The iTunes Store is a public internet store, open to anyone with a credit card.
When Apple made a Windows version of the iTunes software for Windows devices, it stopped playing to the exclusive crowd of Apple fans.
iTunes songs can be synced and placed in neat folders on any Windows PC and any Apple built devices, iPods, iPhones and Macs. Song tracks can also be copied on any device with a hard drive and played with a number of music playing software.
The only issue seems to be whether syncing can occur only on a Windows PC or an Apple branded device. To remove syncing on a Pre device seems to be retaliation on a successful cell phone competitor. I believe it is ill advised (and the sort of thing Microsoft was accused of doing a number of times).
Success should be enjoyed and celebrated, but you can't prevent others from going in business and marketing successful products.
Apple isn't preventing Palm from doing what they need to do. They are just requiring them to do it themselves. Palm has already responded that they might look at some third party software, or maybe do it themselves.
If they were smart, they would have done that from the beginning instead of subjecting their customers to this nonsense they caused.
and, by the way, palm is not at this point a successful competitor. If Pre sales begin to do better, they might be, but they aren't now.
Apple isn't preventing Palm from doing what they need to do. They are just requiring them to do it themselves. Palm has already responded that they might look at some third party software, or maybe do it themselves.
If they were smart, they would have done that from the beginning instead of subjecting their customers to this nonsense they caused.
and, by the way, palm is not at this point a successful competitor. If Pre sales begin to do better, they might be, but they aren't now.
It is interesting that all other phone makers didn't attempt what Palm did by connecting their device to iTunes. I am interested to know if Apple ex-employees who worked on the Pre used their knowledge of iTunes and iPod to get to that and how that will effect their NDA, if any, with Apple when they left.
It is interesting that all other phone makers didn't attempt what Palm did by connecting their device to iTunes. I am interested to know if Apple ex-employees who worked on the Pre used their knowledge of iTunes and iPod to get to that and how that will effect their NDA, if any, with Apple when they left.
That is interesting. It might be hard to prove and a lawsuit may make Apple look petty, which could be reasons why Palm did it… if they did use such knowledge. While I wouldn’t mind seeing Apple sue someone prominent, I surely don’t want another Apple era of “litigation over innovation”. If I see that happening again I’ll sell my stocks quicker than the Blackberry Storm got returned to Verizon.
I know what you're saying, and many devices sync to the computer, either using Apple's software that Apple wrote to enable it, or with third party software.
But that's in areas where Apple doesn't have any major product lines at stake. For this, they do. But even here, these companies can write fairly simple software that will do some of this for them. This has been pointed out here several times.
I can't see any reason why Apple shouldn't reserve some functionality for their own devices giving them an advantage.
If other companies want some of the advantages, they can hire a couple of guys to do the work.
Or possibly a company such as Mark/Space will do it if there's enough demand. I have their software. When my Samsung i300 and 1330 didn't work with the Palm Desktop supplied, their software made it happen. It also made the phones, as well as my later Treo 700p work with Apples software. So this isn't impossible, and Apple shouldn't stop it.
But for Apple to enable it would be silly.
Why should they give people the ability to say; "Hey, I can auto sync a Pre to iTunes, now I don't have to buy that iPhone."?
How about a source for your numbers? Estimates agree with you that Apple probably has a 20% market share. The problem is that is all music, while the gentleman your admonishing is talking about digital downloads which is probably at around 80%. Yes, that is a monopoly.
- iTunes includes an unencrypted XML file listing the tracks in iTunes.
- The music is not encumbered by DRM (at least, the new stuff).
- Any desktop application has full access to that XML file, the file system, and the USB bus.
Add it all up, and there's one inescapable conclusion: Palm doesn't need iTunes to perform the sync of iTunes music to the Pre.
So Apple's denying them iTunes access. So what? They can write their own Pre music sync program. Just don't rely on Apple's code doing the work.
They even don't to - they can use WinAMP, for example. For many people, simple drag & drop will do all they need, and much as I know Pre is not preventing that.
So people can still use iTunes to purchase music and sync/copy it to Pre with alternative methods. What is Apple really achieving here, except pissing off some people with a move that feels very monopolistic?
