You will note the hyperbole in the GPP (which I was replying to) and my post.
The use of sarcasm to refute a blatantly false point is not lost on you, I take?
Your life expectancy is lower because a large proportion of your population do not have access to preventative medicine, or the healthcare system in general. The US system provides for some of its population very well, but for the large majority it is a very poor option.
Oh I'm fully aware that the French, Ausies and even Canucks have better social healthcare than the UK. I am all too aware - I live with the system. It is still infinitely preferable to the US system.
It is recovering from 20 years of neglect under a tory government in the 80s that could not outright kill it (that would be political suicide) but could starve it to death and turn it into a total mess. It is a mess that it has still not recovered from, many, many years later.
It is in serious need of fixing, but it is still in better shape than the US.
It has numerous flaws, and has the "media frenzy" cases that make sensational headlines (like the current one, even though it happened a year ago and has been fixed already - just politically convenient to run the story now), but at its heart it is a very effective system that keeps the UK populace healthy. Most importantly, it provides care for everyone equally for the cost of NI contributions. No one in the UK has to worry about medical bankrupcy, or have to deal with situations where an insurance company overrides your doctor's treatment decisions.
Incidentally, the UK also has a private healthcare system that its citizens are free to participate in if they like, if they feel the NHS cannot provide for them.
If you wait 13 hours to be diagnosed with life threatening conditions then the triage system has failed.
The US system "works" for the rich (and even then, not always - your insurance company decides when you are too expensive to treat) at the expense of the poor.
You get healthcare at the expense of those less fortunate than yourself, which doesn't sit well with me at all. It's also *absurdly* expensive, even before you factor in the private insurance cost - the US spends twice as much of its GDP per capita on the system it has compared to the UK.
Even Sarah Palin has to duck across the border to canada to afford medicine.
When you ride in one in the UK, you know you will never have to worry about paying for it (or any of the treatment you receive when you arrive at your destination).
Oh I know, I should have added a (/generalisation) tag - I know a US ambulance will take you to the closest ER, but the GP's description of how this one flaw (that happened a year ago, and was fixed last year, months before the article) shows what would happen if "Obamacare" passes is just senseless hyperbole.
There are a great deal of things wrong with the US system, but my post was (mostly) hyperbole of my own.
The actual event in question happened a year ago. Given the recent news in the USA - something to do with some sort of bill about healthcare, and the imminent UK general election, I find the timing from a right wing newspaper here in the UK to be highly sensational - especially since the issue has been corrected in the new version of the software, that was released and rolled out last year.
Yes, they are - and they can override the automatic priority set by the computer based on the information they receive and their own judgement. They also will stay on the line and talk a caller through vital life saving steps while the ambulance is on its way. They are remarkable people, far from the "computer says noooooo" drones that your "culture" seems to suggest.
Of course, they are human and sometimes make mistakes, or are sometimes sub-standard at their jobs, but the vast, vast majority are a credit to their profession.
If that actually happened as described, then the dispatch centre was grossly negligent, or the information provided by the person calling initially led the dispatcher to determine that it was non-life threatening.
Regardless, ambulances are routinely dispatched for non-deadly situations - which is the point of the categorisation that led to this article in the first place. Alternatively you can phone your GP and arrange an emergency home visit from whoever is on call for that, out of hours.
Alternatively, we could have a US system, where the ambulance won't set off unless your insurance covers it, or won't take you to the nearest hospital because that is not "in network".
Or, they'll take you to the hospital, unconscious, and then stick you with the bill because the trip wasn't "pre-approved".
This has nothing to do with socialised care and everything to do with bureaucrats making decisions that affect people - it's is not exclusive to socialised medicine. Regardless of how you slice it, ambulances and ambulance crews are a finite resource and priorities have to be set. They should not be set by non-medical people though, as in this case which was clearly wrong, and in the case of a lot of medical decisions under the US system (where your insurance company, and not a doctor, decides the care you receive).
