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Steve Jobs' Testimony Expected to Play Major Role in iPod Antitrust Lawsuit

I think one part of this boils down to Apple forcing out the competition (allegedly). As mentioned MusicMatch had a competing service to iTunes where people could purchase music and MusicMatch supported the iPod; Apple then allegedly stopped MusicMatch from working with the iPod via software/hardware/firmware updates; This is not allowed, forcing out the competition or whatever you want to label it.

Assuming the email mentioned in the article is real, I would guess that Apple will lose this part of the antitrust lawsuit.

A tiny dint in Apples profits for a few hours will go to Yahoo (who ruined MusicMatch after they bought it IMO, I used to use MusicMatch, it was the best and most popular music library manager at the time).

Edit: Second thoughts, MusicMatch was the biggest music manager at one point, maybe it could cost a little more than a few hours profit: http://tidbits.com/article/7819
 
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Swytch said:
but the only barrier i see apple created here was on their own device / software. They have to allow competition within their own product?

its not like itunes and ipod being linked together prevented anyone else from creating a mp3 player and music service - in fact many companies did exactly that, some even before Apple did - so there was competition and apple really just entered into that competition - and did a much better job at providing what customers wanted.

Also, Apple did not have any power in the Music Market prior to the release of the iPod and iTunes - so how exactly did they abuse any power that they did not have?
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Last thing first: prior does not matter. What matters to the law is what they did after the dominant market share was achieved. Apple is accused of "monopoly maintenance," which essentially is an effort to maintain market share by means not available to their competitors. The argument is that anyone who bought music from the iTMS was thereafter artificially locked into the iPod via FairPlay DRM, which Apple would not or did not license to anyone else. The theory is this gave Apple unfair pricing advantages in the digital media player market. This does seem like not a half-bad antitrust theory, but I suspect the success of it in court will hinge on the reasons why Apple did not license FairPlay.

The main purpose of antitrust law is to maintain a level competitive playing field. If a company achieves a market share sufficient to allow them to stomp on their end of the playing field, then the potential exists for them to create artificial barriers to competition. No question, Apple achieved a large enough market share to stomp. The question is whether they did. Answering that question will require them to respond to the question why they kept FairPlay entirely to themselves. If it is found they did it to disadvantage competitors, then they are gonna have to pay.
 
MacRumors said:
To counteract Jobs' testimony, Apple is expected to argue that updates to the iPod and iTunes were designed to improve the platform for the consumer and not cripple competing devices.
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LOL! I seem to remember Apple systematically making it impossible to sync music to Palm devices from iTunes via multiple iTunes software updates.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Where in this article does it state that the lawsuit is in any way, shape, or form, about marketing? Interesting read, my left foot.
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Read the headline. Apple misled iPod owners plaintiffs allege at trial. How does one mislead consumers? Marketing. Whether that be through communication, commercials, brochures, collateral, info on a box, etc.

It cracks me up that you can't seem to figure out everything involved potentially in this trial. Where in any article does it say the trial is about email? It doesn't yet we know they will use emails written in the trial.
 
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mikef07 said:
Read the headline. Apple misled iPod owners plaintiffs allege at trial. How does one mislead consumers? Marketing. Whether that be through communication, commercials, brochures, collateral, info on a box, etc.

It cracks me up that you can't seem to figure out everything involved potentially in this trial. Where in any article does it say the trial is about email? It doesn't yet we know they will use emails written in the trial.
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It cracks me up that you can't read past the headline. No, more like depresses me.

You might also try reading the actual complaint. I have suggested that already.
 
I'm sure someone will set me straight, and I guess I invite that by posting this without having read all the other comments and other sources on the topic, but to me this somehow seems like suing the cassette-player makers because their devices wouldn't play LPs....
 
MusicMatch being able to place files to a device whiteout permishion is wrong, they are stealing. Can one connect a car to another car with rope in order to get a free ride, no that is what happened and Apple put a stop to it. They should of made their own device not leach on someone else's
 
eac25 said:
I'm sure someone will set me straight, and I guess I invite that by posting this without having read all the other comments and other sources on the topic, but to me this somehow seems like suing the cassette-player makers because their devices wouldn't play LPs....
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No, not even remotely.
 
eac25 said:
I'm sure someone will set me straight, and I guess I invite that by posting this without having read all the other comments and other sources on the topic, but to me this somehow seems like suing the cassette-player makers because their devices wouldn't play LPs....
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It seems to be the fact that only Apple can place music on Apple hardware and no one else is allowed to place contents on them, must use iTunes and iTunes has the iTunes Music Store embedded in the iTunes App.

But one must remember that no body wanted to pay for MP3 because it quality was lower than CD, The new codec AAC that was the replacement for MP3 offered better quality than CD and you could get AAC music from Apple from the Music Store cheaper, and could then make your own CD with cover art easy to be played in an CD player, was way way easier than the competition and was the main reason Apple took the lead quickly, so it is a bit of sour grapes from the competition because they produced crap and Steve Jobs was a one for saying no to crap and was never going to allow them to spoil a great AAC Player with MP3 crap.
 
