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Will OSX Build In Torrenting?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon May 01, 2006 01:33 PM
from the imagine-that-itunes-catalog dept.
OS X Operating Systems
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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Will OSX Build In Torrenting? 50 Comments More /

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  • You upload a little and you get infinite download credit for whatever movie you want. Sometimes even before it's out in the stores!
    • It's a great idea. It's a real shame, a real shame, that there's no way of, say, building this in to iTunes, the thing they're trying to speed up, a quasi-independent application that runs on a variety of different Mac OS X versions. I mean, I can understand how they need to build this in to the operating system, it's such a... low level protocol and everything, and it would add so much bloat, yeah, bloat to iTunes to build it in.

      (Yes, I think the article is bullshit. There's absolutely no reason for Appl

    • When NeXT came out every box shipped with ZILLA installed. It was the forerunner of modern screen-saver grid computers. You donated unused cycles to the Zilla organization and they did intersting stuff. In particular they allegedly did much of the four-color map theorem proof on Zilla and some of the early movie CGI work was done on Zilla. Another example of how far ahead NeXT was at the time. (another groovy thing on NeXT was it's early use of Mime and markup formatting for e-mail, something we take f

  • wow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by sxtxixtxcxh (757736) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:35PM (#15239107) Homepage Journal
    imagine getting credit for itunes music for torrenting itunes music... what fun.

  • Movie Store Distribution System (Score:5, Interesting)

    by richdun (672214) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:39PM (#15239147)
    Credit for torrenting? Why would Apple give away iTunes music just for people to run torrents? Well, maybe because those torrents will serve up iTunes movies. Dedicated bandwidth has been the greatest obstacle to getting a full iTunes HD movie store (well, that and the movie companies' agreement, but if the tech is there and economical, the content will follow).

    • Re:Movie Store Distribution System (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rovingeyes (575063) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:57PM (#15239319)
      "...but if the tech is there and economical, the content will follow..."

      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.

  • Precursor for iT-Movie-S (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doormat (63648) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:40PM (#15239151) Journal
    I can see Apple doing this for movies since they're so large size-wise. I wouldn't mind using half of my upstream to earn credit at the store. Good way to defray the cost of my internet bill - and since I'm on a comercial account my ISP doesnt say anything about me using a lot of bandwidth.
  • I don't think that the legitamate uses of BitTorrent come close to equaling the bandwidth wasted on downloading pr0n, music and the latest blockbuster movies. So why would Apple build this into thier OS? Will it help legitimize BitTorrent? I doubt it. It would be interesting to see them distribute updates via bittorrent though.

  • Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Avillia (871800) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:41PM (#15239160)
    Help us take our hosting cost and we'll help you negate that bill you pay for 30 tasty megabytes of fiber... Yesss...

    Personally, this is the best implementation of the BitTorrent technology yet.

    $eeding.
    • I think Apple is being even slicker with this move. This is Apple also building up its defenses against AT&T, etc... AT&T want to start throttling Apple's, Google's, Amazon's, etc... bandwidth. AT&T will have a hell of a time throttling the connections of all of their customers and any other IPs trying to exchange data with AT&T customers. It's one thing to throttle at a source, its a whole other problem to throttle a legally distributed network, and to do it without losing a good chunk of c
  • This sounds like a great thing, since it would make BitTorrent more available for non-techie users and add another vote to the legitimacy of BT.

    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)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:44PM (#15239191) Homepage Journal
    TFA seems slashdotted already, but given the name of the site I can only take this with an extremely large grain of salt.

    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)

    by TeamSPAM (166583) <flynnmj AT email DOT com> on Monday May 01 2006, @01:46PM (#15239209) Homepage

    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)

      by MachineShedFred (621896) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:55PM (#15239291) Journal
      You can already do this.

      In Software Update, under the "update" menu, select either "Download Only" or "Install and Keep Package"

      You will then find the packages at /Library/Receipts and can copy them to other Macs.

      Cheers.

      • Re:Want to share updates (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TeamSPAM (166583) <flynnmj AT email DOT com> on Monday May 01 2006, @02:34PM (#15239655) Homepage

        There are 2 problems with this suggestion:

        1. This works when there is only 1 software update available. This solution gets ugly when there are multiple updates to install. Doing these updates via the command line end up requiring multiple reboots, where the software update panel will only require 1 reboot if needed. I may need to review doing updates from the command line so that I can do multiple installs.
        2. I'm lazy. ;-)
          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.
        • This works fine for multiple updates, just select them all and then "download and install".

