iTunes Shoves Aside Musicmatch
from the play-nicely... dept
When Apple first launched a Windows version of the iPod, they worked with MusicMatch to supply the necessary software, since they didn’t have a Windows version of iTunes. Eventually, they decided to launch their own. This wasn’t a huge surprise to the folks at MusicMatch who realized immediately that their old partner had become a competitor. What they didn’t expect, however, was that the new iTunes for Windows would shove installed copies of MusicMatch aside, and stop it from working with the iPod. That’s right. Even if you had been using MusicMatch for your iPod prior to downloading iTunes, the iTunes install disables that functionality. This seems to go a little bit too far. Installing a new application should not interfere with the way old applications work – especially when many people will probably want to continue to use both (or will just be testing out iTunes before deciding whether or not to stick with MusicMatch).
Comments on “iTunes Shoves Aside Musicmatch”
Hopefully, they sue
It’s a disturbing trend (started by, I think, AOL). I hope MusicMatch sues Apple for restraint of trade and the whole mess of publishers disabling other publishers’ software stops.
Re: Hopefully, they sue
Restraint of trade? You’ve got to be kidding. The only reason the user had MusicMatch in the first place is it because it came with the iPod.
Apple licensed MusicMatch to ship with the iPod.
The only version of MusicMatch that works with the iPod is the version that ships with the iPod. The only functionality of MusicMatch that get’s disabled if you install iTunes is the iPod interoperability.
Oh, and iTunes WARNS you that it’s going to disable MusicMatch interaction with the iPod when you install it.
Re: Re: Hopefully, they sue
same thing happend with mozilla when I installed it on my computer, it replaced all icons of IE with the moz and then tried to take over when I finally opened IE, thats just not right. I mean its trying to be a better browser then IE and it does worse behavure then IE does?
really happens all over the place
i just ran into this practice today when I installed Oracle on my computer…
it blocked IIS and installed its own apache server and connection, turned it on and made all the sites running on my computer inaccessible.
sadly, it’s really common, and not much can be done about it.
Re: I Got an Email from Musicmatch on This
As a registered iPod PC user, I received an email this morning from Musicmatch on this very topic, along with instructions on how to avoid this.
Since I am not nor plan to be an iTunes user, I deleted it. If I hadn’t I would have posted at least excerpts from that email here (it was actually pretty long).
Outlook and Groupwise
Same issue with Groupwise and Outlook. Install Outlook, with PIM only…no email, and it will screw up Groupwise. Re-install Groupwise, and it replaces the Outlook icon on the desktop with the Groupwise icon. Open Outlook, and it will tell you that a recently installed mail program caused changes that may interfere with normal functionality. It then suggests to fix the problem.
Am I the only one that finds this behavior exceptionally childish?
MLO