Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
linuxjournal.com
Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#2Back in the day, I was heavily involved in reverse engineering iTunes to figure out the "authentication" hash sent with DAAP requests. I very quickly got sick of chasing my tail every time Apple unilaterally decided to change their protocols for the sole reason to disable third party interoperation, incidentally breaking old versions of their own software just for the hell of it.
I'm sick of Apple and all their works. If you're a software engineer, and you value open standards and competition, you should never, ever buy an Apple product. Their anti-competitive actions, from breaking their software through misusing legal instruments right up to controlling which apps one can and cannot write for the iPhone, reveal a fundamental distaste for standards, co-operation and even the law.
Every moment spent trying to interoperate with Apple is a moment wasted. For the free software community, most of us have stopped chasing our tail and gone to open standards such as UPnP media streaming. Apple's culture is that of the 70s, the dark ages of personal computing. I can only hope that people inside their organisation like Stuart Cheshire can make some sort of operational change.
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#3Back in the day, I was heavily involved in reverse engineering iTunes to figure out the "authentication" hash sent with DAAP requests. I very quickly got sick of chasing my tail every time Apple unilaterally decided to change their protocols for the sole reason to disable third party interoperation, incidentally breaking old versions of their own software just for the hell of it. I'm sick of Apple and all their works…
Actually, the Apple II/II+ introduced in the late 1970s was quite open and a period of innovation for home computing. Apple even included the schematics as well as source code listing for their basic interpreter.
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#4Back in the day, I was heavily involved in reverse engineering iTunes to figure out the "authentication" hash sent with DAAP requests. I very quickly got sick of chasing my tail every time Apple unilaterally decided to change their protocols for the sole reason to disable third party interoperation, incidentally breaking old versions of their own software just for the hell of it. I'm sick of Apple and all their works…
> Apple's culture is that of the 70s, the dark ages of personal computing.
Were you even around in the 1970s? Those were the days... personal computers came with the complete source code listing of their operating systems, a complete hardware schematic, pinouts for all connectors...
Right through the early 1980s it was pretty common to know everything about a personal computer. e.g. Go take a look at an Apple I or II manual, or the VIC-20, or the PET, or the BBC Micro or the TRS-80, or the early IBM-PC.
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#5please stop buying apple garbage. they are evil. there's nothing cool about crass consumption
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#6please stop buying apple garbage. they are evil. there's nothing cool about crass consumption
If you have a version of this point that depends on reasoning rather than adjectives, you should probably use that instead.
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#7This is an interesting coincidence. A site I run recently became involved in a tiff with Apple over reverse engineering their new iTunesDB file (which was updated Sept 2007).
Backstory: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/20/201246&f... http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/23/017227&f... http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/apple-confuses-speech-d... http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2008/11/in-defense-of-ipodhash.p...
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#8Back in the day, I was heavily involved in reverse engineering iTunes to figure out the "authentication" hash sent with DAAP requests. I very quickly got sick of chasing my tail every time Apple unilaterally decided to change their protocols for the sole reason to disable third party interoperation, incidentally breaking old versions of their own software just for the hell of it. I'm sick of Apple and all their works…
I must disagree with you on one part (a minor one, true).
The 70s were not the dark ages: the late 70s and early 80s were the golden age of the personal computer. As pointed out by other of the commenters, the Apple II manual even included schematics for the computer itself and listings for its ROM-based BASIC interpreter.
You can't be more open than that.
Openness ended more or less when the PC made big advances into the home computer market and DOS and Windows made the personal computer a standardized commodity device.
And that's why I dislike PCs so much and why I am so fond on "exotic" architectures.
I am all in for open standards for interchanging information, but I also want my hardware to be as diverse as possible. I find a x86-only world absolutely boring.
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#9please stop buying apple garbage. they are evil. there's nothing cool about crass consumption
What he may be trying to say is that Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, except the monopoly part. They employ many of the same techniques to bind their users to their hardware and software in ways more enlightened hackers would consider revolting.
They make cool gizmos. But that's about it.
Re: Reverse engineering the iTunesDB File Format
#10Back in the day, I was heavily involved in reverse engineering iTunes to figure out the "authentication" hash sent with DAAP requests. I very quickly got sick of chasing my tail every time Apple unilaterally decided to change their protocols for the sole reason to disable third party interoperation, incidentally breaking old versions of their own software just for the hell of it. I'm sick of Apple and all their works…
Actually, the Apple II/II+ introduced in the late 1970s was quite open and a period of innovation for home computing. Apple even included the schematics as well as source code listing for their basic interpreter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_2
At that time, you could look at the motherboard and figure out (or follow the traces on both sides) how everything worked.
I kind of did that with my first Apple II.