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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

I continue to be amazed at how people are willing to give Apple a pass on cutting off the Pre. Paticularly this guy who says he can "understand" Apple cutting off the Pre but then balks at Apple cutting off his music software.

Monopolistic greed is understandable when it doesn't affect me seems to be the attitude (On that note I'm pretty sure Apple makes way more off iTunes than it does off the hardware at this point)

As a customer who is paying for this music I should be able to sync it with whatever I want. I don't expect Apple to support the Pre but I think it's reprehensible to actively try to cut it off.

(For the record I'm an iPhone 3GS owner who doesn't even like the Pre. I just don't want to be forced to use Apple products for the rest of my life just to keep my music)

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You're not forced to use Apple products to keep your music--none of it is DRM'd anymore so you can use your non-Apple software to sync it with your non-Apple devices on your non-Apple computer. It's even plainly available in the file system--and Apple doesn't even require you to let it reorganize your music files into its preferred folder hierarchy.

If Apple supports interoperability, they have a mess on their hands and they're dealing with interoperability issues instead of making a better product. If they don't support interoperability, people write angsty blog posts about them breaking whatever hackish unsupported software they were using to interface with their iPod. (As for the Pre, anything that allows arbitrary devices to pretend to be an iPhone and sync jeopardizes email account information--which can be synced to the iPhone--and is a security flaw. So I'm sure Apple did intentionally lock out the Pre. But I don't think they care about gtkpod enough to intentionally lock it out.)

"On that note I'm pretty sure Apple makes way more off iTunes than it does off the hardware at this point"

Why stop at "pretty sure"? They're a publicly traded company. It's not hard to get their financials.

Here's some numbers from their Q3 report a couple days ago:

"Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter, producing $1.689 billion in revenue..."

"About 10.215 million iPods were sold this quarter, resulting in $1.492 billion in revenue..."

"Apple's "Other Music Related Products and Services" segment was responsible for $958 million in revenue..."

Cite: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/notes_of_inter...

Not supporting interoperability is one thing. Going out of your way to prevent it is another.

Interoperability with the Pre or with gtkpod? It seems like Apple broke interoperability with the pre deliberately, with the side effect (one that Apple is apathetic towards) of breaking compatibility with gtkpod. Since it's the latter this blogger is complaining about, I'd file this under "not supporting interoperability".

Well, take a look from Apple's perspective. They spent time and money developing a platform for their iPods. Why would they want to allow their free (for consumers) music platform to seamlessly work with a direct competitor's product?

So Apple gets to support iTunes and polish it for years and then Palm gets to leech off their hard work and use it for free without repercussion?

I think by disabling the Pre they're saying to Palm, "Hey, Palm, why don't you go spend your own millions of dollars and build your own damn app." When you look at it that way I can't really fault them.

What I suspect will happen is that Apple and Palm will battle back and forth for a few revisions over a few months and then Palm will cave and throw some money at Apple (or something else they want) and we'll hear about some sort of partnership and suddenly hey, look, the Pre will be supported officially. Either that or Palm will give up and make their own music uploader.

And that is why I never buy Apple. I continue to be amazed that a company which is responsible for such cutting edge technology and engineering excellence maintains such an old school attitude to business, its customers and its developers. Apple just doesn't get the concept of openness. It's stuck in the 80s.

> Apple just doesn't get the concept of openness. It's stuck in the 80s.

Apple's attitude is incredibly modern; just not open.

Do we HAVE to be 100% open all the time now, really? That makes no sense. Apple have killer products all the way from distribution to consumption; they've marketed them and sold them with effectiveness other companies only dream of!

I certainly cant fault them for wanting to keep that success to themselves :)

If they don't block it they will be forced into supporting it if enough users use it.

Not really. No one can force Apple to support something. It is like Microsoft being forced to support their applications on WINE.

If a significant number of users were using iTunes to sync 3rd party devices and a future update to iTunes inadvertently broke that syncing, who do you think the consumer would blame?

If a significant percentage of Microsoft Office purchases were run on WINE, Microsoft would be forced to support that scenario. However, that's not the case.

They would only be "forced" if Microsoft recognized revenue potential in WINE users, then it's a business decision.

So as a vendor what I should do is force my own customers not to force me to support their needs?

"As for the Pre, anything that allows arbitrary devices to pretend to be an iPhone and sync jeopardizes email account information--which can be synced to the iPhone--and is a security flaw"

So any of the billions of iPod users are automatically trusted? I can't imagine the security of email on the iPod depends on trusting all iPhones? Surely they have some other mechanisms in place?

