Synopsis: Apple has never supported or particularly wanted third-party software or hardware to be able to interface with their systems. In the running skirmish that is trying to get said devices to work with said systems, Apple has once again made a change that breaks the jiggered compatibility. This guy doesn't use an Apple system, so he's not gonna buy another iPod.
Well, that, plus a lot more drama and dramatic linebreaks.
How is this misguided? This behavior looks entirely rational from where I stand. Apple wants to lock people in to iTunes, iTMS, and the iPod/iPhone. They make more money when people use the product suite.
I think people are afflicted with the misapprehension that product bundling is unlawful. It is not. It is unlawful to use bundling as a device to maintain or extend a monopoly. Saying Apple has a monopoly on the iPod is like saying Kimberly-Clark has a monopoly on Huggies.
I never said it was unlawful. I also didn't say it not rational. I said it was a bad idea.
It's a bad idea because it's hurts their own customers. It's a bad idea because it causes some people not to buy their product.
Huggies is a ridiculously bad example.
A better example is the Michelin PAX run flat wheels (rims) that require special (expensive) tires. Nothing illegal there, it's a great lock in. Except customers refuse to buy it, and not just refuse to buy the wheels, they won't even buy a car with those, and car manufacturers started having to add an option to not have run flat tires.
With the tires, it's just a bad idea, but with an iPhone apple is blocking access to a customers data. It's MY iPhone apple - not yours.
There are classes of customers that some businesses don't want. It's also rational to ward off customers who are pains in the ass.
As for the "it's MY iPhone argument", I sympathize with it, but I see the other side of the argument too: I also want companies to be free to create any reasonable business model they'd like. Apple very specifically and deliberately didn't sell you an iPhone as a general-purpose computing platform you could do anything you want with, and you can't claim that you bought it expecting to use it as a Linux box.
I don't see where "actively block them" comes in. Changing the database format of your product is something you'd want the latitude to do. The fact that it breaks unsupported third party software is hardly something Apple would go out of their way to do.
Let's not be disingenuous; doing that concedes the point that breaking Pre's unlicensed, unauthorized iTunes connector was wrong. Apple is clearly going to keep breaking the Pre, and they're doing it on purpose.
Yes, but iPhone syncing has the potential to transfer email account information, including passwords, making it a security hole for untrusted devices to be able to do it.
In either case, while breaking Pre interoperability was likely intentional (and we've discussed this to death in other threads), Apple doesn't give a shit about gtkpod.
Well, that, plus a lot more drama and dramatic linebreaks.