that you can get some cool features in flash mp3 players in Asia that you can't get in the US that I've been able to tell. One is the ability to "dock" two players together by their USB ports and transfer songs that way. Hmmm...
you can be sure that they're doing the very best they can to maximize their profits.
Hardly.
If Microsoft wanted to maximise their profits they would have jumped at the chance to split the company up so the Windows team wouldn't be able to piss in everyone else's milk, and all the other products they've had to drop or cripple because they couldn't be turned into life-support for Windows or Office could be created and sold. Microsoft is desperate for a way to get people to Buy More Windows, everything they've done since XP shipped has been tinged with "oh my god, what are we going to do now"... and Vista is more of the same.
Three or five "Baby Bills" would end up making more money for the shareholders than one big Microsoft.
Plus, this device will have access to someone who understands the language - the person speaking. If the person you're talking to doesn't understand, you can change the way you phrase the statement. With the right kind of feedback and some kind of cueing mechanism this could also turn into an effective aid to learning a language.
He's talking about files you downloaded from the music store: those .m4p files - AAC (MP4) protected).
That's what you need to try converting.
When I checked your links I got a page that said the product wasn't available.
That was, apparently, because I was on a Mac.
Tit for tat?
Why should the user need to manage and organize their own files when a program, such as iTunes, does it for them?
They don't like iTunes, and keep their music in another program.
They use Linux or FreeBSD.
They want to load some music from a computer that doesn't have iTunes installed.
You might as well ask "Why should the user need to manage and organize their own files whan a program, such a SoundJam, does it for them?"
And they have a Mac.
Why should a user need to drag and drop files and keep track of new files when a program, such as iTunes, does it for them?
Same answer.
Why should the iPod need to manage the database when a program, such as iTunes, already does it for it?
Same answer.
What are you suggesting, anyway, if the iPod doesn't go through the file system?
I'm not suggesting that it not use the file system, I'm suggesting that it not traverse the file system to open files it's already seen. There's no reason the version of the file system code on the iPod couldn't have "Get Alias for File" and "Open File by Alias"... with the Alias being the Extent on FAT32 or the (ahem) Alias on an HFS-formatted iPod.
It's particularly amusing to consider that Apple provides the equivalent calls in Mac OS and Mac OS X... and they have actually been the preferred format for programs to store references to files in. That is, Apple had already implemented this scheme on the Macintosh! Why not the iPod, which was originally using the same file system?
I guess what I'm saying is that this is entirely how I would expect a corporation to act with capitalistic motives.
The motives aren't the issue. There are many motives a group, coorporation, individual, cooperative, or company might have for wanting to limit the sale or use of their products or services... many of these motives are ones you would probably agree with, but someone else will always see the end result as an abuse of the system.
Besides... capitalism doesn't actually deal in motives at all. Companies do things all the time that significantly hurt their total profitability because someone or some group of people in the company wants it that way. For an example close to this case, Sony's schizophrenic relationship between its hardware and content arms is a perfect example of this: if they were interested in maximizing profits they would never have restricted the abilities of Minidiscs to satisfy their content division, and would have avoided all kinds of DRM-related fiascos since then. Microsoft's got some kind of problem with placing control over profits, and have trashed their share in many potential markets or only recovered a place in them at the last minute after someone in Microsoft managed to get them to back down. And all the way back to US Steel... when a monopoly is broken up the companies remaining usually end up making *more* money for their collective stockholders than they had any expectation of beforehand.
In fact, it's stock market regulations, set up to control abuses of the stock market by individuals, that have ironically created an environment that increases the focus on short term profit.
How do you feel a monopoly is being externally enforced?
By the UK government through the court system refusing to let LikSang sell Playstations in the UK. That mechanism would not exist in a free market.
Taking that mechanism away would probably be a bad idea overall, but the reactions that I see from people at both ends of the economic debate when something like this happens show an alarming misunderstanding of what's actuallygoing on.
From the right: "That's Capitalism, it's great, too bad for the losers but you gotta let this stuff happen". It's not capitalism, and in their ideal world it wouldn't happen.
From the left: "that's Capitalism, it's terrible, we need to stop them before it happens again". It's not Capitalism, and what happened is the result of a previous round of "we gotta stop them"...
This kind of thing may or may not be necessary, but let's not let the sloganistas confuse us about what "this kind of thing" is.
But how do you mitigate against this without additional regulation?
:)
Mitigate against what?
