

Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format - nickb
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6334

======
jamess
Back in the day, I was heavily involved in reverse engineering iTunes to
figure out the "authentication" hash sent with DAAP requests. I very quickly
got sick of chasing my tail every time Apple unilaterally decided to change
their protocols for the sole reason to disable third party interoperation,
incidentally breaking old versions of their own software just for the hell of
it.

I'm sick of Apple and all their works. If you're a software engineer, and you
value open standards and competition, you should never, ever buy an Apple
product. Their anti-competitive actions, from breaking their software through
misusing legal instruments right up to controlling which apps one can and
cannot write for the iPhone, reveal a fundamental distaste for standards, co-
operation and even the law.

Every moment spent trying to interoperate with Apple is a moment wasted. For
the free software community, most of us have stopped chasing our tail and gone
to open standards such as UPnP media streaming. Apple's culture is that of the
70s, the dark ages of personal computing. I can only hope that people inside
their organisation like Stuart Cheshire can make some sort of operational
change.

~~~
kqr2
Actually, the Apple II/II+ introduced in the late 1970s was quite open and a
period of innovation for home computing. Apple even included the schematics as
well as source code listing for their basic interpreter.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_2>

~~~
rbanffy
At that time, you could look at the motherboard and figure out (or follow the
traces on both sides) how everything worked.

I kind of did that with my first Apple II.

------
Sam_Odio
This is an interesting coincidence. A site I run recently became involved in a
tiff with Apple over reverse engineering their new iTunesDB file (which was
updated Sept 2007).

Backstory:
[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/20/201246&f...](http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/20/201246&from=rss)
[http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/23/017227&f...](http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/23/017227&from=rss)
[http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/apple-confuses-
speech-d...](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/apple-confuses-speech-dmca-
violation) [http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2008/11/in-defense-of-
ipodhash.p...](http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2008/11/in-defense-of-ipodhash.php)

~~~
cfabbro
Did you wind up contacting the EFF and that blog entry is how they chose to
respond, or does someone at the EFF read slashdot or HN? ;)

------
kuniklo
Apple makes some great stuff but I've been feeling more and more lately that
I'd rather spend my time and money supporting open standards.

------
crabapple
please stop buying apple garbage. they are evil. there's nothing cool about
crass consumption

~~~
pg
If you have a version of this point that depends on reasoning rather than
adjectives, you should probably use that instead.

~~~
crabapple
steve jobs is a psycho-grade control freak whose "singular vision" of tech
implies pointless upgrades on a regular schedule. apparently i can't mount my
ipod in linux because his OCD control issues can't grasp someone using a
computer that doesn't have a glowing fruit on it. but when you put all this in
a tony mall with minimalist blonde-finished tables, its cool. but it isn't.
monocultures always die and apple will be no different.

