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USB-IF Slaps Palm In iTunes Spat
An anonymous reader writes "The USB Implementers Forum has finally responded to Palm's complaints that Apple is violating its USB-IF Membership Agreement by preventing the Pre from syncing with iTunes. It's found in favor of Apple. Worse, it's accused Palm itself of violating the Membership Agreement by using Apple's Vendor ID number to disguise the Pre as an Apple device."
Apple is bad as MS ever was - only difference is that MS was huge and Apple is only a small segment.
Seriously can we keep business politics out of this? You may not like Apple but a lot of people from day one called into question Palms legality on their faking out iTunes from this very reason all the way down to the very fact that nothing said Palm even had to use iTunes as they could have used a third party player, a plugin for iTunes like Blackberry and WinMobile users use without any complaints from Apple, or made their own software . Just because you dont like the outcome does it in any way mean that the outcome wasn't the right one.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Since the main selling point of the Pre was unauthorized iTunes sync.
Serves them right.
To all those people who think "What is the big deal about faking yourself as Apple?". The point is that these are reserved identifiers in the same way as barcodes are reserved identifiers.
Would it be right for Palm to use the iPhone barcode for the Pre? Clearly not.
So here is another case where there is a specific rule around reserved identifiers and Palm broke the rules. Their alternative is to opt-out of the USB group and do it themselves without its blessing or just suck it up.
Complaining about the rules of a game after joining the table and playing a few hands is just dumb.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
If we're looking at comparitive sins from one (least) to ten (most), Palm did a 1. Apple did a 6.
It's not like the USB-IF had any choice. They could not have voted against one of their biggest members, a huge software and hardware developer/vendor. No matter what, there's no way they could have done anything Apple would have disagreed with.
Apple isn't doing anything to extend USB in a proprietary fashion; it's using an existing feature to differentiate between devices. It's blocking some of them deliberately from working with its software, but it's doing so in a USB-compatible way. Even if they were denied this access, wouldn't it be possible for them to create a challenge-response between the software and their authorized devices that didn't involve the USB Vendor ID?
On the other hand, faking a Vendor ID for your USB device is bound to irritate and annoy the standards group responsible for issuing and tracking Vendor IDs -- even if it's done for the noblest of compatibility purposes.
This iTunes lockout is really lame, but the USB-IF shouldn't have to be involved in it. And instead of fighting that battle, couldn't Palm channel its energy into developing an alternative to iTunes and partnering with a decent DRM-free music provider such as Amazon? If their alternative is solid enough, perhaps it could be licensed to other device manufacturers for extra benefit?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Palm claimed Apple was violating the spirit of the agreement by using their vendor ID to lock iTunes to their products.
Palm used this to justify breaking the actual letter of the agreement by using Apple's vendor ID to trick iTunes into thinking Palm devices were iPods.
So, guess who got in trouble? The guy who actually violated the agreement, of course.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Obviously, the USB-IF is going to take a dim view of spoofing vendor IDs. They were considered important enough to have in the spec, for whatever reason, so faking them isn't going to go over well. I don't really know what outcome Palm was expecting.
However, that said, I can't see tying attempts between products(above and beyond the natural tying effects that the complexity of software interaction naturally produces) as being even a remotely good thing for users, competition, or technological development generally.
Imagine if, back in the day, the "Well, they should just write their own iTunes-like application" had been applied to Compaq and the IBM-compatible clone kiddies. "Well, they can just write their own OS and set of applications..." Even back then, with the fairly minimal legacy effects, that would have retarded the development of cheap, standard, supports-the-software-you-want-to-run computers. It is basically demanding that anybody who wants to make anything must have a complete vertically integrated product range, to which they must induce customers to switch.
Very rarely in the history of technology has that ever worked particularly well. Most of the time, development consists of a few standards, formal or de-facto, and the surrounding ecosystems of add-ons, compatible widgets, clones, extensions, and software, authorized and unauthorized. And, frankly, that has worked pretty well. Modern technology is competitive, fast, ubiquitous, and impressively cheap.
If, in the future, we move away from the annoying-but-largely-useless forms of tying involving monkeying with pinouts every generation, and obfuscating stuff, and move to effective forms of tying based on crypto challenge-response, signing, vendor IDs, and the like(along with a fair bit of force of law, thanks to Mr. DMCA) I fear we will see a much less rich period of technological development.
Few companies are large enough, or smart enough, to maintain a fully integrated product line. Fewer customers actually want to use every one of a company's products, and none of their competitor's products. They want things to work together. Obviously, some degree of imperfection in interface is to be expected, interconnection of complex systems is Hard and writing wholly unambiguous specs is Very Hard. Deliberate breakage, though, is insult to injury.
Faking the vendor ID is just stupid and illegal, Palm should do their own thing.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/ itunes9 is already out. it has been out for a few weeks.
stephen
Morally, it's wrong of Apple to deny other media device manufacturers access to iTunes and ITMS.
Morally? There's nothing immoral about it so far as I can see. With apologies to the authors on wikipedia I just don't see how morality comes into the picture here.
