In iTunes 6.0.2, the recent update to iTunes, there is a new Link Bar at te bottom of my library at all times. How can I get rid of this bar (it takes up a lot of space and I don't see that it is necessary). ...Nor do I see a preference to turn it off. Apple has a picture of the new Library window shown here:



http://images.apple.com/itunes/overv...ac20060109.jpg

Thanks for any help you can give me.

It's called the "MiniStore" and you can disable it via the Edit menu in iTunes.

There was a hint posted on the mini store this morning. You may want to read it. Right now its the main hint on the macosxhints.com page. The title is: Disable iTunes 6.0.2's reporting of listening habits

I think this is evil.

Adding it as a feature that's disabled by default would be ok, but profiling your listening habits by default without even as much as a clear statement what's going on is extremely Bad Manners.

Just out of curiosity, when this version of iTunes is launched for the first time, the EULA appears, which has to be agreed to.

Did anybody read it? (I think I already know the answer.)

What the mini store does is writen in there is it not ? Like with stuff like Kazaa on PC where they did include all the info on the spyware that came with it, and when you clicked on Agree it meant you agreed to insatll spyware and allow the companies to gather info from you...

As it requires intense intellectual effort to read the osxhints article entirely, I will quote Rob here in an effort to provide some extra information:

"I can't find anything about this data collection in iTunes, the Music Store itself, or Apple's website-centric"

Raven correctly points out that it is not from Apple that you would expect such behaviour, even if there was a mention in some legalese nobody reads anyway.

I'm still wondering about this... Apple doesn't even do this for their OS ! Why for ITMS ???

wow...although this can be covered "legally" in a EULA, Apple should have known this would have an action from the E.F.F.'ers

I personally never use iTMS so for me this feature is rather pointless and offensive.

I'm a gmail user. When I signed up for the service they made it very clear that emails were "filtered" and pertinant ads were served up accordingly.

Apple should have made this clear to end users, and like Voldenuit said, shipped it as a disabled feature.

Not sure when he made the change, but Rob edited the hint from this morning with information supposedly directly from Apple:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...60111071001306

A bit off topic (problem with iTunes update)
 

After iTunes update 6.0.2 my computer (G4/466MHz/OSX 10.3.9) crashed (kernel panic). After fsck and reboot i opened diskutility to repair some permissions but... a little error ocured <Disk Utility lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. etc>.

After some googel-ing i opened the terminal and tried to repair permissions with <sudo diskutil repairPermissions /> the result:

Last login: Wed Jan 11 15:19:11 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
192-168-0-103:~ alec$ sudo diskutil repairPermissions /
Password:
Started verify/repair permissions on disk disk2s10 Boot
Determining correct file permissions.
*** malloc[1536]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x4709b70; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug
: for architecture i386 object: ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes malformed object (unknown flavor for flavor number 0 in LC_UNIXTHREAD command 27 can't byte swap it)


With iTunes erased DiskUtil worked again. With iTunes downloaded from site and instoled the same error in DiskUtil.

It`s there a problem with iTunes 6.0.2??????????????

I suspect a problem with your Mac (hardware or software) that just happens to show up with this update.
You should try the standard troubleshooting suggestions:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ (see the "My Mac needs help" section)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...04011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html
If you need more help, please start a new thread for this.

The computer works OK now except the Disk Utility.
And i have tried everything too from TechTool Pro to rebooting from CD etc.
Its more a problem of "i want to know what is the problem"

Thanx

This is interesting: in the comments to rob's hint on the main page, a majority seems to regard this as a non-issue, whereas here in this thread posters seem to be more concerned. So I'll just post here ;)
Many posters on the main site draw a parallel to amazon's shop recommendations. This analogy is severely flawed: The man in the butcher's shop saying: "Last week, you bought some italian salami which you seemed to like; so may I recommend to you some french salami which I received today ?": That's Amazon. The same man saying: " May I recommend some salami to you 'cause last night I looked through your kitchen window and saw you eating salami ?" That's Apple.
It is unimportant, how much and which kind of information was transmitted; it is the simple fact that it was transmitted without explicit permission which makes this such a bad move.
Principiis obsta!

cheers, pink

Theres a pretty comprehensive rebuttal of the no-big-deal-arguments here:

From: http://since1968.com/article/154/itunes-update-update


"... My position, in summary: iTunes collects data about the music I’m currently playing and sends it to the iTunes Music Store without my knowledge or consent. Apple says nothing about this practice in any of the relevant licenses. Apple should be clear about its information gathering practices.

