Forget the other music players, iTunes rocks. Period.

But iTunes also has a few features that are very lovely (music sharing thru rendezvous and access to the music store) that are somewhat protected. Security by obscurity is never going to stop hordes of geeks from wanting to listening to music, or, even simpler, from just do something that you prohibit them to do.

So, the first is how to download stuff from another machine directly that exposes it thru iTunes. Grab OurTunes (self-hosted java app), run it (double-click on macosx) and voila’: browse and download files from the other iTunes libraries in your local network. Suggestion: hook up to a college dorm network drop for maximum satisfaction

Of course, you shouldn’t download music you don’t already own. But I have to say, the semantic of stealing when the act does not remove the item from the owner leaves me a weird taste in my mouth (oh, yes, all my IP is available online, thank you).

The other thing that is protected is the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). I’m not talking about the music you buy, but even the pages that are served to you via ITunes are encrypted. iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is a huge digital library and, have to say, a pretty kick-ass one too (very yummy is the user-filed mixes… imagine what you could do analyzing the graphs of those!). But you can’t hide it for long: iTMS-4-All allows you to query the iTMS and so something with the output.

One thing worries me, though: as much as I love the look and the feel of apple machines, sometimes this is NOT matched by the look and feel of their development decisions. For an example, take a look at the XML document that is returned to iTunes for display. One word: YUCK!

Anyway, fun stuff.