There is no authoritative code of conduct here other than our laws and the bylaws. You personally may feel they are behaving immorally but there are plenty who will disagree with you so your personal morals can't be argued in any sort of universal authoritative sense. You might make an open source style argument but you're on shaky ground there too. Neither ITMS nor iTunes is open source software. You know that up front. You also probably know that there are free (as in speech) and/or legal alternatives to both. If you don't like what Apple offers you don't have to use their software and services. Apple is not under any moral or legal obligation to cater to your every whim.
There also is no ideal code of conduct here that we can all agree on. Apple worked hard to create their combination of products and services. Should they not reap the benefits, especially when it has no detrimental effect on you? You may not like Apple not letting it's competitors be free riders but I see nothing morally wrong with them preventing the competition from capitalizing on their work. ITunes is not some piece of public infrastructure and there is no compelling argument that it represents a market failure. The entire reason we have copyrights and patents is precisely to advance the public interest in the face of the free rider problem. There is no compelling public interest to making iTunes or ITMS the equivalent of a common carrier at this time. Neither the software nor the service is a monopoly - both are merely popular in comparison to the alternatives available.
Legally, it's likely also wrong.
I suspect you are not a lawyer and you have provided no evidence whatsoever to back that assertion. I'm pretty aware of the issues involved and I cannot think of any reasonably legal argument whereby Apple is doing anything against the law. Happy to be proven wrong but I doubt you can prove me wrong.
Imagine if, back in the day, the "Well, they should just write their own iTunes-like application" had been applied to Compaq and the IBM-compatible clone kiddies. "Well, they can just write their own OS and set of applications..." Even back then, with the fairly minimal legacy effects, that would have retarded the development of cheap, standard, supports-the-software-you-want-to-run computers.
It may have worked out nicely for people who want cheap Chinese hardware, but how did that work out for IBM in the profit area? They sure are a powerhouse in PCs now, aren't they?
Why is it so fucking hard for you assholes to understand that Apple is NOT taking a legal stance on this issue?
Apple doesn't want devices to lie. Palm wants to lie. This is fairly simple.
It's so discouraging to see that it's OK to lie as long as your lying to a company that you don't like.
My interest in IBM's margins on one of their product lines is vastly less than my interest in the entire IBM-compatible x86 market.
I love how the comments immediately blame Apple for all of this. How is this any of Apple's fault?
PALM complained about APPLE to the USB-IF. Apple re-tweaked iTunes, their own software, to verify the devices claiming to be ipods were really ipods. They didn't claim copyright infringement, they didn't issue DMCA notices, they didn't make patent infringement claims, they just changed their software to make sure devices they support were actually devices they were modifying. Palm makes it's computer connections lie, and it's Apple's fault. Awesome.
Apple is not the most open company around, but if openess is what you want then don't buy Apple, it's not like you're forced to.
I'm not really sure why people whine about the iPod not being open. It doesn't lock you in to the iTunes store, or DRM stuff, even on video. I buy most of my music from EMusic then Amazon MP3 store then finally iTunes. It'll accept music from peer-to-peer networks as well.
90% of my videos are ripped from DVD and have no DRM. Works fine on my iPod and Apple TV.
I don't understand why you attach a moral dimension to this "lie". When designing a device to interoperate with another system, you make the device send and receive whatever signals the other system is expecting, both in physical and logical terms. If you want to interact with a system, you must operate in a manner similar to the device that the system is expecting to interact with.
This has always been the case with interoperable systems. In this particular instance, one of the signals that iTunes expects is a USB vendor ID of 0x05AC. If you want to natively interoperate with iTunes, you have to emit that signal(aside from a few legacy players in the mac iTunes client from its pre Apple days). The fact that, in addition to being an expected signal, "USB vendor ID: 0x05AC" can also mean "Apple device" doesn't seem ethically relevant.
Do you get upset when Opera "lies" about its browser ID in order to induce webservers to send it the same page that they would send IE?
Ok, maybe I've completely missed the boat her but...I still don't understand the whole iTunes hystaria... Why pay for proprietary formats of music that you can only play on certain devices? My Palm Pre plays MP3s, why would I want to go out of my way to make it sync up with something that requires me to pay for music? I had the iPhone for a while, I never used the iTunes thing. I never saw any reason, and I could never figure out how to get it to play MP3s. The Palm Pre you just hook up to the computer and drag your MP3s over to the music folder. Plus you can ssh into your Palm Pre and manipulate the Linux files. The only thing I miss from the iPhone is the ease of use of the voicemail. I also get a buttload of free apps on the Pre.
if Palm really want there rights, they will push it... truth shall prevail http://www.techandgizmo.com/
Two issues:
1. The USB license issue -- Is it okay to use another vendor's ID? No, probably not. Is it okay to use the vendor ID to work with your software to the exclusion of others? That's an interesting question. Is the use of a vendor ID an acceptable means of keeping others out of your marketplace? That is a question worth exploring since Apple is using its music hardware to leverage its position in the sync software arena and the two are also being used to leverage its position in the digital music selling business. There is a legal term for using one market leading position to leverage another... now what was that word? Anti-something? This second question, however is not a matter for the courts at this point. It is a question for the USB people and at the moment, they say "Apple good, Palm bad."