So Apple's stated goals, on record, that they wanted to remove DRM had nothing to do with it whatsoever?
Remember, it wasn't Apple's choice to use DRM in the first place.
And if you think that artists get much from a $10 CD, you are mistaken - the iTMS (and other online distribution channels) have done more to put money in the artist's pockets than anything the big cartels have done in recent years, since it allows independents and small shops to get distribution to a wide audience - a difficult thing to get when the big players control the radio stations and have the money to manage the physical creation and distribution of CDs.
Just because Apple is going to enter this market (selling a product that they don;t set the price of) does not mean that authors are suddenly going to get screwed - that is happening already due to the publishers. eBooks may be a way for smaller authors and publishing houses to get some serious distribution going, in much the same way that music producers have done.
Apple may be a part of that solution, with a large and successful store with a broad audience. They won;t be the only player though.
Apple updates to a new version of OS X, provides a developer release for testing etc, and a third party app breaks due to changes in code.
MS releases new OS, including beta phase, and a third party app breaks.
You're saying that requesting a workaround from either company and MS providing one (citation needed?!) and Apple not doing so (citation needed?!) is the only difference?
The reason that the development builds of new OSes exist is for exactly this reason.
Apple (and MS) have both done a great deal to work towards backwards compatibility - in Apple's case they kept around a copy of OS 9 as the Classic environment for a long time, and moved to a fat binary app model during the architecture change. Their dev tools feature the ability to target specific older OS versions during build, so you can maintain a working app in the older OS if you find you need to change code in the newer version (usually through APIs being changed or removed).
Apple is under no obligation to ensure third party apps work across platforms - they offer tools and documentation to assist, but the dev builds are there for that reason. I would argue that MS is in exactly the same position. If something breaks, it's not MS's responsibility to tailor their OS to prevent it - if they just keep everything from the old OS and pile new stuff on top you end up with a huge mess.
The Palm Pilot not syncing is entirely Palm's fault. They used to write an app that allowed syncing on Mac, but then they stopped. A third party stepped in (The Missing Sync) and the rest is history.
Don't blame Apple for sync problems with third party software - the sync APIs are all there, documented, from release to release of the OS.
As far as apps on the iPad, you are correct - Apple controls what is on the store, just as Amazon controls the Kindle. If this doesn't suit you, then the iPad is not for you. Buy an Android based tablet (when they arrive).
No, that's pretty accurate. Apple here is not setting the prices, it is just defining the nature of the sales method on their store and the percentage that Apple will take. There's no mandate about what that price should be.
If someone undercuts them, so be it - if they can make money at that margin, that's the nature of business.
Apple doesn't care if you buy from the store really - they don't make much money at all on that front, the bulk of the meat for them is in the hardware. The original 99c one-price model was to prevent the music industry from setting the one hit on an album to $1.50 and setting all the other filler to 79c and then advertising "songs from 79c!". They wanted to prevent all the popular stuff being much more than the bulk of the catalog. The traded that away in exchange for the removal of DRM.
I don't see how they are "forcing" anyone to do anything - no one is forced to buy from the iTunes Store (even if they have an iPod) - as you mentioned, they were never the cheapest online music store anyway. I don't see how it will be any different for ebooks. If they are dearer on the iTunes Store, people will buy them on Amazon's store. If Amazon wants to keep driving prices down, it has to realise that this will benefit competing retailers as well (not just Apple). There's nothing nefarious about this.
They will also not be Apple's prices - they will be the publisher's prices. If they are too high, nothing will sell and the prices will come down.
Apple didn't remove DRM because it faced pressure from Amazon, it removed DRM at the earliest possible opportunity that it could, as one of the original stated goals of the iTMS - as soon as they were able to change the deal with the music companies they did so (and in turn gave up the "one price" model that had been in place before, and moving to a variable pricing model).