Arguments in favor of Apple:

Dude, you should know that Apple is collecting the information because it couldn’t display related songs without it.

Err, if the issue are consent and transparency, isn’t this argument the same as “You should know your house was broken into because the lock was broken?” File under: fatuous.

You should know what information your programs are sending to the Internet. It’s your duty to monitor your outbound traffic.

I don’t buy this argument for the typical end user. Most people aren’t l33t and simply want to play music in privacy. But on reflection, I’m a programmer and I should know better. After all, I run Zone Alarm on my Windows box; why not check outbound traffic on my Mac? I’ll be purchasing a license for Little Snitch shortly thanks to the suggestions of several posters. File under: compelling for computer geeks, otherwise not so compelling for regular folk.
Corollary: You should expect that companies will take your information without asking, and it’s your duty to sniff and counter as desired. Let’s be serious: even if I buy a Club to protect my car from theft, the purchase of the Club does not change the act of theft from aberrant to acceptable. File under: teh lame!

iTunes doesn’t send the data to iTMS when the MiniStore is closed. If you don’t like the behavior, just close the MiniStore.

This appears to be true, and I didn’t bother to test this (as I should have) before my original post. So mea culpa, and I will test before posting next time. But iTMS launches with the MiniStore open by default. And this argument does nothing to address the issue of transparency. File under: toss up.

The EULA and/or TOS says Apple can collect information.

To my reading, the plain meaning of the language in the iTunes TOS indicates that Apple only collects contact and billing data. As pointed out in the original post, Apple’s Privacy Statement (a tertiary [see note below] document referenced in the iTMS TOS) does have a “customer activities” clause, but the meaning of the clause is so ambiguous and poorly worded as to be more obfuscatory than transparent. If Apple wants to collect certain types of information, it should say so clearly in easily accessible documents. To my mind, a Privacy Policy’s stance should be: “By and large we don’t collect information about you, but here are the specific instances of data that we do collect.” File Under: toss up, depending on how you view the role of Privacy Statements.
Note: And when I say “tertiary,” by golly I mean tertiary! You won’t come across the Privacy Statement unless you read the iTMS TOS, and you won’t find the iTMS TOS unless you read the iTunes Software License.

Stop hyperventilating, iTMS is only collecting the songs you play. Where’s the harm?
That’s a fair argument: I admit that this instance of data mining appears to be innocuous. But is it? How hard would it be for Apple to check whether my music comes from an RIAA approved source and, if not, simply disable it within iTMS? Is that really such a paranoid fantasy after the Sony rootkit fiasco? I don’t have an answer, but I know this: the more you push back now against apparently harmless invasions of privacy, the less likely Apple will be to breach your privacy substantively later. File Under: toss up.

Finally, and feeblest: Windows does it, and Apple isn’t half as bad as Windoze. Why should anyone other than an Apple employee be an apologist for Apple’s bad practices? File Under: Whose tool are you?

The core issues are trust and transparency: I want to do business with companies that respect my privacy; I want them to tell me clearly when they’re collecting my data; and I’d prefer to opt-in to data collection programs rather than opt-out. Is that so much to ask?

UPDATE:

A few more arguments have come in and again, some of them are pretty sound. Instead of letting my responses get lost in the comments I’ll continue posting them here.

How do you think iTunes gets the album and artist data when you rip a CD? Apple is already querying third parties, stupid!

On its face, this is a pretty good argument. We all know that Apple uses GraceNote to grab iTunes track info. But this is precisely my point: Apple’s use of GraceNote is transparent. When you rip a new CD, iTunes tells you that it’s querying the GraceNote database. Not only that, Apple had the good sense to be clear about GraceNote in the iTunes EULA.
Here’s the relevant language:

This application contains software from Gracenote, Inc. of Berkeley, California (“Gracenote”). The software from Gracenote (the “Gracenote CDDB Client) enables this application to do online disc identification and obtain music-related information, including name, artist, track, and title information (“Gracenote Data”) from online servers (“Gracenote CDDB Servers”) and to perform other functions. You may use Gracenote Data only by means of the intended End User functions of this application software.

