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\"Plucking the Fruit of iPod Envy\"
Wed, 04/03/2002 - 11:08 — iPoding
BusinessWeek columnist Charles Haddad discusses the iPod on Windows™ issue in this week's BYTE OF THE APPLE column.
"The iPod needs to work with any PC out-of-the-box, so PC drivers would have to be built into the iPod. That means, of course, Apple would have to develop them.
The easiest way for Apple to write PC drivers would be in cooperation with Microsoft. Access to Windows code would ensure that Apple's iPod driver would work with just about any PC."
Comments
Why should Apple do the work?
Gee, here is a concept...Windows being able to mount/read/write HFS+ disks natively! After all, it's really only a Firewire hard drive when you get right down to it. I don't know of any other operating system that can work with disks formatted for a competing OS. It would be a first!
Oh, wait....maybe there is one....never mind. ;-)
If M$ made just a little effort on their part, every PC owner with a Firewire card could use an iPod with no problem. Of course, in the PC world, Firewire (Apple) competes with USB 2.0 (Intel). One of the main reasons why you don't see Firewire on an Intel motherboard.
Now, porting iTunes to Windows...now that's a different story altogether, and probably what he should have said, rather than Apple making iPod drivers for Windows.
Re: Why should Apple do the work?
Apple doesn't have to do anything they don't want to. The whole idea behind the iPod is to try to convert PC users to MAC's. I use a PC (Win XP) and use my iPod with the help of macopener and ephpod! iTunes will never be brought to a PC platform. I'm sure that one day there will be a PC program that will be just like iTunes & allow for sync upon firewire linking. For now I just have a click a few more buttons to get it to run, and I don't mind. I still have to figure out how to use export my csv files to a vcard format. Anyone got any ideas?
Re:
I don't see why Apple would have to develop drivers. They could just license MacDrive or MacOpener.