It’s All Just A Ride

While I love iPods, and wouldn’t really use any other player that is on the market right now, I grow less and less enthusiastic about the newest, bestest iPods coming out. I deal with iPods so much it sometimes makes me want to puke. I have at least 20 sitting on my living room floor right now waiting for student audio to be loaded onto them. I love the interface and the look, but honestly I can see so much more potential in these little boxes then Apple is currently putting out. The biggest problem is that even if someone saw potential, and had the means to create a program for the iPod, or even a new OS, they face big hurdles, mainly because everything that goes onto the iPod has to go through iTunes.

Why is this the big problem?

Because what this means is that everything, excluding songs that you yourself rip, is laden with the Apple DRM. This includes games and other programs that go onto the iPod. Now, to me this is simply ridiculous. If Apple has to kowtow to the music industry and cripple their music with DRM, fine, and if they want to do the same for programs bought through iTunes, I guess that makes a bit of sense too, but to completely lock out any third party programs that do not go through iTunes…that sucks. As such, anyone who wanted to make games or programs for the ipod would need to set up a licensing agreement with Apple, something I’m sure is beyond the scope of small developers, and almost certainly beyond the scope of open-source, freebie-producing one-off developers.

This is a shame, because if Apple didn’t cripple the iPod directly out of the factory then the iPod could be just as useful a tool as an Apple computer. If independent developers were not locked out of programming for the iPod then we could have just as robust a community of free software developers as we have for the Mac OS X operating system.

Until the day that Apple relinquishes the iPod from its development lock any version Apple puts out will be simply less-than it could be.

The ultimate option would be to simply replace the OS with an open-source one, but the current options, like Rockbox, and iPodLinux, are much too inadequate. Rockbox is drab and slow, with an interface that is still in B&W (which makes putting it on a 5G iPod Video a rediculous proposition) and iPodLinux is even slower, buggier, and seems like it was made simply for kids to do useless things like put DOOM on it. Also, good luck getting either to easily install on an ipod that is less than 2 years old unless you are relatively good with Linux.

Edit:

Altering Log has a good post about the possible reasons why there is no iPod SDK, however, there are a couple points which don’t bear out, such as freeware producers taking market share away from Apple. As of right now there are only 18 games available on the iTunes store. In the 2 years that games have been available for the iPod there have only been 18 games. Not only does that suggest a lack of enthusiasm on the part of Apple to make games, (heck, even with outside companies like EA getting in on the action there is still a measly selection) but it also suggests that the revenue from games is not exactly a huge selling point for Apple. Also, as someone mentioned in the forums, more options for games, or actual apps that could do low-level PDA stuff, would actually sell more iPods, and selling more iPods would net Apple much more dough than selling a few games for $5 here and there I’m sure.