5 ms·

What the heck does he want? Should Apple make iTunes work for all 50 thousand different android devices too?

edent 14y ago
No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. You could store your music on your Xbox and push it to your iPhone - or in iTunes and push it to your Windows Phone. Imagine if your BlackBerry could only send emails to other BlackBerry devices. We wouldn't accept that (although BBM is trying to push us that way) - so why should we accept it with other services?
- w0utert 14y ago
  >> No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. If there were one published specification for storing a music library, before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it, and some software vendor will create and sell some piece of software that extends the format to provide it. It's just supply and demand. I really can't wrap my head around this, are you really asking for generic, one-size-fits-all file formats, applications and hardware for everything, or are you just being naive?
  - edent 14y ago
    I'm probably just being naive :-) Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end.
    - w0utert 14y ago
      >> Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Bad example. E-mail is basically just formatted text with binary attachments to be interpreted by the e-mail client. Still, almost every e-mail client uses some internal database-like format to store your inbox and augment it with metadata to make it easily searchable and whatever. E-mail clients are to e-mail what music players like iTunes are to music files. You can't just pick up your Thunderbird e-mail database and drop it somewhere for Outlook to use, just like you can't pick up your iTunes library and drop it into Windows Media Player or whatever other music player. With some effort you can often import/export e-mail databases between clients, but that's no different from importing/exporting an iTunes library. >> Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. One of the most-heard complaints about the HTML standard is that it moves so freaking slow, and is still full of cruft and inconveniences from 20 years ago. HTML isn't actually that great at all, it's just the least worst option we have if you want cross-platform markup with all the features HTML offers today. That's not to say I propose a proprietary alternative to HTML by the way, just that HTML is hardly the prime example of a model you'd want to apply to every other piece of software. >> Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end. First of all that's not entirely true, because USB only defines a transport layer, not how the data going over the wire should be interpreted. It isn't all that different from something like RS-232 serial communication, just a lot more advanced. In itself there's nothing you can do with USB alone, you still need a protocol, which is usually implemented by a driver. Apart from generic hardware such as mass storage devices, almost any USB device that implements any kind of specialized hardware functions needs a hardware-specific driver, and more often than not, thesre are proprietary. Don't confuse 'open' with 'generic' by the way, because even if some piece of hardware uses an 'open' protocol, it's still not 'generic' as you can't do anything with it without a (very specific) driver. Second, USB is not really the epitome of 'openness' either, as you have to pay royalties to sell hardware that uses the USB standard and carries the USB logo. Any more examples? ;-)
      - icebraining 14y ago
        Your Thunderbird email store is just a bunch of mbox files, which is a standardized (RFC 4155) and rather well supported file format. Outlook can't read it, of course, but that's because Outlook is shitty. You can certainly pick up your Thunderbird email store and drop it on (Al)pine, Mutt, Kmail, Atmail, Claws, Cone, Gnus, Opera Mail and others.
  - bartl 14y ago
    >before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it Eh, what? Features don't matter. It's just the data that should be portable. If one platform supports "dynamic playlists" (which is just the equivalent of a view in SQL) and another platform doesn't, that might be a bit inconvenient, but it really doesn't matter. At least your data can be converted.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Proposed: Everyone specifies their data model. No need to standardize.
freehunter 14y ago
Apple doesn't need to do anything to make iTunes work with other devices. In fact, they go out of their way to make sure it doesn't. Palm figured out how to make it work, and Apple figured out how to break it.
- mitchty 14y ago
  Palm made it work? Isn't this the same hack where they advertised themselves as an Apple device completely breaking the USB standard? They made it work by breaking their own agreements to be USB certified.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    True. But that was Palm's decision. Apple was under no obligation to make any changes to prevent Palm's questionable decision.
    - flyinRyan 14y ago
      Nor were they under any obligation to support it in any way.
      - freehunter 14y ago
        That's beside the point.
        flyinRyan 14y ago
        It's not beside the point. Do you know for a fact that Apple went out of their way to break functionality? Perhaps they had some reason for making the breaking changes and since they were under no obligation to support this 3rd party hack, why not do it?
        freehunter 14y ago
        The fact that Apple complained to the USB-IF about Palm's constant attempts to make the Pre sync with iTunes and that every update to iTunes after that broke the compatibility is enough to have a reasonable belief that Apple deliberately broke this functionality. Apple had no obligation to let Palm sync with their software. Palm had no right to sync with their software. But Apple released three updates in a row that each conveniently broke compatibility with Palm's hardware. That's the extent of what I am saying. I'm not arguing that Apple had to support it, but rather that they explicitly disallow it, and will fight to keep it disallowed. Arguing that this was mere coincidence sounds like a violation of Occam's Razor. Possible, but unlikely.

