“This week, Apple Computer announced that it sold a staggering 14 million iPod music players over the recently ended holiday quarter — more than 100 every minute. But as popular and well-designed as the iPod is, it’s not perfect. There are a couple of aspects of the way it works, or doesn’t work, that are becoming increasingly annoying as people acquire both more iPods and more computers,” Walter S. Mossberg reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“First, you cannot use an iPod, out of the box, to copy your music collection to multiple computers you may own. Millions of iPod owners have more than one computer, and it’s perfectly legal to copy the music you own to more than one computer. But the iPod won’t help you do this,” Mossberg reports. “Second, in families with multiple iPods sharing a single computer, the iPod’s companion software, iTunes, doesn’t allow you to have multiple music libraries. With multiple libraries, each user could see only his or her own music, and could synchronize his or her iPod with that personal music library.”
Mossberg reports, “Apple is aware of these shortcomings, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it solve the second one, multiple libraries, this year. But the first, the inability to use the iPod to copy music to multiple computers, is tougher. Apple was forced to cripple the iPod in this manner at the insistence of the record labels, which feared that it might be used to copy music too widely. So a fix probably requires negotiations with the labels, whose obsession with piracy has caused them to treat their own customers like criminals. Luckily, there are solutions to both problems available today, through third-party software or workarounds. Here’s a guide to those solutions.”
Full article here.
Links to products mentioned in case the article become unavailable:
iPod to personal computer:
CopyPod (Windows): http://www.copypod.net/
PodWorks (Mac): http://www.scifihifi.com/podworks
PodUtil (Mac and Windows): http://www.kennettnet.co.uk/
Here’s another one Mossberg doesn’t mention:
iPodRip (Mac): http://www.thelittleappfactory.com/application.php?app=iPodRip
Create multiple iTunes libraries:
Libra (Mac and Windows): http://homepage.mac.com/sroy/libra
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