Vista - iPod Killer?

JMB wrote us with a dire warning, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. Apple is cautioning its Windows-using iTunes customers to steer clear of Vista until the next iTunes update. The reason for this is a bit puzzling. Apparently, if you try to 'safely remove' your iPod from a Vista-installed PC, there's a chance you may corrupt the little music player. They also claim that songs may not play, and contacts may not sync with the device. Apple went so far as to release a detailed support document on the subject, which assures users that a new Vista-compatible version of the software will be available in a few weeks. Is this just some very creative FUD? If it is not who do you think is 'at fault' here, Microsoft or Apple?

It's apples fault

[wardk (3037)]

for not being able to predict what parts Microsoft would focus on breaking

Re:It's apples fault

[malfunct (120790)]

Its worse than that. There has been a fairly stable api in vista for the last 6 months and even before that there were little changes for the last year. Apple just decided not to fix thier software for whatever reason and now they are trying to make Vista look bad instead of taking the blame for being slow to support windows users.

Re:It's apples fault

[Rich0 (548339)]

Of course, if they just implemented the iPod as a USB mass storage device, there would probably not be any issues at all. They could still have a fancy front-end that loads files onto it.

It drives me nuts when you need to use fancy software to download/upload from your camera/mp3-player/etc. It isn't like there aren't standards out there that would work perfectly well...

Re:It's apples fault

[irc.goatse.cx troll (593289)]

You can access it as a usb mass storage device. Either after ticking a setting in itunes, or when plugging it in I believe you hold the menu and play/pause buttons at the same time.

You're generally better off letting itunes handle it though, as it does a much better job. Now if only I liked itunes enough to use it for anything other than an interface to my ipod.. (or foo_dop would become stable enough and featurefilled enough to trust it with my ipod)

Re:It's apples fault

[jZnat (793348)]

The songs are stored in a hidden folder: /iPod_Control/iTunes/Music/ or something like that. No separate partitions required; just enable the viewing of hidden files, and you're good to go. Be warned, however, that iTunes renames files to random 4 letter names for database efficiency (which is why you can't just drag and drop music and whatnot; iTunes (or another third party program) edits and builds the database for the iPod, and the iPod just reads the database).

Re:It's apples fault

[sqrt(2) (786011)]

It might not be much of an improvement for you, but if you can stand to use Winamp5 (or use it already anyway) there is a plugin that allows it to sync with the iPod. It works a lot better and has more features than iTunes, including the ability to take songs off an iPod. Still short of true drag and drop compatibility, but that's all Apples doing trying to tie iTunes and the iPod together (thus getting more market penetration for their ITMS).

http://www.mlipod.com/

Re:It's apples fault

[belly917 (928006)]

"but if you can stand to use Winamp5"

I can't stand to use anything but Winamp! Well, that's not true, but I won't go anywhere near the limited functionality that is iTunes. No ogg vorbis support out of the box, etc.

there is a plugin that allows it to sync with the iPod

The newest versions of winamp5 include an updated version of this plug-in by default.

Another great reason to use winamp5 with your ipod is that it'll transcode songs that the ipod firmware can't handle for you. (yes I know it's bad.. but I don't notice the difference when I'm jogging) So all those wma's & ogg vorbis files will at least be playable on your yet again limiting apple ipod.

if you really wanted to make your ipod useful, you should check out rockbox.org

Re:It's apples fault

[4iedBandit (133211)]

There has been a fairly stable api in vista for the last 6 months and even before that there were little changes for the last year. Apple just decided not to fix thier software for whatever reason and now they are trying to make Vista look bad instead of taking the blame for being slow to support windows users.

And Microsoft has never purposefully designed their OS to interfere with another competitors product.

Re:It's apples fault

[Dahamma (304068)]

And Microsoft has never purposefully designed their OS to interfere with another competitors product.

Who cares? Does that mean Apple needs to sink to their level? The vast majority of iPod owners use it on Windows, so it really doesn't seem to be best for the customer (as Apple is always claiming to be their motivation) not to support Vista properly. I'm a bit disappointed by Apple's obvious attempt to make Vista look bad on release at the expense of their customers.

That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Overly Critical Guy (663429)]

How conveniently people forget that Microsoft's own Zune player app wasn't Vista compatible either. If Microsoft couldn't support their own OS with these "stable apis" of the last six months that you refer to, how can you expect Apple to?

