

Goodbye, Apple - mrlebowski
http://mdeslaur.blogspot.com/2009/07/goodbye-apple.html

======
TomOfTTB
I continue to be amazed at how people are willing to give Apple a pass on
cutting off the Pre. Paticularly this guy who says he can "understand" Apple
cutting off the Pre but then balks at Apple cutting off his music software.

Monopolistic greed is understandable when it doesn't affect me seems to be the
attitude (On that note I'm pretty sure Apple makes way more off iTunes than it
does off the hardware at this point)

As a customer who is paying for this music I should be able to sync it with
whatever I want. I don't expect Apple to support the Pre but I think it's
reprehensible to actively try to cut it off.

(For the record I'm an iPhone 3GS owner who doesn't even like the Pre. I just
don't want to be forced to use Apple products for the rest of my life just to
keep my music)

~~~
philwelch
You're not forced to use Apple products to keep your music--none of it is
DRM'd anymore so you can use your non-Apple software to sync it with your non-
Apple devices on your non-Apple computer. It's even plainly available in the
file system--and Apple doesn't even require you to let it reorganize your
music files into its preferred folder hierarchy.

If Apple supports interoperability, they have a mess on their hands and
they're dealing with interoperability issues instead of making a better
product. If they don't support interoperability, people write angsty blog
posts about them breaking whatever hackish unsupported software they were
using to interface with their iPod. (As for the Pre, anything that allows
arbitrary devices to pretend to be an iPhone and sync jeopardizes email
account information--which can be synced to the iPhone--and is a security
flaw. So I'm sure Apple did intentionally lock out the Pre. But I don't think
they care about gtkpod enough to intentionally lock _it_ out.)

"On that note I'm pretty sure Apple makes way more off iTunes than it does off
the hardware at this point"

Why stop at "pretty sure"? They're a publicly traded company. It's not hard to
get their financials.

Here's some numbers from their Q3 report a couple days ago:

"Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter, producing $1.689 billion
in revenue..."

"About 10.215 million iPods were sold this quarter, resulting in $1.492
billion in revenue..."

"Apple's "Other Music Related Products and Services" segment was responsible
for $958 million in revenue..."

Cite:
[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/notes_of_inter...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/notes_of_interest_from_apples_q309_quarterly_conference_call.html)

~~~
adharmad
Not supporting interoperability is one thing. Going out of your way to prevent
it is another.

~~~
__david__
Well, take a look from Apple's perspective. They spent time and money
developing a platform for their iPods. Why would they want to allow their free
(for consumers) music platform to seamlessly work with a direct competitor's
product?

So Apple gets to support iTunes and polish it for years and then Palm gets to
leech off their hard work and use it for free without repercussion?

I think by disabling the Pre they're saying to Palm, "Hey, Palm, why don't you
go spend your own millions of dollars and build your own damn app." When you
look at it that way I can't really fault them.

What I suspect will happen is that Apple and Palm will battle back and forth
for a few revisions over a few months and then Palm will cave and throw some
money at Apple (or something else they want) and we'll hear about some sort of
partnership and suddenly hey, look, the Pre will be supported officially.
Either that or Palm will give up and make their own music uploader.

~~~
dtf
And that is why I never buy Apple. I continue to be amazed that a company
which is responsible for such cutting edge technology and engineering
excellence maintains such an old school attitude to business, its customers
and its developers. Apple just doesn't get the concept of openness. It's stuck
in the 80s.

~~~
ErrantX
> Apple just doesn't get the concept of openness. It's stuck in the 80s.

Apple's attitude is incredibly modern; just not open.

Do we HAVE to be 100% open all the time now, really? That makes no sense.
Apple have killer products all the way from distribution to consumption;
they've marketed them and sold them with effectiveness other companies only
dream of!

I certainly cant fault them for wanting to keep that success to themselves :)

------
gabrielroth
Apple has evidently made a decision to prevent iPods from working without
iTunes, and to prevent iTunes from working with non-iPod audio players. We
must assume that Apple's executives have weighed the pros and cons of this
decision, and have decided that the pros (maintaining a reputation for a
seamless experience) outweigh the cons (losing some sales to Linux owners,
Palm owners, etc.). That's an ordinary business decision.

"You'd think they would _want_ to sell more iPods, not block a certain
percentage of their market out," says mdeslaur in this post.

Maybe the Apple executives have made the wrong decision for their company's
bottom line, and maybe mdeslaur, and many of the commenters here, would have
made a better decision that would have increased Apple's profits. But given
that (a) they have access to a lot of data that you don't have, and (b)
they're executives at Apple and you're not, I wouldn't bet on it.