While it may look like this is a bad deal for consumers, I think that ultimately it will balance out. Amazon's model is very similar to that of Wal Mart - a giant that can essentially dictate the market conditions, making it hard for smaller retailers and encouraging a monoculture. Large supermarkets and retailers like Amazon and Wal Mart reduce the choice for consumers, and in the case of WalMart, can actually dictate the content of your product (or they can refuse to stock it, and cost you a gigantic portion of your sales).
Apple's model switches it around a little, and allows the publisher to set a price, and I am sure that they will try to set the prices high (I mean, who doesn't want to maximise their profits), but if it's too high then no one will buy. Eventually the sweet spot will be released.
I am not a fan of retailers like WalMart gaining too much control of a market - it only puts pressure on the supplier of the products to drive prices down, which in the long run is bad for the consumer (but hey, if WalMart sells milk 5c cheaper per pint, who cares that it forces smaller farmers out so only the mega-farms can economically produce milk?). If a model that favours publishers works, it will allow the rise of much smaller publishers who just simply couldn't survive under a "profit margin squashed to zero" approach. The rise of smaller publishers also means that the current big guys have to compete more on quality and price.
Who says that? Apple even *possibly* dropping support (ie, not even officially doing so, with security updates to 10.4 in September 09, but otherwise no news about whether it is supported any more) is routinely criticised on slashdot when things like this come up.
If you're specifically talking about the PPC>Intel switch, or the OS9 to OS X switch, it was a necessary move for them in both cases. For dropping PPC - IBM just couldn't deliver on PPC performance or price, so Apple moved architecture (and kept up with universal binaries for some time). In the case of OS 9 to OS X, they kept Classic around for donkey's years - I think mainly to support Quark Xpress, among other things, who were dragging their feet (and shot themselves in the foot when Adobe mopped up some quick and easy InDesign marketshare).
I think any platform that you have standardised on will eventually become obsolete and require upgrades. If you rely on Apple or MS to provide that platform, you are at their whim in terms of just when those dates will be. Both Apple and MS have maintained backward compatibility where possible and have provided things to assist in the move to the new software/hardware.
Even in the OSS world, there are going to be points where your favourite kernel version of choice just has to be put out to pasture because time moves on.
"all" internet activity is a bit of a stretch. I would say that it would be more like "all the services on direct.gov" like paying your taxes, updating car tax and anything else that is currently accessed via the login credentials they sent you some time ago - I have a little card somewhere with those details on that I use to do my taxes online.
I don't think they have any intention of making it a requirement to "log into the internet" as a whole.
"Hackish" in that their chosen method was to use Apple's USB ID so that iTunes saw the Pre as an Apple iPod - that is hackish by any sense of the word.
Incidentally, the iPod itself doesn't appear as a generic drive by default, and iTunes will sync with it without that feature enabled. It's not part of the sync process to mount the iPod as a generic drive.
Have you used The Missing Sync? It knows where your iTunes Library is, and it knows your playlists as you have set them up in iTunes itself.
You just select the playlists you want to sync from within the sync app itself, in much the same way you do for the iPod. Even the icons are the same.
The only difference is that the window that you put the checkboxes in (with your playlists, read right off the iTunes DB by the app automatically) is not inside the iTunes window itself. The sync experience itself is *practically* identical.
The Missing Sync enables much more than just "capable of syncing" - the experience is smooth and relatively seamless. All you have over the iPod is the fact that you need this app running instead of just using iTunes to do it all for you. The iTunes sync features are superfluous when you are using it since it replicates everything iTunes does.
I'm not being disingenuous here - I am in no way attempting to hide the fact that the app doesn't create a totally integrated experience - it clearly does not, but for the user there is very little difference.
Again, you can drop the hostility. I'm not interested in ad hominem attacks. I have not been hostile to you. Please act your age.
Who is talking about Windows here? We were talking about Palm sidestepping the issue in OS X. Either way, there are several sync programs for Windows that work with the Windows versions of iTunes.