Lets face it - while Apple is still (market) underdog in computer share, they are absolutely dominant force in MP3 players segment - not unlikely Microsoft in OS market. From that point of view, isn't Apple's obvious desire to prevent other players working with iTunes comparable as if MS would try to prevent, say, other web browsers working with Windows..?
absolutely. Apple created a wildly popular program, iTunes, to go along with their wildly popular devices, iPods and iPhones. Why on EARTH shoudl apple allow other companies to encroach on their territory? All these iphone-killers are trying their hardest to copy Apple, and Apple is supposed to just sit back and let them copy one of the biggest assets they have (the iTunes ecosystem)?? Get real. Palm was outrageously audacious in publicy promoting iTunes integration.
But if someone already decided to get different phone/player, why wouldn't Apple still grab couple of hundreds from them selling them music from iTunes store..?
It is not like they can't get their music elsewhere, they are not doomed by this Apple's move - only question is who will get their money for selling them music.
Much like MS selling their OS to Mac owners. I guess they could find a way to make Windows non-compatible (or at least non-applicable) with Macs... but why would they? It is the same good old green dollar going into their pockets.
I can't see any reason based on economy. Ego - that's completely different story.
But if someone already decided to get different phone/player, why wouldn't Apple still grab couple of hundreds from them selling them music from iTunes store..?
It is not like they can't get their music elsewhere, they are not doomed by this Apple's move - only question is who will get their money for selling them music.
Much like MS selling their OS to Mac owners. I guess they could find a way to make Windows non-compatible (or at least non-applicable) with Macs... but why would they? It is the same good old green dollar going into their pockets.
I can't see any reason based on economy. Ego - that's completely different story.
iTunes music sale profit is small Compared to iPods and iPhones revenues. iTunes and App store are away to make Apple products more appealing. Furthermore, people will keep buying from iTunes since all other online sources offerings are not as big.
Your MS Windows example is not a good one since MS does not sell hardware and MS main profit is from selling Windows. A better example would be MS limiting IE to Windows only, which MS already doing. This is not an issue now since we have Safari and Firefox but it was years back. Palm should develop their own software to import and iTunes music instead of whining and blaming Apple for their own laziness.
But that DRM isn't the fault of Apple. It's a requirement of the content companies. Wherever that content is sold, there is DRM.
The last sentence is obviously not true as Apple themselves and Amazon sell at least music without any DRM restrictions. The DRM might not be Apple's fault but what has Apple stopped from providing an open specification to sync with iTunes in way the content protection is retained when it was still mandated by the content providers? The coupling between iTunes and the Pods in both ways has been hugely beneficial to Apple when building their monopoly on both the music player as well as content seller market. I still don't buy Jobs' claims that getting rid of the DRM on music was out of the goodness of their heart and for the best of the customer (although it was a positive side effect) but to prevent anti-competitive lawsuits which had a good chance to succeed.
Apple didn't create iTunes, Casady & Greene (SoundJam MP) did.
Almost. Apple bought out SoundJam two years before iTunes 1.0 came out. The whole company, all two of them (Casady and Greene?) was working for Apple when they wrote iTunes 1.0. When SoundJam cease to exist, it was just a music manager/player for a Mac. iTunes 1.0 was also just a music manager/player for a Mac when it first came out. It eventually managed music for the iPod on a Mac. And then on a PC. And then the iTunes Store was added. Apple already knew that iTunes would eventually manage the music on their yet to be released iPod when they released iTunes 1.0.
What are you talking about?? "Apple has no monopoly."
They're the #1 distributor of all digital music sold in the US, they're the #1 distributor of ALL music sold in the US, and they have over 70% of the MP3 player marketshare for Q1 of 2009.
Apple *IS* a monopoly in those fields, and yet they are still held to a different standard than Microsoft.
Every company that sells a product would have a monopoly if you narrow the target market down enough.
The last I checked, music on a CD is also "digital". Maybe you meant "digital music sold online". But you can buy CD's from Amazon. So it must be "downloaded digital music sold online". But until "downloaded digital music sold online" becomes the only way or the way the vast majority of people purchase music. Apple will never be considered a monopoly because it has 80% of that narrowly defined music market. The vast majority of the music in music players are still from CD purchases. And then pirated.
HP is the number 1 distributer of PC in the US (and maybe the World. Depending on who's doing the survey.) with about 27%of the US market. Do they hold any monopoly status? Apple is number 1 with only about 20% of all music sales in the US. And that's based on albums sold. Not on dollars. Apple most likely makes the least amount of profit, from selling music, of all the top 5 music retailers.
