ITunes 8 a Real Killer App; Taking Down Vista 735
CWmike writes "Apple 's latest version of iTunes crashes Windows Vista when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC, scores of users have reported on Apple's support forum. Plug in and Vista crashes and shows the 'blue screen of death.' The errors began showing up immediately after updating iTunes to Version 8.0, which Apple released Tuesday as part of its iPod refresh. 'I just installed iTunes 8 over my iTunes 7 on Vista [and] now whenever I plug in my iPod, I get a blue screen death. Three times so far. Even if it is plugged in on boot, I get a blue screen," said a user identified as 'sambeckett' on the support forum about 90 minutes after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapped up the iPod launch."
Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Expect Apple to blame Vista.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
Expect Slashdot comments to blame Vista too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of what the itunes application might be doing it should not cause the OS to crash. The application to crash yes... but not the OS.
One of the main jobs of the OS is to protect processes from badly behaving neighbors.
This is definitely a bug in Vista.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
Except the application installs drivers.
And it's not necessarily a bug in the OS if drivers are causing it, unless you run all drivers in the userland like QNX does.
But still... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tm
Re:But still... (Score:5, Funny)
Clippy: It looks like your printer is on fire. Would you like to:
* Call 911
* Put it out.
* Let it burn.
Re:But still... (Score:5, Funny)
0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
There is still the option to send an e-mail to the fire department, though.
Re:But still... (Score:5, Interesting)
The "Printer On Fire" status code is strictly a UNIX phenomenon.
Laugh all you want at Microsoft, but this one is mostly our fault :-P
(For those not familiar with this meme, there was a certain brand of mainframe printer in the 1970s that was infamous for continuing to print after jamming, despite being able to correctly detect the jam and take the printer "off-line". This would cause an immense heat-buildup that would often lead to the paper catching on fire. Therefore, a printer that is somehow printing while off-line is reported by most Unices to have a status code of "Printer On Fire")
Re:But still... (Score:5, Informative)
That's a nice philosophy, but anybody who's actually written a kernel-level driver will tell you that's impossible. Kernel-mode drivers require direct access to your computer's memory and bus, and anything with that level of access can cuse your kernel to panic, period.
You can make non-kernel-mode drivers that are much safer, of course, but at the expense of performance and capability.
Re:But still... (Score:5, Informative)
You can make non-kernel-mode drivers that are much safer, of course, but at the expense of performance and capability.
That depends entirely on what the device is doing - USB drivers live in userspace (only the generic read/write support for USB devices live in kernel space) and it works fine and support everything AFAIK, but running a modern GPU from userspace I wouldn't try. The iPod is definately in the former category.
Both Vista Users Are Horrified! (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news 1000 Ubuntu users running under WINE without whining.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But still... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the big reasons no one had any interest in minix is the incredible performance hit the design entails.
At what point?
I think the main reason no one had an interest in Minix was the cost, and the restrictive licensing. Linus admitted that he never expected Linux to be much more than a stopgap until GNU/HURD was released -- except that HURD took too long to get any kind of release out the door, so Linux already had adoption at that point.
The best argument at the time was: You could spend the money and buy Minix, and install it. And then install the source code, and download a number of patches needed to get something approximating a modern OS, recompile, and reinstall.
Or you could spend that same money on a faster computer (a 386), and get Linux for free. Linux could do everything Minix could, and it already ran in native 32-bit mode (which Minix needed patches for).
In fact, that's one of several other ways Minix took performance hits -- ways that I'd call bad design. The filesystem, for example -- Minix has a non-threaded filesystem; Linux had a threaded filesystem.
Re:But still... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, Apple does install drivers, and those drivers CAN crash the operating system.
It's no different from any other popular operating system. If you have a bad OSX driver - boom. Grey box. If you have a bad Linux driver - boom. Kernel panic.
The only utter nonsense is that Apple can't write a driver that doesn't crash the operating system. There's tens of thousands of drivers out there, and most of them run great. Apple is big enough to do proper testing. They didn't QA properly, obviously.
Re:But (Score:5, Informative)
http://sbooth.org/Play/ [sbooth.org]
Basically, it has the core functionality of iTunes, it's free as in beer, and isn't bloated.
Re:But (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll second the notion that iTunes for Windows is a steaming heap of crap.
You're being mean to crap everywhere.
iTunes on Windows is on par with Realplayer, complete and total shit. Treat it like you would a virus, kill it. Avoid installing it.
If you have to install it then use VMWare. VMWare traps the itunes shitstorm quite nicely.
Re:But (Score:4, Informative)
Hehe shitstorm.