Including The Missing Sync, which we have been talking about. Again, this is done without resorting to USB trickery.
"Willfully [sic] ignorant" - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Why is Apple obliged to make any and all third party players seamlessly sync with a piece of software it gives away for free, especially when it offers a documented way for the people who make the players to write a simple plugin/conduit to be able to sync.
The sync APIs are right there, all laid out in OS X.
You are again confusing monopoly issues with ordinary business practices.
Microsoft is under no obligation to make the Xbox 360 media centre sync seamlessly with anything other than Windows. There's no problem with that.
What they cannot do is deliberately break something (say, their JVM) in order to force the web to use IE (since they have an OS monopoly) or use their OS monopoly to "suggest" to OEMs that they only sell PCs with Windows preinstalled, not Linux, and that the Windows PCs they sell not have any competing web browser preinstalled. That is illegal.
What Apple is doing is... none of those things. They are not stopping anyone else from competing in the market by using their monopoly in music sales - they allow third party syncing, and publish documentation on just how to do it. They are not going into phone stores and threatening to withhold iPhone supplies from them unless they refuse to sell competing phones or media players.
The situation is very different.
iTunes is not incompatible with third party hardware - it is demonstrably compatible with all sorts of third party players and phones, even Palm Pres that are not iPods/iPhones.
I would also speak to your attempts to lower the tone - I'm just having a discussion here. You are the one throwing personal attacks around. It's the nature of a debate that you disagree with me (it wouldn't be much of a debate otherwise) but ad hominem attacks really serve no one.
Slashdot Mirror
You will note the hyperbole in the GPP (which I was replying to) and my post.
The use of sarcasm to refute a blatantly false point is not lost on you, I take?
Your life expectancy is lower because a large proportion of your population do not have access to preventative medicine, or the healthcare system in general. The US system provides for some of its population very well, but for the large majority it is a very poor option.
Oh I'm fully aware that the French, Ausies and even Canucks have better social healthcare than the UK. I am all too aware - I live with the system. It is still infinitely preferable to the US system.
It is recovering from 20 years of neglect under a tory government in the 80s that could not outright kill it (that would be political suicide) but could starve it to death and turn it into a total mess. It is a mess that it has still not recovered from, many, many years later.
It is in serious need of fixing, but it is still in better shape than the US.
It has numerous flaws, and has the "media frenzy" cases that make sensational headlines (like the current one, even though it happened a year ago and has been fixed already - just politically convenient to run the story now), but at its heart it is a very effective system that keeps the UK populace healthy. Most importantly, it provides care for everyone equally for the cost of NI contributions. No one in the UK has to worry about medical bankrupcy, or have to deal with situations where an insurance company overrides your doctor's treatment decisions.
Incidentally, the UK also has a private healthcare system that its citizens are free to participate in if they like, if they feel the NHS cannot provide for them.
If you wait 13 hours to be diagnosed with life threatening conditions then the triage system has failed.
The US system "works" for the rich (and even then, not always - your insurance company decides when you are too expensive to treat) at the expense of the poor.
You get healthcare at the expense of those less fortunate than yourself, which doesn't sit well with me at all. It's also *absurdly* expensive, even before you factor in the private insurance cost - the US spends twice as much of its GDP per capita on the system it has compared to the UK.
Even Sarah Palin has to duck across the border to canada to afford medicine.
When you ride in one in the UK, you know you will never have to worry about paying for it (or any of the treatment you receive when you arrive at your destination).
Right wing newspaper, 1 year old event (now fixed with update to software and training), election year in UK, governing left wing party in power.
Pretty much covers it.
The beachball of rumination is there to remind you to book your holiday to the coast.
It used to be a feature of 10.2 and earlier - I only see it occasionally in the later versions, but it is still there occasionally.
