Navio to Reverse Engineer iPod/iTunes DRM

[Tupring]

How about letting to use other MP3 players with iTunes? I'd love to use my Sony player with songs purchased from the Music Store. I love iTunes but I HATE the iPod. Oh the dillema.

Yeah, remember when iTunes came with plugins for mp3 players before the iPod existed?

 

[photomaniac]

great story!

Actually they weren't. I worked in the software indudstry then, very early to mid 90s, i.e. while Apple stumbled along with Performas and about 60 versions of their supposed PowerMacs (why did we need a 6320, 6330, 6332, ugh, damn Amelio) and, at the time, no where did anyone consider Microsoft a monopoly, not legally, not even inside the tech industry scuttlebutt.

Mind you these were the days before the internet so Microsuck hadn't been doing that whole "oh, uhhh, Explorer is PART of Windows, yeah that's it" in fact, they weren't even doing they mafia tactics of "either you put Windows on your machine or we'll sink you!" Hell, their lawyers were even helping them buy up all the competition (with better product) to shut them down. This was even before over in Redmond (I lived in Seattle at the time) their engineers were saying, of Windows 95 mind you, "it's not done until Lotus (Notes) won't run!" As in, they were almost going at it with morals, optimism, free market, human sense, not the Satanic, "screw you," lackluster quality with bloated OS and really nothing of value shoveled on the masses like chum that either people have come to know and hate or at least tolerate for reasons not even a shrink could deduce.

Interesting to add there was Apple's OS 7, Microsoft's (godawful) 3.1, and, at the time, people were convinced someone else would step up, maybe IBM's (vastely better than M$'s 3.1) OS2 or Sun's SGI or even another player. Microsoft had 82% of the market but to everyone... the press, the market, the lawyers, the industry, it was considered still anyone's game. Then Microsuck, really under the direct guidance of Gates, figured out how to use unfair licensing tactics, legal mafia-like hitmen, ways of insuring people would be locked into their stuff without choice, and some of the biggest marketing hype campaigns to sway the not-so-smart-about-computers at the time public (to their credit, Apple has/is failed miserably about getting the word out on their vastly superior products)... and that was also (mid 90s) about the time Microsuck stopped actually innovating, or rather, once the slippery slope of people mindlessly buying their atrociously bad product, why really make it any better? When I look at XP on the machines it's soul is no different than Windoze95, can't say the same thing about OS X to Classic!

And that kids is my Thanksgiving story, pass the weird can shaped cranberry whatsits.

very well said!.... and what a great ending

 

[Tupring]

...what you say would mean i'm still bound by american traffic laws when i leave the US. that is particularly funny when you think about driving in UK

I couldn't stop laughing at that one.

 

[EricNau]

I look at XP on the machines it's soul is no different than Windoze95, can't say the same thing about OS X to Classic!

That is so true. Well said.

 

[Tupring]

No, you're taking what I'm saying too far. Obviously not ALL laws are applicable across state boundaries. In the case of laws that are specific to a country or region like traffic laws (funny analogy by the way ), then the laws do not traverse borders...

The DMCA is a law that applies to the country of region of the United States, so according to you, it does not traverse borders...

 

[shamino]

... in fact, they weren't even doing they mafia tactics of "either you put Windows on your machine or we'll sink you!"

You forget. At the time (before the first DoJ suit), they were using per-processor licensing. PC makers would pay for their Windows licenses based on the number of computers sold, regardless of whether those computers were purchased with DOS (and later Windows) on them. Which led to customer complaints when people got no discount for ordering systems without DOS.

... This was even before over in Redmond (I lived in Seattle at the time) their engineers were saying, of Windows 95 mind you, "it's not done until Lotus (Notes) won't run!"

The "(Notes)" is an incorrect insertion. The phrase "It's not done until Lotus won't run" was actually a reference to 1-2-3, which seemed to break with each and every release of MS-DOS.

Interesting to add there was Apple's OS 7, Microsoft's (godawful) 3.1, and, at the time, people were convinced someone else would step up, maybe IBM's (vastely better than M$'s 3.1) OS2 or Sun's SGI or even another player. Microsoft had 82% of the market but to everyone... the press, the market, the lawyers, the industry, it was considered still anyone's game. Then Microsuck, really under the direct guidance of Gates, figured out how to use unfair licensing tactics, legal mafia-like hitmen, ways of insuring people would be locked into their stuff without choice, and some of the biggest marketing hype campaigns to sway the not-so-smart-about-computers at the time public ...

Yep. And OS/2 was their first (and probably biggest) victim. Technologically superior to its competition, and just as compatible with legacy (meaning DOS/Win16) applications as MS's contemporary next-gen products. Nevertheless, MS managed to kill it.

Threatening magazines with withdrawal of huge ad campaigns was one of their biggest tactics. One columnist (William Zachman) was even forced to leave his job with Ziff-Davis because he wouldn't stop writing pro-OS/2 columns.

I also remember that IBM was forced to pay 50% more than everybody else for pre-load Win95 licenses, because they wouldn't bundle MS Office with new systems (choosing instead to bundle Lotus SmartSuite.) When Win98 came out, MS didn't give IBM the distribution media until the day of the software's release, so IBM couldn't start shipping it to customers on the same day all the competition did.

When I look at XP on the machines it's soul is no different than Windoze95, can't say the same thing about OS X to Classic!

I'm not going to mention the concept of a software product's "soul", because I don't know what you mean by it, but WinXP is radically different from Win95.

Win95/98/Me are all based on an MS-DOS undercarriage. They are, in a very real sense, the 32-bit successor to Windows 3.1.

WinXP, on the other hand, is based on the Windows NT core (just like Win2K is). It carries the legacy of all prior versions of WinNT, but has none of the MS-DOS baggage. (FWIW, WinXP is based on the same NT5 kernel that Win2K is based on.)

The similarities between the Win95/98/Me series and the NT/2K/XP series is purely superficial.