As reported by Will in his Blog, Apple tried (on purpose or not) to lock the use of iPod to iTunes, preventing Linux application developed to handle the iPod to communicate with the new iPods models recently released: Who does this affect? This affects Linux users - there's no iTunes for Linux, so popular Linux iPod management tools like gtkpod and Rhythmbox will not work with the new range of iPods. Windows users who just plain don't like iTunes and prefer an alternative like Winamp, Ephpod or many of the other iPod management applications out there. How? The iPod keeps track of the songs and playlists in your iPod with a database file - the iTunesDB, found in the iPod_Control/iTunes/ hidden folder on the iPod. Back in the early days of the iPod, the format of this file was quickly reverse-engineered by people who wanted to use iPods without iTunes. This was more important back then because iTunes only existed on the Mac, so Windows users were stuck with Real Player (which was just awful), and Linux users had exactly nothing. The format of this file has evolved over the years as the iPod added support for video, podcasts, album artwork, smart playlists etcetera. The basic structure of the file has always remained the same, so these changes were easy enough for us to work out and keep up to date with. With the release of the new range of iPods - the new Nano, the iPod Classic and the iPod Touch, we were expecting more of the same - a few tweaks here and there and everything would be fine. No so. At the very start of the database, a couple of what appear to be SHA1 hashes have been inserted which appear to lock the iTunes database to one particular iPod and prevent any modification of the database file. If you try to do either of these, the hashes will not match and the iPod will report that it contains "0 songs" when the iTunesDB would otherwise be perfectly adequate.As reported by our German friends from www.opensourcemac.de, Linux users decided to dig into the code, and already identified the protection and the way to bypass it to give Linux users the opportunity to use an iPod without iTunes. Maybe Apple should simply try to release a Linux version of iTunes instead of preventing customers to buy iPods because they prefer Linux as OS on their computer. [translation by Linathael]

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	www.hardmac.com/news/2007-09-18/#7204