2. Is Apple entitled to lock out other hardware makers from using the software it has published and distributed? Here is where that Anti-word might get raised. The digital music player market and the digital music market are "connected" but they are not the same market. Apple is presently a leader in that market and is blocking access to that market to competing hardware vendors thereby harming the competitor to Apple's own hardware by using its position in another market. Smells of Anti-.... Anti-.... what's that word again?
Apple doesn't having a problem shipping / using SAMBA to lie about being a Windows server / client.
So tell me.
If you think it is a good thing for Palm to use iTunes, then why the hell didn't Palm use iTunes, you know like all those other 3rd party players that work perfectly well with iTunes using the proper methods, like blackberry and windows mobile?
Apple did not 'lock out' Palm. Palm designed a broken (defined as broken by the USB spec) device, and purposely designed the Pre so it was impossible for their device to identify itself to the computer as a Pre.
Palm purposely made the choice to design a product which is physically impossible to design any software for at all.
This isn't Apples fault any more than it is personally your fault.
If Microsoft based XP on BSD and just added some GUI bits, then I'm sure they would release the source (as they would be legally required to do).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
10 Print "Palm spoofed the id's. What's wrong with that"
20 Print "You can't spoof ID's in a standard like that"
30 Print "Apple created a closed system yet claims it's open. Those Bastards"
40 Print "It is open, there are lots of hooks in"
50 Print "Then why won't they let Palm Play ball?"
60 Goto 10
However, that said, I can't see tying attempts between products(above and beyond the natural tying effects that the complexity of software interaction naturally produces) as being even a remotely good thing for users, competition, or technological development generally.
In a healthy market those things are not a significant problem. Tying products in general is a net negative for users so they tend to move to other products and the vendor doing the tying goes out of business or changes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with selling bleach and floor wax in the same package in a bottle with two reservoirs and nozzles. Legally and economically this hurts no one. It may result in the seller making fewer sales.
Imagine if, back in the day, the "Well, they should just write their own iTunes-like application" had been applied to Compaq and the IBM-compatible clone kiddies. "Well, they can just write their own OS and set of applications..."
The problem comes in when you're dealing with a company that has overwhelming influence on one of the markets involved. At that point the company has too much power over customers in one market and leverages that to gain an advantage in another market. If, in our theoretical example above, only one company sold household bleach, it would be destroying the market for floor wax to tie it to bleach. It would not matter if another company sold better or cheaper floor wax, because everyone would be forced to buy their competitor's in order to get bleach. And while theoretically people could throw away that floor wax and pay a second time to get a different brand, realistically that is not how the economics work out. For that reason tying products when there is a monopoly in one market is both illegal and economically destructive. it undermines the drive for lower costs and innovation that fair competition bring about by leveraging financial self interest.
So looking to your example, IBM had monopoly influence at the time IBM compatible clones were appearing. IBM did try to stop them but the courts properly intervened. So where does this leave us? Does Apple have monopoly influence on the market in which iTunes (the application) operates or in the markets it's tying to iTunes (the application) in this case. There are plenty of music jukebox software packages and iTunes (the application) is not even the most common one. In this instance Apple is giving preferential interaction with its own iPhone product, but the iPhone does not dominate the smartphone or cell phone market, so that too is not harming the market. If people are inconvenienced by Apple's choice to tie the two they can and will buy a different phone and a different music playing application.
Then we get into the two iffy areas. Apple ties their iTunes store (service) to their iTunes application. iTunes (service) sells 69% of online digital music in the US and that is about where the courts have traditionally started to consider a company to have monopoly influence. Moreover, Apple gives preference in connecting to ITunes (application) to iPods and iPods make up about 73% of digital music players, excluding cell phones. You'll notice the last caveat. The EU said Apple doesn't have monopoly influence in that market because cell phones are considered options by average users buying mp3 players. That may be different in the US where phones are locked to cell providers. So on both counts, Apple could be guilty of antitrust action. On the first count, the antitrust action could be seen as damaging Palm by using one level of indirection to leverage Apple's dominance in online music sales to win more market for smartphones, when in a free market Palm would otherwise win more share. This is concerning because it could be holding back innovation and hurting the progress of technology.
Now before we rush off on an antitrust campaign against Apple, however, I feel it pertinent to mention the rest of the equation. When the courts took effective action agai
Why the hell would Apple not want other devices syncing with their software? That could open up a whole new line of devices for which to sell apps and music from their iTunes store to. Don't get me wrong...I'm not a fanboy, but iTunes is a pretty nice model for downloading single tracks or even entire albums, quick and cheap. Apple gets a cut of this sale, right? Not everyone owns an i so why not expand your sales demographic to other devices?
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Imagine if, back in the day, the "Well, they should just write their own iTunes-like application" had been applied to Compaq and the IBM-compatible clone kiddies.
It was. Plenty of IBM clones were sued into oblivion when they dumped IBM's BIOS code and burned it verbatim onto their own ROMs.