          Copy all the updates to the second Mac and launch them all at once, the Installer will run the installs back-to-back and doesn't (usually) get hung up when one requires a restart, it just starts the next one anyway. Sometimes also there are dependencies and a particular package won't install the first time, just restart and run that one again and it should work fine.

          You do have to restart manually when they're done, t

    • 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.

      What if the torrent didn't leave the local network? Azureus can detect machines on the local network -- who needs to throttle when only one machine is downloading over the thin pipe and all the machines

  • P2P built into iTunes (the app) makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joeykiller (119489) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:50PM (#15239247) Journal
    I don't know if P2P built into the OS makes any sense, but certainly it makes sense to build it into iTunes (the application). Some people have claimed that Apple's margin on iTunes content is razor thin. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I certainly know that bandwidth -- when you want the best possible access to your customers, no matter where they are -- doesn't come cheap.

    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).
      • OK.. business 101: assuming that you have the $.35 correct, that is not profit, that is gross margin. Profit is what you have when you have deducted all of the costs associated. Direct expenses would be things like the bandwidth and the credit-card transaction fees. And less direct costs would include all of the servers and personnel costs involved in developing and running the store.

        After all that, profits are probably razor thin.
  • Why? Well, Apple are trying to get in the movie business, and the only efficient scalable way to distribute huge files is, frankly, P2P, and giving people incentives such as free credit is cheaper than providing the bandwidth themselves. It also partially legitimises P2P, which is considered a "bad thing". About time more companies caught onto it

  • Makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)

    by paulxnuke (624084) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:06PM (#15239399)
    The name "torrent" would scare off the few IT managers willing to play with Apple: they wouldn't dare put anything that even suggests P2P on a company system (their VP may not know what a torrent is, but he's heard the name and thinks it's bad.)

    If Apple distributes this and then some sleazy congressman manages to make it illegal, they'll have a big media (if not legal) problem and have to disable high profile system services.

    If Apple distributes this, it will poison their relationship with the gangsters who control ITMS content (whether it has any bearing on song sharing or not.)

    What possible use is it? Apple owns Akamai. Their updates download faster than just about anyone's. If they use a torrent system it _will_ be slower (end user upload speed), not faster, and someone will sooner or later figure out how to upload trojans in place of updates and really wreck their day.

    If Apple wants to hurt themselves, it would be easier and cheaper to just start donating computers to Al Quaeda.

  • Please. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Steve Cowan (525271) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:09PM (#15239425) Journal
    Mac OS Rumors has a long history of being the most uninformed, random Mac rumor site in existence. Its predictions are rarely accurate, and when they are, they have generally been mentioned on another site first.

    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)

      by ZachPruckowski (918562) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Monday May 01 2006, @02:17PM (#15239497)
      Totally concur. Here's another example of this guy smoking stuff:

      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.

  • It's called "grid" distribution. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tentac1e (62936) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:18PM (#15239500) Journal
    I'm working on a project for one of the megaconglomerates we all love to hate. It incorporates bittorrent style sharing, but all literature refers to it as "grid" downloading. Also, content is never downloaded to the user's computer-- it's "cached". But since downloads are so damned DRM'ed, I guess you can't consider it downloaded anyway.
  • The day MOSR becomes a credible source on /. is when not only toasters fly but water flows uphill.

  • What I'd like to see... (Score:3, Funny)

    by utexaspunk (527541) on Monday May 01 2006, @03:00PM (#15239891)
    This may be a little OT, but I'd like to see Apple offer advertisements for download on the iTMS in exchange for store credit. They could make them interactive or something if they want to make sure you watch them. I don't mind commercials, I just mind that they interrupt whatever I'm trying to watch. I'd gladly sit and watch/interact with commercials for 20-30 min if it got me $2-3 to spend on commercial-free TV shows like Lost or The Colbert Report. There's a strange bit of psychology that makes me despise spending $2 out of my pocket for an episode of Lost but be fine with watching 20 minutes of commercials for it, even though my time is worth more than that.

    • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Luscious868 (679143) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:38PM (#15239130)
      RTFA. Traffic would occur on non-standard ports and you wouldn't be able to share anything you wanted. You would donate your bandwidth to share content Apple approved like software updates. It makes perfect sense and I'd certianly donate my bandwith at home when I'm at work in exchange for iTunes credits.
    • The rumor goes that they will give you credit for uploading their software updates to other people (thereby reducing their bandwith bills); they won't offer you anything for uploading anything else...

    • Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MrNougat (927651) <(ckratsch) (at) (gmail.com)> on Monday May 01 2006, @01:39PM (#15239143)
      Perhaps they intend to make torrents a legitimate method of delivery of purchased iTunes songs. So, you purchase an iTunes song, seed it as an 'iTunes torrent.' Then you get some amount of credit for more iTunes songs. Someone else who buys the first song you bought downloads it as a torrent from you (and others).

      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.
      • It can easily be done. Many private tracker sites require a login and track user U/D ratios. Perhaps Jobs can give a call over to the admin at the empornium [empornium.us] to see how he does it ... or perhaps he already has an account and could just post on the forums ;-)

    • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Informative)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:48PM (#15239230)

      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).

    • Re:Nahhh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nuzak (959558) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:42PM (#15239167) Journal
      > I don't care how many good uses there are, Bit Torrent will always be labeled as a piracy tool.

      The name, sure. Otherwise ... it's just a goddamn protocol. WoW uses it for updates, and it's catching on elsewhere. They just won't call it BitTorrent, and it might not even be perfectly compatible. Just call it an "exchange-interlocked pareto-efficiency protocol" or something.

      Man, every time RFID or the BT protocol comes up, slashdot gets its collective panties in a wad.

    • Re:Nahhh (Score:4, Funny)

      by Realistic_Dragon (655151) on Monday May 01 2006, @01:42PM (#15239168) Homepage
      2. Legal downloads of Linux/BSD CD's.

      Somehow I have never seen this as Job's first priority on the list of things to make easy in OS X.
      • FYI- his name is Steve Jobs, not Steve Job. I'm sure you know that, but clearly you don't understand how apostrophes work. When doing a possessive of a word already ending in s, you put the apostrophe after the s. So you'd say "Jobs' first priority". Some people say you should add an additional s, as in "Jobs's first priority", but we all know that's just silly.
    • Except Apple is the one that dictates what it is you'll be sharing. You're simply donating some disk space on your computer and bandwidth. The traffic will also occur on non-standard bit torrent ports so admins can tell the difference between the Apple feature and standard bit torrent traffic.
    • I don't care how many good uses there are, Bit Torrent will always be labeled as a piracy tool.

      You mean, like the Internet?

    • People said the same thing about CD burners.
    • No, abusing your monopoly is bad.

      If MS did not abuse their monopoly, then no problems would have occurred and no one would have complained.

      What MS did, specifically, was to extort Compaq by threatening to withhold OS licenses if they shipped systems with Netscape Navigator as the default and on the desktop.

      In other words, if Apple threatened Best Buy and Walmart into stopping sales of competitive MP3 players, or PCs, with their iPod dominance then Apple would be in the same boat.

      They don't, so they aren't.

    • Re:Building things in the OS bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rizzo320 (911761) on Monday May 01 2006, @03:19PM (#15240053)
      The difference:

      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 :-)
    • Of course, because MS has demonstrated anticompetitive behavior in the past. A link to a similar response to a similar post in this very article thread here [slashdot.org]!

      The gist is: Microsoft threatened Compaq to pull their Windows license if Compaq installed Netscape Navigator. Apple has not done any such thing with their OS, so they aren't under scrutiny.

      If you're going to complain about how people treat MS, at least understand WHY people treat MS differently too.
    • If you consider asking a pointed question to be flame bait, then I suppose I'm guilty.

      The truth is, if Microsoft enters a niche currently served by freeware/shareware/open source, the assumption is that it is the evil empire out to squash all the little perfect peace-loving Linux and OSX people.

      Frankly, I just want to see the same scrutiny applied universally.

      Look for a second at Apple. The only reason they're not Microsoft is that they didn't do it well enough 20 years ago. The failed, they didn't "take

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