Here’s an interesting one for any iPod owners out there, about how Apple have re-engineered iTunes to break a piece of third party software called iPod Download, that apparently made it easier to copy music off your iPod.
I don’t know a lot about iTunes and how it works with iPods (iPod support for Linux is just non-existant, so I can’t see buying one myself), but moves like this have to either be motivated by Apple’s desire to not share their ‘toys’ with other software developers, or the music industry’s desire to limit what you can do with music that you’ve legitimately bought.
Either way, it’s bad news for anyone who doesn’t want to be restricted with what they do with their music.
Gah! How am I and other devout Apple users meant to keep on defending the company if they do STUPID things like this? Well, thankfully there is a guide detailing how to fix what Apple broke.
Easy to defend them. Apple never pretend that they support copying music off an iPod – it’s a highly verboten feature. So what if they change their proprietary application to stop you directly doing this within iTunes?
Given the alternative is that they actually engineer the iPod so you can’t do this (rather than just shove everything in a hidden directory that it is trivially easy to extract the tracks from if you know how), I know which of the two I’d prefer they do. Moaning about Apple because they have to pay lipservice to the RIAA is rather missing the point.
It’s not that they ‘broke’ iTunes and iPod support, they simply re-implimented the copy protection that they probably have to build in as some legal clause to stop people pirating music.
Don’t blame them, blame the RIAA
I admit the RIAA may be Evil™, but nonetheless if you’re buying a peice of music off Apple (or any of the alternative MS-lock-in companies), then you probably expect to be entitled to certain basic rights, such as being able to carry that music physically across to another computer, should you wish to.
Whether or not it’s Apple’s fault, if you’re rewarding a specific company by buying stuff from them, you’d expect them to possibly stick up for your rights as a consumer? They may be bowing to pressures from other more powerful bodies, but even so, I’m afraid they ain’t gonna get much sympathy from me…