Compaq survived because it wrote its own BIOS instead of copying IBMs. Phoenix Technologies made millions licensing its BIOS as a replacement for IBM's. IBM's copyright on its BIOS code did not stifle innovation in the market; it only tripped up a few cheap imitators that were trying to make a quick buck.
Palm Desktop used to have a pretty decent sync engine. It used to have lots of connectors for lots of third-party applications. Why Palm didn't just add an iTunes connector and clean up the interface is beyond me. It certainly would have required less effort than fighting Apple to use Apple's sync software.
Apple doesn't want devices to lie. Palm wants to lie. This is fairly simple.
Palm doesn't want to lie. They want to interoperate with Apple's software and use the same features as Apple's hardware does. Lying, is the method by which Palm attempted to do this.
It's so discouraging to see that it's OK to lie as long as your[sic] lying to a company that you don't like.
So you think it is immoral to do things like change the User Agent string in your browser in order to view a Web page that filters non-IE browsers? That's lying to the Website operator, but is certainly not objected to by the average Slashdot reader and Apple themselves make it easy to do in Safari.
So, what this is saying is that I can't slap a ford logo on my toyota and expect ford to warranty it for me? And when they refuse, I shouldn't complain to the DOT?
At worst, they might be sued for violating the "membership agreement", they didn't exactly commit a crime. Whats more likely is that they will be fined some arbitrary amount or be dropped as members. Even more likely is that the accusation will lead to an update by Pre to conform to the standards and some bad publicity. IANAL, etc.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
I see the delusional Mac fanboys have crawled out of the woodwork in great numbers today, and they're even wielding mod points.
He never said such a thing, and saying "fuck" and calling him an asshole doesn't make you any more right.
Sure, it sounds like Palm is being a big meanie :((((( if you phrase it that way. That's because you're horribly over simplifying the situation to make Apple look better. Here, let me fix that for you:
That's a bit more accurate, and unsurprisingly doesn't paint Apple as the perfect divine goddeveloper handed down authority from the heavens themselves like you'd like them to be.
Palm isn't "lying" to Apple, they're lying to Apple's software. Don't worry, I don't think its feelings will be hurt. And the point the GP was making and all you iDroids seem to be missing is that yes, it is very okay to lie to get your stuff to work with their stuff. I don't think most people here approve of printer makers preventing your from using whatever cartridges you want with your hardware, music companies preventing you from using whatever software or hardware you want to play your music, or so on, but in spite of that they're gladly bending over for Apple because OMG SO SHINY!
You say "How dare Palm! What right do they have to so brazenly lie to Apple's glorious software!", but I ask, why not? Though Palm complaining to the USB-IF was kinda stupid (did they seriously think this wouldn't happen?), if Microsoft or anyone else tried to pull this sort of shit, the comments would be in the hundreds within seconds and you people would be eating them alive, and don't try to pretend you wouldn't.
That's the dumbest thing I've heard this week. Congratulations!
Could a dual dock for both ipod and phone work? Is usb less susceptible to piggybacking than the NES?
Thank you. I was thinking the EXACT same thing. More things connecting equals sales on iTunes.
What's up with all the people bashing Palm over an ID to connect to iTunes? One of the reasons they did this was to have the option to buy music there.
If this was Microsoft (instead of Apple) then we would be seeing very different arguments here.
Apple provides legitimate methods to connect a device to iTunes via a public API and/or Toolkit. This lets them support things easier by making sure the public API works after changes.
I am an ADC member, and I am not able to find the API you are talking about. At the cost of my mod points here, could you please give a link, or name I can use to find the API?
If you think it is a good thing for Palm to use iTunes, then why the hell didn't Palm use iTunes, you know like all those other 3rd party players that work perfectly well with iTunes using the proper methods, like blackberry and windows mobile?
Apple offers no "proper" method for bidirectional sync.
Palm designed a broken (defined as broken by the USB spec) device, and purposely designed the Pre so it was impossible for their device to identify itself to the computer as a Pre.
The Pre identifies as an Apple device only when the user selects the iTunes compatibility mode.
Every step of that journey involved one or more open, freely-available standards-based protocols that have been embraced by hundreds if not thousands of vendors so they could all communicate with each other.
Exactly why the iTunes library stores data in bog standard XML, and the store files (for audio) are pretty much all standard AAC files.
So your complain that Apple does not follow standards, except they do, and third parties can easily make use of them to provide the same abilities iTunes has to peruse the libraries.
It's pretty funny as the other poster pointed out you are so hot to attack Apple when Palm is the one deviating from official low-level standards. Guess it goes to show the lengths some people will go to in order to attack someone they hate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First time on slashdot that I've heard un-crippling technology described as despicable. Comes a day for everything, I suppose.
The iTunes technology is not crippled. It uses standard XML to store data. Anyone can read it. Anyone can use the standard AAC to play music files (the Zune can, for example). Anyone can thus transfer it to a device however they please, using whatever software they write.
What is crippling is throwing standards right out the window and having a free-for-all with USB device ID's.