I don't own an iPod, but I have family members that do and I immediately remove iTunes, install WinAMP, and done.
WinAMP can manage an iPod okay, and it doesn't screw with my media library.
On top of all of the crappiness of iTunes, my biggest problem with it is that if you plan on using iTunes, you *have* to manage your media with it. There's no "rescan library" function. If you do it manually, you get two of everything in your list. It sucks and shows much arrogance on Apple's part.
Re:But still... (Score:5, Informative)
"Doesn't need" is not the same as "doesn't use." IIRC, if you want to port a kernel mode driver to the user mode driver framework in Windows, the path of least resistance is to rewrite it from plain old function oriented C to C++ with COM. So it's possible that it's got direct access because that's the old default and they'd have to rewrite it.
If that's the case, Microsoft deserves a pat on the back for providing a framework for user mode drivers and a kick in the pants for making the framework totally incompatible. In any case older versions of windows don't support user mode drivers and not all Windows XP installations have the user mode framework.
At this point, we don't know where the BSOD coming from yet. Obviously Apple's driver initiates it, but it doesn't mean that's what's crashing. This could be one of those cases where such and so feature is supported correctly in some hardware and not others, so the spec might say doing certain things are kosher and they test fine on the hardware you've got, then you find out that there's a lot of people with systems with broken system hardware or drivers.
Re:But still... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe for userland drivers like printers under Vista using the latest driver model, okay, but if you mean that no driver should ever be able to crash the OS, you clearly don't understand how drivers work.
Re:But still... (Score:4, Informative)
That's entirely possible for some devices in Windows - the Windows Driver Foundation lets some drivers run in userland. In fact, "all" printer drivers run that way on Vista - the WDF runs as a service and acts as a broker of sorts between userspace and kernelspace.
For other devices, it's just not possible. Try writing a user-mode graphics driver and get back to me.
Re:But still... (Score:4, Funny)
"I remember there was quite an uproar about stability when NT4 came out with kernel-mode graphics drivers."
MS decided to do the same with NT as Windows-95 because, as we all know, W-95 was a rock solid piece of wonderware that proved kernel-mode drivers were a brilliant idea that should have conferred instant saint-hood on whoever came up with it.
OK, so there were a few unexplained crashes in W-95, sometimes even a few a day, hour, or minute, but it's now been proven that far from being caused by dodgy drivers running in kernel mode, they were actually the result of emotionally sensitive computers not getting enough of what scientists call "love vibes", a special heart-shaped wave that emanates from people who really, really adore their computers, and wouldn't think of shouting at them, let alone throwing them at the floor or through a window.
Dr. Adrian Stoat of the National Center For Spurious Claims is one of the notable scientists who confirm that Pentium-2 computers were especially vulnerable to Love Deficit Disorder (LDD):
"You'd be surprised how many Pentium-2 machines were brought to us for extensive courses of counselling that could easily end up costing their owners thousands of dollars. Yet despite this, some of them never recovered from the humiliation of being forced to display pornography for hours at a time, the stress of repeated verbal abuse, or living in constant fear of yet another savage beating with a copy of "The Road Ahead". Most of these machines have no future outside our special Caribbean Sanctuary For Sad Computers, where dedicated staff nurse them entirely at their owners' expense. Just think how much suffering and money could have been saved if only the people who bought these tragic systems had given them just a little love instead of erroneously assuming that Windows was to blame for every minor failure".
Re:But still... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and yeah, sound cards must also now (in Vista) run more in user space.
That actually caused a ton of people to complain on Microsoft as it could no longer as easily do Creative EAX. Damn if you do, damn if you don't.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:4, Informative)
The drivers are USB protocol drivers -- they run in user space. iTunes doesn't (shouldn't) load any kernel-space drivers. It is correct to say that, under the circumstances, it should be impossible for iTunes to crash the OS. iTunes should crash, but Vista shouldn't.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes is "GEAR powered"; i.e. it installs the GEAR CD/DVD burner ASPI drivers. See:
http://www.gearsoftware.com/support/drivers.cfm [gearsoftware.com]
http://www.gearsoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=GEAR_Powered_Products#iTunes_for_Windows [gearsoftware.com]
Wouldn't those be kernel-space drivers?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The GEAR drivers are signed by Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility, therefore are completely compatible with Windows Vista.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never had an Apple program be stable on the Windows platform. iTunes is bloated at best, absolutely unusable if you catch it at the wrong time of the moon cycle, and just generally not that good. Safari crashes constantly for me whenever I've tried to use it. I've had iPods not work at a
Re:Good Marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
BSOD in Vista is either hardw3are level resource conflicts, or an actual memory fault.
