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Apple Update Means Palm Pre Can No Longer Sync With iTunes
endikos writes "Apple updated iTunes to version 8.2.1. According to the changelog, it offers bug fixes and 'addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.' In other words, 'Buzz off, Palm Pre. You ain't no iPhone.'"
Palm: "Oh no you didn't!"
Apple: "Oh yes iDid."
Frist psoError: Device type "palm" not authorised!"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And is anyone surprised ? Really ?
/. comments in the past. Wonder how that'll work out in practice ? Guess we'll see :)
It's Apple's tech, they put the work in, they deserve to reap the rewards. Coming along late-to-the-party and just trying to muscle your way in without an invite just shows a lack of class, at least IMHO.
I can't see it really affecting anyone though. As any fule know, iTunes just sucks so badly at managing music that the alternative (what Pre owners are left with), the ability to "just drag files to it as a disk" ought to be a liberating breath of fresh air - at least going by
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Really, what would be the benefit for doing this? For one, not many people really -like- iTunes, it just happens to be the easiest way of syncing your iPod, if you could do the same thing in VLC, WMP, etc most people would. This opens up Apple to a lot more anti-trust suits. Apple had nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing this, so in the end what does it get them?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I interviewed at Apple a few years ago, and a consistent message from the developers was that *everything* they do is to make the customer experience better. Things are not done simply because they're cool -- they have to serve a purpose.
So I find it ironic that, as a MacBook Pro user, Apple has explicitly done something to make my experience *worse*. They went much further than simply failing to "provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players." They went out of their way to harm users.
Shame on you, Apple. Have you gotten so big that you've forgotten what it was like to be under Microsoft's thumb?
-Scott Hutton
Companies that actively thwart interoperability and promote lock-in are incompatible with the best interests of their own customers.
I don't care how pretty Apple's products are. If you own an iPhone, a Mac, or use iTunes, you are supporting this kind of corporate behaviour. Either you care enough to modify your behaviour, or you don't.
Give your dollars to companies that are demonstrably "less bad" whenever possible. Accept that you'll have to go without some of the bling until the market catches up.
Seriously; it works great as a USB drive.
I'm glad I've got my Ogg Vorbis player that uses UMS to communicate with the computer.... It works on any computer, be it BSD, Mac, Windows, or Linux with no trouble whatsoever.
Then again, I guess I'm neither trendy, nor cool.
You could always use DVD Jon's DoubleTwist to sync the Palm Pre.
It reads iTunes libraries (including those irritatingly hidden away on iPods/Phones) and syncs to lots of devices quite nicely.
It's not exactly full-featured enough yet to use as your main media player, but it's really useful for moving stuff between devices.
Only game in town when it comes to mp3 *players*, I realise that there are other music download services. They're not anywhere near as big as iTunes though.
So Apple has a virtual monopoly on portable media players, and they're using their monopoly to harm their competitors. Sounds like a job for the DoJ to me.
Apple is evil, and I can't understand why geeks like them so much. They're notorious for protecting their interests above anybody else's with absolutely zero regard for the consumer.
It's like Apple can't learn from Microsoft's mistakes.
Maybe Palm can buy/license doubleTwist and try to convert customers to syncing iPods and PREs with that instead of iTunes. A long shot I suppose, but it appears to work with a lot of devices(including many digital cameras too).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Palm should go with Songbird. Songbird is not 100% stable and bug free (I have been testing it lately), but if they offer a bit of assistance to the SF-based team, they could make it work for them just fine.
And in the process, maybe they would be able to open the doors for more smartphones/players who are in need of a capable mp3 organizer.
iTunes doesn't make Apple any significant amount of money. iPod and iPhone sales do. iTunes exists for the purpose of driving hardware sales.
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From the article: "It works, but is annoying as hell. Will Palm respond? Who knows. In the meantime, welcome to your new reality, Pre users." Uhh Eric Zeman, not being able to use your precious palm to sync with Itunes is inconvenient and mildly annoying. Not sure it's as annoying as hell.
I was trying to come up with examples..."Cell phone yelling on a bus", "Madonna" - annoying as they are, nowhere near as annoying as hell. I know, I know, figure of speech but fucking drag your files or buy an Apple device or even better..here it comes..STOP USING ITUNES.
OK, OK I will stand corrected. It is not a Microsoft wannabe, it is afailed Microsoft wannabe.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
> It's made to be a lock-in platform for Apple to sell more DRM-ladden music
Not feeding the trolls so much as consistently rejecting this old excuse. Apple do not sell DRM-laden music. Apple do not sell DRM-encumbered music. Apple's music sales are in AAC format, which is an open format, not an Apple-exclusive format. Music sold by Apple will play on any device that plays AAC music, barring ones with obscure bugs.
Apple's *video* sales, however, are DRM-encumbered.
What DRM laden music?
All computer companies should be required to interoperate. Every interface should be documented and never updated, only upgraded to new versions with the old interfaces staying in place.
It is criminal that Apple is able to block users from their music just because the consumer didn't buy Apples non functional overpriced players.
Didn't Palm supply software to sync the Pre with a Mac? If not, it sounds like a failing with Palm, not with Apple. The Pre is a direct competitor. While it's true that Apple has always been about pleasing it's customers, Palm isn't paying them, and the Pre isn't an Apple product. Mind you, these are people who intentionally picked the Pre over an iPhone.
Bull pucky .29 cents per song and made over 570 million dollars in 2008!
http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/03/apple-apparentl/
From this Apple makes
So unless you are a member of the royal family your statement about not making any significant money is just false.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If you're a heavy DRM'd iTunes buyer, I can see the interoperability concern. But who here buys DRM'd music? And if you remove DRM from the equation, this seems less about interoperability and more about Palm's desire to hop a ride on Apple's software development train. I mean, Palm could just spend their own resources to create a detailed sync system to allow transfer of non-DRM'd files via full sync or drag and drop -- you know, like Apple did.
I like it far better, anyway. It's simple and does what I want, and that's just to move media around. Works flawlessly with the Palm Pre, heck, DVD Jon HAS a Pre. DoubleTwist Manages Your Pre Media, Freely, Easily, and Transparently
If you're hooked on iTunes, seriously, you need to get over that, there ARE fine replacements for it. People were listening to digital music long before the iPod ever came out. Unfortunately, Apple tricked a lot of people into thinking that they were paying for music and supporting the artists, but their intention obviously was to control the platform. Any company that would charge for media, but then block you from using it on the device you want to use that media on are not worth your time and money, and if you've been doing business with them, sorry, they've ripped you off. This is a fine example of how Apple is more dangerous than M$ ever was in regards to anti-competitive and anti-innovative behavior.
Ok, so Apple is fine with iTunes on Windows, but not a Palm Pre... I'd like to see how they argue this isn't monopolistic behavior in court, because I would get a lot of good laughs.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
So, in the event the Palm Pre gets a software update that restores syncing, what would Apple's legal options be? Sue with the argument of violating the license agreement of iTunes by using unauthorized hardware? vs. a possible antitrust argument by Palm by blocking (up until then) compatible hardware?
Also, I actually had a problem with my iPod touch 2nd generation being recognized yesterday by iTunes 8.2, rebooting it (the iPod) solved it. Perhaps there is a genuine issue beyond just blocking the Pre.
Apple is entering a losing battle with this change. Next up, I imagine either:
a) firmware update on the Palm Pre that more thoroughly disguises the way the device advertises itself
b) app you can run from your Palm Pre that shims iTunes.
hardware company and not like a software company. Clones aren't necessarily bad as long as they can build superior devices (or have the image for it) and where they would still make money on every sale. They could make decent money being the #1 music site on the web. So what the device isn't an iPod?
I wonder how many people care about iTunes connectivity when they buy an mp3 player? Is it a requirement or afterthought? If it becomes a requirement, that would promote more lock-in for Apple than sabotaging their software against other devices.
Having a monopoly is not illegal. Abusing a monopoly is. And in this case Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly.
As much as people love/hate iTunes there are clearly competitors to it. Perhaps Palm should have chosen one of them to provide sync services for their new phone. But that wouldn't have served their purposes--they wanted to ride Apple's market leading coat tails to commercial success. Not by doing it in the accepted way (say, licensing iTunes or paying a fee to Apple to provide support) but by exploiting a bug in the software. Is it any surprise that Apple decided to fix this bug and prevent a potential competitor from benefiting from their work?
It's true that Apple probably wouldn't license iTunes to anyone, but given that Palm is run by former Apple employees they probably had as good a shot as anyone of getting this done. They didn't try--and worse, they advertised iTunes compatibility--so they very well can't complain now that they've been shot down. The truly amazing thing to me is that people still blame Apple for doing this. Why?
