Why Apple Should Let Other Devices Connect To iTunes

from the stop-complaining dept

We've mentioned in the past how silly it is that Apple blocks the Palm Pre and other devices from accessing iTunes. Plenty of people responded, pointing out that Apple really makes its money on the hardware, and thus it makes no sense to allow other hardware products to connect to iTunes. While I agree that Apple makes its money off the hardware, I still disagree that Apple should block others out. In doing so, it makes me and many others less likely to purchase an Apple product, because I don't want to get trapped into Apple hardware. I'd much rather a more open solution.

Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo has written up a wonderful explanation of why Apple should not just allow the Palm Pre and others to connect to iTunes, but it should encourage it. The whole thing is worth reading, but here's a snippet:

I hope the company continues to search for ways to sync with iTunes, because the fight--silly as it seems--is important, and Palm is clearly in the right. Apple may have the USB-IF on its side, and it may also be protected by copyright law. But by blocking non-Apple devices from its music app, Apple is violating a more fundamental principle of computing--that unalike devices should be able to connect to one another freely. The principle underlies everything we take for granted in tech today: It's why the Internet, your home network, and the PC function at all. And it's why Palm should keep storming the iTunes fortress.

I am not claiming that Palm has the legal right to hack into Apple's software, nor am I calling on any authorities to compel Apple to let Palm in; if the cat-and-mouse game turns into a courtroom brawl, it's very likely that Apple would win the fight. Instead, I'm calling on Apple to stand down. Even better: It should create a legal pathway for Palm and every other company to sync with iTunes. Why? The most obvious reason is that it's good for iTunes users. Nobody other than Apple benefits from locked-down software. Apple frequently extols the wonders of digital music--the convenience, the flexibility, the environmental friendliness. But how flexible can it be if you're allowed to sync your tunes only with devices made by a single company?

What's more, the iTunes block is hypocritical. Like every other tech company, Apple has benefited enormously from the spirit of interconnectedness that pervades the tech industry. The iPod would have fizzled if Microsoft had blocked it from hooking up to Windows PCs. Or look at the iPhone--Apple is proud that it can sync with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo, and just about everything else. Indeed, you could argue that Apple, once left for dead on the periphery of the tech industry, managed to come back only because it skillfully marketed Macs as the most promiscuous computers you could buy.

Indeed. While it's unlikely that Apple will actually do this, it would be a smart move. No one's buying Apple hardware because it syncs with iTunes. They're buying it for many other reasons, and Apple can continue to compete on those. Blocking the Pre and other devices from accessing iTunes is petty and unnecessary.

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Apple Withdraws Lawsuit Against Wiki Site Owner Over iPhone/iPod Interoperability Hack Discussion

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Last November, the EFF took Apple to task for threatening the owner of a wiki site. Apple claimed that an ongoing discussion on the site about how to build interoperability between iPods and iPhones and alternative software other than iTunes violated the DMCA -- which requires quite a novel interpretation of the DMCA. After Apple refused to back down, EFF sued in April. Somewhere along the way, it looks like Apple's lawyers started to realize that it had pretty close to no chance whatsoever and has now withdrawn this particular threat. The EFF is dropping the lawsuit, but isn't pleased that the whole thing had to happen in the first place:

"While we are glad that Apple retracted its baseless legal threats, we are disappointed that it only came after 7 months of censorship and a lawsuit," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Because Apple continues to use technical measures to lock iPod Touch and iPhone owners into -- and Palm Pre owners out of -- using Apple's iTunes software, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more discussions among frustrated customers about reverse engineering Apple products. We hope Apple has learned its lesson here and will give those online discussions a wide berth in the future."

Indeed. While the Palm Pre situation is in the other direction (interop between alternative hardware and iTunes software, rather than alternative software with Apple hardware), it shows again that Apple will do whatever possible to stop people from making legal use of products they purchased.