~~~
sofal
Good point. There is a difference between saying "Apple made a bad business
move here" and "Apple crossed the line in my opinion and I will not buy from
them in the future."

------
crux
Synopsis: Apple has never supported or particularly wanted third-party
software or hardware to be able to interface with their systems. In the
running skirmish that is trying to get said devices to work with said systems,
Apple has once again made a change that breaks the jiggered compatibility.
This guy doesn't use an Apple system, so he's not gonna buy another iPod.

Well, that, plus a lot more drama and dramatic linebreaks.

~~~
ars
That's a rather bad synopsis.

Here's a better one:

In a misguided attempt to lock people in, apple is blocking linux users, (and
anyone else) from accessing their data on an iPod.

Don't support 3rd party software? Fine.

Actively block them? Not so fine.

~~~
tptacek
How is this misguided? This behavior looks entirely rational from where I
stand. Apple wants to lock people in to iTunes, iTMS, and the iPod/iPhone.
They make more money when people use the product suite.

I think people are afflicted with the misapprehension that product bundling is
unlawful. It is not. It is unlawful to use bundling as a device to maintain or
extend a monopoly. Saying Apple has a monopoly on the iPod is like saying
Kimberly-Clark has a monopoly on Huggies.

~~~
ars
I never said it was unlawful. I also didn't say it not rational. I said it was
a bad idea.

It's a bad idea because it's hurts their own customers. It's a bad idea
because it causes some people not to buy their product.

Huggies is a ridiculously bad example.

A better example is the Michelin PAX run flat wheels (rims) that require
special (expensive) tires. Nothing illegal there, it's a great lock in. Except
customers refuse to buy it, and not just refuse to buy the wheels, they won't
even buy a car with those, and car manufacturers started having to add an
option to not have run flat tires.

With the tires, it's just a bad idea, but with an iPhone apple is blocking
access to a customers data. It's MY iPhone apple - not yours.

~~~
tptacek
There are classes of customers that some businesses don't want. It's also
rational to ward off customers who are pains in the ass.

As for the "it's MY iPhone argument", I sympathize with it, but I see the
other side of the argument too: I also want companies to be free to create any
reasonable business model they'd like. Apple _very specifically and
deliberately_ didn't sell you an iPhone as a general-purpose computing
platform you could do anything you want with, and you can't claim that you
bought it expecting to use it as a Linux box.

------
chaostheory
I don't understand what the big deal is. If you don't like Apple's policies
regarding their products there's a simple solution: buy something else. It's
not like Apple has changed overnight. Just like Nintendo, Apple has been doing
this for decades; this isn't some new shocker like the Kindle.

In this day and age I have no idea why someone who primarily uses Linux would
even bother using an iPod when there are good alternatives to Apple's "circle
of one" products.

------
tdavis
I'm a big fan of Apple, but this is ridiculous. Going to such extreme lengths
in the name of what boils down to decreasing their customer base seems rather
silly. God forbid someone use Linux _and pay Apple for iPods_.

~~~
crux
This decision is exactly the same as dozens of decisions they've made in the
past, all decried as patently ridiculous and self-destructive. Apple likes to
sell self-contained systems, in order to make sure that everything works
really well. In the iPod's case, they have an interest in being sure that
iPods are only used with iTunes, because then they can ensure that it works
well -- and so people won't complain about how lousy iPods are when they use
it with other people's potentially lousy software.

That's unfortunate for Linux users, because it's clearly not worth it to Apple
to build a version of iTunes for GNU/Linux. But, you know, the iPod also
doesn't play ogg files. So what are Linux users doing buying them in the first
place?

~~~
ars
I run linux, and I don't have a single ogg file for my music.