As of this writing (01/11/06 3:30pm EST), no publicly available Apple EULA mentions Omniture. According to Google, the only mention of Omniture on Apple’s web site is a couple job openings and a copyright notice for the King Kong trailer. Apple clearly felt bound to include GraceNote in its iTunes EULA. Why not Omniture? Why one standard of transparency for Company A and a different standard for Company B?

If Apple were only open about this practice, this wouldn’t be any big deal and you wouldn’t have anything to complain about. File Under: Rock solid, air tight, I agree. Transparency makes my issues disappear.

Aren’t you overreacting by advocating a boycott? Boy-who?

Who said anything boycotting Apple? I advocate (a) asking Apple to be clear about the information they collect and share with third parties; and (b) consider holding off upgrading from iTunes 6.0.1 to 6.0.2 until more information is available. Wow, I am really out of control.

Apple uses FedEx. Why aren’t you up in arms that Apple gives your personal contact information to FedEx?

Nobody seriously expects Apple qua Apple to show up at your doorstep with a shiny new MacBook. And when you make the purchase, the third party services are relatively transparent: you receive a FedEx tracking number and a FedEx uniformed person in a truck marked “FedEx” delivers your package. File Under: Close, but no cigar. I wouldn’t have known about Omniture without Little Sniffer.

Omniture doesn’t do marketing.

Please, be serious. Read their own literature.
..."

Voldenuit-

Good post, well thought, and good points.

The fed ex argument is somewhat irrelevant. I mean if they did not have your personal contact information how could they ship a package to you? I see why people are upset about this. Personally I do not like nor do I use itunes, and I personally do not like ipods because of how you are limited to the use of one software application, which is itunes.

I ended up getting a creative MP3 player and I like how the software manages my digital music way better than itunes, however, that is another discussion all together, and it is also just my opinion.

A lot of companies that deal in security nowadays are installing kits that they think are for the customer's benefit, which in reality it is not.

here is a related article if you are interested:

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2478

My personal opinion is that the RIAA is not needed and it does not benefit the artists, that record labels do not know didly about music. They are all business men and everything you are fed is researched, marketed, and shoved down your throat. I see the relation from itunes. I would start up itunes and then get some message saying that if I like the rolling stones then I should check out this band. Since I had a few rolling stones mp3s in my itunes library it is now suggesting that. first off it is annoying, and secondly I don't want to listen to a band that emulates the rolling stones. I have like 20 rolling stones records at my house, why would I want to listen to a band that is just a new rip off of them (this is from opinion of course).

The feature can be turned off, but IMHO I find things like this annoying, and that is a reason why I don't use itunes nor do I have an ipod. I knew that apple was going to only let their product be used with their product (I am okay with that, it's their business model not mine) and I wanted a product that gave me more flexibility.

Another great point, and I agree for most basic users this is a feature that really should not cause alarm. Just disabled the iTMS from running or close it once itunes is launched. A few years ago when I wanted to learn the ins and outs of Linux, I made a squid proxy box. My DSL line came directly from the wall to my linux box, and then from my linux box into a switch (dual nics) which i proxy'd out all of my connections. I kept a log file of all incoming and outgoing traffic on my machines. 1 mac and 3 PCs (running win2k and mac os 8.6) and I would look through the logs and checking stuff and learning how it all worked.

In the end I don't think this is a big deal. Apple is probably just covering their butts from a legal stand point. Apple could not afford a huge lawsuit with itunes since it does generate a decent amount of revenue for them. Plus I hope that possibly some cable TV providers follow their model and finally let you purchase individual channels. I canceled my cable TV about 4 months ago because I was tired of paying a lot for the 4 channels I watched. They make you buy it in packages and i hate that.