I think you may be reading more into my post than is actually there. I'm not arguing that regulation isn't necessary, I'm just pointing out that it's regulation that makes Sony's actions possible... whether Sony is a capitalist corporation or a socialist cooperative. This isn't an example of capitalism in action, it's an example of how a mixed economic system can be subverted. Yes, of course, Capitalism can also be subverted by unscrupulous entities - as can any other system or any balance-point you pick between systems. Figuring out where to stand and where to place your board as you surf the shockwave is what makes politics and economics so engrossing.
Back to topic:
In a free market Sony couldn't (for one example) use the British government to prevent LikSang from shipping grey market Playstations to Britain, or (in the end) do anything but refuse to sell Playstations to LikSang. And the way you mitigate against THAT is to set up cut-out fronts to buy the Playstations for you.
So in honor of that, I'm going to dupe my comment on that story
As a true Slashdotter, you failed to check your links. Real Harmony was blocked by Apple a while back, and Real realized what you and (apparently) DVD Jon didn't: as long as Apple can keep breaking your product by tweaking theirs slightly, you're not going to have many customers unless your price is "free".
Individuals may be free-market true belivers corporations are not, corporations are entities designed to maximise profit not promote a particular belief system.
The original poster claimed that this was an example of capitalism in action.
This is clearly not the case.
The fact that a corporation is willing to take advantage of the monopoly-socialist handouts from the government doesn't change the fact that this is not "capitalism".
Let me hilight another part of your quote:
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately owned, and capital is invested in the production, distribution and other trade of goods and services, for profit in a competitive free market.
An externally enforced monopoly is not part of a free market.
In a free market there would be no mechanism for Sony to put LikSang out of business other than refusing to sell a product to them. This isn't capitalism, it's some kind of bizarre twist on protectionism by proxy.
you've ever used a Mac, you know control-click does the same thing as right click, but you almost never use it.
Control-click doesn't always do the same thing, and it CERTAINLY doesn't do the same thing in X11 based apps (like pretty much all the open source stuff). I only use control click by accident, when I lose track of which of the six modifiers Apple came up with to make up for their pig-headed reliance on the 1-button mouse I need to use, and hit control-click instead of shift/command/option/hold/double-click.
Do I need to install Linux to make it useful? I.e., on a Windows machine I install Cygwin and lots of Unix-like tools such as bash, gvim, putty, perl.
They're all in there or can be automatically installed via one of the package systems like Darwinports or Fink. I think these systems even use the debian packaging system internally.
How stable is it.
HFS+ isn't as stable as UFS, but it's a match for any of the Linux file systems I've used. The OS is good, it's not FreeBSD 4.11-class good, but what is?
How much Free software is available?
There's some Linux-specific packages that are supposed to have problems or don't have ports, but none of them are terribly portable to traditional UNIX or FreeBSD. Certainly anything that can run under Cygwin should be fine!
How solid is the workmanship.
Physically good, but it ain't no Thinkpad. The keyboard is mediocre and the single mouse button is annoying.
The Mighty Mouse is an appalling design. It has no actual buttons... the whole body rocks, and it's got pressure sensors on the sides and a capacitance sensor on the top, plus a teeny trackball.
1. It doesn't actually detect right-click. It detects "click with no finger on the left side".
2. The side buttons mean you can't pick the mouse up and move it during a long drag operation.
3. The "middle button versus wheel" problem, where you want to middle-click on something and you scroll, is ten times as bad with the tiny sensitive ball.
I have a Macbook Pro. In actual use the double-tap is finicky and tortuous and I forked out for Sidetrack which lets me tap in the corner to get a right-click... and then bought a compact USB mouse that fits in the space beside the trackpad.
64 bit is SO overrated.
The main reason AMD64 was so good is that AMD managed to build a faster and more efficient variant of the old x86 instruction set and *sell it* by pushing "64 bit". Intel doesn't seem to have actually taken advantage of the larger register file in their 64-bit clones.
Unless you're on an Opteron or Athlon, you're likely to lose performance going to 64 bit (yes, that's true for the Power PC too). If you're one of the 1% who really do need it, you already know the answer to your question.
Except you CAN access the hidden directory without any tools, you CAN copy the songs off the iPod, you CAN drag them back into iTunes or ANY other player that reads ID3 tags, and you CAN use them again on any system.
._xxx resource/finder-info files.
You're looking at it the wrong way around.
The problem I'm talking about is not that you can't pull the music off the iPod, the problem is that you can't go the other way. You can't put music on the iPod without iTunes or special tools.
If the iPod created it's own database, it means it would have to trawl through it's entire HDD to rebuild the database every time a file gets added.
It would only have to read the most recently changed files in the music folder.
At 70MHz.
70 MHz is pretty damn fast. We used to run multiuser systems with gigabytes of data on 286/12s. Since all it needs to do to locate the updated files is read file names... and do it *while it's plugged in*... the 'trawling through the file system' problem isn't a big deal.
