Apple blocks rival smart phones
Ivan | Fri, 2009-07-17 18:04
Apple with the iTunes, 8.2.1 update blocks non-Apple phones from appearing as an iPod in iTunes. This is a blow most importantly to Palm, because their Palm tre has been advertised to work with iTunes.
Officially Apple did this because they do not test non-Apple products with iTunes, but it's clearly a move to protect the iPhone market. The message is clear. If you want iTunes and iTMS on the go you have to get an Apple device.
I would like to state that Apple does have the legal and most importantly moral right to do this. Just as Microsoft has the right to include IE in Windows. There is nothing wrong with a company protecting and upselling their own products. They can and should do this. There is no obligation from one company to help competing companies. And, on the long term, such protective behavior will benefit everyone.
If Apple were to spend resources on making sure other devices are working fine with iTunes they would limit themselves in development. Therefore iPhone users would suffer to help out Palm users. Palm users would gain on the short term, but will be left with uncertainty on long term.
In this situation Palm will have to make a decision, either to build their own iTunes/iTMS ecosystem to sell hardware or to agree with Apple to support their hardware for a fee. Either way consumers will benefit. If Palm creates a competing music player and store, we all will have a bigger choice. If Palm pays for Apple support Palm users can be sure iTunes will work properly on their device.
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Agreed.
I normally agree with your opinions on here Ivan, but I can't say I agree with this.
Firstly, Microsoft doesn't have the right to include IE with Windows (that was the whole point of the recent EU competition ruling), and secondly, whilst Apple might have the legal right to do this, it's absolutely not beneficial for consumers in the future.
Notwithstanding the issues with compatibility and technical support, this walled garden approach merely restricts consumer choice and reduces competition. Ultimately, Palm themselves would acknowledge that this has been achieved through a fairly hacky backdoor method and they will be responsible for modifying the Palm OS to keep this compatibility through future versions of iTunes.
I understand why Apple have taken this decision, but it's disappointing from a consumer standpoint...and this is coming from someone with several Macs/iPhone/iPods etc.
They remind me more and more of Microsoft every day!
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I would say that a clearer benefit for apple would be to allow people to use on all platforms but when you are using it with apple products allow the program to be more diverse or have more functions rather then not including non apple users.
I think it could hurt them, but then in a sense how many people already think you have to use apple products to use itunes?
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same as Microsoft Both suck,that's why Microsoft Market share is decreasing ,and also why Androids may spread
by the way why ITunes for Windows? It's abloated software on the rival
Anti-competitive behavior. More proof that Apple cares more about profits than anything else.
I suppose next MS will start blocking the hundreds of thousands of applications that run on Windows because they haven't personally tested them.
What a joke.