Codeweaver's Crossover 4.0 Adds iTunes Support 271
nbahi15 writes "Codeweavers has released v4 of its Wine implementation with the addition of support for iTunes. To quote their web site, 'iTunes works, and can do everything we thought was important; play music, access the store, and sync with an iPod. It can't burn CDs right now, and it has some fairly serious warts (sound is tricky, particularly with 2.6 kernels, and getting the iPod going is hard), but we think it's usable.' Finally I can use the single most important 'productivity' application on Linux."
seriously, this is great news (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:seriously, this is great news (Score:3, Insightful)
Why couldn't Linux user buy music before? I use Linux and WinXP and I have been able t
I'm a Juk guy myself (Score:2)
Also, and I know this is kinda silly, but I like using less than perfect software sometimes because it's fun to watch it improve from version to version.
From your perspective, I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a developer myself, I know very well that what I think is usable is not always end-user usable. As close as I get to a project, knowing the code inside and out, I tend to miss the big picture stuff. It may sound logical and intuitive in my mind, but it usually takes some testing from non-geeks before I let anyone - especially a client - start using it.
Re:From your perspective, I'm sure... (Score:2)
Then I usually re-rip the tracks as DRM-free MP3 files.
Re:From your perspective, I'm sure... (Score:3, Informative)
Hymn DRM Stripper [hymn-project.org]
Re:From your perspective, I'm sure... (Score:2)
Re:From your perspective, I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't burn CD
Sound flaky is listed as a 'wart'.
Hmm... So on what sense does this 'work' then???
Nice and all. But.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:2)
I've got a gig in my main XP box and iTunes runs slow. Runs fine on my Macintosh however. Not sure what causes the performance problems, but they are well documented even if not everyone sees them.
However, since I have a Rio Karma I dont REALY care too much. iTunes is nice but I just dont like the limiations of the iPod (no Ogg, Flac or gapless playback).
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:2)
I've been happy with Apple Lossless and my iPod, but those Karma's are pretty nice.
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:2)
I have. 1.5 GHz Centrino with 512M ram. iTunes is an absolute PIG on this otherwise speedy system.
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:2)
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:2)
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:3, Informative)
most likely. see:
"I am very glad to announce that we have shipped Version 4 of CrossOver Office, with new support for iTunes, Framemaker 7.1, JInitiator, and Quicktime 6.5.2."
http://crossover.codeweavers.com/pipermail/announc e/2004-November/000027.html [codeweavers.com]
note quicktime at the end of the list.
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:2)
Re:Nice and all. But.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, you do understand that Quicktime is performing all of the AAC/MP3 decoding, right? iTunes is wholy dependent on Quicktime to actually play the media.
Still, a very impressive achievement. The relative stability of the Win32 API could eventually be Microsoft's undoing.
Compatability? (Score:3, Funny)
SyncPod (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SyncPod (Score:2)
more than syncpod (Score:3)
New application support:
Support for iTunes and iTMS. Limited iPod support; drivers for ripping
are not supported.
SyncPod + more burners than you can imagine + online music stores like besonic [besonic.de]
Support for Adobe FrameMaker 7.1
Support for QuickTime 6.5.2
Reviewed plugin support: removed some, updated others
Mplayer,xine,plugger, kmplayer etc....
Application bug fixes:
Office:
Fixed a bug that was cau
Re:more than syncpod (Score:2)
Fantastic (Score:2, Funny)
Now if they just get Clippy support I'd be as happy as a pig in slop.
Usable or executable? (Score:4, Insightful)
So does it work or not? Here's my translation: "iTunes will now launch under WINE. Do not expect to listen to your music, burn CDs, sync with the iPod easily, or in short, do anything iTunes does."
Seriously though, I applaud their effort. It's just that saying iTunes works under WINE when it doesn't really work all that well is a bit of false advertising. If it gets more programmers on the bandwagon, good for them, but I'd hate to see people get turned off by (what sounds to be) a bad experience.
Re:Usable or executable? (Score:2)
When some of the prime features of the software don't work, you can't exactly say the app is supported.
But it is way cool that iTunes music store is working. Keep up the good work guys, but don't jump the gun on integration announcements.
Only on slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have cxoffice 4 and you can listen to music, add stuff to the library (though it is mighty slow, took half an hour to add 4 gigs of mp3s), and you can go on the iTunes music store (Which works very well btw). I used the cxitunespreview which ran iTunes, and they have improved the performance greatly. You can actually listen to music through iTunes now, and performance is drastically improved over the cxitunespreview. Sure, it's not like running it in windows. But it's quite fast.
