iTunes Disables MusicMatch

spooza writes "If you own an iPod and use it with MusicMatch on a Windows machine and then install iTunes, strange things happen: after the installation, MusicMatch is unable to communicate or even find the iPod anymore. Of course this might be a coincidence or bad programming on the Apple side, but since MusicMatch also introduced a pay-per-download service it seems not too farfetched to suspect that Apple simply took the opportunity to knock out an opponent. The funny thing is, Apple and MusicMatch cooperated before, because Apple wanted to have software that was able to work with iPod and thus not lose potential customers that want to buy an iPod but have only Windows." MusicMatch recommends deleting, then downloading and reinstalling, the MusicMatch software to reenable it.

Comments

iTunes disables all other ipod managers

[kerubi]

At least it is not targeted at MusicMatch, just broadly to all competitors :)

Thank god!

[lambadomy]

I had to use musicmatch for my ipod, and it was one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. Musicmatch was kind enough to send me an e-mail alerting me that itunes would disable the musicmatch interaction with my ipod, unfortunately when I replied to the e-mail with "Thank god, your software is horrible" it didn't go to an actual person. Oh well.

Re:Thank god!

[crawling_chaos]

I did exactly the same. Funny how the fact that their reply-to address is just a bot saying "I can't do anything about this." Already that bot is 99% more effective than MusicMatch's Tech Support (motto: We put the "less" in Clueless) ever was.

The disabling of MusicMatch was a bugfix, in my opinion.

Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

As the Apple Turns said it best:

"And before you start lambasting Apple for pulling a stunt like this, c'mon... the people affected by this are Windows users-- they're used to this kind of treatment. Obviously they thrive on it, or they'd have ditched Microsoft years ago. Heck, crippling a competing product was probably the only way Apple could have gotten an ounce of respect from these folks in the first place. In fact, we think Apple probably missed a golden opportunity to win some serious admiration from the Windows community; instead of simply removing MusicMatch's ability to sync with the iPod, iTunes should also have deleted MusicMatch entirely, installed spyware, inexplicably disabled a random piece of system hardware, reformatted any writable volumes not containing iTunes itself, and then emailed itself to everyone in the user's Outlook address book. Oh, and it should have cost thirty bucks. More, with technical support."

Re:sounds like the usual.

[Glock27]

could you imagine the reaction here if Microsoft pulled the same stunt?

Yeah, just imagine if Internet Explorer disabled Netscape when it was installed...

Re:Only if you tell it!

[rco3]

In all fairness, Moofie, you're obviously using iTunes for Windows on .. (wait for it).. a Windows machine. This puts you in a mindset of ignoring dialog boxes, and not bothering to read them fully, because so many Windows dialog boxes are on the level of Clippy - totally fscking useless.

Should it be less easy to miss important messages in a dialog box? Yes. How should it be done? By programs not crying "Wolf!" all the time. If you want to blame someone, don't blame Apple. Blame the people who write programs that pop up dialog boxes for things like, "You have requested a web page from the Internet. Are you sure you wish to continue?" in web browsers.

Oh, and blame yourself for not reading the dialog box. Asking OS mfg's to protect you from your own stupidity only fosters more stupidity.

Sorry. Tough love, and all that.