I'm actually betting, based on the I/O is see in IT8 while it's building the thumbnail images, the massive background effort to create genius database info, and the high level of memory and disk I/O present in it's basic use that did not occur under IT7, that these machines were ALREADY FAULTY, but simply were not utilized enough to trigger these memory or hard disk faults.
The DRM is exactly the same btw. No changes. Besides, DRM is a user space application, and can not cause BSOD. It;s impossible for that to be the cause...
If you have not had vista BSOD, then all that means is your hardware is exceptionally well built and defect free, and that none of your components have resource conflicts with any others. My guess is your PC is OEM manufactured, likely by Dell, and is on the lower end of the spectrum (under $800 base system, that maybe you added a nice video card and some extra RAM to)
Vista may not BSOD on you, but I bet you have frequent application crashes... I don't typically go more than a few days without an application bombing out, my desktop refreshing from an explorer crash, my printer loosing connection, or an app just hanging and needing to be killed by task manager.
Sure, memory leaks may be a thing of the past, and generally when an app bombs, the machine stays up... My Mac has had those features for 6 years! When an app does bomb, I typically see in the logs that it;s a core driver or service at fault, and not even a file installed by the application.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
There *is* support for user-mode USB drivers via UMDF (User-mode driver framework) [microsoft.com]. But, the driver has to be implemented differently for that to work.
Apple USB driver (Usbaapl.sys) is a traditional kernel-mode driver.
Any unhandled exception (or, perhaps, kernel memory corruption) in the driver will cause a blue screen.
And there is, in fact, a redistributable version of UMDF for Windows XP (SP2 and later).
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh? Bad analogy. Replace 'china shop' with 'cement barrier specifically designed to stop dump trucks.' That is one of the main things operating systems do, stop processes from interfering with each other. Understand? It is one of the fundamental reasons operating systems exist at all. To say it is not the fault of the operating system is to misunderstand the purpose of an operating system. Everything else (scheduling, memory and resource allocation) could be done cooperatively by each running program.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
Expect Vista to bla #####
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You both laugh now... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but what if Apple pulled a Microsoft and put an intentional bug into the app? Sure, it might seem a little too sophisticated for such a small thing, and people will still blame iTunes since it's the main application, but what if tomorrow Steve releases a press release apologizing to Vista users but blames it squarely on Vista "oh sorry something in our new version invoked a buggy piece of vista and we had to work around it." And what if that's what all the support people at apple are instructed to say? What if friends down the street say "oh dude I have a Mac/XP and it works fine for me" might iPod users say "fuckin' vista!" With a little careful preparation, I think this might be possible... maybe only a little bit of a stretch? :)
Sounds a little conspiracy theory-ish, but keep an eye out the next couple of days. You never know.
I am a mac fan, but I don't put evil past Apple by any means, they are a corporation after all. At the same time, evil attacking evil is loads of fun to watch, but I pity the people who get caught in the middle who can't sync now until a fix is released.
Good Call! (Score:5, Interesting)
The tags right now are [+] bug, media, music, windows, haha (tagging beta)
Odd that Apple, iPod, and iTunes aren't tags for a story about a bug in their software?
Vista sucks for not encapsulating the exception, but it sure sounds like the bug is on Apple's side of the issue.
-Rick
Re:Good Marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
If Windows didn't allow such extensive use of making every bit of software installing useless drivers and daemons
I'm not sure how to parse that...what do you mean?
With Windows apps, it's more than frequent, it's the norm.
What other windows apps do you run that require drivers to be installed?
I Blame DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
If iPods were simply accessible as a USB mass storage device, I don't think there would have been a problem.
From what I can see, Apple uses a proprietary device-type, so they can talk to it using an encrypted connection.
All that, simply to keep you from copying files you supposedly don't have the right to copy.
Re:I Blame DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
It might not be that. Encrypting the connection protects the files in transit, but who the hell ever sniffed the USB connection to break Apple DRM? There are far easier ways to free up your music in order to exercise your legitimate fair use rights.
I suspect the encryption is there to make sure that only iTunes can talk to an iPod. That's Apple's profit right there: you're forced to manage your music collection using their application, with its inbuilt link up to their music store. And you get used to doing things the Apple way - hell, some day you might even buy a Mac. You're not supposed to use Amarok - God forbid! That way you don't join up with the Cult Of Steve!
The part that pisses me off is they've done a pretty good job of encrypting the firmware updates too. Absolutely no way in for the Rockbox hackers. Pity, because I was thinking of buying a 160GB iPod Classic now that my old iRiver iHP-140 is full. That's a sale lost, then...