InsoftUK said:
It seems to be the fact that only Apple can place music on Apple hardware and no one else is allowed to place contents on them, must use iTunes and iTunes has the iTunes Music Store embedded in the iTunes App.

But one must remember that no body wanted to pay for MP3 because it quality was lower than CD, The new codec AAC that was the replacement for MP3 offered better quality than CD and you could get AAC music from Apple from the Music Store cheaper, and could then make your own CD with cover art easy to be played in an CD player, was way way easier than the competition and was the main reason Apple took the lead quickly, so it is a bit of sour grapes from the competition because they produced crap and Steve Jobs was a one for saying no to crap and was never going to allow them to spoil a great AAC Player with MP3 crap.
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Not a lot in the way of accurate statements here.

It has always been easy to add music purchased outside of the iTMS to an iPod, including that MP3 crap. With iTunes.

No compressed format offers better sound quality than uncompressed CD audio. It's fundamentally impossible. AAC is a better compression method than MP3 at the same bitrates. That's about all you can say.

Apple taking the lead is not at issue in this lawsuit.

None of Apple's competitors are a party to this lawsuit.
 
RedBanana said:
I think one part of this boils down to Apple forcing out the competition (allegedly). As mentioned MusicMatch had a competing service to iTunes where people could purchase music and MusicMatch supported the iPod; Apple then allegedly stopped MusicMatch from working with the iPod via software/hardware/firmware updates; This is not allowed, forcing out the competition or whatever you want to label it.

Assuming the email mentioned in the article is real, I would guess that Apple will lose this part of the antitrust lawsuit.
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Then the implication is, "Once hacked, you must accept the hack and support it forever."

Or, "You must support everything from the start." Next up, people who want to play FLAC file a class action.

Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.
 
daftpunker909 said:
Who the hell is talking about the Mac or Iphone? The issue is that Apple's Ipod held 80% of the digital music player market and used it to their advantage as Steve Jobs' email shows.
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"daftpunker909" a poser techno punk from the valley or desert in SoCal.

Why???

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jon3543 said:
Then the implication is, "Once hacked, you must accept the hack and support it forever."

Or, "You must support everything from the start." Next up, people who want to play FLAC file a class action.

Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.
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Microsoft made a fortune breaking third party hacks in future OS releases. This spawned a cottage industry of "Windows internals experts" that just knew what undocumented API calls to use to get a strategic app running under Windows 3 to Windows 2000. Been told that Adobe hired these guys en mass to get their Photoshop and other products working well under Windows. Many were ex-Microsoft engineers who relocated to California and invalidated their non-comp with the Beast of Redmond.

If there is no contractual obligation to support a third party, the original publisher of the software has the right to support, not support or alter any API they publish under First Amendment.

The concept of "inferred market functional support" has been shot down time and time again. This goes all the way back to Ford's transition of the Model T to the Model A.

This generation upgrade broke many a mechanical support of third party Model T accessories. Ford even made the drive-shaft of the Model A rotate in the opposite direction for forward motion from the Model T just to break many third party electrical generators that were designed around the Model T drive train. Look it up in the archives.
 
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Swytch said:
HAHA! I forgot about RealPlayer - a perfect example - I remember a portable device that would only play RealPlayer files bought from the Real Music Store- where is the lawsuit against Real?
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Yes, and Realplayer files could not be played on on any other media player or software other other than their own Realplayer back then.

Another good example... Anyone remember the AOL ART file format for pictures. To this day, I still haven't found a program that will open them, not even GraphicConverter last time I checked. The current Mac version of AOL doesn't even open them! The older version of AOL that does simply crashes immediately in any recent MacOS version.

That means all of the pictures I sent back and forth on my earliest days on the internet are basically useless now. Can't even see the people I chatted with anymore! HAHA!
 
nutjob said:
It's a shame we can't dig up Jobs, reanimate him and make him face justice.
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Love to know where Steve Jobs shows up in his next life. I'm sure it is a hell of a Life Review in front of the Karma Board this time around for him.

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nutjob said:
Not so fast, he's still working his way through the court system.
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The fact that Steve can get this much press over a post-corpus testimony shows lives beyond any of us in the public eye.

A century from now, Steve will rank along great American industrialists like of George Henry Corliss, Andrew Carnegie, George Westinghouse, Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Bob Noyce.
 
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CFreymarc said:
Microsoft made a fortune breaking third party hacks in future OS releases...
If there is no contractual obligation to support a third party, the original publisher of the software has the right to support, not support or alter any API they publish under First Amendment.
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Actually, Microsoft has often gone to heroic lengths to support undocumented, even stupid things developers do. Read Raymond Chen's blog for numerous examples of that. It all comes down to what the creator of the tech perceives to be in its best interest, and Microsoft has always depended heavily on 3rd party developers.