So any of the billions of iPod users are automatically trusted?

Well... yes. Right? I mean, not 100% trusted -- does anyone trust their own software 100%? But as trusted as software written or vetted by Apple can be.

iPods exclusively run software that is under Apple's control. On everything but the iPhone and iPod Touch, 100% of that software is written by Apple itself. And even on the iPhone, Apple has the power to immediately halt distribution of any app that is causing trouble until the app is fixed. (And, as we all know, they do this. For reasons far less important than security holes.)

You can, of course, run non-Apple-reviewed software on your hardware. But Apple will disclaim all responsibility for your fate -- and, as we can see, they will actively try to shake you off.

It would be nice if, when you got an iPod Touch or iPhone, you created a certificate for it that meant that was yours and any copy of iTunes that wasn't also yours wouldn't sync to it. But not letting someone plug a friggin' iPhone into someone else's computer and sucking off their sensitive data is a different question from not letting someone plug in any arbitrary USB device and suck off sensitive data. Social norms keep people from plugging their iPhones into my USB, but they don't keep people from saying, "here, I'll send you some files off my thumb drive" and surreptitously stealing your email password from iTunes because they have a custom firmware that pretends to be an iPhone.

Three things...

1. DRM free does not mean all my meta data comes with me. Much of that data is stuff I created and stuff I should have the right to take elsewhere

2. I specifically said "I don't expect Apple to support the Pre but they shouldn't actively block it"

3. Revenue is gross not net. Apple's margins are obviously WAY smaller on a hardware device than they are on digital media.

Your metadata is yours, and Apple is not stopping you from doing anything with it. A lot of it is already in the m4a file anyway, using either ID3 tags or some newer analog to them. As for whatever metadata is stored outside the music files themselves, iTunes actually gives you all the metadata you need: it shows you the metadata plainly. What they don't do is maintain a requirement that any arbitrary device or program can reliably access that metadata, i.e. by keeping it in a consistent, well-documented format. That's an engineering decision, not a moral imperative--it allows them flexibility to do things their way instead of worrying about breaking backward or third party compatibility.

Apple's margins on iTunes are pretty low, when you consider how much they have to pay out to record labels and credit card companies even before paying for their own infrastructure. Digital media is high-margin in total, but only if you can realize all the profit. The record labels can do that, but Apple can't.

If they don't have to support and when they have a right to not support, don't they automatically have the right to actively block too?

If it is a standard, they HAVE to support it. If not, they are justified in actively BLOCKing it. There is nothing in between that makes sense to me.

I don't know. You aren't laying out any logical reasoning behind what you're saying other than "you feel" that way.

Once my car's warranty expires should Chevy be allowed to enforce a mandatory recall in which they change the car to prevent after market products from working in it?

Depends if your Chevy gets the newest (regular) updates from the manufactory. There's nothing to stop you to use the old version of iTunes that as far as I understand still works.

The logical reasoning is that - if they don't have to support it, they can actively block it. If it is a standard, they should actively support it. If it is not a standard, they can actively block it.

The reasoning is like running a firewall - you block everything, then open up only the services you need open, and only from the sources you need things accessible to.

By analogy, Apple can make it so that nothing syncs with iTunes, then open it up so that the iPod and iPhone do.

By doing that, they cut off anyone ranting that iTunes is rubbish because it crashed when syncing their music (unmentioned: to a third party device).

Microsoft picked up an incredibly bad rap for bluescreens, enormous numbers of them were caused by poor device drivers and shoddy third party software. Apple has little benefit in allowing El-Cheapo Music System to sync with iTunes, but lots of potential downside (support calls, lowered image of Apple, people migrating away from the Apple ecosystem towards less profitable accessories, buggy integration that requires development and testing of software update workarounds).

"... anything that allows arbitrary devices to pretend to be an iPhone and sync jeopardizes email account information--which can be synced to the iPhone--and is a security flaw."

Since we are talking about USB ids here, pretending to be an iPhone would open a "security flaw" only when they have physical access to the computer iPhone's being synced with.

In which case a person already can do whatever they like with it. E.g., just copy your entire hard drive.

Meanwhile, I am amazed that people are giving Palm a pass for the tactics they're using. They way they re-enabled iTunes sync is by changing their USB id to be the same as Apple's.

