I fear for the parent topic if I reply to this, but what the hell, everyone seems to agree it was not that newsworthy (you know you're in trouble when the title of the article begins with "Another") and this will turn into a flamewar anyway;)
As someone who has used and maintained Macs and Wintel boxes since Windows 3.1, and *nix boxes since 98, I can genuinely say that there is a lot to the anti-MS argument besides their monopoly power abuses. I do not hold that against them as much as the average/.er either; I have Office v.X and IE for X on my system (although I tend to use other apps instead of them most of the time).
Now your argument seems to be that MS's problems are gone. First, stability is improving, but it is still playing catch-up with the other OSes. A complaint that is still valid in Win 2000 and beyond, however, is that Windows is much more prone to having problems for seemingly random reasons, as opposed to other OSes where I may still have complicated problems, but at least i will find a reason for them. Anyone else know what I am talking about?
Secondly, you argue that bloatware is no longer a problem in Redmond. How did you come to this conclusion? I see no trend towards more compact software in their latest products. As MS said, it is very hard to take features out, and as most of us know it is hard to consolidate and reengineer with such large development teams.
And the monopoly power does have an effect on the product they make; it inspires it to be mediocre and overpriced. Consider Office v.X vs AppleWorks (I know most of you son't have direct experience with both, but it's a good example). Yes, Office does a little more, but I would say 95% of the features are in AppleWorks, and AppleWorks is a beautiful example of how not to overbloat a program and is therefore more efficent for me to do most of my work in. Why is this? MS made some progress in Office 2001, then got complacent because they know they need only do a mediocre job. Same with IE for Mac, back in version 4.0 chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki himself endorsed it for freeing us from the weak Mac version of Netscape, and the development has slowed to a crawl and resulted in a mediocre product that has been surpassed by OmniWeb. Now consider that AppleWorks is $99 and Office is $499 (full version prices for both).
Anyways, I think the quote in my signiture sums it up best; who would know better than the man who figured out how a computer should be designed to work with people in the first place. Consider how many good products have buckled under the competitive pressure of mediocre MS software, and hopefully now you understand why so many people want to buy an XBox and turn it into a cheap Linux system just to make MS lose money:)
Unfortunately, Bungie doesn't sound overly optimistic about getting a PC version out the door soon, although they committed themselves to making it, their current reassuring comment about the status of getting Win32/Mac version out the door is, "We honestly haven't had the time to plan the Mac/PC versions yet."
Of course how much of this is technical and how much is MS pressure to lay off on other versions of this "Only for XBox" title is yet to be seen. And even if it is in DirectX 8, there will be a chunk of work getting it to OpenGL for the Mac version, although they could just outsource it to The Omni Group like everyone else:)
"Fast enough" can be an issue for someone running a word processor and internet programs, but in graphics, it is very easy to require exponentially more processing power by increasing the level of detail, and lets face it, games have a long way to go in the level of detail area. For an example of how much power you need to do detailed 3D, look at Pixar's rendering farm. They have combined processing power of 1.5THz, 8TB of RAM, and 27TB of disk space, and it still takes them hours to render one frame.
I have gotten well over 400' from an AirPort base station outdoors, and I get about 300' indoors, depending on how sturdy the building is. And that's with a product w/o a big external antenna. Of course TiBooks/iBooks tend to have better internal antennas than most products, that could have a lot to do with it. To compensate, you can always use a bigger antenna; people have gotten over 900' using an external antenna with an AirPort base station!
The 5Ghz band does travel much more poorly than 802.11b/g in practice, but as you pointed out there is less interference, which could be beneficial if we ever start to get many hundreds or thousands of wireless users in a building. Many companies are compensating for the 5Ghz range problem by using big gain antennas like the ones that get 802.11b/g 900', which give 802.11a about 300'.
No, they operate on different frequencies, and 802.11g packets are specifically designed to begin the same as 802.11b packets to ensure backwards compatibility. For this reason, many people find 802.11a to be a silly gap-filling solution for fast wireless, especially considering its range.
802.11a has very short range, which is why Apple did not implement it in its new AirPort products, but chose to wait out for 802.11g, which will offer the same range and backwards-compatibility. As was mentioned, the products probably won't be available until mid-2002.
From an ITWorld article:
"The range supported from access point to client in an 11M-bit/sec network is about 300 feet. The shorter, wider radio waves in a 5GHz 802.11a LAN, while offering more capacity, transmit only about 90 feet."