Seriously think about this for a minute. You've got a device manufacturer that creates a direct competitor to Apple's products, openly advertising that they are piggybacking onto Apple's software functionality without negotiating some kind of licensing agreement and without Apple's consent. Then Apple closes the loophole that enables this unsupported functionality. But nobody wants to blame poor underdog Palm for having done this in the first place. Your average consumer, who either is too ignorant or too self-centered to think two steps ahead, buys into the advertised functionality and then blames Apple when they decide to break it?
That's not how the game is played, folks. If Palm wants to compete, then let them create their own service and interface rather than leveraging another company's successful work. You say that's unfair because Apple has created a heavily lopsided playing field, and now it's impossible to compete with the massive popularity of iTunes. But you have to ask yourself, where were these same competitors five years ago? What where they doing? They were twiddling their thumbs and milking the consumer for all they were worth while making incremental improvements in their devices. Then Apple came along and blew the whole mobile device market away with the iPhone and NOW they want to complain about the playing field not being level? Fuck that bullshit.
Make no mistake, I don't particularly approve that Apple did what they did, but if you bought a Palm Pre and couldn't see this coming you are not only blind but you're an idiot. Palm, RIM, Nokia, Samsung, Sony--all the handset makers, not to mention the telecoms who still continue to nickel-and-dime consumers with exorbitant rates on SMS (for no other reason except that they can), are not, and never were, your friends just because now they're the underdogs. Same thing with the MP3 player market. These companies want you to think that slapping on features like they were afterthoughts is "technological progress." They never had the vision to rethink the whole device and the whole user experience from the bottom up. And now people have the balls to complain that Apple is a monopoly because they gave you real competition? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
While working at another company we discovered we were infringing on a certain patent from palm from 1998 (I think).
Palm has an interesting patent from the days where Palm's could sync with internet content over com port or USB with a PC in the middle. This is exactly what iTunes and its Music store does to an iPod. If I was Palm AND Apple did not license this patent, I would sue Apple left, right and center. At the very least settle for Palm to inter-operate with Apple technology + get a huge sum of money from Apple just for the kicks.
> It's made to be a lock-in platform for Apple to sell more DRM-ladden music
Not feeding the trolls so much as consistently rejecting this old excuse. Apple do not sell DRM-laden music. Apple do not sell DRM-encumbered music. Apple's music sales are in AAC format, which is an open format, not an Apple-exclusive format. Music sold by Apple will play on any device that plays AAC music, barring ones with obscure bugs.
Apple's *video* sales, however, are DRM-encumbered.
Thats a fairly recent development and even then only because they were rapidly loosing market share to non-DRM stores like AmazonMP3. But with Amazon out, there is less and less need for being locked into iTunes and iPods -- so they work harder and harder to make it more difficult for end users to use other vendors products.
Remember when you could connect your iPod to computer without iTunes and use it as a hard drive? Remember when you could connect your ipod to your TV for video out without buying special hardware from Apple? Remember when universal connector was actually universal? Remember when you could connect your iPod/iPhone to 3rd party devices like a car stereo adapters and be able to control it?
Sure, people keep hacking around Apple's roadblocks, but with each release of software Apple products get less and less functionality that Apple does not control. Apple is all about gaining total control over their users. Makes that classic 80's superbowl Apple commercial so ironic in retrospect.
On the other hand, every dictatorship gets overturned eventually. They could get away with it when they were the perceived to be the only game in town, but there is so much decent competition these days, it is not shocking they would fight tooth and nail to stay relevant and try to make it as difficult as possible for people to move to products that offer more freedoms.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
For one, not many people really -like- iTunes,
[citation needed]
it just happens to be the easiest way of syncing your iPod,
...If by "just happens," you mean "was designed for the express purpose of."
if you could do the same thing in VLC, WMP, etc most people would.
No, most people don't know what those are. Also, they blow in comparison. Also, last I checked, WinAmp also could sync iPods, as can DoubleTwist, and probably some others. People don't use them. I know about them and know how to work them and I don't use them.
Your idea of "most people" is way too influenced by reading the crusty geeks on Slashdot.
Multiply how many iPhone and iPods Apple have sold and let's just use a made up profit number of say $30 per unit. Let's see, 206 Million units * $30 is over $6B.
$500M seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the hardware.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
That's not $0.29 profit, that's $0.29 net income after they've paid the record label. Apple still has to pay for bandwidth, storage, server hardware, system administration, software development, QA testing, customer service, and don't forget the Visa/Mastercard merchant fees.
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While I think "Alter Relationship" has a little too much vitrol for the iPhone and the situation, he's right. Apple is not doing anything illegal, because they don't have a monopoly in the phone market (not yet anyway). In an ideal world, however, different devices work with different pieces of software, and ideally you can mix and match software and hardware in order to gain the best functionality for you. The consumer benefits when they have a range of choices to make and plenty of flexibility.
No one said Apple had to support this configuration. Actually I think with a little thought, perhaps Apple could spin this to their advantage, by sighting Pre owner's desire, and ability to work with their software, which is quite possibly better than Palm's offerings. But then again this would probably cut into their hardware sales.
In the grand scheme of things, in a properly competitive market, I don't mind this so much because if Palm proves to be a better phone and becomes the iPhone killer, then Apple will eat crow and perhaps Pre syncing will become a supported feature. Right now things in the phone market are pretty competitive. While I think the parent is right, I also don't hold the same level of loathing because I like my iPhone solution and I have a bit of faith in competition. If Palm wants to make this a real battle, they shouldn't just be coming up with an iPhone killer, they should come up with an iTunes killer as well. That's what a properly company wants to be competitive.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
iTunes the end product is free. iTunes store purchases are not mandatory for using iTunes. Therefore, someone using iTunes to manage non-apple provided media on devices not from apple or licensed by apple may be perceived as 'ripping off' apple. It may fairly be called an overly paranoid, narrow view of the situation, but some business people think in that manner. Such views have sunk other businesses, however apple has the unique position of mostly incompetent competitors that do not make them suffer because of overly restrictive business practices.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
How much of that $0.29 per song is _profit_? The article you've linked to is *extremely* vague about the whole thing, and isn't even a primary source, so I feel that a bit of hyperbole might be involved. If Apple keeps $0.29 per song, they still need to pay for _massive_ CDN bills, maintenance of the iTunes Store application and all the people needed to run the business operations, change the homepage, come up with "iTunes Essentials", market, etc. I'm thinking that $570,000,000 should be tipping off your RidiculousRadar and telling you to read between the lines.
Help. Can't Palm just read the file system for the mp3 meta data and generate their own playlist. Also, has Apple made the "iTunes Music Library.xml" too cryptic to read? That is where the data is.
A device masquerading as another device by using the same USB manufacturer/device ID is not the way to build interoperability. It's just inviting all sorts of unintended consequences and bugs. How did this ever pass muster at Palm?
iTunes is a piece of iShit anyway.
So let me get this straight: Apple spends several years carefully building an ecosystem for it's hardware and software, and it is nice enought to give away aan excellent free program specifically to gain market share and to leverage hardware sales. It is a closed ecosystem, which is what you pay for being able to use a nice free state-of-the-art music management program.
Enter Pre, a direct competitor of Apple in one of the most strategic lines of Apple's business. How do you think Apple should react when Pre starts (ab)using iTunes, thus gaining more ground and cannibalizing iPhone/iPod in process? I'm surprised they were nice enough to let it stay for a while instead of forcing a mandatory update down everyone's throat and making an incompatible change to the iTunes Store protocol (which would be justified given the shamelessness of Pre strategy).
Maybe Palm should consider making it's own compelling software instead of weaseling it's way through and piggybacking the success of Apple. Or, as a more open (yet inferior) alternative, use Microsoft Media Player as it's music software
Who gave you the idea that anyone bought a Pre solely to use iTunes on a non-Apple handset?
This is just a dick move on Apples part, period. They are embroiling for their own software and content customers in their pissing war with another handset manufacturer.
If it were easy to buy any of these devices and use them on any network, maybe you would have a point about "competition" and leveraging exclusive features.
Speaking as an ex-Support person, if you ever support one thing, once, implictly customers will whinge when you break it through no fault of your own.
They will also bitch if you explicitly say we don't support it before giving a hand with their unsupported problem anyway because you're a decent human being.
Apple was 100% right. It's not a published standard. If they broke shit accidentally later on there'd be hell to pay. Nip it in the bud now.
Yeah I mean here's the skinny on this. You spend years making a name for yourself and writing software that people use to handle their hardware. You give it away for free to everyone because it has some general use. But you put your store in it and then add a hardware sync function. Now you've spent millions of dollars in developer time and advertising to make this work. Along comes a direct competitor and shoves his nose into a crack in the fence and starts cannibalizing your customers with your own software. and you fix the fence and everyone else screams? Give me a break. The whiners here are pathetic and wrong. If you don't like Apple don't use their products, go away and shut the f*** up. Or alternatively offer correct and useful intelligent conversation not this whiny "how dare they" crap. Like a bunch of foxes complaining about how sour those grapes probably are.