If they wanted the Pre to sync to iTunes data, they should have written their own app that reads the user's XML file. It wouldn't have been that much work.

  They way they re-enabled iTunes sync is by changing their
  USB id to be the same as Apple's.

What about this do you find objectionable? Do you deplore reverse engineering too?

How about this for a reason to find this tactic objectionable: USB is a standard with a licensing body which mandates the acceptable USB protocol behavior of vendors that slap the approved USB logo on their product/box, part of the licensing agreement which Palm signed mandates that they supply their proper vendor id (in this case 0 × 0830 (Palm Inc.)) during negotiation. What Palm did was change the vendor id they were supplying to Apple's vendor id. Palm is in violation of a licensing agreement they willingly entered into. If they want to follow this tack they should at least be forced to remove the USB-compatible logo from their product and its marketing materials.

  If they want to follow this tack they should at least be
  forced to remove the USB-compatible logo from their product
  and its marketing materials.

This sounds reasonable.

When you sign up for Vendor ID you sign under these words:

  Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID
  Numbers and associated Product ID 
  Numbers are strictly prohibited.

http://www.usb.org/developers/vendor/VID_Only_Form_withCCAut...

Would you find some random guy using you SSN (or equivalent if you are not from US) obectionable?

The analogy is broken: SSN is a credential. USB vendor IDs are not.

It's not about what it is. It's about how would you feel if someone else would use it. Especially when it is clearly forbidden.

I think I understand your point, but I respectfully submit that it's a bit of a stretch to turn identity theft into something like "computer identity theft". The arguments being presented by you and others boil down to an assertion that Palm behaved fraudulently by emulating Apple's USB device IDs.

But while I think it's useful to talk about defrauding other humans, it makes no sense to me to to talk about a computer defrauding another computer, at least, not yet :-D. This is where the analogy breaks down, in my opinion, and why I don't have any moral problems with what Palm is doing. A far closer analogy would be Compaq's emulation of the original PC BIOS.

I don't think anyone is asserting that Palm is intending to trick reasonable humans into thinking that their Pre is actually an iPod device. Everyone realizes that they are offering an iPod compatible device. To achieve this end, they are having their device "defraud" another computer. I'm okay with this. At worst, they have perhaps violated their licensing agreement with the USB Implementers forum. If so, this could be remedied by removing the USB logo from the Pre, and then even this argument dissolves.

It's treading where they are obviously unwanted. That's not a good way to do business or instill faith.

About ten years ago, Be wanted to have BeOS be an alternative OS you could run on Macs. Be did in fact get the first version running okay. But Apple was in the midst of one of its big hardware changes, so Be needed tech docs for the motherboard to do a really good job of it. Apple never supplied that information.

BeOS advocates at the time said: just go ahead and reverse engineer it. That's what the Linux people did. The powers that be at Be said: nope, we don't play that way. If Apple doesn't want us on their computers, then we're not going there. Be subsequently refocused on standard PC hardware.

And where's Be now? Dead. Where's Apple? Still acting like twits and preventing OS X from running on standard PC hardware, you still have to go to Apple to buy their hardware.

I don't get your point.

I would hardly call that "acting like twits".

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. --Alan Kay

While MicroSoft expends all of their resources testing their OS with every possible piece of hardware and its associated drivers, Apple gets to focus on making great products. They don't have to wait on the hardware manufacturers to innovate, and they don't have to support their shoddy hardware and drivers. They also don't have to take the blame when it doesn't work. MicroSoft does (earned or not).

Apple gets to focus on making great products. They don't have to wait on the hardware manufacturers to innovate, and they don't have to support their shoddy hardware and drivers.

Not wanting to test your OS with a myriad of different hardware is one thing. Stopping VMWare from supporting it as a guest OS is another. There's no technical reason that I shouldn't be able to run OSX on top of VMWare (I know there's hacks to get it to work, but it's slow as molasses).

Apple is more than happy to allow VMWare to develop and sell Fusion so I can run Windows on top of Apple hardware. How is it that they don't allow me to run OSX on top of my Windows box?

This is an interesting example. I'd argue that if Be had not abandoned the Mac market they might have had a better fate than to be merely bought by, ironically, Palm!

Where is Be now?

Bought by Palm.

It is part of Palm, Inc.