Re:That "fairly stable api" didn't help Microsoft

[Space cowboy (13680)]

Which, correct me if I'm wrong, was not 6 months ago. And (presumed) changes to API's (otherwise it would have worked) only 4 weeks ago isn't a sign of a "stable API".

So, when a third-party company finally gets the latest API info, specs out the required changes and their implications, codes it up, runs it through QA, gets sign-off from all the parties (HI, VI, Engineering, Management, X-functional team managers), and gets it out in a couple of months, it's not so bad, really. Oh wait, we're bashing Apple today. BAD APPLE.

Simon.

Re:It's apples fault

[admactanium (670209)]

Maybe they aren't trying to make windows look bad, but it seems odd that a company like Apple, that had access to all of the betas and should have had the RTM for the last three months, didn't have this fixed prior to product launch. New PCs are shipping with Vista now, so a not unsizable chunk of people are going to run in to this problem.

you're joking right? microsoft's own zune player and software didn't even work with vista until the final retail release version! it hardly seems like everything was completely sorted out early on.

Re:End User's Fault

[bluetigerbc (911321)]

because http://rockbox.org/ [rockbox.org] has software to put in new firmware avoiding this big mess. I agree that it should just be usb mass storage device. This site can make that happen.

someone mod this up for "the peoples". I've hunted for something other then Apple's filename switching firmware for a while now. Easy drag and drop songs and delete/rename them from the ipod. There are even themes to make the ipod look like winamp or other skins from users.

rock box is like firefox for yer Ipod. Open code wins again!

Re:It's apples fault

[riscthis (597073)]

A clean install of Vista uses 544meg ram without any applications running - completely ridiculous IMHO.

Some of that may be for caches which would be released if an application requested more RAM. The OS might as well make use of it to reduce latency of other tasks whilst nothing else wants the RAM.

Re:It's apples fault

[kripkenstein (913150)]

Some of that may be for caches which would be released if an application requested more RAM. The OS might as well make use of it to reduce latency of other tasks whilst nothing else wants the RAM.

That is how Linux reports memory usage (in 'free', for example). But Windows has never done so, at least not Windows 95 til XP. Used RAM was RAM used by applications, not caching. However, perhaps Vista changes this, I don't know - never used it.

Re:It's apples fault

[dabraun (626287)]

What are you doing? Looking at task manager?

Task manager never was and still isn't an accurate picture of physical memory in use. It's total combined address space, it duplicates the counts for standard system dlls, it counts stacks that are reserved but not committed - and among other things microsoft significantly increased the default (reserved) stack size for every thread of every process in Vista to decrease the incidence of stack overflow problems in applications. This doesn't cost any "real" memory, though it does cost address space within a process. Processes which may actually run out of address space on a 32-bit machine (like server apps) typically specify the stack sizes they want, and they are lower than the OS default. Server apps are rapidly moving to 64-bit anyway where this is a non-issue (for now).

Now, Vista *does* consume significantly more memory than XP at idle, and certainly needs more memory to run well - but it's not using 544mb without any apps running and, remarkably, it is extremely difficult to answer the question "how much memory is in use" in part because that question isn't specific enough to give an answer.

- Pages in memory?
- Does cache count (windows uses *everything* left as a cache, and in Vista it proactively fills that cache before you even run apps based on your page-usage-history, that is, what apps you tend to run though vista is not considering "applications" here but rather a much more generic concept of image-backed pages)
- Does it count if it's been written to the page file but is still in memory as well (like most OS's, windows proactively writes out private pages to the pagefile before it really needs to so that it can free physical memory quickly when needed - this also helps the system reach hybrid sleep state faster)
- Does it count if it's image-backed (sharable)? What if it's still in memory? What if it was never read into memory or was read into memory at process start and will never be touched again, thrown away as soon as memory pressure reqires it?

There is no easy answer other than "add memory until it performs well" and for Vista that seems to be a minnimum of 1GB, depending on the system, more "real" graphics card memory lowers the requirement, slower hard drives (and thus greater need for caching) increase the requirement.

Re:It's apples fault

[nostriluu (138310)]

You are trivializing this. I recently built a PC with 4 GB of RAM, and have been introduced to the world of pain this means in the mainstream PC world. Starting with the fact many boards only have two slots, and 2 MB chips are incredibly expensive, next on to BIOS compatibility issues, then on to operating system compatibility issues. Maybe in a year this will be a non issue, but for now it's painful, and it means so many more PCs are effectively obsoleted by "improvements" that can't even be explained clearly. http://www.chrisjordan.com/ [chrisjordan.com]

Re:Tagged appleduh

[dangitman (862676)]

What could MS have possibly done between RC2 and release to break the iPod?

