Palm Pre Precedence
I'm a Mac user: I own three iPhones, my company has a collection of 20 Macs (MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros), two Xserves, and today's precedence is a frightening one for those of us who use third party software with OS X.
While I understand the reasons for disabling sync abilities with the Pre as iTunes does not advertise nor support the Pre, what stops Apple from making competing or third-party products to not work with OS X or various parts of the operating system? The reasons for disabling Pre sync ability are good (Apple suddenly becoming liable for supporting non-Apple products, iTunes music are DRM-free and Palm should have built their own syncing facilities and collaborated with Amazon), but the precedence it sets for users of third-party products is potentially very frightening.
Apple could decide to make the Mini-DisplayPort only usable with Apple displays with a future update of OS X; they could theoretically make only Apple-approved USB devices to work with OS X, forcing those of us with USB flash drives of different and unapproved make/type to not be able to interface with OS X to access those disks. Is there a good assurance that Apple won't mess with our third-party hardware? If we use third-party RAM, will the Mac EFI deny the ability to boot the computer?
Please, Apple, we would like a response as to their position on third-party products with OS X and Mac hardware. If the future is that any non-Apple hardware will simply "not work" with OS X, then it's time that we look for alternatives.
While I understand the reasons for disabling sync abilities with the Pre as iTunes does not advertise nor support the Pre, what stops Apple from making competing or third-party products to not work with OS X or various parts of the operating system? The reasons for disabling Pre sync ability are good (Apple suddenly becoming liable for supporting non-Apple products, iTunes music are DRM-free and Palm should have built their own syncing facilities and collaborated with Amazon), but the precedence it sets for users of third-party products is potentially very frightening.
Apple could decide to make the Mini-DisplayPort only usable with Apple displays with a future update of OS X; they could theoretically make only Apple-approved USB devices to work with OS X, forcing those of us with USB flash drives of different and unapproved make/type to not be able to interface with OS X to access those disks. Is there a good assurance that Apple won't mess with our third-party hardware? If we use third-party RAM, will the Mac EFI deny the ability to boot the computer?
Please, Apple, we would like a response as to their position on third-party products with OS X and Mac hardware. If the future is that any non-Apple hardware will simply "not work" with OS X, then it's time that we look for alternatives.
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