Re:I Blame DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
If iPods were simply accessible as a USB mass storage device, I don't think there would have been a problem. From what I can see, Apple uses a proprietary device-type, so they can talk to it using an encrypted connection.
Apple uses a proprietary device type so they can hash the files so reading them uses less battery than it would if it was arranged like a storage drive. I've never heard of any "encryption" for the USB connection and numerous other programs have figured out how to read the hash tables without any problems (e.g. Amarok, Banshee, Floola, gtkpod, MediaMonkey, Rhythmbox, SharePod, Songbird,Winamp, YamiPod). If Apple is trying to stop other programs from interfacing with iPods they're doing a lousy job of it.
All that, simply to keep you from copying files you supposedly don't have the right to copy.
I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Re:I Blame DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Rubbish. The hashing would not even save the most trivial amount of power, and may actually cost a minute amount more, since the Song Name now absolutely has to come from inside the file instead of from the filesystem, meaning every "directory listing" on an ipod has to open up every file, parse the id3 tags and cache the results for display instead of simply showing the filename.
Funny I just read an IEEE article on forensic analysis of iPods that disagrees with you. [Pod Forensics: Forensically Sound Examination of an Apple iPod, Jill Slay; Andrew Przibilla, System Sciences, 2007. HICSS 2007]
This is simply a lame way of satisfying the RIAA that Ipods are not used for piracy.
I have no doubt that Apple did make certain things harder to do using iTunes at the request of the RIAA, but I don't think that is the reason for their hashing, which is so easily bypassed.
The 3G nanos have built in encryption and have yet to be hacked by any of those programs...
Are you talking about the checksum it took the Amarok people all of two days to work around?
...and the Ipod Touch doesn't even offer disk mode anymore, most likely to keep the hackers out.
The iPod touch is using the same firmware as the iPhone so they keep it locked down the same way. All the other iPods work fine with third party music jukebox software I've used.
Re:Apple is actively troubling other programs. (Score:5, Informative)
I see plenty of articles about people wanting to run arbitrary software on iPhones (and the iPod Touch handheld) but don't see much about people having problems putting music on or taking music off of iPods using programs other than iTunes, which is what the person I was replying to brought up... along with some sort of "encryption" used on the USB connection.
I provided a nice list of ten programs other than iTunes that read and write music to the iPod. I think that pretty thoroughly debunks said point.
I just went over that list of 10 programs through some (admittedly not thorough) googling, and checked them for compatibility with iPhone/iPod Touch, which are the models that cause the issue due to the encryption/hashing used.
So perhaps your nice list of programs is less useful than you thought, and does not debunk the point.
As far as I know, there is no program other than iTunes that will let you put music on an iPod Touch/iPhone (with v2 firmware) without hacking the device's OS. iirc, hacking the OS voids the warranty, so obviously most people don't want to do this.
Re:I Blame DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, there is no DRM involved in mounting the iPod. It basically is a USB mass storage device. All Apple's drivers do is detect when a USB mass storage device matching an iPod's filesystem is plugged in, and launch iTunes. Seriously, that's it.
The way that Apple keeps you from copying files is by hiding the directories that contain the music files. The files are then scattered amongst a bunch of obscurely-named directories to make it a little more difficult to find them, after you figure out how to show the hidden directories. (On a Mac or Linux, it's as simple as "ls -a" in a terminal.) An iPod database file is how the iPod and iTunes keep track of what files are on the device, and where to find them. Dozens of other applications (including Linux music players like Rhythmbox or Amarok) have figured out how to read the database. There's also apps that read the database and let you copy files directly, like the Mac app Senuti.
The only DRM involved is in files purchased from the iTunes store. You can access and copy these files, but you just can't play them unless your computer is authorized for the account that purchased them.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
And yet, the update demonstrably does not crash XP...
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
So, it's MS's fault that an app released today crashes their year-old OS? Oh, they should have tested it, right?
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
Pop quiz: What does the kernel use to access hard disks, memory, and whatever other hardware is in your system?
iTunes?
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here let me explain how computers work to you.
Problem: Application crashes the OS.
Blame: OS. Modern operating systems should not crash because of an application.
Problem: Device driver crashes OS.
Blame: In a monolithic OS the driver is at fault. So it is the drivers fault. If the driver is approved by the OS manufacturer then you can also blame the QA department of the OS manufacture.
Problem: Application crashes.
