This just goes beyond stupidity and hugely takes away my respect for Apple.
Apple did well with its iPods because it out-competed their opponents. Obviously Apple is threatened by the Pre, the whole iPhone 3GS is the most pitiful update to an Apple product yet and they obviously must know that. Their only defence against Palm right now is to block their products from using iTunes and threaten lawsuits. It's utterly pathetic and wholly shameful on Apple.
Your argument contradicts itself. It seems as if you are calling for a level playing field so that Apple and Palm products can compete against each other on their own merits.
But remember, Apple out-competed their iPod opponents by making not just a hardware MP3 player, but also a best-of-class jukebox and wholly innovative online music marketplace and integrating them all together. This integration has been shown time and time again to be the force that gives iPod an edge over competitors. In short, iPod "just works".
Enter the Palm Pre which is just a device. No jukebox. No music store. At this point, if Palm wants to compete, it could invest in building its own media jukebox and online store. Instead, it decides to use 2/3s of the technology of the product it's supposedly competing against by masquerading as the competitor itself.
It's as if you take a Boxter, replace the steering wheel, and then call yourself a competitor to Porsche. At best you are partners with Porsche, and at worst you're ripping them off. In either case, it hardly looks like the level competitive playing field you call for.
I would be more pissed with Palm than Apple on this one. This is nothing more than a hack that Palm used to make the Pre look like an iPod, and a hack that they advertised, knowing fully well that it could be broken at any time, and they have no control over it. I'd even go so far as to say that it's better that Apple does this now while there's only one device that's affected by this, before other companies follow suit. It would have happened sooner or later--perhaps when Apple changes the way that iPods/iPhones sync and it would have broken unsupported devices anyway.
Apple did well with its iPods because it out-competed their opponents. Obviously Apple is threatened by the Pre, the whole iPhone 3GS is the most pitiful update to an Apple product yet and they obviously must know that. Their only defence against Palm right now is to block their products from using iTunes and threaten lawsuits. It's utterly pathetic and wholly shameful on Apple.