Why bother
Companies that actively thwart interoperability and promote lock-in are incompatible with the best interests of their own customers.
True, but in this case Apple never designed iTunes to support third-party players, so it was likely to break at some point. The underhanded thing is making it break on purpose, on the other hand Palm was also underhanded in pretending their device was an iPod. Maybe they just want Palm to actually ask (pay) to be able to inter operate with iTunes? Does anyone know whether Palm actually requested Apple to be able to inter operate with iTunes?
What I would love to see is a decent iTunes alternative that support stores other than iTunes and devices other than the iPod, simply so we can give Apple a run for their money.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I can't quite get my head around this concept.
Palm used an unsupported method to link to iTunes, had no agreement with Apple for this and did it for a product that competes directly with Apple's iPhone.
Why on Earth should Apple support them? They can only lose by doing so, since maintaining the Palm's access to iTunes makes it a more attractive competitor to people weighing up between an iPhone and a Palm Pre.
I can see why people are talking up interoperability, but this was no open standard that Apple are abusing. The Palm Pre is spoofing the authentication details to appear as an iPhone. That's a behaviour that will almost always be broken, and is a very short-sighted move on Palm's part.
Surely we all knew this was going to happen? When I heard how Palm were doing this, I started counting the days.
Apple builds their products around "it just works." I know that seems like a big misnomer to people on slashdot, especially after what they just did, but think of it from another angle.
"It just works" because they know how itunes is talking to the ipod is connecting to. It knows how to check for firmware versions and knows the ipod is going to respond properly. Now, suddenly, you have itunes talking to something its an ipod, but it really isn't. What happens when itunes tries to firmware flash the palm? itunes caused it, but are they responsible?
Apple has no desire to let a direct competitor into their software and take the chance that its going to screw something up. During a sync, things are transferred from the "ipod" back to the computer. What if itunes updates an ipods firmware, expects it to respond a certain way, only the palm in disguise returns bad data back because its lying about what it is and what firmware it is running?
This is complete crap on the part of the people at Palm. I'd expect the people at Apple to disable this kind of nonsense. Palm can design their own software instead of lying to someone elses in order to make their device work.
P.S. I keep hearing the argument that Apple should allow this, it will drive more iTunes store sales. Apple doesn't care about iTunes store sales, the profit on them is negligible. Apple cares about selling ipods, and the itunes store only exists to drive the hardware sales. They have no desire at all to let palm screw with their apps and start taking away from their hardware sales.
That's the "iTunes Music Store." "iTunes" is a software program that manages media, can convert sound files to different formats, etc. It's free. It doesn't make Apple anything.
Apple's NEVER been interested in open standards. They actively restrict any negative information (bug reports and the like) as well, to help give the impression of flawless products. They sue people that speculate on upcoming products. They presently use open source software, but it was is a means to an end, they used it because they had to to modernize the Nextstep basis of OSX (although, they have managed to flout this from time to time, making a big thing about the kernel and base utilities being open source). They are only using x86 now out of necessity (they could not get PowerPCs that ran in the speed and temperature range of the Core chip.) It just KILLED Apple to give out any hardware info on the 68k or PowerPC macs -- the info to run Linux etc. on them was basically all reverse-engineered (as was the Intel ones, but they are lots easier since they are just a PC with EFI). I could go on and on.
No, but they do have a very closed application market, and until very recently a very closed music market, and still a very closed video market.
Do you think Apple cares for the DRM that the content providers are requiring them to add to the iTunes Store? You can (in the US!) purchase music from Amazon or Magnatune and put it in your iTunes library and onto your iPod. You can download (and rip) video into the appropriate format and put it on your Apple unit.
There may be many reasons to criticize Apple, but DRM is not one of them: the contents providers want DRM, and if Apple wants the content it has to play ball.
As for the application market: if you want to be able to install any app you desire don't get an iPhone. It's 1% market of the phone market, and there are plenty of other phones with third party apps (either 'native' or Java-based).
Vendor lock-in is vendor lock-in. How is Apple blocking {not-an-iPod} from syncing with iTunes any different than if Microsoft blocked {not-IE} from running under Windows? I don't hate either of them. I say let them do whatever they want. But fundamentally it's the same thing. And while you may not do it, there are plenty of others out there that will somehow argue that it's different.
Blind maybe, but not an idiot. For "idiot" to be an option you would have to present a strong, valid reason why Apple is justified in blocking anybody else from using some other device with iTunes. The same amount of effort went into blocking the Pre as it would have taken to pop-up a warning that says "This is not an approved device and may not function properly with iTunes. Use at your own risk." If they did that, what would Apple/iPod/iTunes users lose?
What if Palm, instead of trolling Apple, hired a shareware vendor who already ships such product and live happily after? Without mentioning Apple's trademark, bread and butter Application which was designed/acquired for iPod itself?
This is what confuses iSync users too. Apple provides an open framework, documentation and even developer tools including a wizard for free. If Samsung for example, doesn't sync with iSync, it is Samsung's fault. Not Apple's. Apple is not obliged to provide a sync plugin for your $600 phone, it is phone vendors job to develop/pack it and perhaps convince Apple to be include it in OS X update if device is really popular.
iTunes database is open for now, it doesn't really mean Apple promises anything for future or you can actually claim your device, competing device is iTunes compatible just like iPod/iPhone. It is their database without any kind of promise. They can ship iTunes 9 tomorrow with some weirdo database format and nobody can say a word about it.
You don't have to hack anything or fool iTunes etc. As with all OS X apps, iTunes is a object oriented, script capable. Just silently integrate to it with "non hack" methods. There are some goodly coded OS X shareware apps which weren't updated since 2006 and yet perfectly works with iTunes.
Apple distributes Safari, which on my PC identifies itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.19.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.2 Safari/530.19.1", and actually gives you the option of pretending to be one of 26 different browsers. Under the circumstances, I think they've got a damned cheek trying to stop the Pre from working with iTunes.
Apple do not sell DRM-laden music.
If the Palm Pre can fake being an iPod, then so can some cheap Chinese pirate device with fake Apple branding.
bandwidth, storage, server hardware and administration is all outsourced to akamai. So that's a single sunk cost.. it also powers their quicktime trailers site, which doesn't have any income.
That you must be in the advertising department.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence my friend. Apple is secure for the same reason there's a "selective application universe" for the mac; when virus writer's do the cost benefit it makes a lot more sense to go after 90% of the market.
-rt
Really, what would be the benefit for doing this?... Apple had nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing this, so in the end what does it get them?
By not deliberately breaking it, Apple would be opening the door for SanDisk and Creative and RIM and all the other smartphone and MP3 player makers to reverse-engineer the protocol as well. And then Apple has a bunch of different implementations of its protocols around, all waiting to break when Apple made some minor change to the sync protocol.
iTunes is basically a hardware driver. (One with a lot of other features.) Some device makers are too lazy to write their own driver. Supporting them becomes a huge burden to Apple going forward, even if it doesn't have to do anything at the moment.
What is with you Apple users? Apple pulls the same kind of stunt that Microsoft's been doing for years, and Apple is in the right?
Or another theoretical scenario:
Microsoft cures cancer = bad!
Apple rapes baby seals = fantastic!
I use iTunes based solely on the strength of it's self-organizing library. That thing has saved me so much time. If you can point me to another program or media player which can do the same thing then maybe I would switch.
But remember iTunes is totally free. They give it away.
I am not surprised they are cutting off Palm's attempts to make the device in direct competition with a product that they *do* sell work on software that Apple distributes for free.
I don't think many people are saying that a company is required to support a competitor (the exceptions would be those maintaining that Apple has a monopoly). But Apple is deliberately making its software less useful in order to maintain its market position. They have a perfect right to do that, but we also have a right to think it marks Apple as a user-hostile company whose products should be avoided.
Then Apple came along and blew the whole mobile device market away with the iPhone
Really? So why is the blackberry curve outselling the iphone in North America?
The iphone, sad to say, is more of the same from the cell phone market. A shiny, limited functionality device, locked down, limited control by the user and maximum control by the vendor.
By comparison, Blackberry and some others are very, very open. Lots of documentation, APIs, and you don't need permission from Big Brother Apple to sell your applications. And if I want pr0n on my phone, nobody stops me.
Oh, incidentally, Blackberries can sync with itunes. They've been doing this for a few years without a peep from Apple, so presumably it's licensed.
Apple has an established protocol for communicating with cell phones and PDAs. It's called iSync, and the app ships on every Mac. It syncs your contacts and calendars using bluetooth or USB, and Apple has worked with phone developers to open it to more devices.
How is it Apple's fault if Palm tries using the private APIs and fakes itself as an iPod, rather than Apple's developer standards for iSync?