I think Palm Pre is concerned more about its users, whereas apple is obsessed with it's software and hardware. Everyone knows that interoperability is a great thing to have, but nobody wants their competitor(Palm Pre et al) to benefit from the technology that they(Apple) has pioneered and improved for years. Think of it this way. Imagine a world where Palm Pre is invented before iPhone, and there is PreTunes software which is the most popular music/app store in the world. Then Apple launches iPhone, do you think Apple would try to make iPhone compatible with the hypothetical 'PreTunes'? or more importantly: Would Palm stop iPhone from being used via PreTunes? The answer is probably 'Yes'.

"I think Palm Pre is concerned more about its users"

I don't. Really, the more I think about this the more I'm convinced it's just a manipulative marketing tactic. Whether it will be a successful manipulative marketing tactic, I don't know yet.

Syncing music and data from a Mac doesn't seem to be that hard. Plenty of mobile device makers do it, and Apple even happily advertises and points people to the software used to do it (see, for example, Nokia's Mac transfer support). If you're concerned about supporting your users and ensuring they have a reliable good experience with your product, that's what you should be doing.

But Palm is knowingly doing something that's not only unsupported, but designed from the ground up to get Apple to take actions which hurt Palm's customers. This is literally the opposite of being concerned about your users.

The only reason I can think of for doing this is that Palm has seen how much press coverage you can get for your product if you can turn it into an anti-Apple story, because the tech press will eat out of your hand if you can give them a multi-million-page-view Apple controversy. And that's precisely what Palm is getting: the coverage of the Pre's syncing has effectively been a massive worldwide advertising campaign building up a sympathetic view of the Pre in the minds of potential customers. And best of all, it hasn't cost Palm so much as a single dime; it's all coming for free.

Everyone knows that interoperability is a great thing to have

Interoperability in practise brings you a mess. Look at the story of the serial GPS driver in Linux and how much effort goes into making it interoperable, look at the story of Netscape rewriting Navigator from scratch and having to track and work around bugs in 60+ FTP servers, look at the wx/tk/qt/kde/gnome mess in Linux - they all work together so you can have apps that look and feel completely different all running beside each other.

apple is obsessed with it's software and hardware

... because it's concerned about users. Users, not geeks. Apple kit works together. It generally works in fairly consistent ways, and third party Mac software does a pretty good job of looking "like Mac software". Apple's (Job's) fanatical and dictatorial approach is often credited with their comeback over the past few years.

Interoperability is good, and I'm a big fan of it, but not requiring it in the first place is even better.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly in portable music players, in smart phones, or even --- despite practically creating the market --- in online music stores. There are effective market substitutes for all of Apple's products.

Interoperability is good, but it's not a mandate.

Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in Operating Systems either (I think polls have shown that a majority of the members of this site don't run Windows), but they still are fined and antagonized for their 'monopolistic' business practices and bundling.

Apple's free to do this if they want, but then again Microsoft should be free to bundle IE also.

Microsoft had --- according to the DC District and Circuit Court --- a monopoly in desktop operating systems.

I'm sorry but they have a defacto monopoly in the digital music market. When Walmart, Amazon and Microsoft specifically target you and can't even get their foot in the door that says a lot.

In what sense can you claim that iTMS has a monopoly on digital music? I wanted to buy a Modern Lovers CD last week, and I had to use Amazon, because they had the CD and iTunes didn't. Monopoly doesn't mean "commanding market share". It means "control of the market".

A CD isn't digital music first. I get your point that it can be turned into digital music but a lot of media can be converted to other mediums and they count as separate products.

As far as the term. I mean, I understand people can have different definitions but the reality to me is when a company feels they can abuse their customers without fear of them going elsewhere that means they have reached the point of de-facto monopoly. Apple has no problem taking functionality from their own iTunes customers to kill the Pre and that to me is the line (though I fully understand others can differ)

The only people who feel like Apple is abusing them, though, are a bunch of angsty tech geeks. The vast majority of normal people using Apple products are thrilled that they just work, unlike so much of technology.

I meant the MP3 album, which you cannot buy on iTunes.

Modern Lovers, hey? Which one? I like the John Cale-produced stuff. They didn't last very long but they were good for about one whole record, which exists in a zillion forms. (And to exponentially grow the offtopicness: check out the beginning of LCD Soundsystem's "North American Scum" for a pitch-perfect imitation of Jonathan Richman imitating Lou Reed.)

I really just wanted the studio version of "Roadrunner", although I like the whole album. I'm a fan of bookish art punk --- Wire works for me too. That LCD Soundsystem album tries so hard to get old and overplayed for me, and constantly fails.