Most of your points have nothing to do with OSS, or are weak. Apple Threatens Open Source Theme Project I agree was bad, but in Apple moves to again to squash look-alikes. Apple threatened a commercial Windows company that hosted a theme that copied Aqua graphics, and I support that. Themes removed at Apples behest., same deal with copied themes hosted on another site. I can understand contention when we start to talk about themes inspired by Aqua, but with complete ripoffs like this I think Apple should take action.
Apple Advertises '1-click' licensing. goes more toward proving amazon.com suckered them than showing evil on their part, and on Apple sues to stop leaks. I emphatically support their action, although you probably didn't get the complete story unless you read some real news on it. Apple tracked down and stopped a leak in their R&D division. He was trying to be harmless, releasing roadmaps and product details to Mac rumor sites, but his actions certainly gave Apple a huge disadvantage and lost them money. All they did was get him to agree to stop, even though they certainly could have won monetary damages. How can you oppose that?
"...a lot of us contribute to Apple. Hint. Stop posting Apple press releases on slashdot.:)" Oh yes, Apple would be davasted if/. stopped doing mostly misinformed and negative reports on their products. "Think different. Indeed!" Interesting since half your complaints had to do with people "Thinking Same." "Apple couldn't build their own OS so they use choose *BSD to gain market share." Apple can't make their own OS, eh? Actually they scrapped years of work to go with the BSD core, and they managed to put an interface on it better by orders of magnitude than anything yet available for an OSS OS, not to bash OSS OSs of course, just saying UI and setup is their big weak point in the desktop world currently. But I'm pretty sure everyone already realizes that "Apple couldn't build their own OS" was a troll.
The patent statement was last updated in July, and in October Apple made a public statement that they would no longer support any patent agreement for web standards except royalty-free. Does anyone else see problems in the reporting here?
Who honestly believes Apple would try to milk this almost certainly invalid patent? What do they gain by going after PNG? I think everyone will agree that web standards help Apple, and they are not going to do something against their best interest.
And what is up with/. posting stories about months-old facts with no new developments anyways? I think it is good for/. to bring this issue up and get Apple to clarify their position, but listen to the report: "APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing." They make it sound like it just happened! And while I'm complaining, why is "Apple" in all caps;)
but we have a pretty clean balance of elements on Earth
You mean molecules, you will have the same atoms that you started out with. And I wouldn't worry about everyone in the world using fuel cells; 2 billion people still use fuelwood as their primary source of energy. If you're worried about running out of things, try commercially extractable oil, which is one of the reasons people have to start looking at fuel cells for larger portable applications currently powered by oil products like cars. If you're looking at the long term effect of converting some of our atoms into water, you obviously don't understand the severity of current environmental problems or the fact that your current laptop probably runs off of coal.
Re:Okay, this is just sad...
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 1
The point is that this is a console; every machine is the same and developers can code knowing exactly how the machine will react, errors will be very reproducible, and therefore consumers have an expectation that they will never experience an error or crash with thier console, and rightly so. Remember the hoopla over the crash-happy first version of Turok 2? And I would hardly call the game not working a "simple error message." Now, the real reason this is silly is because you should expect crashes in demos of unfinished products, although they are quire embarrassing, but if these problems persist he has a point.
Yes, the old one seemed rather pricey compared to some of the generic alternatives, but now that it is a 50 user router, it's quite a deal. Apple's implementation of wireless networking is great too. I camped out in front of the Aspen Grove Apple store on Saturday and it was great having their broadband automatically show up over everyone's 'Book in the parking lot:)
But it is cheaper to buy a Gamecube and a DVD player than an XBox, so I don't see your point. I have no real interest in buying any console, however, and would certainly not pay the price of an XBox when I already have a much more capable machine in my desktop. I guarantee that the computer version of Halo will be much more fulfilling due to the fan support and add-ons you get with a computer game.
Microsoft was founded in/around *1975* at a time when nobody thought there was a market for PC software.
Is it just me or was Visicalc the killer app that drove mass adoption of consumer PCs? Thank them for the use of computers in the office and in homes, along with games and the human friendly hardware ideas implemented by Woz. And after that the desktop publishing revolution drove creative professionals to adopt computers, thank Adobe. You can argue that MS software creates standardization and makes PCs cheaper, but that is a very weak argument because of how the ridiculous prices they can set for their software through their monopoly powers (don't argue that point, it has been proven in court) inflates the price of PCs. It seems to me that YOUR computer history starts in the 80s, when MS was a real force and not yet another developer.