Added more kittens?

Re:Tagged appleduh

[Glonoinha (587375)]

Actually - I wonder if the iPod will be the 'Vista killer'.

Let's be real. A zillion people have iPods and run XP. Tell any of them that not only will Vista cost them an arm and a leg (need new hardware + new OS), it may have problems with their iPod and more imporantly may fuxor their iPod when they connect / disconnect it - and how many are going to be rushing out to upgrade?

Aero / glass is nice, but not nice enough to risk fuxor'ing my iPod over.

Re:Tagged appleduh

[The Dobber (576407)]

Couldn't afford either, huh?

 

Re:precisely

[Sir Holo (531007)]

The fact I can no longer do this either indicates...

Usually, this kind of thing indicates that Microsoft is breaking their competitors' products on purpose, using their monopoly on the OS as leverage. Lots of examples came out in the antitrust case. This is probably one more.

Who to blame?

[falsified (638041)]

Hell, I don't know. How are we supposed to know that? And more to the point, does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway? Bunch of dorks.

Re:Who to blame?

[Technician (215283)]

and customers could corrupt their iPod unless they eject it from Windows using iTunes.

It's like ejecting a floppy on a Mac or *NIX except there is another layer of software that has to properly write to the device to close it. Windows has no idea that iTunes has not finished and using Windows to eject hardware will close the device without all the updates from iTunes. I suprised that is any diffrent from XP or 2K.

does anyone out there ever press that "safely remove hardware" thing anyway?

You may get by most of the time if you don't have any applications such as a file browser open and was writing files that might be cached and not written. For example having a bunch of MP3's on a flash drive and unplugging it is not a problem most of the time. If you were writing new files and updating some files, such as a spreadsheet, may corrupt it if you don't close the application and use the eject option. Cached data might not all get written.

I don't understand why this is just an issue with iTunes and Vista. Maybe iTunes hooks into Safely Remove Hardware, and closes out writes before letting Windows confirm it's safe to remove the device. This is probably what's broken in Vista.

Re:Who to blame?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

They do on OS X. My iPod uses journalled HFS+, so partial writes are just reverted. iPods tied to Windows boxes, however, use FAT32 so that the Windows user can use it as a generic mass storage device. If Windows supported a better filesystem for which the specification was publicly available, then the iPod could use that.

Re:Who to blame?

[BeerCat (685972)]

Maybe, just maybe, it's a bit of both - MS would love to kill the iPod, while Apple would love to undermine Vista enough for people to consider switching (and let them use their existing XP under Boot Camp).

So, I think we are seeing a bit of brinksmanship from both sides - the one who admits first that their product is the one at fault loses mindshare.

Re:Who to blame?

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Win2K had write-caching (lazy writes) on by default, consequently you needed to use the "Safely Remove" option to flush any open file buffers to disk. XP has write-caching OFF by default, so it isn't quite so necessary: just make sure your access LED stops flickering before you yank your stick out.

Re:Who to blame?

[Nimey (114278)]

just make sure your access LED stops flickering before you yank your stick out.

I have nothing to add.

Ethernet cards stay on...

[Xenographic (557057)]

In my experience, you need to completely remove power in order to properly reset an Ethernet card. If you look at the back of the machine after you shut them down, you'll see the lights are still flashing and that the card still has power.

In a semi-related note, presumably due the the firmware on the buggers, I've had problems where booting to a boot CD broke the Ethernet card, too (because the boot CD's drivers downloaded newer firmware, I think). Then when I booted back into the original OS, the card wouldn't work until I updated the machine's Windows drivers. This was with a Broadcom 10/100 integrated Ethernet card, BTW.

Re:Who to blame?

[hoggoth (414195)]

That reminds me of the good old days playing Castle Wolfenstein (1, not 3D) on my Apple II.
I played with one finger hooked under the floppy drive door. If Shultz popped up and shot me I could flip the drive open faster than it would write my death to the drive. Nowadays of course most games let you save your state and don't remove your saves if you get killed.

Interesting...

[alshithead (981606)]

At least they must have some clue about fixes for the issues. It looks like they have a pretty good idea of where Vista breaks iTunes

Now, let me climb into my tinfoil bunker...

The evil that is Microsoft has intentionally released Vista just to break iTunes and promote their own music player!

Re:Interesting...

[Kemeno (984780)]

...except Microsoft's own music player doesn't work with Vista either.

