Little known iTunes 10 benefit

Gee, now I feel like an idiot for buying a portable media player that just mounts as a USB drive.

Is it just me, or did this used to work before? I thought you could always play the music off someone else's iPod without being able to copy it.

I'm surprised that people who wanted this feature haven't already enabled manual-sync. Is there really some benefit in having it automatically sync your device to be worth the pain of not being able to plug it in somewhere else?<p>I went a step further and edited the iTunes DB file's device ids so that they are the same across all 3 of my systems. So my iPhone now recognizes each as the same system allowing me to sync my music with one of my laptops and my videos with my desktop.

That's a pretty big feature change... is that a mistake or did they somehow slip that past the record labels?

Note: most bizarrely, it doesn't let you enable shuffling when listening to music this way. Pink Floyd and Sgt. Pepper are delighted and partying but what about all the 80s one-hit wanders?

Wow, I guess they listened and I need to eat my hat... Or something.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653584" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653584</a><p>This is good news!

Really? The feature's been in iTunes 9, and well, I'm a mac guy but #1 on HN?