Oh I know, I should have added a (/generalisation) tag - I know a US ambulance will take you to the closest ER, but the GP's description of how this one flaw (that happened a year ago, and was fixed last year, months before the article) shows what would happen if "Obamacare" passes is just senseless hyperbole.
There are a great deal of things wrong with the US system, but my post was (mostly) hyperbole of my own.
The actual event in question happened a year ago. Given the recent news in the USA - something to do with some sort of bill about healthcare, and the imminent UK general election, I find the timing from a right wing newspaper here in the UK to be highly sensational - especially since the issue has been corrected in the new version of the software, that was released and rolled out last year.
Yes, they are - and they can override the automatic priority set by the computer based on the information they receive and their own judgement. They also will stay on the line and talk a caller through vital life saving steps while the ambulance is on its way. They are remarkable people, far from the "computer says noooooo" drones that your "culture" seems to suggest.
Of course, they are human and sometimes make mistakes, or are sometimes sub-standard at their jobs, but the vast, vast majority are a credit to their profession.
If that actually happened as described, then the dispatch centre was grossly negligent, or the information provided by the person calling initially led the dispatcher to determine that it was non-life threatening.
Regardless, ambulances are routinely dispatched for non-deadly situations - which is the point of the categorisation that led to this article in the first place. Alternatively you can phone your GP and arrange an emergency home visit from whoever is on call for that, out of hours.
Alternatively, we could have a US system, where the ambulance won't set off unless your insurance covers it, or won't take you to the nearest hospital because that is not "in network".
Or, they'll take you to the hospital, unconscious, and then stick you with the bill because the trip wasn't "pre-approved".
This has nothing to do with socialised care and everything to do with bureaucrats making decisions that affect people - it's is not exclusive to socialised medicine. Regardless of how you slice it, ambulances and ambulance crews are a finite resource and priorities have to be set. They should not be set by non-medical people though, as in this case which was clearly wrong, and in the case of a lot of medical decisions under the US system (where your insurance company, and not a doctor, decides the care you receive).
I'll take the NHS any day.
So Apple's stated goals, on record, that they wanted to remove DRM had nothing to do with it whatsoever?
Remember, it wasn't Apple's choice to use DRM in the first place.
And if you think that artists get much from a $10 CD, you are mistaken - the iTMS (and other online distribution channels) have done more to put money in the artist's pockets than anything the big cartels have done in recent years, since it allows independents and small shops to get distribution to a wide audience - a difficult thing to get when the big players control the radio stations and have the money to manage the physical creation and distribution of CDs.
Just because Apple is going to enter this market (selling a product that they don;t set the price of) does not mean that authors are suddenly going to get screwed - that is happening already due to the publishers. eBooks may be a way for smaller authors and publishing houses to get some serious distribution going, in much the same way that music producers have done.
Apple may be a part of that solution, with a large and successful store with a broad audience. They won;t be the only player though.
It runs iPhone OS, which is based on OS X with some of the unnecessary frameworks removed that are not necessary on a handheld device.
What it's not is retail OS X installed with a couple of bits tacked on to make the touchscreen work.
From a low-level standpoint though, it is functionally almost identical to OS X.
So we have two potential situations:
Apple updates to a new version of OS X, provides a developer release for testing etc, and a third party app breaks due to changes in code.
MS releases new OS, including beta phase, and a third party app breaks.
You're saying that requesting a workaround from either company and MS providing one (citation needed?!) and Apple not doing so (citation needed?!) is the only difference?
The reason that the development builds of new OSes exist is for exactly this reason.
Apple (and MS) have both done a great deal to work towards backwards compatibility - in Apple's case they kept around a copy of OS 9 as the Classic environment for a long time, and moved to a fat binary app model during the architecture change. Their dev tools feature the ability to target specific older OS versions during build, so you can maintain a working app in the older OS if you find you need to change code in the newer version (usually through APIs being changed or removed).