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Consumer Interest Groups Ask Obama To Stop Appointing RIAA Lawyers

from the good-luck... dept

With the Obama administration appointing a whole bunch of copyright maximalists to various positions (despite an early indication that perhaps he recognized issues with copyright law), a bunch of public interest and consumer interest groups have gotten together to write a letter to Obama, asking him to recognize that he seems to be filling every open slot with a very heavily biased viewpoint which could do significant harm towards innovation. Some of the letter may be inspired by the rumored candidates for the IP Czar position -- all of whom also fall into the copyright maximalist camp. Though, the fact that it's taken Obama so long to appoint this position (upsetting the Senators who wrote the law requiring the position in the first place) suggests (at the very least) he isn't considering this to be a priority.

Still, the EFF also took the opportunity to point out that it seems likely that Obama violated copyright himself, in giving a gift of an iPod filled with music to the Queen of England. It's almost impossible to know whether or not copyright was violated, but that's exactly the problem. Of course, this is likely to be of little concern to the President -- which is itself another problem. Too many people, who have little familiarity with copyright law, simply assume that "copyright is good" and that "more copyright is better," leading to the false belief that those who have a history twisting copyright to their own advantage are the best positioned to speak on copyright policy. That's regulatory capture at its finest -- something the Obama administration had claimed it was trying to avoid. Obviously, there are more important things for Obama to be focused on, but relying so heavily on copyright maximalists who have benefited from distorting the purpose of copyright is quite troubling.

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Does It Take A History Lesson To Figure Out You Can Make A Product In Different Colors?

from the mindblowing,-like,-wow dept

The amount of attention paid to and interest in industrial design has skyrocketed over the past several years, with people like Jonathan Ives, Apple's chief designer, becoming well known. Without question, industrial design is hugely important in the consumer electronics space, but some of the genius ascribed to it gets a little over the top. Witness a post on a BusinessWeek blog that attributes the launch of the iPod Mini in different colors to "what Apple Learned from Kodak". It says that Apple's decision to give consumers a choice of colors was borne out of Kodak's 1926 release of its Vanity camera in different colors, an attempt to make the product more attractive to women, and that "What Apple did was learn from history, and adopt, adapt, and assimilate past success to current context." So figuring out you can make a product in different colors requires an immensely skilled designer with an acute knowledge of the history of colored products? That seems to be buying into the mystique of industrial design just a little too much. While it was beneficial for Apple to expand the iPod color palette, that move in and of itself wasn't all that innovative, was it? Furthermore, the success of the Mini, and continued success of the iPod, is because of many factors beyond design -- the ability to deliver more functionality at lower prices, for a start.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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EFF Blasts Apple For Fraudulent DMCA Takedown Of Wiki Page

from the let's-look-at-the-law dept

It's no secret that Apple is excessively protective of the way some of its systems work. That includes trying to stop any other application, other than iTunes, from controlling an iPod. That's a bit of a pain for those of us who like to use alternative apps, such as Songbird. Because of this, there are plenty of folks who work out ways to reverse engineer Apple's system to make this work. Specifically, they need to understand a file called iTunesDB, which Apple tries to prevent others from writing to with a checksum hash. When Apple first introduced the hash it was reverse engineered within a couple days. Apple just recently changed the hash, meaning that it needs to be reverse engineered again. There's a public wiki where a bunch of folks were collaborating to do just that... but Apple sent a DMCA takedown notice to the site.

The EFF has stepped up to walk through the many, many reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site, and Apple's takedown notice appears to be fraudulent. Yes, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA do say it's illegal to offer a technology, product, service, device or device to get around DRM, but an open discussion on a wiki is not any of those things. Perhaps more importantly, Apple doesn't own the copyright on iTunesDB. Each iPod makes its own iTunesDB file based on what files they put on their device. The copyright is unlikely to belong to Apple. Next up, reverse engineering is perfectly legal, and the DMCA has a specific exception for reverse engineering. And, finally, the anti-circumvention clause is designed to protect copyright infringement -- but the folks building alternative software programs aren't doing anything for copyright infringement -- they're just trying to make iPods work with their software.

