The other day, I installed a program on the iPod called Rockbox. This is basically an open-source replacement for the existing jukebox software, and it turned out to be superior in many respects. A casual reformatting of the iPod was required, which meant that I had to load all of my music on there once again.
The iPod is usually updated using iTunes, it has to be if the music is to be playable. This is because the Apple software on the iPod has no file browser, and because iTunes stows the tunes away in some crazy way. The mp3s are renamed with four-letter references, then split up randomly between numbered folders. Seemingly some sort of database keeps track of what is what - a method of preventing unauthorised copying of the files.
The new software has the ability just to find any music on the iPod and build a database from that...so it is possible to have a logical folder structure. This would also allow easy copying of files from the device. I hadn't yet fully tested Rockbox, so I thought I would be better off keeping the Apple file-mash. This turned out to be a mistake!
I discovered a rather nasty element of Apple's war on piracy - upon copying some music onto the iPod from my parents' computer, all of the music I had on there was immediately erased. That's 13GB of music, with which I was hoping to set the mood during my 10 hour trainride back to Adelaide. The other tragic thing about this is that it took almost a day to get those files on the mp3 player, thanks to the USB 1.1 connection on my music computer! Sneakily, iTunes only deletes the files, not the database - so the deed is only discovered later, when the user attempts to listen to their non-existent tunes.
Now I might just sound like any other pirate who has been foiled by copy protection, and some of you might say, "serves you right!" Had I been warned by iTunes that I was about to lose 13GB of data, I might have agreed with you in a minor way. At that point I probably would have balanced the pros and cons of what I was about to do. Any other program would warn you if you were about to delete existing files. But here, iTunes makes the assumption that you are trying to pull an illegal stunt, and wipes the device without a mention. What if you had thousands of public domain tracks, or personal creations, or something of that nature? Many of the things I had on there did in fact fit into that category, being made by friends, family and myself. Bah Christ!
So yes, crudtastic.
Whinge completed.
Addendum: Shortly after this, my Quicktime installation on another computer spontaneously broke, urging me to upgrade to the version it already was, and preventing me from watching the videos it still loaded. The other amusing facet of this glitch: I can't "get info" on any .mov file on my system to change the program that opens them all. It will have to be done one by one.