Blame: Application but maybe the OS if the Application works on a different version of the OS.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
It is Apple's fault. If you read the forum you'll note that they already tracked down the offending driver in the minidump. It is Apple's USB driver for the iPod: usbaapl64.sys.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
I just installed iTunes 8 and happened to peak at the offending driver's import/exports.
Its written uses the kernel mode driver framework and not the user-mode framework.
BTW, User mode driver framework is available on XP too.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:4, Informative)
Drivers like the one for the iPod?
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh. Kinda. Ultimately I think this is a lack of testing on Apple's part though. I don't think you should be able to code together some drivers and then pass off any and all testing to Microsoft.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but it is you who is buried under the pile.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because iTunes totally doesn't use a custom proprietary USB protocol to talk to iPods that would never require special drivers.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's not. If you are going to deploy an application and you are a well funded commercial entity it is your burden to test it on whatever platform you plan on supporting. While I am not letting Vista off the hook for this flaw you cannot say Apple is 100% in the clear here. Either they didn't test it, which is incompetence, or they didn't care.
But I am sure if the next version of Microsoft Office somehow crashed OSX, the conspiracy nuts would be in here complaining about how Microsoft is trying to tarnish Apple's good name.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good Marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
So there exists only 2 possibilities here? I offer another. They did test it, but they couldn't test every single hardware/software permutation that exists which is not realistic. The fact that XP users don't seem to be affected points to problem unique only to Vista. I'm not saying it is not Apple's fault. It may be but until we have better understanding of the issue realize that this isn't the first application to crash Vista, and it probably won't be the last.
Re:Good Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey bud, I'm a software tester for a disaster recovery company. Let me put this past you:
- 4 identical hardware machines
- 4 exact copies of an ISO of Vista EE
- all 4 machines side by side, I make the same click on the same screen on each one.
After installation is completed with exactly the same settings on all 4 machines, we install our corporate AV program, then allow the machines to download and install updates. Each of the 4 machines has exactly the same list of updates added in the same order.
All 4 machines are benchmarked prior to and after installation, using 2 different tools from boot CDs. All 4 machines benchmark the same (within less than a second on a multi-million CPU cycle run, and withing 5 seconds on an multi-hour RAM test. No machines exhibit RAM, disk, or CPU issues and are regularly burned in and tested both before and after installations.
of the 4 machines, 1 has a C: with 3.9GB used space. 1 has 4.7GB used, 1 has 5.2 GB used, and 1 has 8.2!
One machine boots Vista in less than 22 seconds, one takes longer than 2 minutes. others are inbetween. Hard drive I/O pattern tests are run and all 4 drives exhibit nearly identical characteristics and I/O patterns for randomized I/O read/write testing.
One machine has 860MB or RAM free out of 2GB, one has less thqan 200MB free out of 2GB. Others fall between.
When we blank the drives and repeat the tests, machines exhibit completely different results. Sometimes the slowest one to boot in one test wiull be the fastest one to boot in another. Swapping components from system to system was no impact on the performance of a machine.
We started doing this test a few years ago when I was setting up several exchange 2003 servers to be used in a classroom and noticed simalar wild divergence between system performance, install size, and more, even before service packs or patches were added. We have repeasted this test with every version of 2000, XP, Vista, 2003 servre, 2008 server, as well as older OS. Anything NT or previous, and installer seems to be very consistent. Anything 2000 or later, very inconsistent. The newer it is, the worse the installer inconsistancies.
We have also done this test by repeating installations on the same single machine over and over, and the installation size on that machine is just as inconsistent.
So, what's the deal? Why does the same installer batch file, which is basically a top down program that collects data based on pre-defined rules, and processes installation order based on documented, databased information, produce such inconsistancy?
As a result, we no longer test product on a single machine, but we bought 4 each of 5 different machines, and installed the OS seperately on each one, then burned images of it. We test each application agains all 20 OS images with the same OS on each one, then swap images for each OS service pack and each OS supported. This can mean teasting a single application against over 70 Windows versions, each on 20 machines. This is a test base run of 1400 installs. After this, we release internally, and install to roughly 100 machines. We purposely buy only 2 or 3 of each model from a manufacturer to deploy in the company, so we have dozens of different machines, and allow each user to basically maintain their own box the way they like, creating what in other companies would be an IT nightmare, but in this case it;s a benefit (and each user is an admin on some level, and completely capable of maintaining their own machine). We'll find a dozen bugs we didn't find running through the 1400 image test run. After release to the field, when roughly a thousand customers get a hold of it, we'll find more bugs...