The filenames DO matter if the files are Japanese, have spaces, or any other number of weirdness in them that a FAT32 FS cannot handle.
FAT32 actually can handle a lot of the weirdness you're talking about, and both Apple and Microsoft have ways to hide the stuff it can't (Apple certainly does, and you couldn't run Windows NT on FAT32 if Microsoft couldn't)... and how it handles it or how the file names are modified isn't something the iPod needs to care about: it uses ID3 tags, not file names. The user only even sees them *if* they're not using iTunes *and* they go and pull the files out *and* they put the files in on a Mac and pulled them out on a Windows box which doesn't know to look at the
The folder names do matter. The iPod guarantees that every song is no more than 3 folders deep and that no more than 100 songs exist in each folder. This actually does speed up file access due to the way file systems are designed.
The start of each file's extent or the equivalent structures in HFS can be cached by the iPod.
The folder is hidden to prevent a user from accidentally messing up the control structure needed to ensure performance and battery life.
It's not as necessary as you seem to think. In fact if the iPod is really going *through* the file system for every song every time it's less efficient than it should be.
2-button mice on laptops are just annoying. I guess you haven't used OS X much -- the right click is not all that useful, and control-click is EASIER than finding the second mouse button on a laptop, where you have to move your hand to find it anyway.
I've been using OS X for years now, since I used XPostFacto to install Jaguar on my Powermac 7600 with a Sonnet G3/400 upgrade card. I've been using it exclusively for months. Control-click is not a complete alternative to right-click, by any means.
1. It means that you're using a different command at your desktop keyboard than on your laptop.
2. There are quite a few programs where control-click isn't the same as right-click. Sorry, while Apple has done a better job of making everyone hew to the user interface guidelines... they've not managed 100%.
3. Learning where the second button is on a Thinkpad is actually easier than learning where the control key on the Macbook keyboard is (hint, Fn-click doesn't have the same effect as right-click in ANY application).
My first Mac was a model M0001, the original 128K (not M) Macintosh. Not Macintosh this or Macintosh that, just Macintosh.
And the single button mouse bugged me back then. Don't tell me that was because I was used to a multiple button mouse on MS-DOS!
It's not "the Apple way", versus the "Microsoft Way", or else Apple wouldn't be going to all this trouble to let you perform all those essential operations that require a second mouse button with tricks like double-tapping or only pressing on the right side of the mouse.
It's not the OP nor I who have their head on the sand here. It's Apple.
#1 - If that was all it was, the database could have a name like "iPod Music Library", in a visible "Music" folder, that you could copy files into from any application, and it could index the files as they were added. This might be minutely less efficient, but a slightly larger seek every three to five minutes is negligible compared to the rest of the power budget... and it'd only be a factor if you never played the music by album and never shuffled it.
:)
The points:
* The iPod can create the database and keep it in a file on the disk.
* The file names don't matter, and the directory they're in doesn't matter, if their metadata is stored in the database.
* The iPod can cache the locations of the files, it doesn't need to read the directory, because it knows reliably when the file system has been modified.
* The files don't need to be hidden.
All the music on the iPod is hidden off in an invisible directory, with all the song file names replaced with a database ID. The only reason for this is to prevent you from reading your music back from your iPod, to prevent you from using your iPod with anything but iTunes, and to basically lock you in.
#3 I mean without looking at the iPod.
You're driving, it's night, and a song you forgot you put in there is gravel in your ears. Skip to the next track without glancing down. This kind of situation comes up a lot for me, because I like a good random playlist but there's always songs that are a bit too energetic for when you're concentrating on something...
The iPod is styled like a PDA, which looks nice, but you don't need to whack a button on your PDA while you're driving or otherwise distracted. PDA phones that use touch-sensitive controls have the same problem... you can't dial or control them by feel. That's why I'm not using a T-mobile Pocket PC any more.
#1 - drag files to you iPod from Finder or Windows Explorer, or use a command line to copy them there, even putting them in the magic invisible directory.
Now make it play them without running any magic database tweaking application.
It makes an OK storage device, but that ability has nothing to do with its use as a music player.
#2 - you can't carry tape and CD players in most pockets, so you don't have to fiddle with the hold switch. I balked at adding my iPod to my belt, I'd look like Batman if I added anything more.
#3 - I bought an iPod Mini and I tried to control that beggar by feel, and threw it up for the shuffle which, thank god, doesn't have the damned twitch-wheel.
But then I'd had a couple of non-iPod flash music players before then. None of which needed locking but didn't try and jam a dozen operations into five buttons and a scroller.