First time on Slashdot I've seen people champion crippling an entire low level technology just out of hate for one company. Disturbing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple sells a LOT more USB powered devices than Palm, so this result is not unexpected.
who would have seen that coming? -- there is a unique field for manufacturer and one for type. the field is used to determine how to deal with the data. the field is used to limit how data is used. and palm figures the rules are for everybody else, do they? you know, they're probably two weeks receipts from financial ruin, and that's 12 years of screwups in the making. bring it on, they've got it coming.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Apple is not supporting other companies' phones in iTunes as well as it is supporting the iPhone.
Ergo, Apple is potentially leveraging dominance in online digital music sales to win smartphone sales over Palm
There's a world of difference between "as well as" and "not at all".
At 69% there's no definition that would even label Apple a monopoly, much less there being any grounds to do so given that the phone can use music from any other store now that DRM is gone from the scene.
I'm just explaining how this is (potentially) Apple's fault legally and in terms of economics.
But "Fault" implies Apple has done something wrong. Apple has done everything right in terms of law and frankly even ethically. Even if Apple were a monopoly it would not be Apple's "Fault" or illegal behavior to follow standards.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't understand why you attach a moral dimension to this "lie". When designing a device to interoperate with another system, you make the device send and receive whatever signals the other system is expecting, both in physical and logical terms. If you want to interact with a system, you must operate in a manner similar to the device that the system is expecting to interact with. This has always been the case with interoperable systems. In this particular instance, one of the signals that iTunes expects is a USB vendor ID of 0x05AC. If you want to natively interoperate with iTunes, you have to emit that signal(aside from a few legacy players in the mac iTunes client from its pre Apple days). The fact that, in addition to being an expected signal, "USB vendor ID: 0x05AC" can also mean "Apple device" doesn't seem ethically relevant. Do you get upset when Opera "lies" about its browser ID in order to induce webservers to send it the same page that they would send IE?
The difference is that Opera didn't sign a contract with the browser ID implementers' group agreeing not to lie about their browser ID.
Palm did sign a contract with the USB Implementers' Forum agreeing not to lie. Their devices have to use their own vendor ID, and not anyone else's. It's not that hard to understand.
Breach of contract is unethical. Using a false Vendor ID is unethical, especially when you consider that Apple provided a published and documented API for third party device manufacturers to provide iTunes sync capability. It wasn't like it was something difficult to do - this is just sheer laziness (and breach of their USB Vendor Agreement) on the part of Palm.
Apple is not a monopoly, merely the dominant vendor.
In both the US and the EU, a market in which the dominant firm has around a 40% share is considered highly concentrated. (The definition used in the US is a Herfindahl-Hirschman index above 1800, which is unavoidable if a single firm controls 42.5% of the market.)
Given your nick is "DNS-and-BIND", I suppose you loved SiteFinder and similar "helpful" changes to DNS behavior. Oh, you don't, because it was out of specification and could break other programs? Yeah, it does suck when people take shortcuts and break standards for their own selfish gain.
And yet you don't apply that same stance to the USB specification.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Thank you.
It's mimicry, not "lying".
Palm designed a broken (defined as broken by the USB spec) device, and purposely designed the Pre so it was impossible for their device to identify itself to the computer as a Pre.
What the hell? Citation needed. Palm is welcome to use any device ID they want in order to identify their product. The only catch is, if it says "iPod", it damn well better act like one, or it's not going to work right.
The vendor ID, which is totally different, still said "Palm". That is, a Palm device that acts like an iPod. Until iTunes started checking that, and saying "I don't care if you think you can be an iPod, you weren't made by Apple so I'm not speaking to you".
Now it's impossible to tell, but only after Apple tried to stifle competition by making their software not sync with "iPod-compatible" devices unless they actually claimed to be made by Apple.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This is an interesting dispute. (Disclosure - I own an iPod, a couple of Macs, and I use iTunes. I don't use the iTunes Music Store except for finding podcasts. I also use iPhoto, iCal, and Address Book).
The two issues being thrown together are orthogonal to each other. First, did Palm violate the USB standard? Apparently so, as indicated by the keepers of the standard. Second, is Apple doing something illegal or at least "wrong" by blocking other vendors devices from interfacing with iTunes as if they were Apple devices? Perhaps - but this issue should be taken through the proper venue to be resolved. In other words, the ends don't justify the means. Palm attempting to right a perceived "wrong" by clearly violating its agreements isn't right. [And please, please, please, lets leave Rosa Parks, civil rights, etc. out of the discussion. I don't think whether Palm can let the their device pretend to be an Apple device to synch with iTunes is anywhere near the level of moral wrong addressed by a human refusing to be treated as subhuman by other humans.]
There are some arguments in favor of Apple's position... perhaps if they don't defend their exclusive use of the "iPod/iPhone interface" they could lose exclusivity here, and ultimately be forced to support other vendors products, or at the least have their hand tied with respect to the flexibility of changes to their interface? If Palm fails to completely and totally emulate the iPhone/iPod, will Apple suffer harm from consumers calling about the iTunes problem when its really a Palm problem? iTunes doesn't just sync music with the iPod, it syncs movies, podcasts, calendars, contacts, photos, games, and music. Did the Palm support all of those, and if not, was it clear to users that the lack of support was Palm's issue and not Apple's? Doesn't Apple have a right to a competitive advantage that they spent many many $$s creating specifically so that they would sell more of their product?