You CAN NOT test for every hardware reviosion on every machine made, and every OS that could be on it. If you're asking Apple to do that,. you're expecting them to have access to over 10 million differing system images to test on. This is IMPOSSIBLE.
The fault is ENTIRELY microsofts. If the soft
Re:Good Marketing (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you crazy?
My MP3 player is a simple storage device. This is because I can just drop MP3s into it without any user or software intervention, and it plays them without complaint. (It's an old RCA Lyra, BTW; it's gone through the washing machine by accident twice and keeps on ticking.)
Try doing that on an iPod. Go on, try it. No, without iTunes, and without any additional drivers. What was that? It doesn't work? Yeah, that's because Apple uses a crazy scheme whereby they update an index file every time you change something on the iPod hard drive. Don't update that file and you can't see it inside the iPod's UI.
That's why there are a bunch of third party programs so you can treat it as a hard drive, but they are always updating that file in the background.
BSOD... (Score:5, Funny)
Shucks... (Score:4, Funny)
I thought you were going to say that Vista was causing the iPod metal shell to become highly charged and was responsible for electrocutions.
After all, Vista kills babies!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly not!
You must have clicked his link to reply---why else would anyone be posting as AC?
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you know how it is; QA labs are always underfunded... Maybe their budget wouldn't stretch to a Vista license. Or they couldn't figure out which version to buy.
Try listening to your rap now, smart guy! (Score:3, Informative)
In Soviet Cupertino... (Score:5, Funny)
Does it seem like MS & Apple are fighting? (Score:4, Funny)
It really seems that causing a BSoD is something that would have come up in testing, no?
MS or Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MS or Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple should have debugged it on a vista box
Fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft debugged it on a vista box
Fixed that for you. Signed drivers, and all.
Sounds like a feature to me... (Score:5, Funny)
This sounds like a feature, not a bug.
The new "better" driver model sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it seems like there are an awful lot of problems with drivers under Vista. Certainly far more problems than I've seen on Vista.
The thing that bothers me about that is the change in driver architecture was billed as a way to make Vista faster and more stable. Why, then, is it that most of the drivers for Vista are less stable and slower than the same hardware running in XP?
Re:The new "better" driver model sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
For every major Windows release vendors spend a lot of time and money on new sets of drivers. My guess is that to save time and money some of them didn't rewrite their drivers from scratch for Vista, but instead migrated as much code as possible. That would let certain problems slip through the cracks, such as the kernel level security issues we've heard about.
Re:The new "better" driver model sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
I can tell you that it DOES exist. My Creative Nomad Vision M would simply plug into any up-to-date Windows XP machine, and it would show up as a media device. I didn't need to install the software to see the files on it.
Besides true chodes like Sony and Samsung, both of whom had gay software and stupid drivers last time I owned one, every mp3 player on the planet other than the iPod shows up in My Computer as either a drive or a media device.
The reason, as far as I can tell, is that Apple wants to force you to use iTunes to change anything on your iPod. Kodak does a similar thing with their EasyShare cameras, which is the only real negative of those cameras. Thankfully, unlike an iPod, in a camera you can just pull out the memory card and stick it in your PC.
Re:The new "better" driver model sucks. (Score:5, Informative)
Vista and XP do have standard handlers for USB devices but Apple does not support this. That is why you can't plugin your iPod and iPhone and except your computer to be able to mess with it, that is why it requires special software adding protocols to your networking stack like bonjour and rDNS services. Of course if you configure so, the devices can be used as standard usb mass storage devices but you'll never get access to your music that way.
This is the principle reason why the iPod sucks, it is everything that Apple stands for which is propietary technology which really requires Apple hardware to work with. I can hook up hundreds of other USB based MP3 players out there without added software but the iPod requires specific software to interface with and don't think about going cross platform, many an ipod has been wiped by going from Mac to PC and visa versa.
You're right, iTunes should not require administrative privileges to install but all that DRM means Apple has to dig deep.
Vista doesn't handle driver issues very well but the majority of this particular issue is definitely in Apple's court especially given all the issues with iTunes 8 on both sides of the isle. At least they are mostly getting OS X right now with a lot of the silly defaults getting changed. Samba support was atrocious for the longest time when the Linux camp had it down.
I wonder . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Kernel mode driver (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK the only thing that can cause a BSOD is code running in the kernel space, ring 0.
Quite why iTunes affects stuff that runs in kernel space is another matter... but I suspect it's probably to do with the Protected Media Path stuff. DRM, in other words. I can't think of anything in iTunes that should be running in kernel space - in Vista, all drivers apart from a component of the graphics driver are supposed to run in userspace.
