Rockbox
Mon 28th May 2007, 5.22 pm
Seems that last week the developers of Rockbox finally cracked the problem getting it working on the 80GB iPod and I now have it running here.
After trying out iPod Linux (which was rubbish for playing music and not much good at anything else) I didn't have much hope for Rockbox either. I was very very wrong.
In less than a day I have worked out how to do everything my iPod could do before with the Apple OS, but with the following fantastic extra things on top:
- Dynamic playlists - especially the ability to create them on the fly.
- Customizable look and feel means that I can make it look absolutely beautiful. I'm on the Black Glass look at the moment.
- Support for Ogg Vorbis.
- Support for my own file naming convention as well as Apple's dodgy one.
- Various games and applications including a fully working Doom. You won't believe how cool it is to play Doom on an iPod.
- Volume goes up to 11. Seriously, seems the iPod can be a lot louder than the Apple OS let on.
- Apple OS dual-booted in case I want to use it.
- Finally, decent Last.fm support, rather than the dodgy hack that I was having to use with the "Play Counts" file that meant I couldn't listen to the same song twice in one day.
Three cheers for free software, and three cheers for Apple for (a) making it possible to do this and (b) not voiding the warranties of users who want to try something different.
Tagged as:
music
apple
freesoftware
rockbox
ipod
doom
Operating at caffeine mark 4
I'm feeling birthday elated
I'm singing Spiritualized - Hold On
Pete
on Tue 29th May 2007, 3.46 pm
Doesn't void the warranty?! Wow, I might actually consider buying an iPod now.
Rich
on Thu 31st May 2007, 7.59 am
Yeah, they're really polite about the whole thing. Basically there is no way to brick an iPod at all if you own iTunes for Windows or Mac. Even if you completely obliterate the bootloader you can always get the iPod back to the factory state by allowing iTunes to wake it up on USB and send the firmware back down the cable.
As with the Mac, Apple actively support the concept of dual booting - they are still making money on the hardware, after all!
