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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
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?
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.
For a sins what Palm did was 7 and what Apple did was a 4.
If you hacked you Palm to do what Palm did then that would be a sin of 1. But the fact that the company created such actions intentionally against Apples will (3) marketed it (4) to the general public.
If you did it with your own Palm then it is only a 1, perhaps a 3 if you made it public. As you have already purchased the product and what you are doing is actually a favor to Apple as you buying their songs and using their product...
However by the corporation doing the same thing, they are hurting apple as they are making a product that is directly competing with their product, and not working with your competitor for compatibility.
Why is it worse for a company to do something then it is for an individual?
Well first it is scale, The individual usually has limited influence as they don't have the resources to make a large influence, at best the hack would give you some geek credits and only the brave geeks who could afford to brick their phone to do it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I can't stand these folks who insist that they have a right to infringe on others intellectual property. Apple spent millions of dollars on R&D to create this device that has revolutionized the online music industry. Apple the iPod helped Apple stay out of the commodity PC business and boost them back into a great growth company that they were back in the 1980s. Then these parasites come around, use Apples IP to piggy back on its hard work and money. Thank God someone has the good sense to finally value IP.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
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.
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?
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.
You couldn't figure out how to make your iPhone play mp3s?
Box it up and return your computer to the store. You are too stupid to own a computer. Or a troll. Pick one.
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
Do you have a reference for your sin system?
What is the maximum sin value? Is it stored as a long or an int or byte?
Can non-agents be attributed sin numbers? For example, what is the sin for a mosquito biting me?
Thanks.