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El Reg reports
Apple has prevailed in an almost decade-long antitrust legal battle over the way its iPod gadgets handled music not obtained through iTunes.
A federal jury in Oakland, California, took just four hours to clear the iThings maker of wrongdoing--and tossed out calls for a $351[M] compensation package for eight million owners of late-2000s iPods. That figure could have been tripled if the iPhone giant had lost its fight.
Apple was accused in a class-action lawsuit of designing its software to remove music and other files from iPods that weren't purchased or ripped via iTunes--but the eight-person jury decided that mechanism was a legit feature.
[...]It was argued that Apple had deliberately set up iTunes to report iPods as damaged if they stored music that, essentially, wasn't sanctioned by Apple: if alien files were found by the software, users were told to restore their devices to factory settings, effectively wiping songs not purchased from or ripped from CD by iTunes.
Apple countered that it was only preventing iPods from being hacked or damaged by third-party data. The company said the protections were implemented to prevent people from listening to pirated music--a claim the jury upheld.
Related:
Apple Deleted Rivals' Songs from Users' iPods - Class-Action Suit
Apple's Intentional iPod Lock-in Efforts - Engineer Testifies in Court
(Score: 1) by radu on Thursday December 18 2014, @11:17AM
Maybe you're right. I only had one experience with this. My mother got an iPad as a present from someone and asked me to put some music on it. MP3s I ripped (I think with lame) from CDs. After 2-3 hours of installing, reinstalling iTunes, making libraries, synchronizing, pressing "agree" on everything it prompted and so on, the only effect on the iPad was that the sample music it came with was gone.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday December 18 2014, @01:28PM
I've only ever used iTunes on a Mac - just drop your MP3 on iTunes (or copy it to the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder) and away you go. Amazon's music downloader/player can do that automatically.
Maybe the Windows experience is not so seamless - it offers more opportunities for conflicts, plus its not exactly in Apple's interest to make their PC software as good as the Mac versions.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday December 18 2014, @02:52PM
The windows version is pretty rough. It's slow and leaves a bunch of services running 24/7. But like you said, that may be intentional. I have the feeling it's because iTunes requires a lot of infrastructure to function so they had to install a lot of system level libraries and services to get it working on windows. Linux seems to be a non-starter. You have to use an iTunes alternative.
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(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday December 18 2014, @06:29PM
The windows version is pretty rough.
That's the impression I've been forming - I think it explains a lot of the anti-iDevice sentiment. iTunes on Mac is a long way from perfect (main problem is bloat from its expansion way beyond the "tunes" thing) but its fairly good at its job.
Linux seems to be a non-starter. You have to use an iTunes alternative.
I'm not sure what combination of misconceptions would lead a Linux user to buy an iDevice. Open Source and DRM do not make good bedfellows... but its not like the iPod is the first or last hardware device to lack proper Linux support.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday December 18 2014, @06:59PM
When i bought mine there were very few mp3 players on the market. The iPod was fantastic in comparison to others. This was only a few years post-napster and mp3s were still not a common way to store music. Everyone still had cd wallets in their cars. There was a lot of 3rd party ipod support for linux. It worked great as long as you did not ever use iTunes (it would delete your music).
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(Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Thursday December 18 2014, @07:37PM
Hi, theluggage. I'm from the International Committee of Excellence in Understatements (Internet Division). I just wanted to inform you that you're now in the running for Understatement of the Year. You should be very proud of your accomplishment. As a non-voting member of the committee, I cannot personally comment on your chances of winning, but from my keyboard to your eyes, let's just say that I'm also on the nominating committee for Understatement of the Decade, and when we meet in a few years to come up with the shortlist, well, let's just say I wouldn't be shocked if your ears were burning a bit.
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]