When I first got my 40GB iPod (3G) this summer, it was great. Except for one small problem. My music was stored on an external hard drive. The music played fine through iTunes while the external drive was mounted. Unfortunately, the iPod was not recognized through the external hard drive’s second FireWire port. I really didn’t want to blow another $35 to get a FireWire hub.
So I had to have a friend with a ton of free drive space copy all the music to his hard drive, import it all into his iTunes, then we conncted my iPod to his computer. Then we drag and dropped the music to the iPod. After it copied, Josh disconnected the iPod, removed the music from his iTunes, and erased the MP3s from his computer.
Now all I have to do to add new music to my iPod is manually copy the files within my iTunes. But I can’t get the music off of my iPod onto my new Powerbook G4. And what’s going to happen when I get a new iMac G5 later this year? Is Apple expecting me to re-rip all the CD’s I have?
That’s where a very cool program called iPodDownload entered the picture. iPodDownload adds a plugin to iTunes that allows you to copy music files from your iPod to your hard drive. Very cool, should save me a ot of time. So I downloaded it yesterday, figuring I would work with it this weekend. Well, I am glad I got the program when I did. Because Apple threatened this guy’s web site for distributing “unauthorized Apple iTunes® code.”
Thanks, Apple. I paid for these 2,177 songs, either from the iTunes store, or by ripping the CDs I have. You aren’t making any friends by limiting people unreasonably. And I think it is unreasonable to limit people from copying their music between their computers and devices.
Two news articles about this: MacMinute: Apple shuts down iTunes plug-in and MacNN: Apple forces developer to remove free iTunes plugin.