I am not a MS basher, I use Office 10 and it is a good product. I don't conisder it innovative or great however, and it didn't drive my computer purchase; programs from companies that innovate, not standardize, did that.
"Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines,"
So wat he's saying is that the mass adoption of their inflexible software has driven people to create open products that will meet their needs, or am I misinterpreting him ?;)
It was definitely a fake Apple ad, but I can't tell if it was an actual product or some ridiculously shaped computer they made up, as it was only on for part of a second. I want my DVD now!
Also, did you notice the "Think Funny" banner in the background in the same scene?
G4 owners will be shocked at a system that uses 3 fans and gets up to 69C! Plenty of posts from happy owners of cubes here, and I can't hear the noise from the fan in my tower over my roommate's HP across the room. Even after running at at 100% load with distributed.net or somesuch for days, I can't get it above 38C, and it idles at 23C.
This news was first broken in an article at theforce.net on information from someone who was at Pixar's cast screening of Monster's, Inc., where Jobs announced that the trailer would be showing with the film and was included with the copy they watched at the screening. The article even has a link to an MP3 file of Jobs making the announcement. At first, this was disputed by people citing internet trailer listings, but has now been confirmed by today's official Lucasfilm announcement.
Working for Pixar and seeing the trailer first... how luckey can you get!
I am posting this at top level since so many people seem to have read the false reports about the iPod having a copyright protection scheme. The Times claims to have gotten this comment from Jobs himself but I suspect that they either do not understand the synchronization scheme or did not understand Jobs, or possibly Jobs just misspoke/exaggerated. In any event, I will trust the official documentation.
When you plug an iPod into a Mac it brings up iTunes and gives you three options of how to transfer files. The first two give you the option to update the iPod to mirror all the music on your Mac or just certain playlists and replace all other music. You should select one of these options when connecting the iPod to your primary Mac.
When you plug the iPod into a seconday/freind's Mac that you want to transfer files onto, you should select the "Manual Mode" where you can drag and drop files between the iPod and the computer.
There are also some myths going around that you have to put the files on in FireWire mode and they won't be playable, or that you must change the extensions and archive them, or that the iPod encrypts/modifies the files so you cannot both play and transfer them. These are, indeed, myths.
Here is the exact wording from the FAQ (my emphasis):
Q. How do I transfer music between iTunes and iPod? A. iPod offers three ways to transfer music from your iTunes 2 music library. You can select one of the following update modes from the iPod Preferences menu in iTunes: - Update all music automatically. This is the default mode, in which iTunes copies your entire music library, including playlists, to iPod when you connect it to your Mac and deletes songson iPod that are not listed in iTunes. If your iTunes library exceeds the iPod storage capacity, it prompts you to select a different update method. - Update selected playlists. With this option, iTunes automatically copies selected playlists to iPod whenever you connect to your Mac, and the songs on iPod that are not in the selected iTunes playlists are deleted. - Update manually. You can also choose to transfer music to iPod manually. This enables you to drag and drop songs and playlists between iTunes and iPod, transferring music from one place to the other.
And later in the FAQ:
To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
And of course the capacity of the iPod is 5GB not 10GB (as the slashback said) and it uses a 1.8" drive not a standard laptop drive (as many posters have assumed; the whole device is smaller than a laptop drive!). Both comments about the iPod in the slashback article are false. I hope this helps to stem the flood of misinformation;)
The iPod allows you to copy files you have loaded onto it to play onto another computer simply by selecting manual mode on the second computer and dragging and dropping any or all of your songs. The "copyright protection" was a fabrication created by a misinterpretation of how the synchronizing technology worked. See the iPod FAQ.
That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet
Unfortunately that also is not true and is the result of sloppy reporting by many people who did not RTFFAQ:
"To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode."
There is no copyright protection scheme on the iPod, save that automatic synchronization only works with one machine and you have to manually drag and drop songs/albums/playlists in iTunes to get them onto your second Mac. I don't think select all, drag is hard enough to consider it copyright protection, in fact I would say that it is probably easier to copy MP3s from one machine to another than with the software that comes with other MP3 palyers with a weaker UI.
This is incorrect. There is no copyright protection whatsoever on the files. What the FAQ says is that when you plug an iPod into a Mac, it only automatically updates the songs on the iPod to reflect those on the computer, not the other way around.
If you select Manual Mode you can drag files from the MP3 player to iTunes to copy them onto another computer. iTunes makes no attempt to stop you. At all. It just doesn't automatically copy everything on the MP3 player to the computer every time you plug it in like it does the other way round.