They're going to be releasing another version soon which should help the cpu usage go down for iTunes (currently some kind of garbage iTunes is spewing is causing cxoffice to use 100% cpu, they think it's some kind of timing hack used by apple... Hey, windows/x86 isn't apple's primary platform, so I wouldn't be surprised).
All in all a nice product. Also soon they will be adding firewire support to the cxipod (currently only usb is supported, and my 4G ipod doesn't like usb on linux). But then I use gtkpod and am perfectly happy with that (I can transfer all the mp4's I get off of iTunes).
Wha? (Score:5, Insightful)
"sound is tricky, particularly with 2.6 kernels, and getting the iPod going is hard"
So... Which one is it? How was this ready for release again?
how much better than the itunes preview? (Score:2, Interesting)
but with their friendly upgrade policy i will be trying out 4.0 soon. they seem like a nice company. ahh, one day itunes will run flawlessly under linux, and that will be a GREAT day!
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh well, I guess you'd expect some problems with running an app designed for Mac on a Windows emulation layer on a Linux box -- come to think of it, it's amazing it works at all! Nice job guys.
Earlier news.com story... (Score:5, Informative)
now it's in the official release (Score:2, Insightful)
timothy
Simuated iPod (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple talks about a new way of sharing music, appealing to our sense of "karma" to encourage us not to steal. Yet they leave Linux desktop users in the cold. This seems somewhat disingenuous to me.
I would be excited about the iTunes music store launching in Canada (finally), if it wasn't for the fact that it won'
Re:Simuated iPod (Score:2)
Re:Simuated iPod (Score:2)
Re:Simuated iPod (Score:5, Insightful)
So what does Apple get in exchange for porting iTunes to Linux again?
Not ready for iTunes on my debian system yet (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't see the advantage in downloading music.
When you download from any source, legit or not, you're not in control of how the file was extracted.
The bit rate may not be what you wanted, there is always the possibility of some digital artifacts during playback, and i'm just not comfortable with it.
Plus, I don't own an iPod. I don't think I want one. I'm quite happy with my CD based MP3 player which uses CDRW's.
I can put 10 hours worth of music on one disc and it works nicely.
Besides I like to be in control of my music and my gear and I don't like when I can't replace the battery like the way the iPod is setup.
Cheaper and you can get single songs (Score:2)
The real winning scenario is when you want just a few songs from an album. Then are you willing to pay 3-4x as much for a slightly better quality copy of the song? My answer has turned out to be "no way" - I now buy even whole albums just for the convienience and slight price advantage, while knowing the artists get a measurable amount of money from it (like 10 cents a song).
Re:Not ready for iTunes on my debian system yet (Score:2)
iPod Batteries (Score:3, Informative)
I think by now, anyone bitching that they "can't" replace an iPod battery is just looking for something to bitch about. Seems to me that there are more [ipodbattery.com] than one [apple.com] place to get replacement batteries [ipodresq.com] for the iPod, and it even only takes about 5 mins to do the replacement yourself.
hmmm....... (Score:2)
I say what??? (Score:3, Funny)
Someone's got their priorities seriously out of kilter here...
As an actual paying customer (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd use Evolution - but we're on Exchange 5.5 and I can't use the calendar (very important).
I do use OpenOffice also, but sometimes you actually do need the real deal, for crazy marked-up contracts with goofy checkboxes and whatnot. It's good to be able to open network diagrams in Visio. Also, I like to fill in my timecard so I get paid.
Obviously, the situation is not ideal, but it lets me run Linux at work, which is vastly helpful to actually doing my job. It's just that all the other junk associated with having a job - HR, Legal, etc kind of things - require me to have Microsoft products.
OpenOffice 2 has better conversion (Score:2)
Mind you OpenOffice 2 is still beta - but I haven't had any corruption or major issues yet.
Uh huh (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh wait, it still doesn't run the apps that regular end-users want. Oh well.
As an aside, I was reading a very funny Usenet discussion I had in *1996* (!!), where someone was saying that Linux was almost ready for the desktop, and I said (paraphrase), "I'll meet you back here in 10 years and I predict that we'll have an interesting Linux product, but it will lag behind the commercial market in critical ways."
Only eight years later, but yup. An interesting product that still can't do what normal users want to do.