The iPod do not hold any monopoly status when you count all the cell phones that are also MP3 music players. And they also can play "downloaded digital music sold online".
iTunes does not have a monopoly in the music manager software. Windows Media Player is practically in every PC sold with any version of MS Windows.
Apple iPhone has about 2/3 of the internet mobile browsing market share. Does that mean that the less than 2% market share (of all cell phones) that the iPhone has is closing in on being a monopoly?
The thing that surprises me is that Palm didn't see this coming, and these former Apple employees at Palm had to know that there were approved ways of syncing with a Mac.
Apple provides a full sync framework to allow all applications to get access to contacts, calendar, and other data. I find it incredulous with all this hard work put into a sync protocol by Apple, that Palm couldn't see fit to design a simple, thin client for syncronising data.
As for music? Well... Apple owns iTunes. You want to use it? Thats your right, but its a licence. Don't like that it won't sync with a pre? Deal with it. Apple doesn't have to provide a free music management application for you to sync with any device you want. Pre's hack is just that. A hack.
Good for Apple! It looks like former Apple douche bags have a little vendetta towards their former employees. I used to have a Palm IIIvx. Now I use it as my coffee coaster
It's pretty obvious you are a teenager and weren't even born when the anti-trust suits, involving not only Netscape, but Real and Quicktime were brought against M$.
You should probably stop asking people for proof and go read up on it, do yourself a favor you have most of this board rolling their eyes at you.
Wow. See, I tried my hardest word my question to avoid a response like this.
Instead of adding any kind of helpful information, you took it upon yourself to insult me. On top of that, you took it upon yourself to speak on everyone's behalf, and insult me even further.
You really are the counter-productive type of poster that these forums need less of.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
I don't really want to go looking for links right now. But this is all well known.
MS was accused of, and was found guilty of, hiding information from these companies about Windows (they were originally DOS programs) that they needed to, in a timely fashion, re-write their programs for proper, and enhanced use under Windows 3.0 and up.
It was also found that MS's own developers were using advance information about the OS, which violated the wall they must maintain. They were also found to have been using API's that were not available to third party developers that were crucial to the operation of those apps. As a result all those apps were well behind MS's own on the 3.1 platform, and ended up in their demise to the benefit of MS's own apps, now known as Office.
If that had not occurred, its very possible that Office would just be one suite among several. It also could have hindered MS's growth and profits, as well as their subsequent power in the industry.
Being more recent, you should be familiar with the Netscape case. One of the main problems Netscape had was MS bullying the computer manufacturers with a lack of early release information for their OS if they installed Netscape on their machines.
Computer manufacturers need this pre-release info in order to come out with computers with the proper specs. MS was saying that if a company cooperated, they would get the info, and those that did not, wouldn't. This would have put the non-cooperating companies at a severe disadvantage, so they cooperated.
That was just one of their tactics. They also used their monopoly profits to give IE away for free when Netscape needed to charge.
It's a complex situation, but you get the point.
They also threatened Apple about Quicktime. They said they would stop producing Office for the Mac, a required program for Apple, if Apple continued to produce Quicktime. They came to arrangements when Apple caught them using Apple's code in their own video playback software that ended in the five year commitment to produce new versions of Office and the $150 million non voting investment in Apple. Before MS stole that code, videos in Windows would just play jerkily. Many people noticed the sudden improvement, and now you know why it happened.
Over the years, MS has stolen code from more than a few "partners". You may not like that this is being said, but it's true.
A long time sentiment in the MS world of partners is that MS will eventually steal your code if they want it. You even sign agreements stating that they can see your code. It's a tough business.
Thank you for the post. It was informative and helped answer my question very much.
If only more people were like you, and less were like AdamIIGS.
Seems to me this entire debate is based on two things, an entitlement mentality and ignorance of Apple's business model. Apple makes software to sell hardware. There will never be OS X on generic boxes, nor is there a law that can force them to do it. If you want the benefits of OS X, you have to buy the hardware Apple sells with it. iTunes exists for the sole purpose of selling iDevices. It is not a public service; it is a business model. It does not exist to sell Palm Pres and BB Storms. There is a Windows version of it only to facilitate the sell of iDevices, period!
Palm and their users feel like they are entitled to what Apple has produced. They feel like it should be freely available to the world at large as if it were a public utility like gas or water. Apple provided back door access, but Palm felt entitled to front door access. So they bashed the door down and are now complaining that they got splinters in their eye. That entitlement mentality will not fly here. Here, you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You do not have a right to run OS X on just any hardware or sync iTunes with just any device.
