From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:53:31 -0600

One idea might be "iTunes support improvements" for Rockbox. Given that
iTunes is moving away from DRM for their audio, we should be able to
play a significant portion of their catalog soon. Possibly all of it
(I'm not sure if audiobooks are going to be DRM free, but my
understanding is that all music should be).

Given this, it would be handy if Rockbox was in a position to handle
being synced to with iTunes. This would be a two-fold project I think.

1) Improve our database. Possibly support importing the Apple database
(though I'm not sure this is necessary or a good idea). At least deal
with, better, changing files on the disk. Solve the database duplication
issue, and assume that users may (or will) have almost entirely
different audio on their player after every sync (often the case with
small-storage flash players).

2) Appear to be an iPod over software USB. My understanding is that on
some targets it should be possible to present ourselves as an iPod even
when not. We could simply call this 'iTunes Mode' on players that
support it. This would allow syncing with iTunes on players that aren't
even iPods, and would free up iTunes users from being bound to Apple
hardware.
Received on 2009-01-20