Here is what it says (my emphasis):
Q. How do I transfer music between iTunes and iPod? A. iPod offers three ways to transfer music from your iTunes 2 music library. You can select one of the following update modes from the iPod Preferences menu in iTunes: - Update all music automatically. This is the default mode, in which iTunes copies your entire music library, including playlists, to iPod when you connect it to your Mac and deletes songson iPod that are not listed in iTunes. If your iTunes library exceeds the iPod storage capacity, it prompts you to select a different update method. - Update selected playlists. With this option, iTunes automatically copies selected playlists to iPod whenever you connect to your Mac, and the songs on iPod that are not in the selected iTunes playlists are deleted. - Update manually. You can also choose to transfer music to iPod manually. This enables you to drag and drop songs and playlists between iTunes and iPod, transferring music from one place to the other.
And later in the FAQ:
To transfer music between yourcomputers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
So, to recap there is no modification of the files or any attempt to stop you from copying them, but the default configuration is intended for a single-computer use where you just want the iPod to mirror the collection on your hard disk. You do not need to put the files on using the finder or change their extension or archive them, or perform any other fabricated ritual.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who has used and maintained Macs and Wintel boxes since Windows 3.1, and *nix boxes since 98, I can genuinely say that there is a lot to the anti-MS argument besides their monopoly power abuses. I do not hold that against them as much as the average /.er either; I have Office v.X and IE for X on my system (although I tend to use other apps instead of them most of the time).
Now your argument seems to be that MS's problems are gone. First, stability is improving, but it is still playing catch-up with the other OSes. A complaint that is still valid in Win 2000 and beyond, however, is that Windows is much more prone to having problems for seemingly random reasons, as opposed to other OSes where I may still have complicated problems, but at least i will find a reason for them. Anyone else know what I am talking about?
Secondly, you argue that bloatware is no longer a problem in Redmond. How did you come to this conclusion? I see no trend towards more compact software in their latest products. As MS said, it is very hard to take features out, and as most of us know it is hard to consolidate and reengineer with such large development teams.
And the monopoly power does have an effect on the product they make; it inspires it to be mediocre and overpriced. Consider Office v.X vs AppleWorks (I know most of you son't have direct experience with both, but it's a good example). Yes, Office does a little more, but I would say 95% of the features are in AppleWorks, and AppleWorks is a beautiful example of how not to overbloat a program and is therefore more efficent for me to do most of my work in. Why is this? MS made some progress in Office 2001, then got complacent because they know they need only do a mediocre job. Same with IE for Mac, back in version 4.0 chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki himself endorsed it for freeing us from the weak Mac version of Netscape, and the development has slowed to a crawl and resulted in a mediocre product that has been surpassed by OmniWeb. Now consider that AppleWorks is $99 and Office is $499 (full version prices for both).
Anyways, I think the quote in my signiture sums it up best; who would know better than the man who figured out how a computer should be designed to work with people in the first place. Consider how many good products have buckled under the competitive pressure of mediocre MS software, and hopefully now you understand why so many people want to buy an XBox and turn it into a cheap Linux system just to make MS lose money:)
Of course how much of this is technical and how much is MS pressure to lay off on other versions of this "Only for XBox" title is yet to be seen. And even if it is in DirectX 8, there will be a chunk of work getting it to OpenGL for the Mac version, although they could just outsource it to The Omni Group like everyone else:)
"Fast enough" can be an issue for someone running a word processor and internet programs, but in graphics, it is very easy to require exponentially more processing power by increasing the level of detail, and lets face it, games have a long way to go in the level of detail area. For an example of how much power you need to do detailed 3D, look at Pixar's rendering farm. They have combined processing power of 1.5THz, 8TB of RAM, and 27TB of disk space, and it still takes them hours to render one frame.
The 5Ghz band does travel much more poorly than 802.11b/g in practice, but as you pointed out there is less interference, which could be beneficial if we ever start to get many hundreds or thousands of wireless users in a building. Many companies are compensating for the 5Ghz range problem by using big gain antennas like the ones that get 802.11b/g 900', which give 802.11a about 300'.
No, they operate on different frequencies, and 802.11g packets are specifically designed to begin the same as 802.11b packets to ensure backwards compatibility. For this reason, many people find 802.11a to be a silly gap-filling solution for fast wireless, especially considering its range.