Re:Kernel mode driver (Score:4, Informative)
in Vista, all drivers apart from a component of the graphics driver are supposed to run in userspace.
Bullshit.
A couple of driver types got major changes (most notablly display drivers which got the DX10 related stuff and printer drivers which were pushed into user mode) but by and large the driver model didn't really change significantly from XP to vista (despite this MS for some reason didn't allow XP drivers to install on vista, in most cases this can be worked arround by editing the inf file).
MS did introduce a framework for allowing some types of drivers to be developed in user mode but there are many that have to be done in kernel mode (anything that has kernel mode clients, anything that uses a memory mapped bus, anything that handles interrups) and many more that are still kernel mode because that makes the driver portable to more windows versions.
Re:Kernel mode driver (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they do (it's one of the things I particularly dislike about iTunes), but just running as SYSTEM doesn't mean it runs in kernel space - in the same way as running as root doesn't make it part of the kernel on Linux.
Re:Kernel mode driver (Score:4, Informative)
They do, however, have a specialized USB driver for iPods below that level.
"Hi, I'm a PC." "...And I'm a Mac." (Score:5, Funny)
"You son of a bitch." (Pulls out a gun)
"Whoa PC, whoa, let's not..."
BLAM.
Not Mine (Score:3, Insightful)
My advice (Score:5, Informative)
This happened to me... I read the Apple thread, and followed simple instructions... unplugged my HP printer, and it stopped the BSOD's when I plugged in my iPhone. Most people are saying the problem is with the Apple USB drivers screwing with the drivers for HP printers and Logitech mice/keyboards. There may be other devices that cause the problem as well, but those two are the biggies.
So until iTunes 8.1 is released, I can either charge my phone or print... but not both at the same time!
Re: (Score:3)
So until iTunes 8.1 is released, some people can either charge their phones or use their keyboards... but not both at the same time!
Best roadblock ad ever (Score:5, Funny)
The fault is (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I blame Linux.
media center (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, and here I was thinking it's time to upgrade the media center from that elderly, barely supported (but solid) XP Media Center Edition, to Vista. 26 gigs of music, and no way to get it on our ipods... Yeesh. Oh, I know it'll be fixed, but stories like this give me chills.
Upon re-reading that, it sounded like I'm dissing Microsoft. Not really, just prudently waiting for these kinds of issues to settle -- no matter who's fault they are -- before thinking about upgrading. By then, the CPU upgrade necessary to run Vista should be really cheap. :-)
This is off topic, but I have to say it: I may have to turn in my Linux geek hat for saying this, but I've been running XP Media Center Edition 2005 since it came out, under heavy daily use, and have not had a single bluescreen of death. Not one. (Nobody is more surprised than me. :-))
Who uses iTunes on Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
Geesh the last three versions were bloated to the heavens. I think it takes about a minute to start now. A least few recent versions flat out crashed or did not update correctly. And is there any piece of application software that takes more time to update than iTunes? I don't think so.
iTunes Really a Mac App (Score:3, Insightful)
Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Itunes in past has:
- deleted your legit music
- Unstalled othe mac applications without asking you
- Hijacked volume control from windows
- Modified code specifically to make it hard to work with the ipod outside of itunes
- Is the largest pusher of DRM technology
Really a BSOD isn't that big of a deal. And incase you are curious NO it isn't windows fault. Why is a music player installing drivers overtop of standard drivers that work perfectly? Aside from their hatred of doing things the same even when they are better only jobs knows. If windows tried to pull even half the bullship Apple has they would have been sued into dust. I find it disgusting its ok since its mac.
I had no idea that it was so successful... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the largest pusher of DRM technology
You're saying that Apple has shipped more copies of iTunes than Microsoft has shipped copies of Windows XP and Vista (or Windows Media Player 9 for earlier versions of Windows)? That Apple has shipped more copies of iTunes than all DVD players combined (worldwide!)?
Well, no, actually, I think you're pretty far off base with that one.
Re:I had no idea that it was so successful... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong metric.
Apple is the largest supplier of DRM media via the iTunes store.
Microsoft is one of many vendors who has been strongarmed into supporting playback of DRM files. You think they want to spend money developing DRM shit, or snorting blow off hookers?
Content owners are pushing DRM the hardest. They get the most blame. Then the content providers that agree to push this bullshit onto their customers.
My computer won't boot with an iPod connected (Score:4, Interesting)
On-topic enought to tell here: My computer won't even boot with an iPod attached. Might be just the shuffle, but I think having my old mini connected is a no-no, too. Won't even go past the BIOS screen, it hangs before the pseudo memory check at POST.
