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

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#31

Post by jemmons » Thu, Jul 16, 2009, 1:40 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #30

jemmons wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even. Competitors are (as far as I know) welcome to use iTunes' xml database and files. But they are not allowed to label themselves as iPods, especially on user-facing interfaces. That's exactly what the Pre does, and it's a clear and blatant infringement on Apple's marks and trade dress.

A device identifying itself as an iPod in a protocol is no more "blatant infringement on Apple's marks" than it is when every modern browser puts Mozilla/4.0 in its user agent.

Please note "especially on user-facing interfaces" above. The Pre identifying itself as an iPod in a protocol is not an issue. The problem is that doing so ultimately advertises to the user that the Pre is an iPod via dialogs, icons, and other interface verbiage.

If for Internet Explorer to ape Mozilla/4.0 compatibility, it had to momentarily change its name, icon, and all user-facing interfaces to match Firefox so that one could not distinguish between an actual instance of Firefox and the "IE-in-fox's-clothing", you can bet that the Mozilla foundation would be peeved. Aside from legal considerations, what if IE-with-firefox-dress crashed all the time and people wrongfully blamed Firefox for this sorry state of affairs?

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#32

Post by GHFigs » Sun, Jul 19, 2009, 1:18 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #29

GHFigs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, as the person you replied to in that thread, I thought it was pretty obvious they were going to break it. From Apple's perspective, the ability to sync a Pre is a bug, and they fixed it as they would any other. What isn't obvious is why you seem to find it so offensive and threatening.

I don't find it threatening, but I do find it offensive. Apple is harming consumers (it's own customers of music players), in order to protect it's market share in a related product. It's just not ethical behavior. Some people tried to say "they just don't support it", but that's not so, they broke it deliberately. (And I know it was deliberate because they said in advance that they would do it.) So that's what surpr…

I don't get it. Why should Apple support the Pre if they don't want to? Palm is perfectly capable of developing their own software that syncs with an iTunes library, and Apple has done nothing to prevent that. (RIM and Nokia both have such software, and DoubleTwist supports the Pre.) Why is it offensive it Apple chooses not to let their competitors parasitically hijack their software? Why is that any different from any other bug that produces undesirable behavior?

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#33

Post by ars » Sun, Jul 19, 2009, 6:29 AM UTC

GHFigs wrote: post #32

ars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it threatening, but I do find it offensive. Apple is harming consumers (it's own customers of music players), in order to protect it's market share in a related product. It's just not ethical behavior. Some people tried to say "they just don't support it", but that's not so, they broke it deliberately. (And I know it was deliberate because they said in advance that they would do it.) So that's what surpr…

I don't get it. Why should Apple support the Pre if they don't want to? Palm is perfectly capable of developing their own software that syncs with an iTunes library, and Apple has done nothing to prevent that. (RIM and Nokia both have such software, and DoubleTwist supports the Pre.) Why is it offensive it Apple chooses not to let their competitors parasitically hijack their software? Why is that any different from a…

They should simply ignore Palm. Instead they chose to actively block them.

Re: Apple breaks up Palm Pre, iTunes lovefest

#34

Post by GHFigs » Mon, Jul 20, 2009, 1:28 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #33

GHFigs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Why should Apple support the Pre if they don't want to? Palm is perfectly capable of developing their own software that syncs with an iTunes library, and Apple has done nothing to prevent that. (RIM and Nokia both have such software, and DoubleTwist supports the Pre.) Why is it offensive it Apple chooses not to let their competitors parasitically hijack their software? Why is that any different from a…

They should simply ignore Palm. Instead they chose to actively block them.

They didn't actively do anything to Palm. Apple fixed a bug in their software that causes what they think is undesirable behavior.

Suggesting that a company should avoid fixing bugs in it's software if it would potentially harm their competitors is a little bit on the silly side. I don't know of any business that operates on that principle.