edent 14y ago

No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. You could store your music on your Xbox and push it to your iPhone - or in iTunes and push it to your Windows Phone. Imagine if your BlackBerry could only send emails to other BlackBerry devices. We wouldn't accept that (although BBM is trying to push us that way) - so why should we accept it with other services?

w0utert 14y ago
>> No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. If there were one published specification for storing a music library, before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it, and some software vendor will create and sell some piece of software that extends the format to provide it. It's just supply and demand. I really can't wrap my head around this, are you really asking for generic, one-size-fits-all file formats, applications and hardware for everything, or are you just being naive?
- edent 14y ago
  I'm probably just being naive :-) Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end.
  - w0utert 14y ago
    >> Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Bad example. E-mail is basically just formatted text with binary attachments to be interpreted by the e-mail client. Still, almost every e-mail client uses some internal database-like format to store your inbox and augment it with metadata to make it easily searchable and whatever. E-mail clients are to e-mail what music players like iTunes are to music files. You can't just pick up your Thunderbird e-mail database and drop it somewhere for Outlook to use, just like you can't pick up your iTunes library and drop it into Windows Media Player or whatever other music player. With some effort you can often import/export e-mail databases between clients, but that's no different from importing/exporting an iTunes library. >> Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. One of the most-heard complaints about the HTML standard is that it moves so freaking slow, and is still full of cruft and inconveniences from 20 years ago. HTML isn't actually that great at all, it's just the least worst option we have if you want cross-platform markup with all the features HTML offers today. That's not to say I propose a proprietary alternative to HTML by the way, just that HTML is hardly the prime example of a model you'd want to apply to every other piece of software. >> Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end. First of all that's not entirely true, because USB only defines a transport layer, not how the data going over the wire should be interpreted. It isn't all that different from something like RS-232 serial communication, just a lot more advanced. In itself there's nothing you can do with USB alone, you still need a protocol, which is usually implemented by a driver. Apart from generic hardware such as mass storage devices, almost any USB device that implements any kind of specialized hardware functions needs a hardware-specific driver, and more often than not, thesre are proprietary. Don't confuse 'open' with 'generic' by the way, because even if some piece of hardware uses an 'open' protocol, it's still not 'generic' as you can't do anything with it without a (very specific) driver. Second, USB is not really the epitome of 'openness' either, as you have to pay royalties to sell hardware that uses the USB standard and carries the USB logo. Any more examples? ;-)
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Your Thunderbird email store is just a bunch of mbox files, which is a standardized (RFC 4155) and rather well supported file format. Outlook can't read it, of course, but that's because Outlook is shitty. You can certainly pick up your Thunderbird email store and drop it on (Al)pine, Mutt, Kmail, Atmail, Claws, Cone, Gnus, Opera Mail and others.
- bartl 14y ago
  >before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it Eh, what? Features don't matter. It's just the data that should be portable. If one platform supports "dynamic playlists" (which is just the equivalent of a view in SQL) and another platform doesn't, that might be a bit inconvenient, but it really doesn't matter. At least your data can be converted.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Proposed: Everyone specifies their data model. No need to standardize.

freehunter 14y ago

Apple doesn't need to do anything to make iTunes work with other devices. In fact, they go out of their way to make sure it doesn't. Palm figured out how to make it work, and Apple figured out how to break it.

mitchty 14y ago
Palm made it work? Isn't this the same hack where they advertised themselves as an Apple device completely breaking the USB standard? They made it work by breaking their own agreements to be USB certified.
- freehunter 14y ago
  True. But that was Palm's decision. Apple was under no obligation to make any changes to prevent Palm's questionable decision.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    Nor were they under any obligation to support it in any way.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      That's beside the point.
      - flyinRyan 14y ago
        It's not beside the point. Do you know for a fact that Apple went out of their way to break functionality? Perhaps they had some reason for making the breaking changes and since they were under no obligation to support this 3rd party hack, why not do it?
        freehunter 14y ago
        The fact that Apple complained to the USB-IF about Palm's constant attempts to make the Pre sync with iTunes and that every update to iTunes after that broke the compatibility is enough to have a reasonable belief that Apple deliberately broke this functionality. Apple had no obligation to let Palm sync with their software. Palm had no right to sync with their software. But Apple released three updates in a row that each conveniently broke compatibility with Palm's hardware. That's the extent of what I am saying. I'm not arguing that Apple had to support it, but rather that they explicitly disallow it, and will fight to keep it disallowed. Arguing that this was mere coincidence sounds like a violation of Occam's Razor. Possible, but unlikely.