Seems to me this entire debate is based on two things, an entitlement mentality and ignorance of Apple's business model. Apple makes software to sell hardware. There will never be OS X on generic boxes, nor is there a law that can force them to do it. If you want the benefits of OS X, you have to buy the hardware Apple sells with it. iTunes exists for the sole purpose of selling iDevices. It is not a public service; it is a business model. It does not exist to sell Pal Pres and BB Storms. There is a Windows version of it only to facilitate the sell of iDevices, period!
Palm and their users feel like they are entitled to what Apple has produced. They feel like it should be freely available to the world at large as if it were a public utility like gas or water. Apple provided back door access, but Palm felt entitled to front door access. So they bashed the door down and are now complaining that they got splinters in their eye. That entitlement mentality will not fly here. Here, you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You do not have a right to run OS X on just any hardware or sync iTunes with just any device.
How about a source for your numbers? Estimates agree with you that Apple probably has a 20% market share. The problem is that is all music, while the gentleman your admonishing is talking about digital downloads which is probably at around 80%. Yes, that is a monopoly.
You should be the one giving the links then. Because that number is worthless.
It doesn't matter how high the download percentage is. It's the overall position in the music selling business that matters. That's all.
You guys can't make up your own categories and expect them to be taken seriously.
So, yes, Apple has about an 80% share of legally sold music downloads in the US, so what?
Most music is not bought through downloads yet. If it ever is, and Apple still has an 80% share in the States, then they will have a monopoly here.
The last sentence is obviously not true as Apple themselves and Amazon sell at least music without any DRM restrictions. The DRM might not be Apple's fault but what has Apple stopped from providing an open specification to sync with iTunes in way the content protection is retained when it was still mandated by the content providers? The coupling between iTunes and the Pods in both ways has been hugely beneficial to Apple when building their monopoly on both the music player as well as content seller market. I still don't buy Jobs' claims that getting rid of the DRM on music was out of the goodness of their heart and for the best of the customer (although it was a positive side effect) but to prevent anti-competitive lawsuits which had a good chance to succeed.
You're wrong. That statement is obviously true.
Do you know what's going on?
Do you understand that it's the content companies that have demanded DRM?
You do know that, right?
You do know that every DVD is DRM protected. You know that every HD-DVD disk was DRM protected. You do know that every Blu-Ray disk is DRM protected. You do know that some record companies have proposed making new CD's DRM protected. You do know that all Tv shows online are DRM protected, as are all movies and music videos. You remember Sony's rootkit for CD's of course.
You do know this of course.
I suppose all of this is Apple's fault?
As for the coupling, so what? This has nothing to do with the selling of music. There are various ways of getting that music on to another device. Other companies don't have to lie about their device being one made by Apple to do so, and Apple doesn't have to allow it.
I'm not so sure Palm didn't bait Apple into doing this. Rubenstein worked with Jobs for close to 20 years and you gotta think that he would know exactly how Apple would respond. This has just seemed like a trap for a possible iTunes anti-trust case from the beginning. I would expect a suit by the end of the summer.
We can debate whether such a case would have any merit until we're blue in the face, but it won't be tried in the court of Apple fans. The only opinions that would count are that of U.S. Federal District court, Appellate Court, and the Supreme Court.
Almost. Apple bought out SoundJam two years before iTunes 1.0 came out. The whole company, all two of them (Casady and Greene?) was working for Apple when they wrote iTunes 1.0. When SoundJam cease to exist, it was just a music manager/player for a Mac. iTunes 1.0 was also just a music manager/player for a Mac when it first came out. It eventually managed music for the iPod on a Mac. And then on a PC. And then the iTunes Store was added. Apple already knew that iTunes would eventually manage the music on their yet to be released iPod when they released iTunes 1.0.
And how did Apple create iTunes- again?
C&G created the music manager/player SoundJam - the root of iTunes. You can't re-write history and claim otherwise.
Apple buys it and changes the name of it- and that's creating it? Puh-leeze.
I should know- I owned and used a copy SoundJam - way back when, in the days of OS9. It's basic features haven't changed.
What is Apple really achieving here, except pissing off some people with a move that feels very monopolistic?