Apple is under no obligation to ensure third party apps work across platforms - they offer tools and documentation to assist, but the dev builds are there for that reason. I would argue that MS is in exactly the same position. If something breaks, it's not MS's responsibility to tailor their OS to prevent it - if they just keep everything from the old OS and pile new stuff on top you end up with a huge mess.
The Palm Pilot not syncing is entirely Palm's fault. They used to write an app that allowed syncing on Mac, but then they stopped. A third party stepped in (The Missing Sync) and the rest is history.
Don't blame Apple for sync problems with third party software - the sync APIs are all there, documented, from release to release of the OS.
As far as apps on the iPad, you are correct - Apple controls what is on the store, just as Amazon controls the Kindle. If this doesn't suit you, then the iPad is not for you. Buy an Android based tablet (when they arrive).
No, that's pretty accurate. Apple here is not setting the prices, it is just defining the nature of the sales method on their store and the percentage that Apple will take. There's no mandate about what that price should be.
If someone undercuts them, so be it - if they can make money at that margin, that's the nature of business.
Apple doesn't care if you buy from the store really - they don't make much money at all on that front, the bulk of the meat for them is in the hardware. The original 99c one-price model was to prevent the music industry from setting the one hit on an album to $1.50 and setting all the other filler to 79c and then advertising "songs from 79c!". They wanted to prevent all the popular stuff being much more than the bulk of the catalog. The traded that away in exchange for the removal of DRM.
I don't see how they are "forcing" anyone to do anything - no one is forced to buy from the iTunes Store (even if they have an iPod) - as you mentioned, they were never the cheapest online music store anyway. I don't see how it will be any different for ebooks. If they are dearer on the iTunes Store, people will buy them on Amazon's store. If Amazon wants to keep driving prices down, it has to realise that this will benefit competing retailers as well (not just Apple). There's nothing nefarious about this.
They will also not be Apple's prices - they will be the publisher's prices. If they are too high, nothing will sell and the prices will come down.
Apple didn't remove DRM because it faced pressure from Amazon, it removed DRM at the earliest possible opportunity that it could, as one of the original stated goals of the iTMS - as soon as they were able to change the deal with the music companies they did so (and in turn gave up the "one price" model that had been in place before, and moving to a variable pricing model).
While it may look like this is a bad deal for consumers, I think that ultimately it will balance out. Amazon's model is very similar to that of Wal Mart - a giant that can essentially dictate the market conditions, making it hard for smaller retailers and encouraging a monoculture. Large supermarkets and retailers like Amazon and Wal Mart reduce the choice for consumers, and in the case of WalMart, can actually dictate the content of your product (or they can refuse to stock it, and cost you a gigantic portion of your sales).
Apple's model switches it around a little, and allows the publisher to set a price, and I am sure that they will try to set the prices high (I mean, who doesn't want to maximise their profits), but if it's too high then no one will buy. Eventually the sweet spot will be released.
I am not a fan of retailers like WalMart gaining too much control of a market - it only puts pressure on the supplier of the products to drive prices down, which in the long run is bad for the consumer (but hey, if WalMart sells milk 5c cheaper per pint, who cares that it forces smaller farmers out so only the mega-farms can economically produce milk?). If a model that favours publishers works, it will allow the rise of much smaller publishers who just simply couldn't survive under a "profit margin squashed to zero" approach. The rise of smaller publishers also means that the current big guys have to compete more on quality and price.
Who says that? Apple even *possibly* dropping support (ie, not even officially doing so, with security updates to 10.4 in September 09, but otherwise no news about whether it is supported any more) is routinely criticised on slashdot when things like this come up.
If you're specifically talking about the PPC>Intel switch, or the OS9 to OS X switch, it was a necessary move for them in both cases. For dropping PPC - IBM just couldn't deliver on PPC performance or price, so Apple moved architecture (and kept up with universal binaries for some time). In the case of OS 9 to OS X, they kept Classic around for donkey's years - I think mainly to support Quark Xpress, among other things, who were dragging their feet (and shot themselves in the foot when Adobe mopped up some quick and easy InDesign marketshare).