802.11a has very short range, which is why Apple did not implement it in its new AirPort products, but chose to wait out for 802.11g, which will offer the same range and backwards-compatibility. As was mentioned, the products probably won't be available until mid-2002. From an ITWorld article: "The range supported from access point to client in an 11M-bit/sec network is about 300 feet. The shorter, wider radio waves in a 5GHz 802.11a LAN, while offering more capacity, transmit only about 90 feet."
Apple Advertises '1-click' licensing. goes more toward proving amazon.com suckered them than showing evil on their part, and on Apple sues to stop leaks. I emphatically support their action, although you probably didn't get the complete story unless you read some real news on it. Apple tracked down and stopped a leak in their R&D division. He was trying to be harmless, releasing roadmaps and product details to Mac rumor sites, but his actions certainly gave Apple a huge disadvantage and lost them money. All they did was get him to agree to stop, even though they certainly could have won monetary damages. How can you oppose that?
"...a lot of us contribute to Apple. Hint. Stop posting Apple press releases on slashdot. :)" Oh yes, Apple would be davasted if /. stopped doing mostly misinformed and negative reports on their products. "Think different. Indeed!" Interesting since half your complaints had to do with people "Thinking Same." "Apple couldn't build their own OS so they use choose *BSD to gain market share." Apple can't make their own OS, eh? Actually they scrapped years of work to go with the BSD core, and they managed to put an interface on it better by orders of magnitude than anything yet available for an OSS OS, not to bash OSS OSs of course, just saying UI and setup is their big weak point in the desktop world currently. But I'm pretty sure everyone already realizes that "Apple couldn't build their own OS" was a troll.
Who honestly believes Apple would try to milk this almost certainly invalid patent? What do they gain by going after PNG? I think everyone will agree that web standards help Apple, and they are not going to do something against their best interest.
And what is up with /. posting stories about months-old facts with no new developments anyways? I think it is good for /. to bring this issue up and get Apple to clarify their position, but listen to the report: "APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing." They make it sound like it just happened! And while I'm complaining, why is "Apple" in all caps ;)
You mean molecules, you will have the same atoms that you started out with. And I wouldn't worry about everyone in the world using fuel cells; 2 billion people still use fuelwood as their primary source of energy. If you're worried about running out of things, try commercially extractable oil, which is one of the reasons people have to start looking at fuel cells for larger portable applications currently powered by oil products like cars. If you're looking at the long term effect of converting some of our atoms into water, you obviously don't understand the severity of current environmental problems or the fact that your current laptop probably runs off of coal.
The point is that this is a console; every machine is the same and developers can code knowing exactly how the machine will react, errors will be very reproducible, and therefore consumers have an expectation that they will never experience an error or crash with thier console, and rightly so. Remember the hoopla over the crash-happy first version of Turok 2? And I would hardly call the game not working a "simple error message." Now, the real reason this is silly is because you should expect crashes in demos of unfinished products, although they are quire embarrassing, but if these problems persist he has a point.
Yes, the old one seemed rather pricey compared to some of the generic alternatives, but now that it is a 50 user router, it's quite a deal. Apple's implementation of wireless networking is great too. I camped out in front of the Aspen Grove Apple store on Saturday and it was great having their broadband automatically show up over everyone's 'Book in the parking lot :)
But it is cheaper to buy a Gamecube and a DVD player than an XBox, so I don't see your point. I have no real interest in buying any console, however, and would certainly not pay the price of an XBox when I already have a much more capable machine in my desktop. I guarantee that the computer version of Halo will be much more fulfilling due to the fan support and add-ons you get with a computer game.
Wow, you just quoted Woz! Time to break out the timeline ;)
Is it just me or was Visicalc the killer app that drove mass adoption of consumer PCs? Thank them for the use of computers in the office and in homes, along with games and the human friendly hardware ideas implemented by Woz. And after that the desktop publishing revolution drove creative professionals to adopt computers, thank Adobe. You can argue that MS software creates standardization and makes PCs cheaper, but that is a very weak argument because of how the ridiculous prices they can set for their software through their monopoly powers (don't argue that point, it has been proven in court) inflates the price of PCs. It seems to me that YOUR computer history starts in the 80s, when MS was a real force and not yet another developer.
I am not a MS basher, I use Office 10 and it is a good product. I don't conisder it innovative or great however, and it didn't drive my computer purchase; programs from companies that innovate, not standardize, did that.
