Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

« LocalisationsMainSick Sad World »

iTunes Non-Sharing

838 words

I just saw John Gruber's bit on him thinking people over-reacted vis-à-vis Apple's removal of iTunes' internet-wide library sharing feature. While he is certainly right that some people's reactions were inadequate, Apple's role in this isn't exactly a bright one.

To begin with, removing a feature, a cool feature, a feature that people liked will always be unpopular. Showing people that you're capable of doing something and then refusing to do it, will cause much more frustration than not doing in the first place. That's not specific to iTunes, it seems to be a general way of thinking about software: Consider the lack of spring-loaded folders, the spatial Finder or WindowShade feature in MacOS X. These were/are some of the major complaints about OS X and the main reason for people being so upset about them is that they know, love and miss those features. As far as I know, Windows has neither of these features either, but I haven't heard people complaining about that...

Secondly, Apple must have known that people will 'hack' that feature. If something is cool, people will hack it. If it's easy to do, it'll be hacked almost instantaneously. Apple has been doing software for long enough to know this. Thus, apart from Apple of course having every 'right' to do with their software what they want, it was at least very poor judgement to include the feature in the first place – as, judging from the low profile they introduced the feature with, they were aware of the 'bad' things that could be done with that feature.

Thirdly, (contrary to what John suggests in his text), I assume that disabling the the sharing libraries across the internet actually makes iTunes' guts more complex rather than easier. From an æsthetical point of view, making a program more complex to limit its capabilities seems absurd. But that's the word to describe many things that seem to make business sense.

So where do I stand in this? Obviously I disagree with Apple's decision, finding it disappointing and exactly the kind of knee-jerk reaction John observed in other people. Did I use the internet-wide sharing feature frequently? No, not really. Did I use it to copy other people's files to my hard drive? No, never bothered to download one of those 'rogue' programs.

Did I enjoy the feature? I certainly did. I had tuned into Dave's internet radio station a couple of times. And thanks to iTunes internet library sharing, Dave could let me access his library. Browsing through his music library was a nice way to get to know more about Dave and electronic music. Who knows whether I'll have the opportunity to browse Dave's 'real' CD collection?

So, yes, I am disappointed, both by losing this feature and by Apple making the unwise move to introduce it in the first place. But even more, I find the removal of the feature absurd, not only for the technical reason mentioned above, but also because it won't change anything: As far as I can tell, in order to actually copy files using iTunes' sharing feature you need some extra software anyway. So what kind of 'rogue' use do Apple think they prevent this way?

If people are prepared to run their iTunes library sharing, not protect it with a password and advertise its address to the public, while other people go all the way to look for and download an extra program to be able to store those file, doesn't it seem likely that the same people would also be happily using AppleShare, FTP or simply http to supply and copy the very same songs? Incidentally Apple provides server and client applications for each of these methods of file sharing with their operating system, with at least the first one being rather comfortable.

I.e., I think that all Apple does is make life less interesting for those of us who like peeking into other people's music libraries, while not hindering anyone who is determined to go beyond the 'personal use' barrier.

Furthermore, the genie is out of he proverbial bottle now. Apple once more showed us a new way to make the best of computers and networks. So, hopefully it won't be long until some smart kid comes up with a little proxy application that handles remote library sharing for us. And while they're at it, why not make it work without iTunes, so you can simply share files from some cheap Linux server and without being logged in? I guess there are plenty of possibilities for things to happen along these lines. And if they happen, things are bound to get out of control.

I guess more things could be said, but I feel I've written more than enough now. Always remember kids:

  1. It's not the people's fault that they copy more than they're supposed to, but the software's that can be (ab)used for that purpose.
  2. It's not the guns that kill but the people pulling the trigger.
  3. Earth is flat.

June 3, 2003, 1:52

Comments

Comment by brian: User icon

wait, so software is good, but people are bad, but guns are bad and people are good?

June 3, 2003, 3:47

Comment by paul mison: User icon

‘hopefully it won’t be long until some smart kid comes up with a little proxy application that handles remote library sharing for us. And while they’re at it, why not make it work without iTunes, so you can simply share files from some cheap Linux server and without being logged in?’

It already exists, and although it’s very much under development (and requires compilation), it works. It’s called daapd, and you can get it here: http://www.deleet.de/projekte/daap/daapd/.

Given that there are also Java (streaming, not ripping) iTunes clients (http://one2ohmygod.sourceforge.net/) (although they only use the iTunes 4.0.0 protocol), a completely non-Apple library server-client combo is definitely possible.

June 3, 2003, 9:41

Comment by ssp: User icon

Thanks for the pointer. Looks interesting.

June 3, 2003, 10:54

Add your comment

« LocalisationsMainSick Sad World »

Comments on

Photos

Categories

Me

This page

Out & About

pinboard Links

People

Ego-Linking