OTOH, Apple did not create the iPod to be a generic music player of all DRM schemes, and I have no problem with them refusing to support DRM'd music that didn't come from iTunes. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the objection to it. No one was forcing anyone to buy iPods. They were many alternatives.
 
jon3543 said:
Actually, Microsoft has often gone to heroic lengths to support undocumented, even stupid things developers do. Read Raymond Chen's blog for numerous examples of that. It all comes down to what the creator of the tech perceives to be in its best interest, and Microsoft has always depended heavily on 3rd party developers.
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Yes and no. I have personal experience with Microsoft issuing many misleading (where the claimed "error") documentation delaying strategic third party apps from release. Many experiences like this let to Microsoft's anti-trust trail.

jon3543 said:
OTOH, Apple did not create the iPod to be a generic music player of all DRM schemes, and I have no problem with them refusing to support DRM'd music that didn't come from iTunes. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the objection to it. No one was forcing anyone to buy iPods. They were many alternatives.
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That is why I wonder why this suite is a going on. There is no regulated obligation to support third party formats.
 
CFreymarc said:
That is why I wonder why this suite is a going on. There is no regulated obligation to support third party formats.
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This is my thought as well. there are many examples in this thread where people have shown apple was no different then many other companies. It works well afaik that today a business model allowing third parties to work with either formats or hardware is advantageous to better profits for many companies. Back in the 90s and early 2000s most of the electronics I remember seeing or having had proprietary software and hardware. It was the norm. From what I've read the music service going after apple was able to have a business from its consumers using iPods. Apple got wind and made sure it didn't happen. It seems pretty clear the other music service was in competition with iTunes anyways and for Apple to not do anything could harm iTunes sales. Add to Apple has successfully blocked third party computer hardware companies from cloning and running OS X, which seems very similar to this.

Couldn't the other music service just make it to where you could convert to acc/whatever format that worked on old iPods and drag n drop? did the music service have their own proprietary codec so it could be protected? Apple didn't stop anyone from creating their own MP3 player with MP3 software or downloadable music. They didn't create a market where they were the only ones who were allowed to sell music from record labels.

They had their own self contained device and service which was aesthetically pleasing with great marketing in a new market. Imo it was well built and worked better and easier then the other MP3 players. It led to a huge success and the majority share of the market. I'll take open source any day and yeah it sucks that the other company got shut out from its services on the iPod but it doesn't mean it was illegal or Apple was manipulating the market.
 
CFreymarc said:
That is why I wonder why this suite is a going on. There is no regulated obligation to support third party formats.
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It isn't about regulations. Market power changes everything. If you want to understand antitrust laws, start with market share in a defined market.
 
mikef07 said:
Read the headline. Apple misled iPod owners plaintiffs allege at trial. How does one mislead consumers? Marketing. Whether that be through communication, commercials, brochures, collateral, info on a box, etc.

It cracks me up that you can't seem to figure out everything involved potentially in this trial. Where in any article does it say the trial is about email? It doesn't yet we know they will use emails written in the trial.
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While one form of misleading could be from marketing, there are other forms too and I didn't see anything in the article to show it was from marketing. Rather common sense would seem to be the reason people assumed their iTunes music would work on other MP3 players or their purchased mp3s from elsewhere would work on iPods. A misleading marketing example would have been explicitly showing or stating iTunes worked with other MP3 players or vice versa.
A main focus of the trial will be jobs' testimony which does include emails. (Per this macrumors article and your link)
From your link I would side heavily with apple. plaintiffs quotes as well as their reasons do not show me any merit they have been wronged from what (admittedly little) I understand/know from antitrust law. Further I also side with apple in their reasons for doing the software updates. Not having permission from apple to use iPods, then explicitly writing code that undermines apples own software so their own music services would work on iPods and thius profit off of it....then to claim Apple was in the wrong when Apple blocked their competition from using apples products and blocked third parties from profiting off of apples products is absurd. Both parties look silly saying 'it's for the customers best interest' I think iPod consumers would be more likely to yell at Apple if for some reason the third party music service crashed iPods. I thought this took place near the beginning of the 00's but maybe I could still see people were still used to buying physical CDs and thinking iTunes mp3s would work like having a cd and being able to play on different MP3 players. However it was so common to have electronics only work exclusively for one brand up until pretty recently plus I'm sure it was in the service agreement no one read.

Still, I don't see what Apple did was taking away the competition. apple had a majority share of MP3 players at the time but I don't draw the connections from that to other companies being limited to making their own MP3 players,or making their own music software/online music buying apps. The plaintiffs quote about the software update that crippled their music software not being big enough is laughable. Saying a software update should have made the device "cooler", "sleeker " and/or "smaller" to be a "genuine" update. One professor of pay me a little and I'll say anything is a witness who will testify iTunes "blew everything up" if put on a device that wasn't an iPod. Well duh, if it wasn't designed for that player why should a reasonable person expect it to work correctly? The plaintiffs go on as if Apple was the reason other companies were making inferior products or products not as popular.
It is interesting to have a discussion I think on how the purchasing of digital audio/video should be or should have been. Many people I know were frustrated with using iTunes as the only option of managing iPods. I'm also sure there were probably some great software/apps people could have done for the iPod which would have improved it for consumers but Apple made the iPod how they wanted. It's not against the law to not get everything we want out of a product. You take the good with the bad and we decided the iPod was good enough, cool enough, easy enough that it out weighted the bad.

Jesus, sorry I wrote so much
 
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