Sometimes I don't even get an image on the screen, I think because it hangs too fast for the monitor too sync. I found this out the (very) hard way: Computer didn't boot, no image on screen, seemingly for no reason, so I did what I had to do, basic troubleshooting. Remove power cord and reconnect after a while, didn't do anything. So I started tearing out extension cards, disconnecting hard drives, removing RAM chips. Had pretty much the whole thing disassembled, short of removing the CPU (because removing the HSF is such a PITA). Erased the BIOS using a paperclip, nothing. Only then did I notice, by accident, that some USB devices, including the iPod, were still attached. Disconnected them, and the system booted fine. WTF.
The whole thing is so strange that I promptly forgot about it and repeated the whole procedure half a year later. Doh!
Note that everything works fine once the POST is done, I bet I could even boot of of it if I wanted to, and I can use them in Linux or Windows just fine. So really just a minor inconvenience, albeit a very odd one. (I blame my motherboard, BTW, not the iPod.)
IT seems to only involve people with an (Score:5, Informative)
HP Printer.
Drivers on windows can be troublesome. It would suprise me if usbaapl64.sys has some issue previously undiscovered.
This is fallout of shared component design MS uses.
Should Apple have tested with HP printers? Probably, but no one can test every configuration of a PC.
The USB set up MS is using is causing a fault in Ring 0. That's the only way I can see this causing a BSoD
Steve Jobs crossed the streams! (Score:5, Funny)
He mixed Apple iTunes sloppy code with Microsoft Vista sloppy code.
That is why I don't use iTunes or Vista, both have sloppy code in them that cause crashed. When you cross both of them together you crash the system or at least cause it to lock up.
It is also why my G3 iMac was never upgraded to Mac OSX and still runs Mac OS9, because of Apple's sloppy code in OSX. If I convert it to a new OS it will either be Linux or AROS, because both of them are stable and being ported to the PowerPC platform or have a port already.
Apple "borrowed" a lot from Commodore, first it was the Vic-20 Commodore logo key copied as the Apple logo key on the Apple //e, then it was the Commodore Vic-20 and Commodore 64 compact design copied with the Apple //c, then it was the Amiga Workbench and co-processor support for 4096 colors and above with the Commodore Amiga in the Macintosh II (The Macintosh II was basically an Amiga 2000 rip-off after the Mr. Coffee Classic black and white Macintosh series was an epic fail), and then NeXT was an AmigaOS rip-off using BSD Unix (AmigaOS/AmigaDOS was based on the Unix-like TriPOS and Steve Jobs learned from his epic fail to use Unix as it is more like the Amiga to help make Next survive), Pixar ripped off the Newtek Video Toaster that Amigas had used (Steve Jobs saw how Amiga 2000s with the Video Toaster did great desktop video for movies and wanted to borrow that tech for Pixar), and then Mac OSX got the AROS and AmigaOS 3.X look and feel but with the Microsoft Windows bloat. AROS [sourceforge.net] does not have the Windows bloat but still has the AmigaDOS/Workbench "less is more" approach in that it is memory efficient and doesn't need a high end processor with tons of memory to run it.
Basically Apple started to slowly evolve into Microsoft, and Amiga and the Amiga technology evolved into what the Macintosh should have been in 1985, and evolved into what it should be with AROS into modern times.
Apple even is suing people like Microsoft did like Pystar because of its EULA, which is very much like the one Microsoft has. Apple vs. Pystar is very much like Microsoft vs. IBM over OS/2, so Apple is evolving to what Microsoft was during the OS/2 years in the 1990's.
Fix already available (Score:5, Informative)
Please see this apple knowledge base page: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2280 [apple.com]
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
iTunes installs its own CD drivers to manage ripping and burning, as well as always-on "helper" and updater processes, in addition to drivers for the iPod/iPhone.
Asinine, but then again Apple doesn't follow Windows UI guidelines either.
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Interesting)
WMP doesn't follow windows UI guidelines. I think the UI guidelines for Windows specifically give media players a pass.
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
(I'm the original author of PyTunes, the base for Pymusique -- I know a bit about Fairplay)
Here is a test: (Score:5, Insightful)
Try plugginh an HP printer into the same usb Channel as your iPhone.
This will cause the crash.
In the scenerio I presented to you, whose fault would you think was the crash if you ahdn
t read this story?
Probably HPs.
Just an example of how overly complex windows driver architecture is.
This is why I feel we should go back to the applications installing everything it needs under a directory it creates.
Less mess, easy trouble shooting easy uninstall, not files scattered all over your system.