No one is stopping Palm from writing their own software for OSX that will synch with their phones. It's not up to Apple to make iTunes compatible with every phone and digital music device out there. Feeling "monopolistic" is your opinion only, there's no truth to it at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
Lets face it - while Apple is still (market) underdog in computer share, they are absolutely dominant force in MP3 players segment - not unlikely Microsoft in OS market. From that point of view, isn't Apple's obvious desire to prevent other players working with iTunes comparable as if MS would try to prevent, say, other web browsers working with Windows..?
That is not an accurate comparison. If Palm had bothered to create a software called "PreTunes" for Mac OSX and Apple prevented that software from running in OSX, that would be comparable to your MS example above.
Comments
The iTunes Store is a public internet store, open to anyone with a credit card.
When Apple made a Windows version of the iTunes software for Windows devices, it stopped playing to the exclusive crowd of Apple fans.
iTunes songs can be synced and placed in neat folders on any Windows PC and any Apple built devices, iPods, iPhones and Macs. Song tracks can also be copied on any device with a hard drive and played with a number of music playing software.
The only issue seems to be whether syncing can occur only on a Windows PC or an Apple branded device. To remove syncing on a Pre device seems to be retaliation on a successful cell phone competitor. I believe it is ill advised (and the sort of thing Microsoft was accused of doing a number of times).
Success should be enjoyed and celebrated, but you can't prevent others from going in business and marketing successful products.
Apple isn't preventing Palm from doing what they need to do. They are just requiring them to do it themselves. Palm has already responded that they might look at some third party software, or maybe do it themselves.
If they were smart, they would have done that from the beginning instead of subjecting their customers to this nonsense they caused.
and, by the way, palm is not at this point a successful competitor. If Pre sales begin to do better, they might be, but they aren't now.
Apple isn't preventing Palm from doing what they need to do. They are just requiring them to do it themselves. Palm has already responded that they might look at some third party software, or maybe do it themselves.
If they were smart, they would have done that from the beginning instead of subjecting their customers to this nonsense they caused.
and, by the way, palm is not at this point a successful competitor. If Pre sales begin to do better, they might be, but they aren't now.
It is interesting that all other phone makers didn't attempt what Palm did by connecting their device to iTunes. I am interested to know if Apple ex-employees who worked on the Pre used their knowledge of iTunes and iPod to get to that and how that will effect their NDA, if any, with Apple when they left.
It is interesting that all other phone makers didn't attempt what Palm did by connecting their device to iTunes. I am interested to know if Apple ex-employees who worked on the Pre used their knowledge of iTunes and iPod to get to that and how that will effect their NDA, if any, with Apple when they left.
That is interesting. It might be hard to prove and a lawsuit may make Apple look petty, which could be reasons why Palm did it… if they did use such knowledge. While I wouldn’t mind seeing Apple sue someone prominent, I surely don’t want another Apple era of “litigation over innovation”. If I see that happening again I’ll sell my stocks quicker than the Blackberry Storm got returned to Verizon.
I know what you're saying, and many devices sync to the computer, either using Apple's software that Apple wrote to enable it, or with third party software.
But that's in areas where Apple doesn't have any major product lines at stake. For this, they do. But even here, these companies can write fairly simple software that will do some of this for them. This has been pointed out here several times.
I can't see any reason why Apple shouldn't reserve some functionality for their own devices giving them an advantage.
If other companies want some of the advantages, they can hire a couple of guys to do the work.
Or possibly a company such as Mark/Space will do it if there's enough demand. I have their software. When my Samsung i300 and 1330 didn't work with the Palm Desktop supplied, their software made it happen. It also made the phones, as well as my later Treo 700p work with Apples software. So this isn't impossible, and Apple shouldn't stop it.
But for Apple to enable it would be silly.
Why should they give people the ability to say; "Hey, I can auto sync a Pre to iTunes, now I don't have to buy that iPhone."?
How about a source for your numbers? Estimates agree with you that Apple probably has a 20% market share. The problem is that is all music, while the gentleman your admonishing is talking about digital downloads which is probably at around 80%. Yes, that is a monopoly.
Let's review something here:
- iTunes includes an unencrypted XML file listing the tracks in iTunes.
- The music is not encumbered by DRM (at least, the new stuff).
- Any desktop application has full access to that XML file, the file system, and the USB bus.
Add it all up, and there's one inescapable conclusion: Palm doesn't need iTunes to perform the sync of iTunes music to the Pre.
So Apple's denying them iTunes access. So what? They can write their own Pre music sync program. Just don't rely on Apple's code doing the work.
