Comment by recursive

What if that software is trying to sell you stuff? And what if it's discouraging or preventing by technical means alternatives from that?

What do people do with ipods if not play music? And where do they get that music if not paying Apple? Apple's official recommendation at the time if you wanted to ingest arbitrary audio like your own recordings was to burn a CD and then rip it with iTunes. That cost about a dollar an hour to get access to your own audio rather than just... making a reasonable process.