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Apple Trying To Patent Not Letting You Use Your Nike+iPod With Non-Nike Shoes

from the this-raises-some-questions dept

I know plenty of folks (including my wife) who have purchased the Nike+iPod device to use with non-Nike sneakers. The device puts a sensor in your shoe, which communicates with a separate dongle connected to your iPod (or built in to the new iPod Touch), and tracks your running stats, which you can then upload. Many Nike sneakers have a little cutout underneath the insoles where you can stick the sensor, but you can buy (or make) a little pouch and connect it to shoelaces on non-Nike shoes. However, not only is Apple thinking about ways to stop this -- it's trying to patent those ways. It's got a patent application in for smart garments which would create basically a DRM for devices -- forceably pairing a device like the Nike+iPod sensor to a specific shoe.

This seems odd for a whole variety of reasons. First, it seems positively silly for Apple to do this, as it severely limits the market for the devices, and lessens the value of the iPod. You can see why Nike might ask for it, but it's hard to see why Apple would implement it. Second, however, is that this seems highly questionable as a patent. I mean why would you patent something that makes your product less desirable? Would Apple actually sue someone else (say, Microsoft) for doing the same thing? That would (oh no!) force Microsoft to make its product more useful and more valuable. Finally, as a patent, how is this not "obvious"? It seems like a bad idea to implement, but that doesn't make it non-obvious. If any engineer wanted to create such a system, it wouldn't take much thought at all. The whole thing seems rather pointless.

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No, This Guy Didn't Invent The iPod 30 Years Ago

from the try-again dept

Two and a half years ago, we wrote about the claims of Kane Kramer, a guy who claimed to have invented the iPod thirty years ago, and was talking to lawyers to see if he had a case against Apple. As we explained at the time, Kramer did not invent the iPod at all. He created a very early digital music player, that had much less functionality that couldn't store more than a few minutes of music, which never got anywhere in the marketplace, and for which all of his patents had long expired. To say that he had invented the iPod would be like saying that the first guy who threw a block of ice in a box "invented" the air conditioner.

Yet, here we go again, as the DailyMail in the UK is claiming that Apple has admitted that this guy did, in fact, invent the iPod. However, again, that's not true at all. What happened was that Apple had him provide some evidence in its dispute with Burst.com (which was eventually settled). Basically, what Apple was doing wasn't admitting that Kramer "invented the iPod" but was showing that there was plenty of prior art (including Kramers) that predated Burst's highly questionable patents.

That doesn't mean that Kramer invented the iPod. It just means that his work predated Burst's claim of a monopoly on some specific technology that it claimed Apple infringed. That's a long way from "inventing the iPod." Besides, there were plenty of digital music players prior to the iPod. In fact, the real revolution around the iPod wasn't the fact that it was a digital player, but that it was the first digital player that had significant storage and could carry large collections of music at once -- something that Kramer's player never could do. So, please, can we stop repeating this myth that he somehow invented the iPod. He didn't.

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Apple Sued Yet Again For Patent Infringement Over iTunes/iPod

from the promoting-what-kind-of-progress,-exactly? dept

Apple has been sued over and over again by companies claiming to hold patents on some of the most basic concepts found in Apple's iTunes and iPod offerings. However, given Apple's seeming willingness to pay up to settle such suits, it really shouldn't be a surprise that more companies are coming up with even more ridiculous patents to sue over. The latest is from a company named ZapMe which claims to hold a couple of patents that it says covers iTunes and the iPod. Of course the company is demanding an injunction and damages, though it seems unlikely that a court would ever grant an injunction. As for the patents themselves one was granted back in 2006 and the other came earlier this week. The newer patent is actually a "continuation" patent, a process that has been widely abused by some patent holders to adjust older patents to make sure they cover newer technologies. The Patent Office has been trying to put some limits on continuations, but a court recently wouldn't allow them to put the new rules in place. Take a read through the patent itself and explain, please, how this possibly served the purpose of furthering innovation?

