

Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest - jballanc
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10287709-1.html

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tptacek
I eagerly await the 1000-item-long comment thread about antitrust, unfair
competition, and Apple's history of bare-knuckled business practices. Really.

But before we kick that off, can I just chime in with the observation that the
overwhelming likelihood of just this event made it irresponsible for Palm to
promote iTunes syncing for their device?

~~~
potatolicious
I agree that it's irresponsible for Palm to promote iTunes compatibility - but
someone had to be first. Without a clear, actual case of "Apple shuts down
competitor by software patch" one cannot make a case against Apple as a
monopolizer. Hypothetical "Apple _can_ shut down competitor" cases do not
convince mainstream lawmakers and media.

~~~
GHFigs
Let's be clear here: Apple doesn't prevent syncing with the iTunes library.
What they prevent is third parties using iTunes to do so. It is less a case of
shutting out a competitor as it is squashing a parasite. Nokia and RIM both
provide software to sync with a user's iTunes library, why won't Palm?

~~~
jemmons
Not even. Competitors are (as far as I know) welcome to use iTunes' xml
database and files. But they are not allowed to label themselves as iPods,
especially on user-facing interfaces. That's exactly what the Pre does, and
it's a clear and blatant infringement on Apple's marks and trade dress.

~~~
lacker
A device identifying itself as an iPod in a protocol is no more "blatant
infringement on Apple's marks" than it is when every modern browser puts
Mozilla/4.0 in its user agent.

~~~
jemmons
Please note " _especially on user-facing interfaces_ " above. The Pre
identifying itself as an iPod in a protocol is not an issue. The problem is
that doing so ultimately advertises to the user that the Pre _is_ an iPod via
dialogs, icons, and other interface verbiage.

If for Internet Explorer to ape Mozilla/4.0 compatibility, it had to
momentarily change its name, icon, and all user-facing interfaces to match
Firefox so that one could not distinguish between an actual instance of
Firefox and the "IE-in-fox's-clothing", you can bet that the Mozilla
foundation would be peeved. Aside from legal considerations, what if IE-with-
firefox-dress crashed all the time and people wrongfully blamed Firefox for
this sorry state of affairs?

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mrkurt
What's really interesting is who this hurts -- iTunes on OSX users who may
have purchased music from the iTunes music store.

Windows users have a number of really useful and viable options to iTunes for
managing their music. OSX users... don't. If I were still on Windows, I
probably wouldn't have been using my Pre with iTunes to begin with.
Unfortunately for me, I switched to a Mac not long ago, so I'm stuck with
iTunes and a whole bunch of crap alternatives for managing my media library.

Great job, Apple, I'm so happy to be a Mac user.

~~~
jsz0
There's SongBird for OSX which IIRC also supports iPod syncing. In the case of
the Pre you can also use it as a USB Mass Storage device to add music. Or Palm
could just stop being lazy and offer proper software for their device.

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viraptor
It's kind of amusing to see... I'm pretty sure people at Apple realise that
just by breaking compatibility they won't force any special amount of Pre
owners to suddenly buy an Apple product which does work with iTunes. They just
bought Pre - why would they even look at iTouch / iPhone? Maybe iPod, but
probably not before the next salary.

Also, I guess someone told them that this move has the same problem as DRM.
Now Pre will improve compatibility. The only real way to block Pre would be to
introduce a public key infrastructure support + certificate checking in iPods
& iTunes, which I believe they don't support yet. (and it would require a mass
firmware upgrade)

But they could just count on Pre users getting interested in iTunes and their
store (which would give them profits). They could even detect a connected Pre
and splash-screen advertise iPods to them. So... was it really something they
had to do? Did they actually think before the default defensive move?

~~~
sjh
There may be a support issue for Apple here. Imagine a customer purchases a
Pre and syncs it to iTunes, but Palm's reverse-engineering of the iPod-iTunes
protocol is incomplete and iTunes crashes as a result (and does so
reproducibly). Many customers would follow this up with Apple, but Apple would
likely be unable to help them (presuming they were even interested in doing
so).

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mingyeow
Apple deserves MUCH more rap and lawsuits than they currently get. They make
amazing products, but that should be independent of their business practices

~~~
rimantas
I would not call relying on a hack to use third party (which is not at all
interested to support you) software a solid business practice either.

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mleonhard
Apple is just as bad as Microsoft.

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ars
I got downmodded when I said it before:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661202> so now can I say I told you so?

It's amazing how pretty much every person in that thread refused to believe
Apple would break it. This is not an accident, Apple did it deliberately -
they warned about it, and then they did it.

Edit: And I get downmodded for this one too, which I expected. People clearly
really like Apple and refuse to believe they would do this.

~~~
jemmons
You misunderstand. People did not refuse to believe that Apple would break
support. They refused to believe you had any compelling evidence to support
your claim that they would.

That you happened to be right is no vindication when the odds were 50/50 and
you put forth no model for predicting the outcome.

~~~
ars
It was not 50/50 it was 100%. They clearly said they would break it.

Yes I know they used marketing speak to do it, but after a while you learn to
decode it.

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jrockway
This is why I use free software; software that works in my interests, instead
of actively against it. I don't really understand why people would use
software that intentionally limits their rights, but it makes me sad.

Amarok is vastly better than iTunes, if you are into that kind of thing. (I
personally use xmms2 and a variety of perl scripts to control it, but I can
see how that's not exactly suitable for everyone.)

~~~
jrockway
I see the anti-free-software brigade is out in force tonight. Helpful hint,
guys, I have lots of karma and nothing to spend it on.

~~~
Elepsis
For what it's worth, if you'd made the identical comment about Windows Media
Player you'd probably be at +10 by now.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah. I have learned what is and isn't popular here. On the popular list is
being really cynical about everything; on the "not popular" list are free
software, the GPL, and being liberal.

Fortunately, I have like 7000 karma points and only lose 8 for every unpopular
post, so it doesn't really matter. Although, I am still trying to figure out
why karma matters at all...

