Actually they are not long ways from being a monopoly. And the EU have already investigated Apple once and ruled against them.
A monopoly in what exactly? iPod and Mac sales ? haha good joke.
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iTunes 8.2.1 Reportedly Breaks Palm Pre Syncing
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A monopoly in what exactly? iPod and Mac sales ? haha good joke.
Apple DOES allow anyone--even Pre users--to access and play their DRM-free iTunes music on any device.
That has not changed. And third parties can even sync playlists with iTunes. Just not in the WAY Palm did it (pretending to be an iPod).
(People are imagining all kinds of things other than what has actually happened. It's like everyone reads the story and fills in whatever they are most afraid of
)Exactly.
John Gruber Posted this snip from a BusinessWeek Article, quoting Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.
That's very specific as to why Apple chose to disable the Pre's ability to sync, and it's what I said a few pages ago. Apple doesn't care if you sync but it will be unsupported. Apple is basically saying, "find your own way, this one's ours."
This is exactly what will get the DOJ investigating. It's called illegal tying or bundling. If Apple has a dominant position in a market (take your pick of
of online Music distribution, smart phones, or MP3 players, then they are not allowed to tie use of that product to the other market/products.What you've just said would be admitting that Apple does this. The only question in court would be convincing a judge that Apple's market position in this areas is significant enough to trigger the anti-trust laws.
I agree however, Apple has always said they are and
always will be.....a hardware company.
Could Pre owners return the Pre since syncing with iTunes was a selling point?
Well, thats the thing. Anti-trust kind of requires market control. Nobody doubts that Apple is a major player, but they are not the only one and do not run or control the market. Apple isn't preventing Palm from develop their own software nor are they stopping other syncing software from existing. Read the court cases - Microsoft used one market power to stop legal business practices between its OEM partners. All Apple is doing is plugging a whole - they never had any business arrangements with Palm and likely never will directly. That is very different. There is no law that says that media players must support other devices. It would be nice sure, but there is no requirement.
Well duh. Society works by laws. What laws are Apple violating? Tell me the court decision that I must have missed that obligates that iTunes must work with other devices.
It only worked because of a glitch with Apple's software. Palm never sought permission to use Apple's API's in that regard. Apple owns iTunes. Plain and simple. They get to decide how things work with it. Apple has not said that Palm cannot use Apple's developer tools nor have they denied access to Apple's itunes XML (the same tools that other sync programs on the Mac use. Palm was the one not playing nice. They deceptively used the USB standard and Apple said "Don't do that with our stuff like that" and promptly fixed the hole that Palm made.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)
Yes, I'm perfectly ok with it. And I'm perfectly ok with MS breaking it if they so choose.
MS likes bootcamp because their business is software. Apple doesn't like the pre syncing with iTunes because their business is hardware. If it were the reverse apple would allow the latter and MS would break the former -and I'd have no problem with any of it.
This is dollars and cents people. Please stop acting like this is a moral issue.
dragossh said:
Alright. Apple is the best! I love they made this decision! Hurrah for closed gardens! I guess that makes me worthy of commenting on this issue now. Pro tip: this trolling is called "having a different opinion".
Are you okay with Apple using Microsofts intellectual property as a selling point? (Boot Camp) Because that is what Palm is doing. Speaking of that, doesnt Apples firmware emulate a BIOS to achieve Windows compatibility?
Yes, I'm perfectly ok with it. And I'm perfectly ok with MS breaking it if they so choose.
MS likes bootcamp because their business is software. Apple doesn't like the pre syncing with iTunes because their business is hardware. If it were the reverse apple would allow the latter and MS would break the former -and I'd have no problem with any of it.
This is dollars and cents people. Please stop acting like this is a moral issue.
They can still access all the songs, they just have to write their own sync software. RIM has it for the Blackberries and it works fine.
Apple DOES allow anyone--even Pre users--to access and play their DRM-free iTunes music on any device.
That has not changed. And third parties can even sync playlists with iTunes. Just not in the WAY Palm did it (pretending to be an iPod).
(People are imagining all kinds of things other than what has actually happened. It's like everyone reads the story and fills in whatever they are most afraid of
I have to hand it to you, nagromme...you truly must have the patience of Job. You've calmly explained the simple facts of what is actually going on in this case over and over again in this thread, in about every way you could possibly explain it, and yet the anti-Apple trolls just seem to blithely ignore it page after page. I wonder why that is? As I pointed out earlier, either they are too thick to get it, or they are deliberately ignoring the truth because it effectively ends their absurd excuses for debating a perfectly reasonable business practice by Apple. It boggles the mind how stubbornly dense people can be when their pet opinion is not supported by available facts.
Microsoft can do with their software whatever they want. Go and use another OS if you don't like what they do. No one's forcing you to use Windows.
Well they can as long as they don't abuse their market power (they still posses a 90 percent market share). Remember Windows is a Monopoly and MS is a convicted Monopolist. Monopolists have very different standards than companies with small market-shares. They were convicted. Apple has not and you cannot say that they will.
They have important things to do and won't care a bit.
Fighting competition in a free market has zilch to do with breaking the law. Apple can do with their software whatever they want. You can always use something else if you don't like it.
Yeah, Microsoft tried using that defense in their IE case. ("People can just download any ol' browser they want!")
It didn't work. Having one system for the 'home-team,' and another system for everybody else is discriminatory, and if you are determined to have dominance in your market, you will be called on it.
Microsoft wasn't convicted before they were convicted, but everybody knew what they were before the court finally said it.
We're just in the pre-conviction days of Apple Inc, waiting for the Dream team of Eric Holder & Barack Obama to bring us the Change We Need!
You forget, Apple has very powerful enemies.Speedy2 said:
You don't get it, do you? There are official ways for other devices to sync with iTunes. RIMM does it that way. Palm could do it as well, but it involves a little bit of effort. An effort that Palm obviously didn't want to make.
Go and whine at Palm's HQ for being lazy.
A lions share yes, but:
1) There is nothing illegal about having a popular product - it's what you do with it. So far Apple hasn't done anything to stop other music players from being sold on the market nor have they stopped phones from syncing on the Mac. Sure other players have failed, but that could be argued that they weren't able to make a god product that customers wanted. Too bad
2) There still are other MP3 Players, stores, and phones on the market. Take the Zune. Sure it's a joke as far as units sold, but they use the same exact business model of integration that Apple uses (and it's not cross platform!). Even a company like Microsoft, a convinced monopolist - has not gotten slapped for this. That's because they aren't using their Zune software to stop other music stores or other players to create their own syncing software or using pre-existing sync frameworks.
Point is, there is choice. If you do not want to go with Apple you do not have to. Sure the others might suck, but thats hardly Apple's problem.
Now we're going from solid points to mere unsubstantiated assumptions?
There is already a way for others to sync with iTunes. Palm was just too lazy to implement it. So now this is Apple's fault or what? They can do with their own software whatever they want.
Am I seeing double standards here? So you don’t have any problem with Apple using Windows as a selling point, but you do have a problem with Palm using iTunes as a selling point. This is really "thinking different"
My assumptions are based on Apple’s recent behaviour. Banning competiting apps from the App Store, screwing around with Palm users (the method used for tricking iTunes into syncing is irrelevant). They would be more than happy to have a walled garden, restricting everything to Apple-blessed things if they had the chance.
