Apple preventing 3rd party with iPods?

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• Toxteth O'Grady Posts: 8,493

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  29/10/07 - 11:01 #2

  There was a lot of hoo-hah over Apple doing this to the iPhone and they finally backed down
  
  Apple are becoming the new bad-boys it seems

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• [Deleted User] Posts: 10,888

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  29/10/07 - 12:43 #3

  dfgh wrote: »

  I see that Apple are with recent iPod firmware upgrades, trying to prevent consumers from using 3rd party software(such as Yamipod) for managing the iPod material.My question is this.Why has no one attempted to sue Apple for monopolization? Surely this is more blatant than Microsoft and its IE fued.

  Apple just haven't released the specification to the iPod's database format, so 3rd party apps have to reverse engineer it.
  Apple made some changes to it in newer firmware, which broke compatibility.
  
  I don't believe Apple did it intentionally, or that they should sacrifice new features and performance optimisations for the compatibility of 3rd party applications.

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• jkain Posts: 1,629

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  29/10/07 - 23:09 #4

  Pingu wrote: »

  I don't believe Apple did it intentionally.

  
  Pingu, you naive little penguin :). Apple want people to use iTunes and the iTunes store and nothing else.

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• [Deleted User] Posts: 10,888

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  30/10/07 - 00:11 #5

  jkain wrote: »

  Pingu, you naive little penguin :). Apple want people to use iTunes and the iTunes store and nothing else.

  But Apple (reportedly) make little profit on the iTunes store. However, their profit margin on iPods is as much as 50%.
  Why would they intentionally break compatibility on platforms such as Linux, and cut off that market completely for iPod sales?
  
  The iPod revolves around a database file on the device, created by iTunes, which stores information about its content. Obviously the performance of the iPod OS is directly affected by how this data organised and laid out.
  It's not surprising that changes are made to such a file when updates like this are released:
  http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/06/ipod-nano-update-1-0-2/
  
  Apple didn't do anything particularly special to stop anyone reverse engineering it; indeed many 3rd party applications (including Yamipod) currently work with the latest iPod firmware.
  If Apple truly wished to stop this, they would introduce some form of encryption. (such as what they've done with iTunes's DAAP protocol)

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• [Deleted User] Posts: 2,389

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  30/10/07 - 11:11 #6

  iPod + iTunes are a combined system, the only priority for Apple is how they work together. It's not sold as an open system, just like games consoles aren't designed to allow you to run whatever you want on them. If you want an open player that you can install anything on and sync with the app of your choice then buy something different.

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