There is an interesting argument against Apple's position: iPhoto works with a wide variety of cameras, not just one or two brands. Apple works hard to make it as compatible as possible with as many different cameras as possible. Apple doesn't make a camera - would they be so generous with iPhoto if they did? (Yes, you can argue that since iPhoto only comes with iLife, which you pay for, while iTunes can be downloaded free its not the same thing, but I would argue back that iPhoto is almost free since it comes free with any Mac you buy.)
Of course, iTunes does work without an iPod. I used it for several years before I bought an iPod. Other vendors figured out how to interface to iTunes without pretending to be an iPod. SlimDevices made the SlimServer capable of integrating with iTunes but didn't "fake out" iTunes. Why couldn't Palm do something like that? Was violating the USB standard the only way they could interface with iTunes?
In the end, as long as Apple isn't breaking any laws, I think they should be free to do as they choose, whether its creating some sort of cozy relationship between iTunes/iPods/iPhones, or making iTunes/iTunes Music Store open and usable with multiple competing music players. If they pick a bad strategy, they will suffer the consequences. If they pick a good strategy, they will benefit from the consequences. And if Palm thinks Apple has created an illegal tie-in, there are venues within which Palm can air that complaint and see if they can get a legal authority with appropriate jurisdiction to agree with them.
My interest in IBM's margins on one of their product lines is vastly less than my interest in the entire IBM-compatible x86 market.
I'm sure your interest is. My point is that letting the genie out of the bottle was not a good strategy for IBM and it's not a good strategy for Apple/iTunes. If you think any company is in it for the good of the people, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you.
I think there is an adage that goes something like: there no such thing as bad publicity. I think both palm and apple are benefiting from this "quarrel."
-- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
"if you want to sync with iTunes, stop spoofing our USB ID and write your own plugin using the published API for iTunes sync".
I think the real question here is: Is Apple providing a level playing ground so that independent companies can provide equivalent functionality?
It's just like Microsoft and their (alleged) undocumented Windows APIs used by their Office suite for better performance. If Apple is providing an equivalent playground for Palm and other companies so that they can create the same kind of syncing software provided by Apple to the iPhone and iPod hardware, and if Apple's public interfaces are the same as the ones used by Apple's own hardware/software, then Palm should just use that route.
My hunch is that Apple is not revealing all of their APIs. Perhaps they're leaving some undocumented, or they've set up the interfaces such that Apple handheld devices get a better syncing interface. Perhaps by using Apple's USB id Palm can save a lot of development work by using an interface that Apple has decided not to make available to 3rd party developers.
Think about it: Why in the world would Palm want to make their device look like one of Apple's devices if they could get the same, easy-to-use sync from iTunes while indicating that the handheld device was a Palm Pre? There's no good reason. No good reason, that is, unless somehow the Pre pretending to be a piece of Apple hardware was giving Pre users a better experience than announcing themselves openly as Palm hardware.
It sounds like Palm broke some contract with the Grand High Council of USB Lords when they spoofed Apple's id. Okay, fine. So what if they did? I mean perhaps the rules of the USB consortium allow no leeway in these cases, but this situation is just discrimination, plain and simple. There's one interface for Apple, and a separate one for everyone else. Kind of like having one drinking fountain for white people, and one for black people. Sure, Palm pretended to be an iPhone, but that's because they had no other choice.
Let's say that in 2 years someone realizes that some super-popular application they wrote in 2009 was compiled with the wrong flags and will only talk to USB vendor ids in a static list compiled into the binary. Is the USB Council of Poo-Bahs going to try to tell us that Palm, or Apple, or Joe's Open Hardware Hackitorium may not pretend to be one of the USB vendors in the static list in a hack to make it possible to interoperate with said application? That's just f*cking insane!
coding is life
Sorry, but, you have to actively set your Pre to try and spoof with iTunes (one of their USB modes). It does not show up as an iPod when you, say, switch to the USB Drive mode, nor when it is just plugged in.
Or at least I'm pretty sure this is how it goes, as mine does not show as an iPod when I connect it via USB.
The problem is that morons like you don't actually know what they're talking about.
Palm Pre identified itself as an ipod-compatible made by Palm. That's not a lie.
Apple then changed iTunes to require an Apple vendor ID... forcing Palm to file a letter with the USB-IF saying that they have no choice but to lie now.
as I've seen on episodes of court tv shows, if they came into this with clean hands. aka filing suit saying apple themselves are breaking rules instead of circumventing i would be more likely to side with them and against apple (which btw, is a lame - cheap ass - underhanded way to monopolize itunes/ipod) but they didn't and they can't go home to mommy and daddy later on and whine and complain that apple isn't playing fair.
The Sherman Act says actions meant to preserve market dominance are illegal when they destroy competition itself.