I think any platform that you have standardised on will eventually become obsolete and require upgrades. If you rely on Apple or MS to provide that platform, you are at their whim in terms of just when those dates will be. Both Apple and MS have maintained backward compatibility where possible and have provided things to assist in the move to the new software/hardware.
Even in the OSS world, there are going to be points where your favourite kernel version of choice just has to be put out to pasture because time moves on.
"all" internet activity is a bit of a stretch. I would say that it would be more like "all the services on direct.gov" like paying your taxes, updating car tax and anything else that is currently accessed via the login credentials they sent you some time ago - I have a little card somewhere with those details on that I use to do my taxes online.
I don't think they have any intention of making it a requirement to "log into the internet" as a whole.
"Hackish" in that their chosen method was to use Apple's USB ID so that iTunes saw the Pre as an Apple iPod - that is hackish by any sense of the word.
Incidentally, the iPod itself doesn't appear as a generic drive by default, and iTunes will sync with it without that feature enabled. It's not part of the sync process to mount the iPod as a generic drive.
Have you used The Missing Sync? It knows where your iTunes Library is, and it knows your playlists as you have set them up in iTunes itself.
You just select the playlists you want to sync from within the sync app itself, in much the same way you do for the iPod. Even the icons are the same.
The only difference is that the window that you put the checkboxes in (with your playlists, read right off the iTunes DB by the app automatically) is not inside the iTunes window itself. The sync experience itself is *practically* identical.
The Missing Sync enables much more than just "capable of syncing" - the experience is smooth and relatively seamless. All you have over the iPod is the fact that you need this app running instead of just using iTunes to do it all for you. The iTunes sync features are superfluous when you are using it since it replicates everything iTunes does.
I'm not being disingenuous here - I am in no way attempting to hide the fact that the app doesn't create a totally integrated experience - it clearly does not, but for the user there is very little difference.
Again, you can drop the hostility. I'm not interested in ad hominem attacks. I have not been hostile to you. Please act your age.
If their patent is under RAND terms, yes. The GSM patents owned by Nokia are just such ones - in exchange for them being part of the standard.
Who is talking about Windows here? We were talking about Palm sidestepping the issue in OS X. Either way, there are several sync programs for Windows that work with the Windows versions of iTunes.
Including The Missing Sync, which we have been talking about. Again, this is done without resorting to USB trickery.
"Willfully [sic] ignorant" - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Why is Apple obliged to make any and all third party players seamlessly sync with a piece of software it gives away for free, especially when it offers a documented way for the people who make the players to write a simple plugin/conduit to be able to sync.
The sync APIs are right there, all laid out in OS X.
You are again confusing monopoly issues with ordinary business practices.
Microsoft is under no obligation to make the Xbox 360 media centre sync seamlessly with anything other than Windows. There's no problem with that.
What they cannot do is deliberately break something (say, their JVM) in order to force the web to use IE (since they have an OS monopoly) or use their OS monopoly to "suggest" to OEMs that they only sell PCs with Windows preinstalled, not Linux, and that the Windows PCs they sell not have any competing web browser preinstalled. That is illegal.
What Apple is doing is... none of those things. They are not stopping anyone else from competing in the market by using their monopoly in music sales - they allow third party syncing, and publish documentation on just how to do it. They are not going into phone stores and threatening to withhold iPhone supplies from them unless they refuse to sell competing phones or media players.
The situation is very different.
iTunes is not incompatible with third party hardware - it is demonstrably compatible with all sorts of third party players and phones, even Palm Pres that are not iPods/iPhones.
I would also speak to your attempts to lower the tone - I'm just having a discussion here. You are the one throwing personal attacks around. It's the nature of a debate that you disagree with me (it wouldn't be much of a debate otherwise) but ad hominem attacks really serve no one.