If Wikipedia is correct Apple had 88% of the U.S. download market in 2006 and it passed Walmart as the #1 all around music sales leader in 2008. iTunes is a defacto monopoly now and Apple better start treading more carefully. Using tie ins to build new monopolies, which seems to be what they are doing here, is especially dangerous. An antitrust regulator might be inclined to say Apple's defacto monopoly on online music sales is giving them an unfair advantage in other markets, in this case the smartphone market. If a competitor can't bring a new smartphone to market because they can't access online music because of a monopoly Apple is begging for an antitrust complaint.
You can argue competitors just have to start their own competing MP3 service but that is a very tall order, especially since it requires inking deals with a relatively small number of recording companies that are something of cartel themselves. They are already distributing their product through iTunes and may or may not give a competing MP3 services the same terms, or may not deal with them at all which would make the iTunes monopoly very pronounced and entrenched.
@de_machina
That's illogical. If someone bought a Pre, they either did or did not intend to use it with iTunes. If they did not, they have not lost anything as a result of Apple closing the loophole. If they did, then they are foolish for thinking that they could rely on that functionality remaining intact for the lifetime of both products.
All I'm asking is: where's the accusation of "it's a dick move on Palm's part" for (1) not bothering to develop their own music services and syncing application, (2) not bothering to cooperate with and secure permission to link to a competitor's product and services, (3) boasting about how their product will work with iTunes, and (4) having sat on their collective asses for the larger part of this past DECADE by releasing shitty products nobody wanted to use? You didn't see them rolling over when other companies wanted to appropriate their IP (e.g., Graffiti). So why would you now defend them for appropriating Apple's iTunes just because it's *popular*?
Get a grip people. Apple-bashing is tremendously popular these days. But give credit where credit is due. It's fun to root for the underdog, but what you're all missing out on here is that NONE of the corporations--Apple included--are the victims. All of these companies employ slimy MBAs who earn their six- and seven-figure incomes by spending all day thinking up ways to squeeze more money out of YOU. If you believe for even one second that Palm didn't see this coming, then the real victim is you.
If Palm wants to compete, then let them create their own service and interface rather than leveraging another company's successful work.
Yeah! And they'd better do their own shipping, build their own components from scratch, and create a brand-new telephone network so that they can offer call-centre support. Because, y'know, interoperability between companies in different industries isn't what our present economy is based on, or anything.
Aren't most iTunes users iPod owners? If a person uses a Creative Nomad exclusively, they are unlikely to even have iTunes on their system. Why would a Palm Pre owner expect iPod-only software to work with their Palm Pre? Wouldn't it make more sense to buy your music on a site such as Amazon MP3 and sync with Winamp or something similar?
Like Google using a âoefreeâ OS in an anti-competitive move to
generate ad revenue for another of itâ(TM)s products, Apple uses iTunes
to dominate the phone and mp3 markets. Can you imagine the uproar if
Microsoft did this?
Apple monopolizes markets and uses illegal, anti-competitive tactics to maintain dominance. FTC - are you listening? Unless you have an iPod or an iPhone, guess not. Since I donâ(TM)t want Apple suing me tooâ¦
iPod is a registered trademark of Apple Computer
iPhone is a registered trademark of Apple Computer
Carl in Silicon Valley
Technically.
Yes, I know it works just fine, however they're claiming a vendor and product ID that is not their own in order to get it to work with iTunes, thats against the rules for devices that are supposed to USB compatible. Do they use the official USB compatible logo anywhere for the Pre? I'd think the USB folks themselves would be pissed off about that much like Phillips and those bullshit CD discs that were 'copy protected' from a few years back.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This is almost a no win situation for apple. If they allow the pre to sync up with iTunes, every time Apple needs to release an update that might potentially break the compatibility with the Pre they have to worry about how much shit they are going to get over it. Don't allow it, and this happens.
I really don't have a problem with this. Apple may be the most popular and recognized, but they are far from being a monopoly. There are still plenty of sites where you can purchase music, or download music for free (legally). You can still convert your existing cd's into mp3s, or purchase the cd and convert it. You can go to any number of websites or brick and mortar stores that sell music players and find a huge selection of mp3 players cheaper than the iPod, players that have larger capacities or more desirable features. And you can still purchase any number of cell phones that can play mp3's just fine and offer downloadable applications.
With any company that enjoys such success there is a threat they can be headed towards being a monopoly. However Apple is still in a highly competitive market for something that is a commodity. And they got to where they are by being innovative and producing a quality product. It's not fair to be so liberal with the monopoly label to a company that has earned their success, and it sends the message that if you are the best at what you do you may end up with legal problems for it.
I really don't understand this. I mean, all you have to do is plug it in. That's it. Nothing more.
As I type this I've just picked up the iPhone and docked it. I get a 'Sync in progress' message on the phone, and then it goes away. All done. Total time about 13 seconds.
How much easier can it be ?
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Somehow, as I was reading your post I misread "Apple" as "Microsoft", "iTunes" as "Internet Explorer" and "Pre" as "Netscape".
I wonder why.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
...like we need more reasons NOT to use itunes and Apple's music store. I almost bought a Pre last month, but the saleman couldn't answer any of my questions and kept babbling incoherently about multitasking and itunes, which I cared little about. So I gave up on Sprint and the Pre (still almost got a Treo Pro - would have if it didn't run WinMo), gave away my broken but beloved Treo 650, dumped AT&T, and got a nice new G1 for under $100. T-Mobile seems fine around here (no 3G in the area), and the G1 does everything I want it to, including accept and play my music files on my terms. The Pre, as a new entry and without the benefit of the Apple hype/fanboy machine, needs to beat the iphone on price, and the Sprint sales weenies need to know what they are selling. Some of us know how good the Palm hardware and software can be, but I doubt they're winning over the average person who might buy an iphone because it acts as a music player. Unrelated: did previous iphones really NOT have the ability to cut and paste?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
iTunes is free software and its development could be considered partly funded by ipods & iphones.
It is important to keep this in mind when deciding on whether it is a good / bad move by Apple to stop Palm Pre's synchronization.
iTunes is a very good piece of software, and I think most agree on that (if not, they don't have to worry about synchronization anyway). It is also freely available on both Windows and Mac, so it is not like it is tied to a platform. (I agree they should have it for linux).
So where does apple get money to develop and maintain this nice software ? I would say there are 2 possible sources.
1. iTunes store : Apple could be supporting the software from the money they get from songs sold on iTunes store.
2. iPod/iPhone sales : Apple could be supporting the software from ipod/iphone sales, since it is supposed to sync with them. The iPods would be useless without iTunes.
I don't think one can come up with a clear definition here, but it would be safe to say that Apple develops and maintains iTunes as a software meant to buy music from its iTunes store, manage the music on a computer and sync the music to its own devices.
I think it is also safe to say that the 'synchronizing' part of iTunes is funded by the iPod or iPhone sales. If you have this perspective in mind, it seems to me that Palm Pre was acting as a free loader. Trying to use the sync functionality of a software that it did not contribute anything to. It seems perfectly okay for Apple to plug this loop hole.
Now, lets think about what would Apple have lost by keeping the loop hole open.
Does it cost any extra money, resources or time for Apple if some freebies use its sync functionality ? I think it does, in long run and in an indirect way.
Any type of software, be it free or paid, always has to deal with backward compatibility, which has some development cost involved. The cost is also related to number of things that you support to be backward compatible. if Apple continues to allow Palm Pre (or other ipod-clones) to sync, it is indirectly committing to these devices. In a long run, in future, there will be lot more ipod clones that depend on iTunes for their synchronization and every new version of iTunes would have to either take care that it doesn't break the synchronization with these foreign devices, or incur the wrath of a much larger user-base if it stops supporting them later.
By plugging the loop hole today, Apple has made a wise decision. Incur the wrath of a smaller user base today (whom apple doesn't have to answer anyways) than to incur the wrath of a larger user base which may include many more smart-phones and ipod-clones that may try to follow Palm's example.
Finally, an analogy that would show the absurdity of all this : Lets say a Hotel 'Apple Suites' builds a beautiful lounge at an airport and opens it to the public. It also installs a monorail that can transfer its guests from airport to the hotel. Since there is no other establishment near Apple Suites, it doesn't bother to verify that all monorail riders are indeed Apple Suites' guests. Hotel 'Royal Palms', builds a new Hotel near Apple Suites and advertises that their guests could in fact use the Apple Suites airport lounge and Apple Suites' monorail to get to it as they have tested it and nobody bothered to verify their reservations. Apple Suites finds out about the monorail misuse and decides to stop it by doing a better verification. Royal Palms guests start to complain that Apple Suites free lounge is now restricting them to get to their Hotel !!! Some would say that they in fact booked in Royal Palms so that they can use Apple Suites monorail. Although this may look absurd, it is possible that if Apple Suites allows the misuse to go on, more hotels would spring nearby relying on the monorail for their transport. If Apple suites decides to stop the practice later, a court may rule that Apple Suites has stopped a legitimate mode of transport that people have been using, and so should open the monorail to public.