No, it doesn't actually say that. Read the act and the subsequent legislation including the Clayton Act and the Robinson-Patman Act. Market dominance by definition means that you have destroyed competition. What anti-trust law guards against is elimination of competition to the detriment of consumers. That is a MUCH harder case to make.
Apple isn't disabling the Pre's syncing because of worry about consumer, they do so because letting the Pre sync could damage their iPod sales. Despite a variety of alternatives, iPod's still command a healthy share of the mobile audio players market.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware - iPods and more importantly iPhones. So is Palm in the business of making and selling phones but NOT MP3 players. Apple has created software and a download service that helps create a market for their devices. These services have been quite successful. Palm has (to my knowledge) not created their own iTunes equivalent but instead has chosen to free ride on Apple's investment, knowing they will sell phones at Apple's expense. People who buy a Pre are probably not going to buy an iPhone as well. So what reasonably argument can we make that Apple should be supportive of this? I certainly can't think of one.
A case also could be made that Apple's disabling the Pre's ability to sync as a native iPod is illegal product tying - i.e. requiring the purchase of one product to complete purchase or use of another.
Tying is not generally held to be illegal unless there is no relationship between the goods offered for sale or some sort of price discrimination. There is no compelling argument for tying here because each part of the service is independent (you don't HAVE to use iTunes or ITMS with an iPod).
An MP3 player by itself isn't especially useful without software to load the files on to the device but you don't have to use Apple's software to do it. ITunes is merely one of many ways to manage a music library and interface with an MP3 player. Even iPods don't require iTunes to work nor does iTunes require an iPod to be useful - you can play music from iTunes without even owning an iPod. Furthermore iTunes is free so no one is required to pay anything to use it.
ITMS is a service and the product it provides (MP3 files) can be obtained easily elsewhere for similar if not lesser cost.
Morally? Doesn't it seem a bit greedy of Apple to stop the Pre from syncing just because Palm wanted to make life easier for users and making it a PITA to use a Pre might get some people to buy iPods?
Palm isn't selling MP3 players. Palm sells phones. Palm is trying to be a free rider on the work of Apple. Apple is in the business of selling handsets like Palm. If someone buys a handset from Palm they don't buy one from Apple. It's a zero sum game. Why should Apple pay to support Palm when it is perfectly legal for Palm to set up their own version of iTunes and ITMS?
However, none have the breadth that ITMS has as far as selection. It's much like how WalMart isn't a monopoly because other companies sell lots of the same stuff-they just happen to be hundreds of times bigger than your average supermarket chain
That's a fairly good analogy and illustrative. Apple is for the moment the 800lb gorilla in the MP3 music market. Like Walmart however they are no where close to being a monopoly. Dominant? Yes. Influential? Certainly. Monopoly? Nope. A monopoly that is detrimental to consumers? No way. Sorry but you haven't convince me that Apple's actions are in any way illegal.
I certainly don't.
I mean, how can they make it ANY easier? I plug in the Pre to a USB port, I copy over music files to any directory I want, I sync/unplug the Pre. Done! It doesn't require or need iTunes. Besides, iTunes doesn't run on Linux or BSD, but using usbstorage to copy over the files works on *EVERYTHING*. No cost, nothing to download, nothing to install, nothing to configure, no "end user license agreements", no Internet required, no registration, no spyware, no special accounts, no magic daemons running.
Guess what? You can do the same thing for pictures and videos, too. It is simple, fast, easy.
As a Pre user, I find the waste of time and energy on this iTunes compatibility thing frustrating when there are plenty of other, BETTER uses of Palm's development time and energy.
Its evident to me that Apple is leveraging its position in the music organizer (and, more importantly, music _market_) to push its sales of the iPhone. Not very many corporations _have_ these kinds of agreements, mainly iTunes, Amazon, and a couple others. So using this position to force users into buying hardware seems fairly anti-competitive.
Its the exact same thing MS came under scrutiny for with Windows and IE (hell, then they weren't even locking people out, just influencing heavily). Both firefox and IE require Windows to run, just like the Pre and the iPhone need a tool for music syncing. Apple locking out the Pre is the _exact_ same thing.
Now, should Pre have spoofed the Vendor ID's? Morally, no. But until the court case comes out saying whether Apple is behaving, I'd say its a fairly good business decision...
All Apple is refusing to do for Palm is let them integrate Pre into the main iTunes application. That would require Apple to publish and maintain a plug-in API for iTunes which would cost Apple money. Why should they?
That is not the issue. Palm does not touch Apple's API in any way. The Pre doesn't touch any iTunes file at all! Instead the Pre tells iTunes that it is an older iPod. iTunes copies over the files and the Pre reads them. Simple, clean, and no extra installation for the user! Is Apple really going to break the DB files on all their old iPods? That would require them to re-fresh all the firmware across their entire line of iPods.
I hope you never, ever have used a program that imports songs from an iPod. That program is doing basically the same thing the Pre is doing internally. I bet quite a few people would be pissed if their 3rd party iPod management program that has been working since forever broke because Apple is trying to prove something with Palm.
