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Will OSX Build In Torrenting?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon May 01, 2006 02:33 PM
from the imagine-that-itunes-catalog dept.
from the imagine-that-itunes-catalog dept.
Cjattwood writes "Mac OS rumors has an article describing a possible implementation of a Bittorrent client into Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", including a unique sharing reward system where the user can share bandwidth and get rewards, such as credit in the iTunes store."
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BitTorrent still has a better incentive scheme (Score:5, Funny)
Re:BitTorrent still has a better incentive scheme (Score:3, Interesting)
(Yes, I think the article is bullshit. There's absolutely no reason for Appl
wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Movie Store Distribution System (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Movie Store Distribution System (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how AT&T and Verizon will try to extort money for this to happen. Are they gonna track ITunes bittorrent traffic and charge Apple for it? If they can demand money from Google, Amazon etc for their content, which is incedentally less amount of data (per request probably megs at max) than a HD movie (gigs of data per request), I don't see why these cartels wouldn't eye Apple as their next target.
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Precursor for iT-Movie-S (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, this is the best implementation of the BitTorrent technology yet.
$eeding.
Interesting, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if there's a crediting system, does that mean that Apple is watching your BT usage? If I'm not mistaken, Apple has some interest as a content producer and may not like what they see BT being used for. Is this going to be yet another organization watching what people transfer and ratting them out to the RIAA/MPAA/CIA, or will they be Not Evil (tm) and keep their noses out of people's business?
Groan. (Score:3, Interesting)
Beyond that, it's an interesting concept, but one that could seriously botch up torrenting as it is. Bittorrent works so well (with both legal and shady source material) because every user gets the combined benefit of getting what they want, and helping thers who want the same thing to get it. At the very most, a big ratio gets you get bragging rights on some tracker site. My inner folk-song-singing hippie cringes at what result throwing monetary things like iTunes credit into the mix would have.
Want to share updates (Score:5, Interesting)
If we can share the software updates between macs, it would be a good thing. With 3 macs in my house, why should I have to download the updates 3 times? I should be able to get a copy from the mac on my local net that downloaded it first. I just hope they allow the torrent client to have a throttle on it.
Re:Want to share updates (Score:4, Informative)
In Software Update, under the "update" menu, select either "Download Only" or "Install and Keep Package"
You will then find the packages at
Cheers.
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Re:Want to share updates (Score:4, Interesting)
There are 2 problems with this suggestion:
In the wonderful world of Apple's "it just works", I want the pref panel for software update to have a checkbox that says cache all updates and a textbox that indicates my local update cache.
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P2P built into iTunes (the app) makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
So adding P2P to iTunes could be one area where Apple could improve their margins. I guess the credit system would be a way to secure that people actually kept on sharing their files after they were downloaded/bought from iTunes (the store).
It's an interesting idea (if it's true).
Please. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a fairly typical MOSR pipe dream.
Apple does not need my unreliable, low-speed bandwidth. They deliver 100+ MB software updates to thousands of users without blinking. Given that most of their iTMS downloads (music, movies, whatever) are from Windows users, they would see little gain by offering software update credits to Mac users. In fact, for their paltry savings on the cost of bandwidth, they would have an administrative nightmare to face.
I file this one under bullshit.
Re:Please. (Score:4, Informative)
From the MOSR front page: In the process of researching recent reports from sources regarding Apple's "Gamer's Dream" Macs now in the late stages of development, we uncovered information suggesting that Apple is testing an alternate version of the Gamer's MacBook which would employ an nVIDIA nForce chipset and dual GeForce 7800GTX Mobile GPU's. Memory bandwidth would be slightly less than that offered by the existing Intel chipset in today's MacBook Pro's, but graphics performance would be even higher than the ATi X1800/X1900 based dual-GPU laptop design we've spoken about previously.
Not only does he have no sources, he doesn't have much of a clue about economics or design either. So he's a faker and not a very good one.
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Re:DRM? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:DRM? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a way for Apple to expand their ability to deliver content without having to drastically upgrade their own network infrastructure. You get a little iTunes store credit for being part of the delivery system.
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Re:DRM? (Score:5, Informative)
DRM? just curious, I can't imagine that they would let you offer the pirated music and movies and then get itunes credit for it...
I think you're confusing the term upload. They aren't talking about you uploading some data you have to get credit to download other data. They are talking about you authorizing Apple to use your machine as a node in a bit torrent network that distributes data of their choice. Thus you click "yes" and they use your spare upload bandwidth to more cheaply and quickly send software updates, podcasts, iTunes downloads, etc. to other computers. The data is all encrypted and chunked so it is not useful to you at all, even though it is on your hard drive. In excahnge, they give a free itunes song or something every month or year or something.
You win, because you weren't using all your hard drive and bandwidth anyway (and presumably it gives your data precedence). Apple wins because they no longer have to pay as much to distribute iTunes data and software updates. Theoretically, they could even expand this to third party software, cheaply distributing up to date version of any software companies want to give Apple a copy of. Hopefully it would be tied to a full service to keep all your programs updated.
The risks are legally, Apple might have copyright challenges to copying little chinks of encrypted music, even if it is unusable, and the security risk of people masquerading as valid nodes to disrupt the network or try to inject fake data (unlikely unless the implementation is very weak).
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Re:Nahhh (Score:5, Insightful)
The name, sure. Otherwise
Man, every time RFID or the BT protocol comes up, slashdot gets its collective panties in a wad.
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Re:Nahhh (Score:4, Funny)
Somehow I have never seen this as Job's first priority on the list of things to make easy in OS X.
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Re:Nahhh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nahhh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When one runs out of feline names! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Building things in the OS bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I can delete Safari from any version of Mac OS X it runs on. Can you uninstall Internet Explorer from your current verion of Windows XP?
What I am leading to here is that Apple builds features into Mac OS X, and then creates modular applications that take advantage of them, or allows you to disable these features in the operating system. Plus, other applications built by third party developers can take advantage of the features (such as OmniWeb with WebKit) as well. No one who installs Mac OS X is forced to leave Safari, iChat AV, Mail, iCal, etc installed on their computer. They can delete them and then choose to install Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium, and Sunbird, and there is no penalty to the user.
Again, try doing that to Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or Microsoft Messenger, without a third party XP hacking tool. You can hide those applications to the user, but can never fully delete them.
If Apple builds torrenting into 10.5, I'm sure there won't be anything that prevents you from running the normal bittorent clients that are already available for your standard pirating needs.
And that, my friend, is the difference between good and evil
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