So wat he's saying is that the mass adoption of their inflexible software has driven people to create open products that will meet their needs, or am I misinterpreting him ? ;)
After that he hands her a fish... I wonder if that will be in Finding Nemo. How great would it be to put in references to a movie that isn't out yet ;)
Also, did you notice the "Think Funny" banner in the background in the same scene?
G4 owners will be shocked at a system that uses 3 fans and gets up to 69C! Plenty of posts from happy owners of cubes here, and I can't hear the noise from the fan in my tower over my roommate's HP across the room. Even after running at at 100% load with distributed.net or somesuch for days, I can't get it above 38C, and it idles at 23C.
Working for Pixar and seeing the trailer first... how luckey can you get!
RTFFAQ, there is no copy protection scheme. slashback is 0 for 2 on the iPod.
When you plug an iPod into a Mac it brings up iTunes and gives you three options of how to transfer files. The first two give you the option to update the iPod to mirror all the music on your Mac or just certain playlists and replace all other music. You should select one of these options when connecting the iPod to your primary Mac.
When you plug the iPod into a seconday/freind's Mac that you want to transfer files onto, you should select the "Manual Mode" where you can drag and drop files between the iPod and the computer.
There are also some myths going around that you have to put the files on in FireWire mode and they won't be playable, or that you must change the extensions and archive them, or that the iPod encrypts/modifies the files so you cannot both play and transfer them. These are, indeed, myths.
Here is the exact wording from the FAQ (my emphasis):
Q. How do I transfer music between iTunes and iPod?
A. iPod offers three ways to transfer music from your iTunes 2 music library. You can select one of the following update modes from the iPod Preferences menu in iTunes:
- Update all music automatically. This is the default mode, in which iTunes copies your entire music library, including playlists, to iPod when you connect it to your Mac and deletes songson iPod that are not listed in iTunes. If your iTunes library exceeds the iPod storage capacity, it prompts you to select a different update method.
- Update selected playlists. With this option, iTunes automatically copies selected playlists to iPod whenever you connect to your Mac, and the songs on iPod that are not in the selected iTunes playlists are deleted.
- Update manually. You can also choose to transfer music to iPod manually. This enables you to drag and drop songs and playlists between iTunes and iPod, transferring music from one place to the other.
And later in the FAQ:
To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
And of course the capacity of the iPod is 5GB not 10GB (as the slashback said) and it uses a 1.8" drive not a standard laptop drive (as many posters have assumed; the whole device is smaller than a laptop drive!). Both comments about the iPod in the slashback article are false. I hope this helps to stem the flood of misinformation ;)
Unfortunately that also is not true and is the result of sloppy reporting by many people who did not RTFFAQ:
"To transfer music between your computers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode."
There is no copyright protection scheme on the iPod, save that automatic synchronization only works with one machine and you have to manually drag and drop songs/albums/playlists in iTunes to get them onto your second Mac. I don't think select all, drag is hard enough to consider it copyright protection, in fact I would say that it is probably easier to copy MP3s from one machine to another than with the software that comes with other MP3 palyers with a weaker UI.
If you select Manual Mode you can drag files from the MP3 player to iTunes to copy them onto another computer. iTunes makes no attempt to stop you. At all. It just doesn't automatically copy everything on the MP3 player to the computer every time you plug it in like it does the other way round.
Here is what it says (my emphasis):
Q. How do I transfer music between iTunes and iPod?
A. iPod offers three ways to transfer music from your iTunes 2 music library. You can select one of the following update modes from the iPod Preferences menu in iTunes:
- Update all music automatically. This is the default mode, in which iTunes copies your entire music library, including playlists, to iPod when you connect it to your Mac and deletes songson iPod that are not listed in iTunes. If your iTunes library exceeds the iPod storage capacity, it prompts you to select a different update method.
- Update selected playlists. With this option, iTunes automatically copies selected playlists to iPod whenever you connect to your Mac, and the songs on iPod that are not in the selected iTunes playlists are deleted.
- Update manually. You can also choose to transfer music to iPod manually. This enables you to drag and drop songs and playlists between iTunes and iPod, transferring music from one place to the other.
And later in the FAQ:
To transfer music between yourcomputers, or to add songs to iPod from both systems, you can selectively drag and drop songs, albums, or playlists between iPod and either computer using the manual update mode.
So, to recap there is no modification of the files or any attempt to stop you from copying them, but the default configuration is intended for a single-computer use where you just want the iPod to mirror the collection on your hard disk. You do not need to put the files on using the finder or change their extension or archive them, or perform any other fabricated ritual.