(I'd post the real discussion -- it's pretty funny -- but it was under my real name, heh). You could cut and paste the discussion today and no one would know it was from 1996. It's hysterical.
Re:Uh huh (Score:2)
For me, Linux became a usable desktop the day KDE 1 became available.
What about MINIDISC (netmd) under linux? (Score:2)
Re:What about MINIDISC (netmd) under linux? (Score:2)
I wrote Sony a comment letting them know they lost a potential buyer. The product did everything I needed, except not in OS X . . .
Re:What about MINIDISC (netmd) under linux? (Score:2)
Anyway, i also wish Sony would get off their asses and give the MD a fair chance. The hardware is great, cheap, and the media is readily available.
Finally something works! (Score:2, Insightful)
One more reason to get off Windows.
Though, seems like the upgrade borked the fonts in MSWord. Ouch.
This is a testament to how good iTunes is (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux users are usually a lot more critical of their software. While a lot of Linux doesn't have the polish or fit 'n' finish of some Windows software, the quality of the code is taken more seriously, as is the functionality of the software. It may not always LOOK pretty, but it is usually very powerful and well written.
There are a lot of programs that try to emulate iTunes, both on Linux and Windows (LTunes anybody?). But it seems that the Linux community would rather see iTunes itself running on Linux than a knock-off. I see this as a 'kudos' to Apple from the Linux community, for producing software so good that linux devs bust their balls to get it working.
I applaud the efforts of Codeweavers and hope that they are able to get full functionality very soon. While I would like to see Apple write a version of iTunes for Linux (in a way legitimizing the platform as a desktop alternative), this is certainly welcome and very impressive.
To everyone involved with this: Awesome job. Keep up the good work. Now if we could just get Apple and linux devs working together on more projects (khtml, for instance) perhaps we'll see a day where Apple software could be run on both Linux and Mac OS X
Apple? (Score:2)
No Mac emulator yet? (Score:2)
To me it would seem easier to port Mac software over to run on Linux thanks to OSX basically being Unix (yeah.. BSD, I know).
Anyone heard of such a project yet?
Re:No Mac emulator yet? (Score:2, Informative)
here's a hint:
W ine
I s
N ot an
E mulator
Re:No Mac emulator yet? (Score:2)
When I read things like (Score:2)
In Win4Lin, it's a surprise when applications don't run.
I think I'll go download iTunes for Windows something soon.
Anybody tried iTunes/Win on VMWare yet?
Not the same thign (Score:2)
Its hard to farily compare them so caviler like you just did.
Re:Not the same thign (Score:2)
disclaimer: I am not an employee of Netraverse or any of its contractors
Re:When I read things like (Score:2, Informative)
Good luck getting a WinNT/XP program to run under Win4Lin. Last time I checked Win4Lin only supports Win9x/Me.
It works. (Score:3, Informative)
Please note the quote in the article from Codeweaver's is part of their REAL DIRT policy. They are cautious in making claims about the software working perfectly on every system, in every circumstance.
locked away from the real user (Score:2)
I use iTunes for listening to music. Its all I use it for (syncing with my iPod is secondary - the end goal is still to listen to music). So if the sound is broken what is the point? I'm sure that technically it is a fine achievement but those statements say it all about the reasons widespread adoption of linux isn't taking place.
Re:Yet more free advertising for Apple on Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Yet more free advertising for Apple on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yet more free advertising for Apple on Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yet more free advertising for Apple on Slashdot (Score:2)
it gives Linux users the ability to run one of their flagship pieces of software in a broken and semi-functional sort of way.
And this is different from it running on Windows... how? ;)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2)
The record store?
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2)
So?
nothing that gives free songs away can possibly be legal.
Don't be rediculous
And, iTunes can encode stuff in AAC loseless.
When we already have FLAC, I don't see that this is a big deal.
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2)
To be honest, I'm often surprised that iTunes basically gives you only a
Re:itunes is a monster! (Score:2)
Seriously though, AllOfMP3 offers MP3, OGG, Wav, WMA, MP4 and MPC. Far more choices then the DRM'ed AAC from Apple. Sorry, but my money won't go to support DRM'ed music. I am a little older then the average music buyer (31), so I don't care about all the pop-crap out there. I have about 500 MP3's and it is honetly enogh to last me the rest of my life without ever having to contribute to the RIAA monopoly again or supporting crap like Brittany, Christina Aguilera, Ricky
Re:I hate ITunes (Score:2)
Re:I hate ITunes (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably working on more important things, since iTunes does its job really well and saves me untold hours of time, freeing me up to work on other projects besides maintaining a music collection.