They even don't to - they can use WinAMP, for example. For many people, simple drag & drop will do all they need, and much as I know Pre is not preventing that.
So people can still use iTunes to purchase music and sync/copy it to Pre with alternative methods. What is Apple really achieving here, except pissing off some people with a move that feels very monopolistic?
Lets face it - while Apple is still (market) underdog in computer share, they are absolutely dominant force in MP3 players segment - not unlikely Microsoft in OS market. From that point of view, isn't Apple's obvious desire to prevent other players working with iTunes comparable as if MS would try to prevent, say, other web browsers working with Windows..?
absolutely. Apple created a wildly popular program, iTunes, to go along with their wildly popular devices, iPods and iPhones. Why on EARTH shoudl apple allow other companies to encroach on their territory? All these iphone-killers are trying their hardest to copy Apple, and Apple is supposed to just sit back and let them copy one of the biggest assets they have (the iTunes ecosystem)?? Get real. Palm was outrageously audacious in publicy promoting iTunes integration.
But if someone already decided to get different phone/player, why wouldn't Apple still grab couple of hundreds from them selling them music from iTunes store..?
It is not like they can't get their music elsewhere, they are not doomed by this Apple's move - only question is who will get their money for selling them music.
Much like MS selling their OS to Mac owners. I guess they could find a way to make Windows non-compatible (or at least non-applicable) with Macs... but why would they? It is the same good old green dollar going into their pockets.
I can't see any reason based on economy. Ego - that's completely different story.
But if someone already decided to get different phone/player, why wouldn't Apple still grab couple of hundreds from them selling them music from iTunes store..?
It is not like they can't get their music elsewhere, they are not doomed by this Apple's move - only question is who will get their money for selling them music.
Much like MS selling their OS to Mac owners. I guess they could find a way to make Windows non-compatible (or at least non-applicable) with Macs... but why would they? It is the same good old green dollar going into their pockets.
I can't see any reason based on economy. Ego - that's completely different story.
iTunes music sale profit is small Compared to iPods and iPhones revenues. iTunes and App store are away to make Apple products more appealing. Furthermore, people will keep buying from iTunes since all other online sources offerings are not as big.
Your MS Windows example is not a good one since MS does not sell hardware and MS main profit is from selling Windows. A better example would be MS limiting IE to Windows only, which MS already doing. This is not an issue now since we have Safari and Firefox but it was years back. Palm should develop their own software to import and iTunes music instead of whining and blaming Apple for their own laziness.
But that DRM isn't the fault of Apple. It's a requirement of the content companies. Wherever that content is sold, there is DRM.
The last sentence is obviously not true as Apple themselves and Amazon sell at least music without any DRM restrictions. The DRM might not be Apple's fault but what has Apple stopped from providing an open specification to sync with iTunes in way the content protection is retained when it was still mandated by the content providers? The coupling between iTunes and the Pods in both ways has been hugely beneficial to Apple when building their monopoly on both the music player as well as content seller market. I still don't buy Jobs' claims that getting rid of the DRM on music was out of the goodness of their heart and for the best of the customer (although it was a positive side effect) but to prevent anti-competitive lawsuits which had a good chance to succeed.
Apple didn't create iTunes, Casady & Greene (SoundJam MP) did.
Almost. Apple bought out SoundJam two years before iTunes 1.0 came out. The whole company, all two of them (Casady and Greene?) was working for Apple when they wrote iTunes 1.0. When SoundJam cease to exist, it was just a music manager/player for a Mac. iTunes 1.0 was also just a music manager/player for a Mac when it first came out. It eventually managed music for the iPod on a Mac. And then on a PC. And then the iTunes Store was added. Apple already knew that iTunes would eventually manage the music on their yet to be released iPod when they released iTunes 1.0.
What are you talking about?? "Apple has no monopoly."
They're the #1 distributor of all digital music sold in the US, they're the #1 distributor of ALL music sold in the US, and they have over 70% of the MP3 player marketshare for Q1 of 2009.
Apple *IS* a monopoly in those fields, and yet they are still held to a different standard than Microsoft.
Every company that sells a product would have a monopoly if you narrow the target market down enough.
The last I checked, music on a CD is also "digital". Maybe you meant "digital music sold online". But you can buy CD's from Amazon. So it must be "downloaded digital music sold online". But until "downloaded digital music sold online" becomes the only way or the way the vast majority of people purchase music. Apple will never be considered a monopoly because it has 80% of that narrowly defined music market. The vast majority of the music in music players are still from CD purchases. And then pirated.
