2008-07-28»
iPod Touch: Cover Flow, No Cover StoryยปSo I didn’t get an iPhone 3G, because really I couldn’t bring myself to sign up to a bunch of AT&T years. But when I saw the refurbished iPod Touchs for $199 on the Apple site, I admit I caved. It’s sort of the sad halfway house for those of us who are strong in spirit, but weak in the flesh. It’s currently sitting next to my far more pure N810. I am rubbing them together in the hope that some of the nice implementation in the Apple product rubs off into the Nokia open source experiment.
I am sort of enjoying the flashy brattiness of the Touch, but I fear he is putting up a spirited fight against my Linux set-up, and thus rendering himself useless. Sure, people have Pwnage 2.0 now, so you can ssh into it, and have all the freedoms that Apple don’t want; but the latest firmware update also changed the hash value that the iPod software uses to check the “integrity” of the iTunes database. If you want to copy over music from a Linux machine on an iPod Touch/iPhone 2.0 firmware, you’re out of luck for now. Maybe not for long, as it didn’t take them very long to break the hash when Apple created this little roadblock. I will continue to lurk around on #gtkpod for the good news.
I’m racking my brains to understand a good argument (not any argument, a good argument) for why Apple would put a concealed checksum in the database in the first place. It doesn’t protect the music, or any copyrighted material that Apple might have a contractual agreement to protect (the music is still in the clear, AFAIK — it’s just the database that’s checked). It’s not part of the phone locking system, which again Apple can claim it needs to protect for a continuing business relationship. And it certainly doesn’t have a consumer-friendly reason, like making sure the database data is coherent — if the database is corrupt, iTunes doesn’t offer to reinstall your music, it demands you restore your entire iPod (actually losing your purchased music or apps whatever in the meantime).
The only reasoning that makes sense is that Apple dearly wants iPod and iPhones locked ever-more tightly into iTunes. Obviously, I’m shocked, shocked. But if I was Apple, I’d try and come up with another cover story quick before the regulators start sniffing…