Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#11

Post by jsz0 » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 10:33 PM UTC

mrkurt wrote: post #9

What's really interesting is who this hurts -- iTunes on OSX users who may have purchased music from the iTunes music store. Windows users have a number of really useful and viable options to iTunes for managing their music. OSX users... don't. If I were still on Windows, I probably wouldn't have been using my Pre with iTunes to begin with. Unfortunately for me, I switched to a Mac not long ago, so I'm stuck with iTu…

There's SongBird for OSX which IIRC also supports iPod syncing. In the case of the Pre you can also use it as a USB Mass Storage device to add music. Or Palm could just stop being lazy and offer proper software for their device.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#12

Post by jsz0 » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 10:45 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #6

It's kind of amusing to see... I'm pretty sure people at Apple realise that just by breaking compatibility they won't force any special amount of Pre owners to suddenly buy an Apple product which does work with iTunes. They just bought Pre - why would they even look at iTouch / iPhone? Maybe iPod, but probably not before the next salary. Also, I guess someone told them that this move has the same problem as DRM. Now…

Maybe Apple wants to license iTunes Sync support in the future to third parties? In that case they would obviously want to restrict who can use it. Personally I think Apple just doesn't want the responsibility of support someone else's device and figured it was better to shut the door on it now instead of waiting. From Palm's perspective it's really puzzling they even did this in the first place. They have an agreement in place with Amazon to sell music through the Pre. Why support iTunes? I would love to see Amazon offer a desktop app for buying/syncing/ripping/playing music that could rival iTunes and create some real competition.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#13

Post by Zak » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 10:54 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #2

I eagerly await the 1000-item-long comment thread about antitrust, unfair competition, and Apple's history of bare-knuckled business practices. Really. But before we kick that off, can I just chime in with the observation that the overwhelming likelihood of just this event made it irresponsible for Palm to promote iTunes syncing for their device?

It was irresponsible of Palm to do so. That doesn't mean it isn't user-hostile and slightly evil for Apple to intentionally break syncing with a third-party device.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#14

Post by lsb » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 11:01 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #8

This is why I use free software; software that works in my interests, instead of actively against it. I don't really understand why people would use software that intentionally limits their rights, but it makes me sad. Amarok is vastly better than iTunes, if you are into that kind of thing. (I personally use xmms2 and a variety of perl scripts to control it, but I can see how that's not exactly suitable for everyone.…

The software itself doesn't work against you, but for people to have a good interface it has to go through a lot of use. (That's why bash, for instance, is so much better as a shell than GIMP is as a picture editor.)

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#15

Post by rimantas » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 11:02 PM UTC

mingyeow wrote: post #10

Apple deserves MUCH more rap and lawsuits than they currently get. They make amazing products, but that should be independent of their business practices

I would not call relying on a hack to use third party (which is not at all interested to support you) software a solid business practice either.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#16

Post by snprbob86 » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 11:06 PM UTC

mingyeow wrote: post #10

Apple deserves MUCH more rap and lawsuits than they currently get. They make amazing products, but that should be independent of their business practices

Patients don't sue doctors that they like.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#17

Post by elai » Wed, Jul 15, 2009, 11:35 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #6

It's kind of amusing to see... I'm pretty sure people at Apple realise that just by breaking compatibility they won't force any special amount of Pre owners to suddenly buy an Apple product which does work with iTunes. They just bought Pre - why would they even look at iTouch / iPhone? Maybe iPod, but probably not before the next salary. Also, I guess someone told them that this move has the same problem as DRM. Now…

I wouldn't say that PKI & checking is far off, what do you think the entire app store dev platform is built on after all? I think the DRM is similar too.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#18

Post by sjh » Thu, Jul 16, 2009, 12:06 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #6

It's kind of amusing to see... I'm pretty sure people at Apple realise that just by breaking compatibility they won't force any special amount of Pre owners to suddenly buy an Apple product which does work with iTunes. They just bought Pre - why would they even look at iTouch / iPhone? Maybe iPod, but probably not before the next salary. Also, I guess someone told them that this move has the same problem as DRM. Now…

There may be a support issue for Apple here. Imagine a customer purchases a Pre and syncs it to iTunes, but Palm's reverse-engineering of the iPod-iTunes protocol is incomplete and iTunes crashes as a result (and does so reproducibly). Many customers would follow this up with Apple, but Apple would likely be unable to help them (presuming they were even interested in doing so).

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#19

Post by GHFigs » Thu, Jul 16, 2009, 12:10 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #5

tptacek wrote: post #2

I eagerly await the 1000-item-long comment thread about antitrust, unfair competition, and Apple's history of bare-knuckled business practices. Really. But before we kick that off, can I just chime in with the observation that the overwhelming likelihood of just this event made it irresponsible for Palm to promote iTunes syncing for their device?

I agree that it's irresponsible for Palm to promote iTunes compatibility - but someone had to be first. Without a clear, actual case of "Apple shuts down competitor by software patch" one cannot make a case against Apple as a monopolizer. Hypothetical "Apple can shut down competitor" cases do not convince mainstream lawmakers and media.

Let's be clear here: Apple doesn't prevent syncing with the iTunes library. What they prevent is third parties using iTunes to do so. It is less a case of shutting out a competitor as it is squashing a parasite. Nokia and RIM both provide software to sync with a user's iTunes library, why won't Palm?

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#20

Post by ars » Thu, Jul 16, 2009, 12:25 AM UTC

I got downmodded when I said it before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661202 so now can I say I told you so?

It's amazing how pretty much every person in that thread refused to believe Apple would break it. This is not an accident, Apple did it deliberately - they warned about it, and then they did it.

Edit: And I get downmodded for this one too, which I expected. People clearly really like Apple and refuse to believe they would do this.