HP is the number 1 distributer of PC in the US (and maybe the World. Depending on who's doing the survey.) with about 27%of the US market. Do they hold any monopoly status? Apple is number 1 with only about 20% of all music sales in the US. And that's based on albums sold. Not on dollars. Apple most likely makes the least amount of profit, from selling music, of all the top 5 music retailers.
The iPod do not hold any monopoly status when you count all the cell phones that are also MP3 music players. And they also can play "downloaded digital music sold online".
iTunes does not have a monopoly in the music manager software. Windows Media Player is practically in every PC sold with any version of MS Windows.
Apple iPhone has about 2/3 of the internet mobile browsing market share. Does that mean that the less than 2% market share (of all cell phones) that the iPhone has is closing in on being a monopoly?
Apple provides a full sync framework to allow all applications to get access to contacts, calendar, and other data. I find it incredulous with all this hard work put into a sync protocol by Apple, that Palm couldn't see fit to design a simple, thin client for syncronising data.
As for music? Well... Apple owns iTunes. You want to use it? Thats your right, but its a licence. Don't like that it won't sync with a pre? Deal with it. Apple doesn't have to provide a free music management application for you to sync with any device you want. Pre's hack is just that. A hack.
It's pretty obvious you are a teenager and weren't even born when the anti-trust suits, involving not only Netscape, but Real and Quicktime were brought against M$.
You should probably stop asking people for proof and go read up on it, do yourself a favor you have most of this board rolling their eyes at you.
Wow. See, I tried my hardest word my question to avoid a response like this.
Instead of adding any kind of helpful information, you took it upon yourself to insult me. On top of that, you took it upon yourself to speak on everyone's behalf, and insult me even further.
You really are the counter-productive type of poster that these forums need less of.
I don't really want to go looking for links right now. But this is all well known.
MS was accused of, and was found guilty of, hiding information from these companies about Windows (they were originally DOS programs) that they needed to, in a timely fashion, re-write their programs for proper, and enhanced use under Windows 3.0 and up.
It was also found that MS's own developers were using advance information about the OS, which violated the wall they must maintain. They were also found to have been using API's that were not available to third party developers that were crucial to the operation of those apps. As a result all those apps were well behind MS's own on the 3.1 platform, and ended up in their demise to the benefit of MS's own apps, now known as Office.
If that had not occurred, its very possible that Office would just be one suite among several. It also could have hindered MS's growth and profits, as well as their subsequent power in the industry.
Being more recent, you should be familiar with the Netscape case. One of the main problems Netscape had was MS bullying the computer manufacturers with a lack of early release information for their OS if they installed Netscape on their machines.
Computer manufacturers need this pre-release info in order to come out with computers with the proper specs. MS was saying that if a company cooperated, they would get the info, and those that did not, wouldn't. This would have put the non-cooperating companies at a severe disadvantage, so they cooperated.
That was just one of their tactics. They also used their monopoly profits to give IE away for free when Netscape needed to charge.
It's a complex situation, but you get the point.
They also threatened Apple about Quicktime. They said they would stop producing Office for the Mac, a required program for Apple, if Apple continued to produce Quicktime. They came to arrangements when Apple caught them using Apple's code in their own video playback software that ended in the five year commitment to produce new versions of Office and the $150 million non voting investment in Apple. Before MS stole that code, videos in Windows would just play jerkily. Many people noticed the sudden improvement, and now you know why it happened.
Over the years, MS has stolen code from more than a few "partners". You may not like that this is being said, but it's true.
A long time sentiment in the MS world of partners is that MS will eventually steal your code if they want it. You even sign agreements stating that they can see your code. It's a tough business.
Thank you for the post. It was informative and helped answer my question very much.
If only more people were like you, and less were like AdamIIGS.
Palm and their users feel like they are entitled to what Apple has produced. They feel like it should be freely available to the world at large as if it were a public utility like gas or water. Apple provided back door access, but Palm felt entitled to front door access. So they bashed the door down and are now complaining that they got splinters in their eye. That entitlement mentality will not fly here. Here, you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You do not have a right to run OS X on just any hardware or sync iTunes with just any device.