Re:Interesting...

[Shippy (123643)]

Uh, yes it does: From http://www.zune.net/en-us/support/howto/start/oper atingsystems.htm: [zune.net]

Zune(TM) software is compatible with the following operating systems:

• Windows® XP Home, Professional, and Tablet PC Edition Service Pack 2
• Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2
• Windows Vista

You must be referring to when Vista was still in Beta. It was not supported at that time and likely for good reasons.

Suits suits suits.

[GodInHell (258915)]

Suits are to blame either way.. for thinking that their job was to tie a software app to one OS or the other.

If it turns out that MS is keeping true to form from past abuses - using its control over the OS to submerge and destroy the oposition (see netscape) then Apple should probably start digging for evidence to back a differnet kind of suit right now. This kind of deliberate destruction of property that just happens to be manufactured by the opposition company (OS v Os, and now MP3 player v. MP3 player) is text-book anti-trust case material.

-GiH

I dunno..

[benc (573)]

Look, I think Microsoft's products emanate directly from Satan's butthole, just like the rest of you. I also secretly hump the boxes from which my purchased Apple products emerge. However, doesn't it seem like Apple probably had more than enough time to get this working on the beta versions, assuming this isn't some new, last-second bug?

That said, the Zune doesn't even work on Vista yet, as another commenter already pointed out.... Still, I'm inclined to blame Apple on this one.

Corrupting a little music player

[Ace905 (163071)]

How can you even ask who's fault it is? Man, if the story-authors on slashdot spent like 10% less time blindly bashing Microsoft, the 80% of the time they spend accurately bashing Microsoft would actually be taken seriously. To say, "Who's fault do you think it is" doesn't imply Apple or Microsoft is at fault - but it opens up a debate that can't possibly be intelligently executed.

There's no evidence of anything ; we don't even know what happened.

You might as well sprinkle M&M's all over a busy freeway beside a Richard Simmons retreat. People are going to rush into this one and end up looking pretty stupid.

---
Don't even get me started on looking stupid [douginadress.com].

History repeating itself

[SierraPete (834755)]

Without accusing the crowd of being anything less than an ethical [insert gagging sounds here], this might be history repeating itself for competitive gain. With the Windows 95 upgrade came the "feature" that included the disabling of AOL software. Didn't M$ introduce M$N Network with Windows 95? So didn't M$ introduce the Zune this past Christmas season? Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, but given the track history of M$ (to include the now infamous Halloween documents which were recently acknowledged as authentic in court), a sabotaging of the iPod is not outside the realm of possible.

Safari and hotmail

[Scrameustache (459504)]

When Safari came out, I downloaded version 1.0 the very first day, and used it to go to hotmail, check out my messages, download attachement, everything worked fine.

Three days later, I could no longer download attachments... My version of Safari hadn't changed, but somehow, after three days, it didn't work as well as it did. Hmmm...

In a less anecdotal way, you might remember Microsoft "borking" Opera [opera.com], or the infamous Microsoft hack that screwed with Netscape back in the 90s.
If we're lucky, "leaked" memos will show up in a few years detailing how Microsoft purposefully decided to screw with their competition for their new zune.

Beta doesn't equal Golden Master

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista and iTunes were working together fine during the open beta but that doesn't mean Microsoft didn't make last minute changes that broke iTunes. Further, the fact that some people are using iTunes now without issue doesn't mean Apple is spreading FUD. An operating system is a complex animal, obviously there are differences between the various flavors of Vista so that iTunes might be fine on a Professional version but not work with a Home version. And while many people are using iTunes on Vista today doesn't mean some nasty bug (oops, I mean feature) won't rear up and bite their butt tomorrow.

pay attention!

[Hallowed (229057)]

What, didn't you notice that Vista said "Permanently Remove Hardware" instead of "Safely Remove Hardware"? It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Winamp USB

[haijak (573586)]

If I have Winamp running and put in a USB CF reader with photos on it, I get a prompt about Winamp managing this possible media player. Of course I decline and copy off my photos, then remove the card. As soon as I remove the card, Winamp crashes.

So while I'm sure using iTunes will probably be fine, The USB media device management has some issues that ether Microsoft or the software makers need to handle. I would bet that is what Apple is talking about.

STOP the FUD Appl provided a fix already

[aristotle-dude (626586)]

Enough already.

