How do I permanently shut down Apple Media services?
My new mac keeps asking me to enter the apple account and password for this. I don’t know what it is and do not want it. I just want to play my physically owned video collection. I’m about ready to disconnect the computer from the internet altogether (and just use thumb drives for file transfer) which probably cause even more problems. I’m getting rather pissed off with Apple.
In System Settings > Your Icon > Media & Purchases there is a whole section devoted to media. For me it lists there which account I have set to use for my Apple media purchases. If you hit Manage… next to Account, you should be forwarded to an App Store window where you have the option to authenticate and then deauthorize that Mac. I would hope that doing the former or then both would stop the incessant services nagging.
Thanks. I saw that System Setting but could not figure out what to do with it. I will give it a try.
You’ll likely still get prompted as apps try to access DRM’d media files. (Just like any other password protected file.)
Yes, but once you provide credentials to authorize a single DRM’ed file, the computer should remain authorized for all content purchased by the same account. I’ve very rarely had to re-enter my iTMS credentials for playing my DRM’ed purchases.
But the point is, if you want to eliminate the dialog, either provide the credentials (which it sounds like OP doesn’t want to do) OR delete all your DRM’d files.
Agreed. But you don’t have to delete them if you don’t want to. You can use smart playlists to separate out your DRM’ed files from the rest and then only play content from the non-DRM playlist.
For music (but not movies or books), there is always the CD loophole. FairPlay protected music may be burned to audio CDs (but a single playlist containing DRM tracks can only be burned five times). So you can burn your DRM’ed tracks to an audio CD, then rip that CD, which will result in non-protected files. Of course, there will be losses from re-compressing the audio if you don’t rip into a lossless format, but it does remove the protection.
Years ago, I did this with my protected purchases in order to put them all on an MP3 CD for playback in my car.
(There are also software methods for removing DRM protection directly, but those methods don’t always work and are illegal in many locations, including the US.)
I don’t use DRM files. Either I own the file or I don’t have it. You may not believe that is possible, but I have been collecting for 40 years converting things as necessary when tech changes.
Try analog.
iTunes Music Store purchases from before 2009 were wrapped with DRM, even though there has never been any periodic subscription fee.
Similarly, book and video purchases from the iTunes Store are all DRM-wrapped even though no periodic payments are required in order to maintain access.
This is completely different from streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, Apple TV+ and countless others, where you need to pay a monthly subscription fee to retain access to the content you’ve downloaded.
I’ve never used any of those services. I purchased my music on CD and ripped them before iTunes even existed. The others I don’t use and don’t want to.