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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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?

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I agree with that. I'm sure that they would rather have their own syncing app that simply works with the iTunes library rather than masquerading as an iPod and leaving it up to iTunes to do all the work. That's just plain crazy if you think about it, but in their rush to market this was probably the easiest way. Surely there is a team at Palm working on a standalone app as we speak. Other handset manufacturers use their own applications for the sync and simply utilize the iTunes library data, in time Palm will too.

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?

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?

I completely concur.

I wonder now many consumers saw the small print stating, "Compatible with iTunes v8.2. Compatibility with future versions not guaranteed."

It seems irresponsible for Palm to put out a feature that relies on a hack, knowing full well that it would likely break when iTunes was updated.

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.

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