Actually, I believe that would be called competitive behavior, not anti-competitive. Are you seriously trying to imply that iTunes in the only avenue to get music online?
Results 1 - 10 of about 234,000,000 for buy music online
Note that there are 234 Million results.
Nuff said...
Palm's device would have continued to work fine with no effort from Apple.
Exactly! And Palm wouldn't have had to spoof the Vendor ID, just the Device ID.
> The only "lock in" with iPod/iTunes is if you choose to buy DRMd content [...]
Couldn't we say this about ANY DRM'd content? Like "the only 'lock in' is if you CHOOSE to buy Lexmark printers and subject yourself to locked, overpriced ink cartridges." Or "the only 'lock-in' is if you CHOOSE to run Windows Genuine Advantage [TM] and have to sit on hold while trying to convince them you're not a pirate, even though you've activated too many times, because you just added some RAM."
I mean, honestly? That statement could excuse ANY lock-in. I guess people just love Apple that much. I think they make cool products, but they're also control freaks and I won't excuse them for that like the fans will. Maybe Palm is doing it wrong. It's an ugly hack, to be sure. But I just don't see Apples goals as legitimate here.
Apple was doing exactly the same thing up until the iPhone 3.1 OS update, which corrected the way pre 3GS iPhones reported their "on device encryption" ability. Pre 3GS iPhone users were unhappy that their devices would no longer sync to Exchange servers that required on device encryption. Exchange allows admins to set whatever security flags they wish (where these supported), and Apple should be allowed the same privilege. If Apple was guilty of allowing its devices to "lie" to Exchange servers prior to the 3.1 iPhone update, then Palm is guilty of its devices "lying" to iTunes also.
You can drag and drop music files directly to the phone. The sync with iTunes feature is just a convenience.
Near all of those formats are called "industry standard" for some reason: They are DESIGNED by AV industry themselves, completely documented and just because they are patented, it doesn't make them proprietary. They proprietary only on Wikipedia which seems to love that word, rest of the industry loves them as "vendor neutral" formats, ages ahead of anything comparative.
If MS video took off, they would see what proprietary is. They should be thankful to AV industry and Apple who kept up with true standards. There was nothing stopping Apple from tweaking AAC (which is part of mpeg4) a bit and coming up with .APL and suing everyone who dares to implement it. Of course, these industry outsiders loving to use the word proprietary but can't differentiate between extension and format are still calling AAC as some Apple format. No, it is part of MPEG4, Apple did a favour to you to keep up with MPEG STANDARDS and hell yes, multiple billions of dollars spent on the mpeg standards with millions of engineering hours, they will have patents on them just like $150M Hollywood production will have copyright.
Please, please for God's sake... If someone idiot enough to ship a product with Microsoft USB vendor id and suggested/advertised the product can be used with Microsoft software, we would have an example in hand.
Every single keyboard conforms to HID profile, keyboards part is supported by every OS conforming to USB standards. It has nothing to do with iPod or a freaking Microsoft OS. I guess Linux having good USB support made people forgot how USB really works, what vendor ID is, what model ID is. Once upon a time, we even memorised hex vendor IDs.
Want another example? Logitech, Swiss guys spend millions to have extra software giving extra,bonus features. Now, my Chinese A4Tech keyboard will act like a Logitech device and I will demand Logitech to support it, with their software. Man is it WebOS or the abused brand "Palm" making people act like this? Do you know how low Palm got by acting like an iPod? I have never, ever heard a USB device acting like another from any vendor. Perhaps those counterfeit stuff could be doing it, not a real&known brand.
If I was a mobile developer (which is hell harder than desktop), I would stay away from a platform made by a company acting like that. "We can't sync with iTunes?", hell yes you can. Just download some damn software from Nokia and Blackberry and learn how to do it. Especially Nokia's multimedia sync which easily surpasses iTunes own syncing with wireless support should give a clue how it is done.
PC clones became possible because Compaq had to reverse engineer BIOS in a clean room and then re-implement it from scratch to make PC clones. That was a much more difficult task that writing a GUI app to synchronize files with a music player based on documented XML files.
Microsoft sold licenses of DOS to Compaq.
If Apple didn't say a word about it and iTunes 9.2 somehow wiped out your entire library of family photos because of a glitch, you and the company going low enough to act like another vendor wouldn't have a WORD to say. Wanna bet? iTunes doesn't have to sync with anything else than Apple products reliably and even if you have an Apple product, it has tendency to make paranoid backups just in case if something goes wrong.
Do you know how stupid it is to act like one of the World's most advanced multimedia/smart devices fooling a media/file sync application hoping nothing would happen? Palm doesn't value their customers data at first place. First issue (if that joke continued) would be the "case insensitive" variant of HFS+J used versus ext2 and Apple's attitude towards easily ejectable devices with the help of journaling and aggressive (fs)syncing.
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Apple will more than likely update itunes AGAIN so that the pre stops working and prolly take legal action (because they can). Best way I can think about this is a Honda Civic with a nissan skyline badge on it. Palm is just trying too hard.