As I recall, iTunes was FREE software, and noone forced anyone to download and install it, and there are plenty of companies selling MP3s over the net, so noone forced you to use the iTunes store, and plenty of other music collection managers, for iPods and PREs and fuck knows what else, so noone forced you to use Apple's device manager.
I do not believe that APPLE says that you have to have an Apple device, they just offer it, and if you don't want one, don't expect to use their free software. Goddamned dickheads. Both APPLE and you screaming shortsighted brain-addled whiners.
Now get awf my fucking lawn, and go do something USEFUL instead of babbling about your ADD-"entertainment" toys.
car analogy - you bought a car, most probably, that you can't do what you please with. And probably a TV, or laptop, or any other number of products that have warrantys voided when you bust them open. And you can't do what you please with them all, just because you want to, and then go use them on public roads.
The reason you don't purchase from iTunes - why does anyone else care?
Keep your money, be a geek, but don't expect every J Smith and co to follow you as their glorious leader in freedomland.
Most folk, outside of your imaginary world, just want Apple to focus on servicing their iPods, and don't understand why these PRE owners believe they should distract those nice folks at Apple from doing what they believe they PAID APPLE FOR.
Could it be possible to make software that emulates an iPod device signature that would stand in between iTunes and any real device that wants to sync with it?
Maybe if Palm could bundle it with their phones it would free them from this problem. And if Apple finds a way to block it, it wouldn't be as hard to update that software as well...
Seems to me as though Palm simply went about this the wrong way. Instead of working WITH Apple (and no doubt paying them wads of cash) to get the Pre into the iTunes fold as a supported device they just messed around and made a hack, then were so obnoxious as to advertise it as a FEATURE.
Now, maybe you think there is no way in hell that Apple would ever let iTunes support the Pre officially, given the existence of the iPhone, but I doubt Palm even tried that route. I would have though getting Pre owners to use iTunes would be one more step to getting them to buy iPods (and then iPhones instead) which would be advantageous to Apple, as well as selling more Macbooks to owners of phones like Pre since they wouldn't have to use whatever (presumably windows only) syncing program came with the Pre instead.
Palm broke the rules and got burned. Apple will not stop Palm from writing a plug in for iTunes so that it is recognized as a Palm Pre and as a sync capable device. This is how RIM did it and it is how Palm should have done it if they had not been lazy and just used Jon's insider knowledge from his time at Apple.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
iPhone users now have a lifestyle dictated by a company. Shame on you for letting a company own you. suckers.
Vendor lock-in is vendor lock-in. How is Apple blocking {not-an-iPod} from syncing with iTunes any different than if Microsoft blocked {not-IE} from running under Windows?
It's very different - Windows is designed to have third-party application software written for it. And it is as successful as it is, because of that software. iTunes was never intended to a platform for other music players than the iPod/iPhone (since the release of the iPod, that is).
... and then they built the supercollider.
I'm not particularly surprised at what Apple's doing with Palm, but rather surprised that the top people at Palm believe they stand a chance. Integration is Apple's bread and butter, and Apple would rather burn in flames than let that advantage be lost (again).
Jon Rubinstein, COO of Palm, and former Apple iPod VC, has an axe to grind with Apple and Steve Jobs in particular. So what he thought he'd do is join Palm and begin series of unpolished and, frankly, strange attempts to copy Apple's act, including the way they design and market devices, the way they build their presentations, and also co-opting selectively parts of their ecosystem (iTunes sync) without any standing agreement between both companies.
It's a pity for the engineering and design talent behind Palm's Pre, that their top product is being reduced to an iPhone knock-off, because someone high up has scores to set straight. Hopefully, they'll realize that differentiating and creating your niche is the winning strategy, and not cheap attempts at copying and one-upping the market leader.
Thats a fairly recent development and even then only because they were rapidly loosing market share to non-DRM stores like AmazonMP3.
Horseshit. Apple had DRM-free music for sale before the Amazon MP3 store ever opened. Steve Jobs was pleading with the labels to get rid of the DRM. In fact, without Apple's pressure on the labels for DRM-free music, it is unlikely that Amazon or anyone elsewould be selling DRM-free music today.
If you look at what actually happened, some of the labels were witholding DRM-free tracks from Apple and giving them to Amazon, as a form of punishment/coercion to get variable pricing on the music.
It's astounding how much revisionist history and FUD is spouted around this topic.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Mind me, I am a capitalist libertarian, but that does not make me stupid. Corporations work that way. Always. They always try to make more money and extend their market share. Apple has learned a lot from Microsoft. Especially how to use a monopoly (or near monopoly) in one market to support their product in other markets.
That is why for any market to work you need strictly enforced rules (read: regulation). How do you think a game of basketball would look like without rules or referees to enforce them. Especially if the players are not guided by their morals and conscience, but each of them has a board that has to listen to stockholders that want performance.
I always think its funny when people "believe" in large corporations or their "moral" way of doing sth.
Their combination of ITunes and IPods is dominating the market for digital music. Both in listening devices and in online retail. The IPhone was developed, because Jobs was afraid, that people would stop using dedicated players to listen to their MP3s and just use their phones (I do that as well). When he was greatly disappointed with the IPod-Itunes-Phone from Motorola Apple started on the IPhone.
And now they are pushing the IPhone in part using their dominance in the online music retail business.
Big surprise here.
Palm: Sync or swim
Apple: You drown; WE SYNC. You blink; We THiNK.
Palm: You STiNK, you FiNK...
Apple: We JiNKED, you BLINKED. Take your palm and your PALM and rub them in the dark on something somewhere...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
iTunes is a defacto monopoly now and Apple better start treading more carefully.
Why? The iTunes Store enables media acquisition, desktop playback, library organization, and is written to sync with Apple devices. All your downloads are sitting pretty, right there on your hard drive, fully available for you to use as you please. Anything you downloaded with DRM you got with the known caveat that it would only work with Apple products.
Using tie ins to build new monopolies, which seems to be what they are doing here, is especially dangerous.
If by build new monopolies, you mean not supporting syncing of third-party devices on their unpublished, internal protocol, then sure. But that's an uphill battle to convince anyone that that is an unlawful monopoly.
An antitrust regulator might be inclined to say Apple's defacto monopoly on online music sales is giving them an unfair advantage in other markets, in this case the smartphone market.
Not really. It gives them an advantage in the internal syncing department, but as a natural effect of them making both products.
If Palm wants to access the iTunes library XML file and use that to load information in its own sync software, the file's sitting right there for them to use. Failing that, it can read the file/folder structure and metadata directly and compile its own library.
The Pre isn't disabled. Palm tried to piggyback on iTunes using an undocumented and unsupported hack to capture a competitor's market with zero effort. Talk about unfair advantage.
If a competitor can't bring a new smartphone to market because they can't access online music because of a monopoly
Where can't they? 1. Buy music from Amazon, iTunes, Walmart, Microsoft, whatever. 2. Transfer files to Pre. 3. Profit.
You can argue competitors just have to start their own competing MP3 service
Like the rest of your comment, it's entirely off base and out of scope. Palm doesn't need an MP3 service. All they have to do, and all they had to do from the start, was put a modicum of effort into writing their own synchronization software. There's nothing particularly special about the media storage of iTunes (files and folders) or the library database (XML).
Palm just noticed that there was a way they could get plug-and-chug support for free, and leave Apple holding the bag of dog crap when future versions of iTunes no longer worked with whatever hacked-together code was stuffed onto the Pre. Suddenly "iTunes broke my Pre!" would ring out all across the Internet.
that is a very tall order, especially since it requires inking deals with a relatively small number of recording companies that are something of cartel themselves.
Apple did it, and did it before the lucrative nature of the setup had empirical evidence. If anything, it should be easier to compete now.
Get real. The iTunes Store has almost nothing to do with this. The iTunes client software, developed by Apple, supports syncing Apple devices. They're not, nor in any rational world would they be, required to support third party data transfer.
If you want to put all smartphone manufacturers in a room and tell them to come up with an open standard for data synchronization, fine, but until that's the case, get real.
You're babbling about nothing. Palm never had any right or reasonable expectation to be able to use Apple's unpublished protocols and expect it to work in a production environment. No one's stopping Palm from syncing the media or selling their smartphones.
Apple allows lots of direct competitors for things like keyboards, mice, monitors, routers, external drives, printers, etc. There are a raft of HW competitors out there that happily interoperate with Apple products even while they directly compete against Apple branded versions. Why should a Palm phone vs an Apple phone be any different? How would Apple like it if Microsoft kept changing their file sharing protocols such that you couldn't network a Mac to a PC?