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunesrepai rtoolforvista10.html [apple.com]

Microsoft is at fault

[dl_zero (933977)]

It has nothing to do with the iPod (unfortunately). The problem is the way vista sometimes handles removable mass storage. The other day, I had a 250GB external HD and when I used it with Vista, it corrupted the whole partition table. I was able to recover the data because only the partitions were deleted, but either way, its a flaw in Vista

Re:Microsoft is at fault

[LodCrappo (705968)]

How can Apple have released a fix if Vista was at fault? Hmm?

You apparently know nothing, and I mean nothing about how software works in the Windows world. Software companies constantly have to "fix" their software because of bugs or changes in the underlying Windows systems they rely upon. This is simply the way things are done in the Windows world.

Vista compatibility

[Jugalator (259273)]

After having actually used ( please don't waste your time commenting here if you haven't :-p ) Vista, I think the app compatibility has been as good as I can expect from a major OS upgrade. In other words, similar to where Windows 2000 was when it was fresh out the door. Lots work, some things don't. Especially if the applications are designed in a user-oriented way that understands Windows actually has a user home directory, they seem to work well. The most common problems seem to be software that work in a very machine local way. Compare to if a Linux application would try install things under \root\FancyApp instead of the home directory. Even here, Vista tries to resolve things in a clean way for backwards compatibility, but sometimes fail, especially when UAC prompts are active.

With that in mind...

If it is not who do you think is 'at fault' here, Microsoft or Apple?

Since Apple isn't whining about Microsoft's Vista compatibility (they would definitely be in a position to do so, especially with Microsoft's recent lashes at Apple), but taking full responsibility at fixing their app ASAP, and that application incompatibilities hasn't been overly common in Vista (it's far worse with drivers), I'd say that Apple has made a boo-boo at their software design. They aren't great developers of Windows applications anyway, as any user of Windows QuickTime vs Apple QuickTime should be able to confirm.

Re:Move along, nothing to see

[oddaddresstrap (702574)]

Aren't workarounds a violation of the Vista EULA?

Re:Dont' be a dumbass.

[jimbolaya (526861)]

You think that people will "ditch" windows for their iPod? Are you that disconnected from reality? The alternative is a Mac that is literally running on identical hardware but costs twice as much. You think people will ditch their 2 year-old $1000 dell for a new $2000 mac that doesn't offer them anything new?

Speaking of disconnected from reality, you really believe that an Apple today costs twice as much as a comparable Dell did two years ago? Aside from the Mac Pros, most Macs today sell for well below $2,000. The 24" inch iMac is an exception. But what you're telling me is that two years ago, you could have bought a Dell with a 24" LCD, 1GB RAM, 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, DVD burner, and 128MB video card, for $1,000? That must be what you're saying, because you claim the $2,000 Mac couldn't give you anything new.

I challenge you to configure a comparable Dell (or HP, etc.) today for $1,000 (Apple's are twice the price, remember?). Hell, I challenge you to find one for $2,000. I came up with a price of $2,308 at Dell's site. Granted, that was with a 256MB video card, which would bring the iMac up to $2,124. Far from being twice the price, the Apple is nearly $200 cheaper.

Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM

[Frequency Domain (601421)]

Studios should object to Apple's DRM and rewrite their contracts to make APple open FAirplay so that other video players can play their movies.

You've got it bass ackwards. If you had been paying attention you would remember that Apple couldn't launch iTunes until it had satisfied the studios by adding some form of DRM. Apple still managed to sneak in the work-around that you could burn your own DRM-free CD's. Has any other DRM provider done that?

Re:oh no

[kfg (145172)]

I shudder to think what would happen if you unsafely remove it. Especially from a Sony laptop.

You've got 10 seconds to throw it after you pull the pin.

KFG

Re:oh no

[Alsee (515537)]

...and you've got 30 seconds to throw if you don't pull the pin.

-

Re:If only...

[Quixotic Raindrop (443129)]

It's funny you mention that ... because Microsoft has, in the past, done exactly this sort of thing before, and if you read Groklaw, you'll note that this very issue is a major factor in a lawsuit currently being litigated. Microsoft is well-known for providing different builds of Windows to different developers, and for changing system calls, hooks, APIs, and other such things at the last minute and only telling certain third-party developers, if any.

I don't doubt that Apple might have some dirty hands here, if only because they seek to embarrass Microsoft at any opportunity, and may have deliberately withheld some updates specifically to cause the most possible bad publicity about Vista, but more likely than not Apple was given one set of APIs WRT the safe removal of iPods, only to have Microsoft change them without warning.