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Bill Gates Damns Zune With Faint Praise

from the the-anti-Jobs dept

By now, most people are aware of the "reality distortion field" that surrounds Steve Jobs. Folks attending his keynotes or product launches talk about how it's almost a religious experience, where he really does make you feel like the latest iPod nano is the greatest device ever invented. It's no secret that Bill Gates has a rather different personality -- but it's still quite bizarre to see the level of faint praise Gates gives the Zune as its second generation launches:

"For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got.... It was just so-so on the software side. I'm sure a year from now we'll do even better."

He does insist that the satisfaction was "superhigh," but satisfaction and passion are two very different beasts. Of course, this fits right in with how Microsoft has attacked this problem from the beginning: designing the product by committee, rather than coming up with something that they can be passionate about. When even your CEO can't show much passion about your products (especially when those products are up against Steve Jobs' latest products), you've got a problem.

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New iPods Demonstrate BLS BS

from the inflation,-deflation,-whatever dept

The obvious response to folks complaining about the iPhone price cut is that of course the price was going to be cut, because it's a tech item, and the cost of technology invariably marches lower. Yes, technology is a constant deflationary force, not just because prices of it keep dropping, but because the quality of any given item tends to rise over time. We've made this point in the past, that inflation statistics have a hard time dealing with tech items, because the measures only look at price and have a difficult time adjusting for quality improvements. As economist Russ Roberts notes, the new iPod Classic is not just $50 cheaper than the original, it holds 40 times as much data. In other words, doing a like-for-like comparison between the original iPod and the new one vastly understates the amount of progress that was made in such a short time. What's more, while it's easy to note the data storage comparisons, how do you quantify the addition of video playback or pictures? It's pretty difficult. So while inflation statistics serve a purpose, it's important to recognize that there's often a lot more at work than just price changes.

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Apple Announces New iPods, Cue Fanboy Frenzy, Navel-Gazing

from the ihype dept

Apple refreshed its iPod line today, announcing the long-expected touchscreen iPod among other things. The event was pretty wide-ranging, with a lot to chew on. The biggest early news was the announcement that iPhone owners will be able to create ringtones from songs they've purchased from the iTunes Music Store... for an additional 99 cents on top of the cost of the downloaded track. Perhaps this is an attempt by Apple to throw a bone to disgruntled record companies, but it's likely to call attention to legions of mobile handsets other than the iPhone that will let user set MP3s and other types of audio files as ringtones for free. Apple also sliced the price of the 8GB iPhone by $200, to $399 -- indicating that demand has slowed as demand among diehard Mac fans and other early adopters has been filled. The price cut is probably also a reaction to the iPod Touch, which appears to be an iPhone without any phone, and a similar 8GB model of it has been priced at $299. This may prove to be an attractive alternative to the iPhone for many users, since it has a fairly similar feature set, outside cellular connectivity, including WiFi web browsing -- but comes at a lower upfront cost, plus without the need for a long-term contract with AT&T.

Perhaps the most curious announcement, though, was news of an Apple partnership with Starbucks. iPhone and iPod Touch users will eventually see an extra icon on their screen when they're within range of a WiFi-enabled Starbucks. The application it leads to will allow them to see what songs are playing in the store, and buy them from the iTMS, and they can also access the iTMS without having to pay usage fees for the hotspot. On the face of it, it's a pretty underwhelming offering, just like all of Starbucks' previous attempts at digital music downloads, and the fact that Steve Jobs claimed Apple had been working on it for two years is hardly reassuring. Despite Jobs' contention that the service is "very cool", it's hard to see it selling more iPods, or making much money on its own.

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Another iPod Listener Struck By Lightning

from the is-it-a-message? dept

It's happened again: Aaron points us to a story about an iPod listener in Canada who was struck by lightning, suffering major injuries in the process. This isn't the first time someone has been listening to an iPod before getting struck, although it bears repeating that there's nothing about an iPod (or a mobile phone for that matter) that would actually attract lightning (unless you think that God doesn't like iPod listeners, though that can't be demonstrated through science). In this case, the iPod listener happened to be sitting underneath a tree, which probably had a little more to do with it. Doctors think that perhaps the headphones may have caused the electricity to move towards the head, exacerbating the injuries, although the slim chances of this happening to someone probably doesn't justify the cost of getting bluetooth headphones.

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