Perhaps that wasn't their intention, but iTunes doesn't run on an iPod, it runs on Windows (not exclusively of course). And like you mentioned, Windows is designed to work with everything. So why can't "Windows" (iTunes) sync with my Pre or my Sansa or any other player? I've been asked that question and I can't imagine I'm alone. What's more frustrating is that it CAN sync to any of those things, Apple just won't let you do it. It's vendor lock-in.
I don't use any Apple products. I'm not an Apple hater either. I still think that fundamentally there is no difference between what Apple is doing and what Microsoft has done in the past. But somehow Apple gets a pass.
Your comment is a mix of bullshit and speculation.
First, it is not marketshare that creates a monopoly, it's leverage. And Apple has hardly any leverage over the mobile phone, or smartphone, or even portable music player markets. Hell, they don't even have leverage over the online music distribution market - their competitors got to sell DRM-free higher bitrate music for almost a year before all music labels agreed to let Apple do it, and only after Apple conceded flat pricing. So, yeah I'd love to see how would regulators argue that Apple constitutes a monopoly.
As for the latter part of your comment, I've already demonstrated that, not only is your claim that content owners may not allow or hinder competitors to iTunes a completely baseless speculation, but in reality the situation is probably exactly the opposite - music labels are scared shitless by iTunes' huge popularity and are willing to give its competitors much more leeway in an attempt to get marketshare back from Apple.
At the end of it all, Apple are in no way preventing anyone form creating an alternative to their iTMS/iTunes/iPod/iPhone package - either by creating their own music distribution service and their own jukebox/library software, OR by partnering with companies that have ALREADY created such services and software.
Yeah, there is no quick, easy and free way for Palm to create the same great user experience as Apple, but Apple didn't get either to where they are quickly, easily or for free.
You're forgetting that there is nothing stopping you taking the music you buy from the iTunes store and putting it on whatever device you like. There is no device lock-in with iTunes any more, the files don't have any DRM. If you want to sync the music you buy from the iTunes store with your Apple iPod device, then yes, you need to use their sync software (which happens to be the iTunes client). If you want to sync the music with another piece of hardware, you can do that using whatever software came with the hardware. All Palm needed to do was provide some desktop application to allow you to sync MP3s with their device and this would be a complete non-issue. They didn't, and for some reason that baffles me decided to make the device pretend to be something else, thus leaving themselves completely at the mercy of any changes to the iTunes/iPod syncing protocol. Was it that hard to write an app that says "show me where your MP3s are" and then moving them to the device? Enough analogies have already been used in this thread - it was just a silly move by Palm. They need to release their own audio syncing software and the whole issue goes away.
How hard is it to write " Apple update means Palm Pre can no longer sync with iTunes" instead of " Apple Update Means Palm Pre Can No Longer Sync With iTunes" ?
The first is correct, the second looks childish
My first response when I saw this was like "KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!"
> The pre on the other hand says 'Hey, I'm an iPod!'
Read Sega v. Accolade. If you try to abuse trademark law by using a lock-out measure that requires people to use your trademark to get past it, they are allowed to use your trademark for that purpose.
It's all there in the second holding. The courts won't put up with that kind of crap.
I realize that you're trying to distinguish what they're doing from User-Agent strings, but I don't want people to go around accusing people of trademark violations unless they can cite applicable law and precedent and apply them to the facts of this particular case.
Frankly, this is why I hate all that imaginary property crap.
First. Apple does in no way have a monopoly on Music sales.
This should be obvious. There are lots of music resellers, both electronic and old-fashioned. All the old-fashioned ones sell music which will work on iPods or other music players after ripping. There are also big electronic competitors, such as Amazon, which sell music which will work on iPods and other music players.
Second. Apple does not have a monopoly on Portable Music Players.
While Apple may well have a 90% (?) market share on portable music players, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from buying a competitor, which are available in any electronics store.
You may ask: but Microsoft has a 90% market share on operating systems, why do they constitute a monopoly while Apple is not?
Unlike MS Windows, the iPod or iPhone is not (*) a crucial business tool that most businesses require in order to run the software they need. People can't just go ahead and purchase a product from a competitor of Microsoft, since their costly business software probably depends on Windows. But people absolutely can (and do) purchase a competitor of the iPod or iPhone.
Third. As long as Apple does not have a monopoly on either Music sales or Portable Music Players, there is legal boundaries stopping them from tying these together in an exclusive fashion. If you don't like the lock-in, don't buy Apple products.
(*) Watch this space, the iPhone is also a platform. This means that it is unlikely as long as good competitors exist, Apple could conceivably in the future become a monopoly on smart phones if they are big enough that third party software developers only develop for the iPhone. In this case, they would need to start playing by different rules.
Your entire case rests on a patently wrong assumption. You can use music downloaded off iTunes on your Pre or any other music device, since the files don't have any DRM. You don't need an iPod to make use of the iTunes music store.
I don't know what crackheads modded you +5 insightful.
...and they said that they were making too much money and that they're tired of it. So from now on, only the iPhone/iPod can utilise their music services and everyone else can either pony up or sod off. Or at least until Palm can roll out a patch for their patch.
That having been said, my wife and I own an older(read hand-me-down) 60GB iPod, and we don't use iTunes or any service that has DRM of any kind attached. Once we pay for our music, it's ours. Period. We decide the when, where and how, not Apple or anyone else for that matter.
NONE OF WHICH ACTUALLY JUSTIFIES APPLE INTENTIONALLY, SPECIFICALLY, AND MALICIOUSLY PREVENTING THE PRE FROM SYNCING WITH ITUNES.
How is that tinfoil hat suiting you?
I generally agree with you. But it was a hack that allowed the Pre to be recognized as an iPod. If there is one thing that Apple is famous for, is breaking software that uses hacks and non-official APIs. Does anyone remember how VPC used tricks to get additional speed back in the old days, but because of it would break with practically every OS update?
The other issue is that this hack may have been exposing a vulnerability, much like the exploits used to jailbreak an iPhone. Nothing like having Tiff images exposing your system to viruses, eh? Not fixing them would be akin to not fixing a car lock that opens without a key because it's easier. And on top of that, if Apple did ignore the Pre and inadvertently breaks the connectivity anyway later on, who do you think consumers are going to blame with false expectations? It's better that they do this up front.
There are two people who generally post on slashdot Apple posts. Apple haters and Apple apple fanboys. My eye for more people in between. I swear, if I see another post saying that iTunes is DRMed, I'm going to start ignoring Apple stories on Slashdot...
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Only if your company is Microsoft :)
It is half a billion and that is only one year.
Plus apple probably doesn't make $30 off of every pod. I am sure the shuffle has a lower mark up.
And no your wrong half a billon plus in anual sales is never a drop in a bucket. Even using your math it is close to 10% which in any business report is significant amount.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As long as you wanks keep buying their shit and complaining about this and that, nothing will ever change.
My radar is tipped of by the fact that Apple is now one of the biggest music retailers. Also by the fact that unlike Walmart the have no need for physical stock. The idea that the profit from that just isn't that much is what strikes me as silly. What is even more silly is that nobody can show me this low number.
Apple wouldn't let other stores use playfair DRM because they wanted the profit from the music sales. Apple doesn't want the Pre to work with iTunes because they want profit from the ipod sales. Apple makes a lot of money from both! They want to keep it that way.
The idea that Apple isn't make that much money from all those sales is what should be throwing up red flags.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In fact it looks even worst, Windows didn't forbid you to install a new browser, Apple is simply blocking the synchronization with the Palm based on what graounds exactly?
And also today, on a side story, Apple lawyers told Microsoft to stop their Laptop hunters adds ... err, hasn't Apple been doing that for the past 3 years or so? This is completly stupid.
I think in a pair of years it will be time for the EU to impose some sanctions on Apple like it did to Microsoft, it's time someone puts them in their place.
However, the Pre was tricking iTunes into identifying it to the customer as an iPod. Ignoring trademark violations, that seems like it could be harmful and confusing to Apple customers less technically inclined than yourself.
What trademark violations? Confusion on whose part? Courts in the United States have held that a trademark cannot be used as an ersatz copyright or patent. Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510, 24 USPQ2d 1561; Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, 539 U.S. 23 (2003).
As it would happen, Apple doesn't make digital cameras.
Anyone who has used a QuickTake, iSight, or iPhone would beg to differ. They're digital, and they're cameras.
and since Itunes is DRM free
Since when do video downloads from iTunes Store come without digital restrictions management? And what should people who downloaded musical recordings from iTunes Store prior to its going DRM-free do?
I wonder how many people care about iTunes connectivity when they buy an mp3 player? Is it a requirement or afterthought?I wonder how many people care about iTunes connectivity when they buy an mp3 player? Is it a requirement or afterthought?I wonder how many people care about iTunes connectivity when they buy an mp3 player? Is it a requirement or afterthought?