Your argument about self contained would be good, except that it's not a case
of apple not supporting other things, it's apple deliberately blocking them.

~~~
crux
I don't want to start any flamewars, but the assumption that the market leader
can engage in a kind of mutualism and 'not support' a given device or OS while
still leaving them open to interoperability displays the sort of cavalier
attitude towards user experience that hobbles Apple's competitors.

How many hacks that muck around in Apple's UX space do you think it would take
for Apple to just sort of turn a blind eye to, before users starting
accidentally wiping their iTunes libraries or bricking their iPhones? And how
many proponents of said hacks do you think would argue that's an acceptable
state of affairs?

~~~
jules
Do you want your TV manufacturer to build a steel cage around your TV because
they're afraid that users will complain if they mess up their own TV. That
would be ridiculous.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Do you want your TV manufacturer to build a steel cage around your TV because
they're afraid that users will complain if they mess up their own TV._

Bad metaphor. Suppose I lived in a world where, if my TV malfunctioned, it
could break my phone and my web browser, send random emails to my relatives,
riffle through my address book, and delete all the music I've bought over the
last five years.

Oh, and there are international criminal gangs who employ networks of botnets
to attack my TV every fifteen seconds.

In that world, I'd see a real use case for the steel-cage-equipped TV.

------
arantius
I got a Nokia N810 recently. With a hefty SD card it plays media very
adequately for my needs -- and it does a whole lot more too! My iPod is
starting to gather dust.

------
mrlebowski
For a company that started off with the motive of making the cheapest and most
usable computers, and that believed in sharing its design [from iWoz: the
APPLE-1 architecture was made public], Apple has come a long way. They are
successful, yes. Their products are good, yes. But now they make exhorbitantly
expensive products [an iPhone 3gS with contract can cost you ~1000$ in the
long run], which they force to not work with anything else [WHY?] and are
closely guarded. Apple, you make great products, but I am never gonna buy
them, cuz then you'll want me to buy music just from you, use only your
software, and pay you for software upgrades [iPod touch] !

~~~
jodrellblank
_But now they make exhorbitantly expensive products_

Their profitability demonstrates that this is false. People (lots of people)
can and do afford their products.

 _which they force to not work with anything else [WHY?]_

To be able to dictate a minimum standard of user experience and to keep you
tied into their ~$250/second profit supply.

 _you'll want me to buy music just from you_

Want you to, yes, but you don't have to - iTunes has offered to import your
CDs for ages, and you can put other music files into its library with click-
and-drag simplicity.

 _use only your software_

No - if they did there would be no iPhone app-store. It doesn't make sense -
they want you to buy a Mac, so they want a compelling ecosystem of high
quality programs of all kinds - from Omnigroup and Circus Ponies to FireFox
and the gnu Utils.

 _and pay you for software upgrades [iPod touch]_

Which take employees time and effort to develop - why should they be free?

~~~
plinkplonk
@jodrellblank, I guess mrlebowski made those points(expensive, not work with
anything else etc) not to claim they are intrinsically bad (which point you
seem to be addressing) but as a contrast to how Apple used to work when it was
founded.

In other words, Apple's present behavior may be justifiable(like you say)
_and_ a change from how it used to work in the past (mrlebowski's point).

------
thenduks
Wow, I don't get all of this. I use Ubuntu and have an iPod touch, it doesn't
sync at all, total brick. But, obviously, I have a windows partition (or,
sometimes, virtual machine) which I use to test in IE or play games, etc... So
I just use iTunes there. Do people really add music to their libraries every
day or something? I sync mine probably once a month, but I can see myself not
being upset even if I had to do it once a week. Let's put things like this in
perspective, shall we?

~~~
asjo
My perspective is: I do not have Windows on any of my computers (yes, that
was, of course, my choice.)

So your solution doesn't work.

My solution is to not upgrade the OS on my generation 1 iPod Touch and use
gtkpod. Not very sustainable in the long run, but almost acceptable.

~~~
thenduks
Hey I'm no fan of Windows, but I really don't see what's so wrong with having
a 2-3GB virtual machine around on an external hard drive or something so you
can sync your iPod. Perhaps if you're that against Windows on some sort of
fundamental level then the iPod is not an appropriate product for you? Or
maybe it's time to get a Mac mini for a media center or something and it's
problem solved from another angle.

------
st3fan
Goodbye, Linux Hacker.

