Neue iPods synchronisieren nicht mit Linux

Die jüngste iPod Generation kann nicht mehr auf Systemen verwendet werden, auf den iTunes nicht läuft. Folglich können Linux-Anwender, die bisher beispielsweise gtkpod oder Amarok benutzt haben, ihren iPod so nicht mehr bespielen. Cory Doctorow diskutiert das neue „Killer Feature“:

The new hardware limits the number of potential customers for Apple’s products, adding engineering cost to a device in order to reduce its functionality. It’s hard to understand why Apple would do this, but the most likely explanations are that Apple wants to be sure that competitors can’t build their own players to load up iPods – now that half of the major labels have gone DRM free, it’s conceivable that we’d get a Rhapsody or Amazon player that automatically loaded the non-DRM tracks they sold you on your iPod (again, note that this has nothing to do with preventing piracy – this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store).