I thought of a really funny quote when I first read about this, and I could be butchering it but it goes something like this:

I'll never trust any machine until it learns how to drink

I just wanted to say something to hopefully educate you a bit about this. I'm actually label manager for a UK dance music label called Sential Recordings. I write my own music, I'm highly active in the dance music community, I give my artists 50% of the profit and I very much respect and help my other artists on the label. While you may be correct in your words about possibly the 3 major record companies, you're entirely wrong about the other 99.9% of record labels out there. I hugely respect everything the RIAA does for us in our favor and believe it or not, everybody who works in the music industry at one point or another loved music and this was their reason for going into the business.

Regards,
-Luke

Yes, but there is a duality to it as well. I work IT and have done tons of side work for Independent labels in the past years, and I let them pay me in merch if they don't have the money. I love music as well. However, there are plenty of things that could be better, and it is not always in the artists interest but in the business interest. But this should be a seperate thread for this conversation.

I think you are perhaps referring to the 5 labels, and all of the sub labels (they own lots of labels under them, plus disney owns a huge amount of radio stations in the US):

sony
bmg
warner bros
emi
universal

Here is a link to the Major record companies and all the sub labels they own.

http://musicians.about.com/library/big5/blbig5.htm

Thanks, however I'd like to point out that I quoted a blog entry so the credit goes to the author.

I do however share his opinion and was relieved to find it already written up.

We've had RIAA-is-evil discussions quite a bit here, I think an industry that has completely failed to keep up with the evolving market, tries to shove increasingly restrictive legislation down our throats and breaks the usefulness of otherwise Good Things in the process deserves to go broke.

How about offering products that people want, such as open file formats, interoperability and no more rootkits, intrusive stealth profiling and abusive lawsuits :

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/30...wyer_no_l.html

Well it's ignorant people like you that have made the whole situation so bad.
I don't put copy protection on our CDs or our Vinyl; I don't DRM our downloads (I even spend the time to give customers 320kbps LAME or AAC tracks encoded in the highest quality;) and I haven't sued anybody. But those people who download our music without paying I despise. Not only because they're not paying for it, but if the fans have respect and put money down, why can't they be fair as well? £0.99 per download -half going toward the artist- and these bastards refuse to even pay that. There is just no fairness in it.

You know, the first artist I signed lives in Poland. He's currently got the worst paying job in a pawn store over there but he is so talented. Like I already said, I give him 50% profit of everything and I fight wherever I can for his rights.
Not only this but I've seen many brilliant friends and idols disappear from this scene altogether because of losses due to the massive file-sharing boom.

The fact is, these leechers don't discriminate between large labels or small labels, mega-rich artists or struggling artists. And that's why I'll never support file-sharing.

If you wonder why people are ending up being treated as criminals.. well, for crying out loud, it's because they are being criminals. I don't see how there is any sympathy for these people whatsoever.

Anyway, like someone pointed out, this isn't the place for this. And I've made my points. I just hope I've been able to point some things out to people who think the entire music industry deserves no respect.

I think that is a pretty sensible attitude.

You should not feel rubbed the wrong way by my post as you obviously have respectable business practices.

You might also want to read a bit about how, especially for small labels, file-sharing is quite a bit like radio-play and doing more good than harm in terms of sales.

And think again whether you really want to defend a business association that regroups those who do the exact opposite of what you feel is positive attitude towards customers.

Apple really made a Bad Move converting iTunes to spyware and it should be noted that this kind of action is flat out illegal in quite a couple of countries with decent privacy legislation.

I appreciate the acknowledgement

I have read about this and a lot of organizations like downhillbattle and EFF say it often, but I've yet to actually find any proof or even see any results for myself. There was one band who got a lot of exposure over the internet, but this is because they actually gave the album out as a free download on their website. I personally consider this extremely different from P2P sharing, which is what everyone is suggesting 'gives exposure.'
And even if it did give exposure, they're still downloading the tracks and not paying. Yeah, it would be great to have 1 million fans who listened to the track, but if none of them paid for it, that doesn't help us at all. I am in a very single-sale orientated section of the industry (albums are extremely rare,) so if someone is inclined to downloaded an artist's single on P2P, I've never known those people to further buy a copy. Albums very possibly, not not singles. Also, this isn't a type of music that can be performed live and it's again very rare in this part of the industry for the artists to do anything but make the music, so all they have is the actual sales to live on. So that puts a massive flaw in that argument right away.