Seems to me this entire debate is based on two things, an entitlement mentality and ignorance of Apple's business model. Apple makes software to sell hardware. There will never be OS X on generic boxes, nor is there a law that can force them to do it. If you want the benefits of OS X, you have to buy the hardware Apple sells with it. iTunes exists for the sole purpose of selling iDevices. It is not a public service; it is a business model. It does not exist to sell Pal Pres and BB Storms. There is a Windows version of it only to facilitate the sell of iDevices, period!
Palm and their users feel like they are entitled to what Apple has produced. They feel like it should be freely available to the world at large as if it were a public utility like gas or water. Apple provided back door access, but Palm felt entitled to front door access. So they bashed the door down and are now complaining that they got splinters in their eye. That entitlement mentality will not fly here. Here, you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You do not have a right to run OS X on just any hardware or sync iTunes with just any device.
^ This
How about a source for your numbers? Estimates agree with you that Apple probably has a 20% market share. The problem is that is all music, while the gentleman your admonishing is talking about digital downloads which is probably at around 80%. Yes, that is a monopoly.
You should be the one giving the links then. Because that number is worthless.
It doesn't matter how high the download percentage is. It's the overall position in the music selling business that matters. That's all.
You guys can't make up your own categories and expect them to be taken seriously.
So, yes, Apple has about an 80% share of legally sold music downloads in the US, so what?
Most music is not bought through downloads yet. If it ever is, and Apple still has an 80% share in the States, then they will have a monopoly here.
But it isn't, and so they don't.
The last sentence is obviously not true as Apple themselves and Amazon sell at least music without any DRM restrictions. The DRM might not be Apple's fault but what has Apple stopped from providing an open specification to sync with iTunes in way the content protection is retained when it was still mandated by the content providers? The coupling between iTunes and the Pods in both ways has been hugely beneficial to Apple when building their monopoly on both the music player as well as content seller market. I still don't buy Jobs' claims that getting rid of the DRM on music was out of the goodness of their heart and for the best of the customer (although it was a positive side effect) but to prevent anti-competitive lawsuits which had a good chance to succeed.
You're wrong. That statement is obviously true.
Do you know what's going on?
Do you understand that it's the content companies that have demanded DRM?
You do know that, right?
You do know that every DVD is DRM protected. You know that every HD-DVD disk was DRM protected. You do know that every Blu-Ray disk is DRM protected. You do know that some record companies have proposed making new CD's DRM protected. You do know that all Tv shows online are DRM protected, as are all movies and music videos. You remember Sony's rootkit for CD's of course.
You do know this of course.
I suppose all of this is Apple's fault?
As for the coupling, so what? This has nothing to do with the selling of music. There are various ways of getting that music on to another device. Other companies don't have to lie about their device being one made by Apple to do so, and Apple doesn't have to allow it.
We can debate whether such a case would have any merit until we're blue in the face, but it won't be tried in the court of Apple fans. The only opinions that would count are that of U.S. Federal District court, Appellate Court, and the Supreme Court.
Almost. Apple bought out SoundJam two years before iTunes 1.0 came out. The whole company, all two of them (Casady and Greene?) was working for Apple when they wrote iTunes 1.0. When SoundJam cease to exist, it was just a music manager/player for a Mac. iTunes 1.0 was also just a music manager/player for a Mac when it first came out. It eventually managed music for the iPod on a Mac. And then on a PC. And then the iTunes Store was added. Apple already knew that iTunes would eventually manage the music on their yet to be released iPod when they released iTunes 1.0.
And how did Apple create iTunes- again?
C&G created the music manager/player SoundJam - the root of iTunes. You can't re-write history and claim otherwise.
Apple buys it and changes the name of it- and that's creating it? Puh-leeze.
I should know- I owned and used a copy SoundJam - way back when, in the days of OS9. It's basic features haven't changed.
What is Apple really achieving here, except pissing off some people with a move that feels very monopolistic?
No one is stopping Palm from writing their own software for OSX that will synch with their phones. It's not up to Apple to make iTunes compatible with every phone and digital music device out there. Feeling "monopolistic" is your opinion only, there's no truth to it at all.
Lets face it - while Apple is still (market) underdog in computer share, they are absolutely dominant force in MP3 players segment - not unlikely Microsoft in OS market. From that point of view, isn't Apple's obvious desire to prevent other players working with iTunes comparable as if MS would try to prevent, say, other web browsers working with Windows..?
That is not an accurate comparison. If Palm had bothered to create a software called "PreTunes" for Mac OSX and Apple prevented that software from running in OSX, that would be comparable to your MS example above.