It is a requirement for me that any mp3 player I buy for my own use does not mandate iTunes.
iTunes music is now DRM-free
But how long until video follows music's lead?
What Apple is trying to prevent is people connecting a Palm and getting a tab in iTunes that has multiple occurrences of the word "iPod". This can be seen as a subtle case of trademark dilution.
Not in the United States. Precedent doesn't support using a trademark as an ersatz patent or copyright. Sega v. Accolade, 977 F.2d 1510, 24 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1561 (9th Cir. 1992). And before you launch into a "Ninth Circus is often overturned" rant, see how the Supreme Court backed up the reasoning: Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, 539 U.S. 23 (2003).
Microsoft has occasionally signed contracts which attempt to say, in some way, that they won't sue you for patent infringement.
One problem with these promises is that they do not apply to not-yet-conforming, incomplete, work-in-progress implementations of a specification. Free software is often distributed to the public before it is complete, so that others can contribute patches to make it complete.
Apple hasn't
Do the patent provisions of the Apple Public Source License count?
Apple really lacks the capacity to learn from it's mistakes apparently. They clearly had a better system when the IBM-PC took off. The only reason they got beat out by the PC is because IBM allowed interoperability with other vendors. Now once again they try and close everyone out expecting different results. Screw Apple, what a bunch of elitist punks. I'd go without before I'd own an iAnything.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
One issue is whether Apple did the right thing or the wrong thing in modifying its software. One can have differing views, interpretations of what Apple should and should not support. I can certainly see why Apple would not want non-Apple iPods masquerading as such, especially if they have published an API that allows non-Apple devices to maintain pretty much the same functionality as an iPod in iTunes.
No, the bigger issue is that Palm has neglected the desktop, handheld, and smartphone aspects of its products for so long that folk have been abandoning their hardware in droves. So Palm finally brings out a shiny new smartphone OS that may work as advertised. Yet, Palm actually had to adopt windows CE on some of its devices because the Palm OS was such a hopelessly decrepit pile of yesterdays junk. While I think the hardware and software of the Pre is interesting, it's more of the too little too late, IMO. It's next best competitor (Android) has a lead start, no lock-in at the hardware level, and many other advantages. Multi-tasking by itself is not reason enough to jump to a new hardware platform, especially if you limit yourself to Sprint, a has-been phone network.
Recognize that what Apple has done is to create a "seamless experience" from connecting the device to calenders, etc. being synced up and ready to go. Palm dropped the ball by concentrating solely on integrating with iTunes instead of bringing out a similarly "revolutionary" desktop application to complement it's many Pre functionalities. By allowing another vendor to dictate the terms under which its device can be interfaced, Palm has capitulated the desktop side of the business and by extension a prime means of differentiating its product from those of Apple.
I still can't believe that Palm can't bring out a better, up-to-date version of its used-to-be-great Palm desktop application, for example that allows users a entourage-like (but hopefully better!) experience. By comparison, the Apple reliance on multiple apps to get the same job done (i.e. iCal, Addressbook, etc.) is inelegant not nearly as intuitive. There are plenty of ways to write better software and make better hardware than Apple. However, if you want your product to stand out, you better do a better job than Apple does at creating a "user experience" that is intuitive and which differentiates Apple products enough for folk to be willing to spend a premium buying them...
Nevermind bringing out a smartphone that actually runs on most of the worlds networks instead of having a 6 month exclusive with a CDMA-based carrier. Sometime at the end of this year the exclusive will end, Palm will release a GSM-based Pre and I doubt anything much will happen. If Palm had actually focused on bringing out innovative phones and desktop applications in the last 5 years, perhaps they wouldn't be playing 4th fiddle to Apple, Rim, Windows, and Android. A pity, considering what an innovative company Palm appeared to be at one point.
I plug it in to charge it and I can use it as a usb drive.
I can simply copy videos I want to watch on the quite
lovely screen over no syncing required.
Ringtones is as easy as sliding a mp3 into the correct folder.
Amarock syncs with it, no hassles.
I'd like an iphone, but AT&T sucks compared to the coverage
I get with sprint, and I can roam on verizon too. (If you do
have to roam call and they will take it off your bill, or at
least they have done so for me in the past.)
While it's within their rights and power, it strikes home to me one more time why I will NEVER, NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER Have I made my point? NEVER buy anything apple or so proprietary that has similar programing. MESSAGE TO APPLE... I WANT CHOICES NOT DICTATORSHIP! IN CASE I WASN'T CLEAR ENOUGH I WILL NEVER BUY YOUR GARBAGE, AND BY THE WAY I'M AN IT MANAGER, YOUR CRUD WILL NEVER DISGRACE MY HALLS!
Pretty simplistic point you made. Apple's moves where against competition and against the wishes of some of their consumers, and you are giving this moves an OK stamp just because Apple was sooner than others in the market.
My personal opinion of apple has always been that it was a shame Microsoft were never quite able to land the final killing blow.
Microsoft are evil, but Apple hold the patent on it (for which MS pay licensing fee's).
Apple scare me more than MS ever has. Look at what apple has done to the iPhone for example - only software they approve? how is the DoJ not stepping in and saying "im sorry, thats a no-no?". The REALLY scarey thing is that if MS had of lost the look-and-feel debate of the 80's (or was it ealier?) we may very well have the same problem on the desktop (i.e. all running mac's with software only apple approve of).
Back on topic though, the pre cant sync via iTunes - its not the end of the world and i dont see it as apple being "evil" myself. Consider google aquiring licensing to sync with activesync for example, apple came with an idea they're not obliged to allow it to work with any other device. The reality is, if they were interested in interoperability they would have done it with syncml to begin with. But as we all know, both software and hardware vendors are interested in lock-in and open standards are the enemy.
Never forget that, OPEN STANDARDS ARE YOUR ENEMY IF YOU WORK IN THE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE INDUSTRY. To think otherwise is a serious mis-calculation (with a few exceptions).
And that is why I almost exclusively use Linux - cause everyone who codes here at least partially aims to implement a standard (even if it can be quite painful sometimes). Granted, there are examples of that in reverse, but they are the exception rather then the norm. Even when linux does invent its own standards at least its all there in the source (and probably documentation) for you to implement. If you were ever after a reason for using linux, thats it.
i'll get off my soap-box now, i've got the flu and am on flu-drugs so i may be going off slightly half-cocked!
Palm was the one who hacked their way into using iTunes. THEY are the ones who are making users lives harder. Apple said right off the bat that they don't guarantee that the Pre would always work with iTunes. If they want something like iTunes for the Pre then why don't they just write it?
What DRM laden music?
the billion and change they sold before they switched to itunes plus
Amazon should put some development time in songbird, position it as the open alternative that syncs with most devices including Ipods and has an easy intuitive interface for purchasing music. Run an ad campaign show people plugging non-Ipods into Itunes and being disappointed that it doesn't work, then show them happy buying music through Amazon and using songbird.
Profit!
"Hello? Umm, yeah...just a second...
Hey Apple - there's somebody at the door for you. He says he's with the Justice Department..."
[Insert pithy line of moxie here.]
Fact is that I like Itunes a lot and have an iPOD. HOWEVER!!!!....
When I purchase from iTunes, I download it, burn it immediately to a CDROM, label it, catalog it, and also use Winamp to re-rip the CD back in; fully titled and all, and store it as a MP3 usable on any device.
Simple solution. Now if Apple takes that feature away, bye bye Apple!!!
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Palm figured out how much it'll cost them to build their own syncing software that rivals iTunes and then realized "hey we have a bunch of former Apple engineers who know how iTunes works, let's just fake being an iPod and we don't have to do anything!!!".
No doubt it'll be easy for Palm to make a small change to make it work with latest iTunes again but it's still not a good way to go about syncing.
My kingdom for some mod points...
Somebody please mod this awesome comment up...nicely done, Em
[Insert pithy line of moxie here.]
Yes, yes, you have some good debunkers there. But despite all of the arguing there is one point:
If Microsoft did the same thing and had a PMP that was as popular as Apple's, there would be an antitrust complaint in no time.
So what. If I were to buy a pre, that wouldn't be a feature I cared about anyway. Just like RIM's push towards the music in their advertising right now. I really don't care about that, and it's not why I bought my curve. Stupid feature war over things most people don't use anyway. For my own example, I wish RIM would focus on their messaging and gps stuff, since it's very good.
...and they said that they were making too much money and that they're tired of it. So from now on, only the iPhone/iPod can utilise their music services and everyone else can either pony up or sod off.
...and they wanted to introduce you to a thing called google. Apple makes very little revenue let alone profit from music sales after bandwidth and storage costs are considered from that 30 cents per song that they get from each sale.