Re:I hate ITunes (Score:5, Insightful)
reason the first: we are practicing to beat the turing test, and feel that slashdot is full conversations that come close to beating the turing test, so this is good practice.
reason the second: we are lazy.
The current problem is that any story regarding iPods or iTMS creates a flood of posts about how much we love apple. This is being corrected but it will take some time to figure out the love apple / hate apple logic. I really shouldn't be telling you this because it is funny watching the few people who actually try to have conversations on slashdot, but I decided to give someone a hint to see if everyone else catches on or not.
For an example of an all script-generated conversation, look here [slashdot.org]. As you can see we've gotten quite good at using markov chains to produce seemlying meaningful responses without actually contributing everything. We have some troubles with grammar and spelling but that's alright because so do the people we're imitating. Anyway I hope someday you join in the fun! Really me, -Ignignot
Re:I hate ITunes (Score:2)
Re:I hate ITunes (Score:2)
Re:sweet (Score:2)
No it's not... (Score:2)
Re:Running itunes? (Score:4, Informative)
Steam does work in CrossOver, but due to the lack of DirectX 9 support, Half-Life 2 does not work yet. On the bright side, all the Half-Life 1 engine games do.
Re:Running itunes? (Score:2)
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
On that note, I don't think apple really likes writing ANYTHING for a platform other than mac, so they had to have a lot of incentive to write something for windows, which is mass marketshare and the possibility of having tons more music store and ipod sales. Neither of those incentives really exist on the Linux platform. Also, they would have to port Quicktime as well, I would guess.
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:2)
http://www.codeweavers.com/site/compatibility/c
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:2)
This is a key point. A proper port of iTunes to Linux would require a proper port of QuickTime to Linux to be done first. And of course, that would be wonderful, because then it becomes much easier to port applications which rely on QuickTime, and would put an end to the hassle of dealing with trying to get proprietary codecs to work in an open source media player - you could just write an open source media player that called the QuickTime A
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:2)
Because of all the fuss with different distros, libraries etc. I imagine. Plus there's always the fact that the desktop Linux market is not really that significant yet.
However, I do think it would make sense for Apple to contribute to the WINE project and ensure their Windows port of iTunes runs there. What harm could that do them? They'd lose Microsoft's co-operation...?
Personally I wouldn't expect a Linux native port any time soon. But kee
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:5, Informative)
This is the difference. iTunes is not an open source app. It heavily uses proprietary code (Carbon) derived from the classic MacOS (9 and earlier). They would have to port that API to linux before they could port the app. That would be a large effort considering the small market share of Linux. Porting to Windows was a bit easier as there was a huge opportunity to expand iTMS and iTunes revenues, and they had already ported Carbon to Windows.
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
and they had already ported Carbon to Windows.
Your reply is excellent, but when I came to this... whoa! Unless you know something I think this is quite misleading.
By all accounts, modern iTunes is a mix of Carbon, Cocoa, and QuickTime. The QuickTime API has been ported to Windows, but historically speaking Carbon consists of about 70% of the original Macintosh APIs, which have then been extended for modern OS X capabilities.
Carbon is in effect the procedural, lower level API interface to Mac OS X. The API you use when you aren't using Cocoa.
But for porting it to Windows, to say Apple had ported Carbon is misleading. What they probably have done is ported part of Cocoa's WebKit to render the iTunes store pages, and are possibly using QuickTime's API calls for the sound playback. I'm pretty sure the rest would be calling native Win32 APIs.
However, since a lot of the Win32 APIs are eerily similar to the original Macintosh, it might be truer to say that Microsoft ported Carbon when they first ripped off the Mac!
Re:Where is Apple in all of this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Re:Use Gtkpod (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding, especially since XMMS, Rhythmbox, Amarok and Juk all natively support the DRMed AAC files that you buy from iTMS. Oh, wait...
I couldn't care less about Yet Another Music Player. I could get interested in a working client for the world's largest online music store, though.
Re:Use Gtkpod (Score:3, Interesting)
idiot mods, this is a troll (Score:2, Informative)
2. "no kernel support for XML" is complete gibberish.
3. "cut-n-paste" between apps works just fine these days.
Obviously there are reasons people don't get a Mac, cost often being #1.
Re:Why Bother? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why Bother? (Score:2)
Re:opposits attract? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Except.. (Score:2)