Amazon, Walmart and Microsoft have stuff all to do with digital music. Heck, Microsoft's most recent contribution is shutting down their DRM servers from the retired MSN Music store resulting in no more moving your music around ever. A company like that not being able to get a look in is not a sign of monopoly, just incompetence.

The other problem is that no other companies who might stand a chance are really trying - if a huge techno-music company such as Sony-BMG made a proper attack, such as "our entire catalog, open, for $X/year" and that went nowhere, then I'd start to be convinced.

Monopoly is not required for antitrust violations. Indeed, most companies found liable for antitrust did not have a monopoly in said market.

The key issue is whether the company in question had significant market power and used that power for non-competitive purposes. Price-fixing is a classic example, but it's only one of several.

As long as the Pre is capable of syncing with iTunes, you have a situation where an unsupported device is capable of affecting (through fraudulent means) the user's music, contacts, settings, and god knows what else -- all of which live in Apple's operating system, inside Apple's software.

If Palm fucks anything up and some fraction of Pre users manage to corrupt their data or their software (because Pre-iTunes interoperability is an ugly hack!), then those users are not—at least not all of them—going to shrug and say, 'Oh, well. I was using unsupported software and hardware, and I got burnt.' Enough of them are going to say, 'What the fuck!? iTunes/Apple/Mail/OS X sucks!' or they're going to call Applecare support and sit on the phone for half an hour while the poor schmuck tries to get their iTunes library back. That is what we call a bad experience, and Apple doesn't like that. If they control both sides of the equation, then they can make sure that doesn't happen.

So I guess Microsoft should be able to block any other browser because Chrome might crash and someone could says "Windows Vista sucks" (which it does but that's a whole 'nother story)

Beyond that, if that scenario does happen Apple gets to tell it's customers "Look, Palm messed up your data which is why you should use geniune Apple hardware" and they win a monsterous victory. Palm corrupting iTunes data would be the greatest thing to ever happen to Apple. So the idea that Apple is blocking the Pre because of that doesn't hold much weight.

Funny you say that.

Vista requires signed drivers because Microsoft was finally sick of shoddy drivers destabilizing Windows, generating support calls and ruining the user experience.

So there's no need for the hypothetical. Microsoft has already done something analogous to Apple's move -- despite years of 'enjoying' what you view as a sales opportunity.

That's a bogus analogy. Apple is not preventing you from installing any software you want and using the same music you have in iTunes (along with all the meta-data in the music files) to connect to any hardware you want through standard USB/Firewire/Whatever connections.

Apple is preventing people from essentially hacking their software for the benefit of another company.

Have you worked in tech support ever? Nobody gives a toss why their data is gone, only that you can't get it back. Finger pointing "It's not our fault it's theirs" is terrible, even if it is true.

They don't win a Monstrous Victory. You know when Windows crashes, it now submits to a web service and comes back saying:

Your computer crashed because of software made by JONES SOFTWARE LTD.

I feel less annoyed at Microsoft when I see that, but never happy. It's still not OK. It's not a victory for MS, just a defensive block.

The integration between iTunes & iPods is Apple's Secret Sauce. Since they have never really opened either side of this equation to third parties it's hard to argue any monopolistic behavior here. Apple isn't stopping anyone from developing their own hardware, software and online store and making a competing platform with the same level of integration that consumers seem to want. It's not Apple's fault that no one has been able to step up and produce a legitimate competitor yet. Like any company Apple is obligated to maximize their profits and protect their market share. We can argue if it's good or bad for the consumer but honestly it's irrelevant. That's how capitalism works. I do not see any legitimate OSS projects offering a comparable platform. Apple (especially since dropping DRM) is not impeding their ability to do it.

> Like any company Apple is obligated to maximize their profits

Not true; fiduciary duty requires you to act in a manner "reasonably believed to be in the best interests of the corporation", which does not mean "reasonably believed to maximize profits".

> I continue to be amazed at how people are willing to give Apple a pass on cutting off the Pre. Paticularly this guy who says he can "understand" Apple cutting off the Pre but then balks at Apple cutting off his music software.

Apple has every right to block the Pre. If they don't, then people will come to expect the Pre syncing to work (and I'm sure other devices would follow) and Apple would be forced into a situation where they would either have to support this or take a significant portion of the blame if an update to iTunes inadvertently broke 3rd party device syncing. Even so, if they only want you to sync with Apple brand products then they can do that too. Don't like it? Don't buy Apple products, that's always been an option.

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