Originally Posted By: DWallach
If anything, Apple should try to encourage other media players to offer similar levels of compatibility with iTunes, rather than potentially getting itself into an anti-competitive position by tying iTunes together with iPods.

iTunes works with Rio devices and several others. The article is no longer updated, but iTunes 8.2 still has the code in there for these devices.

Originally Posted By: tman
The iTunes/iPod database format is well known despite the attempts by Apple to lock people out.

I haven't really seen anything to prove Apple is specifically trying to lock people out. The format has changed over time, but this is no different then major versions of other software changing it's structure of data files. Their stance on 3rd party iTunes tools seems to be very similar to the Apple TV hacking. Feel free to do it, but Apple makes no guarantee or effort to ensure backwards compatibility.