Fuck Apple and fuck their iPod Classic.

So, it’s finally happened. Unhappy with other media players being better than iTunes, Apple have apparently decided to stop them from working with the new range of iPods.

Who does this affect?

This affects Linux users – there’s no iTunes for Linux, so popular Linux iPod management tools like gtkpod and Rhythmbox will not work with the new range of iPods.

Windows users who just plain don’t like iTunes and perfer an alternative like Winamp, Ephpod or many of the other iPod management applications out there.

That is more than enough for me to ditch the notion of using their player at all and even if the gtkpod team gets it working that is just plain bullshit. Face Apple, iTunes is a steaming pile of shit and fucking worthless if you want to manage a collection bigger than a handful of tracks and locking people into it by way of the iPod db is a real asshole move.

Doctorow says it better (and with less cursing) than myself:

…this is about Apple limiting the choices available to people who buy their iPod hardware.

It’s hard to understand why Apple would do this, but the most likely explanations are that Apple wants to be sure that competitors can’t build their own players to load up iPods — now that half of the major labels have gone DRM free, it’s conceivable that we’d get a Rhapsody or Amazon player that automatically loaded the non-DRM tracks they sold you on your iPod (again, note that this has nothing to do with preventing piracy — this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store).

Hopefully Cowon will roll out a large capacity player soon or I’m going to be one miserable bastard.