undertakingyou

So for Christmas my sister got a new iPod Nano. She was super excited and asked if we could put some music on it. Happy to do so, we came over to my house, where I only have Linux, and plugged the iPod in. Using amaroK she transfered a bunch of songs over, and after we ejected it we went to play some of this new music. It said that there was none. No songs, artists, albums . . . nothing. When I looked under the statistics tab on the iPod it said that most of the space on the device was used. I plugged it back in to the USB and looked at the music device with amaroK, RhythmBox, and GTKpod and all the same result. Everything was there on the device according to these programs but nothing was there to be played once the device was disconnected. In disgust we tried several things to get the iPod to rescan and rebuild the database. All ended the same, no soup for you. After borking the iPod we deleted the partition, recreated it, only to find that it wouldn’t mount be cause the ‘SuperBlock’ couldn’t be read. We gave up, went over to my moms and plugged the iPod in there. After installing iTunes we restored the iPod and went from there. What a pain in the butt, a royal pain. Another instance of DRM.

Now, DRM is more than just locking a song file that you bought. It also includes whenever you can’t use something with whatever software you wish, or in other words when you don’t have the freedom with what you bought to use it how you want. iTunes puts a lock file on the iPod, and when you try to use it with something else, such as amaroK, or GTKpod the iPod craps out. Once again, I don’t own the device, I just own the right to use it within the bounds the manufacturer has set. What a load.

I have always thought that iPods were pretty cool. But now I will never buy one, and I will encourage everyone I know to buy something that doesn’t have this issue. I have a Creative Zen and have been able to put music on it with any machine I come upon, and have never had anything corrupt or anything go wrong. It ‘just works’ and I can use it however I want with whatever software I want.