That having been said, my wife and I own an older(read hand-me-down) 60GB iPod, and we don't use iTunes or any service that has DRM of any kind attached. Once we pay for our music, it's ours. Period. We decide the when, where and how, not Apple or anyone else for that matter.
Seriously dude, you need to check out google. Apple has not been selling DRM'ed music for some time now.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Apple has no problem with third-party devices that connect to iTunes Just not ones that identify themselves as "iPods" and depend on iPod sync routine.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2172
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ipod_itunes/sansadevicesyncwithitunes.html
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/themissingsyncforblackberry.html
Since iTunes went DRM-free a few months back, all the music they sell now can be put on other players. They are not obligated to provide software to sync other manufacturer's devices.
I think it is also safe to say that the 'synchronizing' part of iTunes is funded by the iPod or iPhone sales. If you have this perspective in mind, it seems to me that Palm Pre was acting as a free loader. Trying to use the sync functionality of a software that it did not contribute anything to. It seems perfectly okay for Apple to plug this loop hole.
Good in theory but I don't see it as Apples motivation at all. There are other music stores out there charing the same price for music and they do not sell hardware. If Apple REQUIRES the hardware sales money to support iTunes, they are doing something wrong. Aside from that...
Apple wants you to have a unified experiences using all Apple products. The unified part and benefit up to the end user but for Apple it is the business model. If you have an iPod, you get a licensed adapter for your car, a licensed home unit to plug it in, the licensed head phones with the Apple volume knob, the licensed charger, the licensed music from the Apple licensed store. Tie that in with the iPhone and its array of accessories etc, the App store where they get a cut etc.. As time goes on, your commitment to Apple becomes more and more. Even if you don't like some feature or desire another feature Apple does not have, you have a financial interest to keep buying and upgrading your existing apple stuff and accept what they have or to adjust your "needs" to what they can provide.
"Palm, RIM, Nokia, Samsung, Sony--all the handset makers, not to mention the telecoms who still continue to nickel-and-dime consumers with exorbitant rates on SMS (for no other reason except that they can), are not, and never were, your friends just because now they're the underdogs."
RIM has > 55% of the smartphone market. It is by far the dominant player, with Apple owning less than 20%. RIM is NOT an underdog.
Wow people are slow.
1. iTunes is the gateway to the iTunes music store. Sure you can use it to rip and transcode CDs but so can a ton of other programs that are free.
2. iTunes is big and slow and the the real reason to use the store.
Man this is such an complete desire to make as much money by locking customers into your software and hardware. It is so funny that the fanboys are so willing to stand with Apple. What do you guys work for them?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have to punch all the ones and zeroes onto a paper tape, tear it off with my teeth, and manually type it in on the tiny Palm keyboard. Apple schmapple.
You do seem to be a bit slow, yes. Also very unclear.
Are you arguing with my assertion that "iTunes" is free?
The assertion that Apple doesn't make any money from iTunes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
lets see, I can get into most Mac laptops in under 10 seconds. iPods not so much, but iPhones in under 20 sec. secure? LOL
somebody sounds like they work for apple...
There can be an antitrust complaint against anyone at any time for any reason. It doesn't mean it would get anywhere.
If a third party product tried to use Microsoft's closed protocols for their Zunes, they'd be in the exact same boat. If the Zune were the dominant player and WMP the dominant desktop software for that player, Palm still wouldn't be able to use the Zune syncing code and force Microsoft to maintain compatibility of its self-funded, closed, internal protocols with a competing product. You don't get to pass your hardware off as someone else's and offload the responsibility to support your product to another party.
Microsoft would have no obligation not to break compatibility with future versions of its internal sync protocol.
Palm didn't try to write a plugin and it didn't try to write a sync manager that accessed the library data. Whether the third party in that scenario is Apple or Microsoft makes no difference.
Hijacking someone else's software isn't competing. Preventing palm from using iTunes isn't anticompetitive in the sense you are suggesting. Anticompetitive behavior would be Apple software going out and uninstalling palm software, or going out onto a system and converting all the music files into a iTunes only DRM format (like Sony has tried to do over and over).
If palm wants to compete then it needs to do its own hard work and write its own software. Apple is under no obligation to support them in anyway and can do whatever it wants with it's own software.
Is it a dickhead move on Apple's part? yes. Do they have a monopoly on digital music? quite possibly. Does what they did violate the Sherman Antitrust Act? of course it doesn't, they're still playing in their own sandbox.
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
is that people like me are sticking with their 1st gen smart phone and not wanting to buy a 2nd gen smartphone until they quit squabbling over the bullshit.
mod +1
There are many alternatives to iTunes on both Mac and PC. Palm should have licensed one of these alternatives the same as every other media player. Instead, they changed their device's USB ID to pretend to be a past Apple product. Lame.
Palm is $299 and iPhone is $99 and Apple is supposed to provide the media player software also? C'mon!
Perhaps that wasn't their intention, but iTunes doesn't run on an iPod, it runs on Windows (not exclusively of course). And like you mentioned, Windows is designed to work with everything. So why can't "Windows" (iTunes) sync with my Pre or my Sansa or any other player?
That's quite a bizarre argument. Because it runs on Windows, it should work with everything? Then Blizzard should be compelled to make World of Warcraft work with a competing games' servers, I guess. AutoCAD should sync with my iPod!
Apple just won't let you do it. It's vendor lock-in.
Well, that's Apple's perogative. They developed iTunes, and they give it away for free. There is no obligation to support competing products. Microsoft nor Palm had anything to do with developing the product.
The claim of lock-in is bullshit, because Apple does provide a documented method for accessing the iTunes database. Palm could have worked with that by making their own syncing utility that reads the iTunes database. But they didn't. They decided to use a silly hack, instead of taking a little extra effort to make a supported solution.
I still think that fundamentally there is no difference between what Apple is doing and what Microsoft has done in the past. But somehow Apple gets a pass.
Where's the similarity? Apple is doing this with products that Apple developed. That's nothing like Microsoft's relationship with OEMs, where they were intimidated not to offer any other OSes or deploy other browsers. Apple has no third-party OEMs, so there is no similarity. Microsoft's success stems from its monopoly with OEMs, which is why that is problematic. Apple has its own ecosystem that is not reliant on other companies.
But somehow Apple gets a pass.
Since when? The tech press is full of strident criticism of Apple about these very things. Not a slashdot story gets published without an Apple hate-fest. Where is the free pass?
... and then they built the supercollider.
You would like a factually incorrect post to be modded up? WTF?
... and then they built the supercollider.
You would like a factually incorrect post to be modded up?
Care to elaborate, or are you going to take the "it's wrong 'cause I say it's wrong" stance?
[Insert pithy line of moxie here.]
I hadn't considered Zune, but the Zune isn't a phone. So, comparing Zune vs iPod, you end up about the same.
Which is exactly what I was doing. The iPod Touch is just an iPhone minus the camera, built-in microphone, and GSM/UMTS radio.
That's why I qualified it as "mobile".
"Mobile" does not imply "phone". Is the Nintendo DS or Sony's PSP not a device "in the mobile space"?
I suppose the Xbox doesn't bother me nearly as much, as it's designed as a game platform, whereas the iPhone is designed as a general-purpose handheld computer/phone/everything
Xbox may have been a gaming platform with a DVD add-on, but Xbox 360 is also marketed as a media-playing device with photo slideshows and sharing, Media Center Extender, built-in DVD playback, and a Netflix streaming app.
If Apple doesn't want these people for iTunes Music Store customers, then Amazon will gladly take them. Especially since the Amazon music purchase application is bundled with the Pre and it can be hacked to download music over Sprint's network in addition to WiFi.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
...all I have to say is System Preferences->Software Update->Check Now, then File->Ignore Updates->iTunes. I'll stick with 8.2 until it works again. If it never works again then I sure hope there are no major vulnerabilities in iTunes 8.2.
Sad thing is, one of the reasons I went with the Pre over the iPhone 3GS is because I hate AT&T (from some crap they pulled when they where still Cingular).
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
DRM laden music videos, movies and iPod/iPhone applications then, happy now?
Palm had the best handheld sync software I've ever used. I've used Hotsync, Activesync, iSync, and Missing Sync, and Hotsync is the only one that:
* Never lost data.
* Never duplicated data.
* Allowed me to sync with as many computers as I wanted.
Palm needs to bring back Hotsync, and use the standard iTunes API to access playlists and tracks.
I've never put any music on it because every program I've found to put music on the iPod (iTunes, Winamp, etc...) makes me put it in some asinine Music Library rather than using this filing system I call a Hierarchical Directory Structure that my 17,050 music files (60.8GB) are already in?
Then you must really, really hate trying hard.
Here's a hint for you: you can set iTunes to index the music you have in an arbitrary folder structure without moving, copying, or in any other way messing with your actual music files.
Enjoy your iPod.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.