But I do not mind people who share the occassional good song over MSN. I believe that is proper exposure. The difference is people who mass-download everything from P2P.

Yes, I do completely disagree with DRM (CDs or downloads,) but that is nothing to do with RIAA. That's just something the large labels do independently, or certain music download services do, assuming it will be more attractive for labels. But there are plenty of DRM-free mp3 download sites. And yes, I am talking about legal ones.

I appreciate the RIAA because of what they are doing to try and prevent P2P networks from distributing pirated copies of music on my behalf (even though I'm not personally a member.) If they weren't doing it, then nobody would be. So many people demonize the RIAA, but they're only a small association who are a voice for almost every record label, small or large, throughout the entire USA. So many people seem to forget that, and I think they've undeservedly gotten a bad rep from people too ignorant to even read that up on their website, who just go around posting "DEATH TO RIAA!", "RIAA SUXX." - It's pathetic.

I doubt I would disagree with you on everything, but I disagree with this as well. I don't see the big deal really. I turned off that feature within 2 seconds of seeing it, just by pressing the obvious button with the down arrow.

I think the benefit it will give the majority of users far outweighs those few who are scared someone might be able to hack into Apple's servers, and in those 2 seconds that they have the feature open for, might be able to look them up and see that they listen to Hilary Duff. :rolleyes:

I like some of the new I-tunes stuff but the hole pod thing is not macintosh, I do own one(2ver.) I use it to listen to my Paid music an some podcast(http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...st?id=73329404
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...st?id=76140881
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...st?id=73329937
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...st?id=73329586
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...t?id=102387056) but i think of it as info not a way of life. So that said I hope you don't think that you always have to download all the updates, some are down grades and info hogs... just ask steve jobs , thats a joke, he doen't take anymore E-mails after the rehiring with bill gates clan. Just look as a stepping stone when crossing a river, some stones are wet and some are slimy, are you ready to get wet.

Hmmmmm....salami. (said as Homer Simpson would say it).

That is a good analogy! Current practices that are somewhat close: what google does with gmail, although I think they were upfront about that.

Yes, I have a gmail account (had one for a long while now) and when you first signed up for the beta there was a EULA that was not long but to the point. The jest of it was, they will never ever look at your private stuff, but if the government subpenas them, they aren't going to protect your privacy. This was due to the whole post 9/11 security acts the government was pushing. They were upfront about it, and they said they wouldn't look, but if big brother was peeking in, they weren't going to stop them (legally) from doing so.

For whatever its worth, I think I've noticed different behavior today.

I have not changed anything in iTunes. Today I opened it and the little miniStore panel was open, but in the panel it described what it was and had a button asking me if I wanted to start it. The panel was static and not transmitting anything else. When I started it, it provided feedback on the song selected by the cursor, not on the song which was currently playing. This was even though the cover art panel was showing the cover art for the song currently playing (as it was selected to do).

So, does it always ask you now before it is enabled?
Did it always give feedback on the selected song on or the playing song?

I haven't installed anything Apple (besides XCode 2.2.1) since the original iTunes/QuickTime/10.4.4 installations from last week.

It looks like Apple indeed fixed it:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/18...es_itunes.html

How hard would it have been to get it right in the first place, especially with Sony providing some free extra education on the subject just weeks before ?

We all make mistakes, the main difference is that some people own up to them and some deny them almost to their dying breath.

Yep, that's the way it should have been right from the beginning.

cheers, pink

Granted.
However, there are honest and there are sleazy mistakes ;).

Forgetting to include the 64 bit version of a Library in a system update falls into the first category and is just lousy QA, but there is that nasty $$$wish-we-could-get-away-with-it$$$ aftertaste to this one...

I tend to side more with John Gruber at DaringFireball:
Since it follows up on the "Just For You" feature on the site, this seems like something they thought people might like (although I appreciate the difference between the two). 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.'

so I'm confused...did they change a setting on our systems? or was this done on the iTMS side of things?

I don't recal installing any updates between iTunes 6.0.2 and now :confused:

It was all done through server-side changes.
The ITMS and the MiniStore parts of iTunes are done via a specialized web browser. So all that was necessary was to change the HTML that was sent by the server. The hooks for hiding & showing the MiniStore were already in iTunes.