Apple getting away with things

[matkubicki]

[rant]

I am so sick of Apple getting away with things in the courts or having things go there own way or not being challenged over things etc!

Examples:

MS Windows in Europe can no longer be shipped with Media Player as this is abusive and anti competition.

Apple ship Itunes with Mac OS with no problems at all, and create a portable media player and download site linked dirtectly to it, which must all be used together, no one seems to blink

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Apple manage to win the itunes.co.uk site back off the UK owner, even though the person owning the domain regitered it before Itunes was even thought up.

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A leak from Mac HQ to a popular Mac news site leads to a court battle where the site has to name its sources. How many leaked peices of info have we all read online, latest roadmaps etc for Intel/AMD, when to expect the next version of windows, problems people are having developing some new technology, all leaked by someone, yet no court cases, no named sources.

[/rant]

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest, anyone else get annoyed by this or is it just me?

[dangel]

No, you're not alone. Some of us don't worship corporations - even if they are named after fruit.

Kudos to those capable of assessing a product on it's merits alone..

[latency]

Well, the first one, personally I don't see any problem with that at all, I think you want to blame the courts for being stupid, I can't see anything wrong with MS shipping media player and stuff.

The second one I don't know enough about, so i can't really comment, if the guy had a website there, then he should've been able to keep it. The the domain name was ona holding page, I think Apple had a better use for it, but again, I don't know enough about that.

The last one, totally aggree with you. I love apple products, but their legal team is WAY too sue-happy. They're killing off their own fan sites, a little secrecy is fine, but most of the hype surround apple products is from leaked info. The fan sites are doing apple a favour, so I don't know what apple's problem it there

[[M]uuhh]

Originally Posted by L4T3NCY

The last one, totally aggree with you. I love apple products, but their legal team is WAY too sue-happy. They're killing off their own fan sites, a little secrecy is fine, but most of the hype surround apple products is from leaked info. The fan sites are doing apple a favour, so I don't know what apple's problem it there

seems like its the only way they can make a profit...

anywayh, i dont see a problem with MS shipping windows media player, after all i use it anyway. (ANd its only a media player.... if it was a pay service like itunes i would not be happy)

wha i do hate is when you try and download Quicktime, you cannot install it without installign itunes with it, i cannot stand that and i had to search for an hour jsut to find an old installer.....

[dangel]

Try Quicktime Alternative - it lacks the bloat of the 'real' thing

[matkubicki]

I didnt realise you couldnt get Quicktime without getting Itunes, lucky i got it before they started that up as that truly should be stopped, not that i ever liked the MOV format anyway, always seemed rather slow and poor quality.

I dont have any really problem with any major companies, i know there all evil and just out to take my money and i accept that! But it does annoy me to see unfair treatment like the Windows media player thing. I'm so sick of the whole Microsoft bashing thing, be it in the courts or on the net/at Uni/everywhere. Are we not allowed to think - "well actually windows is pretty good, it may not be perfect but across the whole board im pretty happy with it"?

[Betty_Swallocks]

I wouldn't mind using iTunes, it's not a bad bit of software, but what winds me up is that installs all sorts of crap along with itself. I mean, wtf? iPod helper? I haven't got an iPod and have no intention of buying one. Why do I have to have the iPod helper riunning as a service under XP?

[latency]

That's another thing that confuses me about Apple software. On windows it DOES install a load of rubbish that I disable, but on the mac it doesn't do any of it.

They're really shooting themselves in the foot with some parts of their software- especially quicktime, which is a big pile of poo on windows.

[robdos]

I think the issue with Media Player is that M$ are attacking their opposition in a massive "monopoly" type of way.

Imagine you worked for WinAmp!

Its difficult for us to pass judgment on the Media Player topic as we're all computer literate, however I'm sure there are thousands of PCs that get shipped each week to people who don’t know there is an alternative, and further more probably don't care.

Same with the browser wars a few years back....now look what’s happening now with Firebox.

The point is that if M$ put all other media player developers out of business, there is nothing to stop them charging a premium for their player, or filling it with spyware, or what ever they like.

Therefore personally I agree that M$ shouldnt ship their Media Player with Windows but offer it as a download, like every other developer.

[[M]uuhh]

but that also means that peopel will have to have acces to the internet to even watch media on there pcs. when i first got my first PC i did not have acces to the internet for anotehr 2 years.

so now peopel are forced to downlaod things to even watch an AVI or move movie?

[Jamez_Warner]

Originally Posted by robdos

I think the issue with Media Player is that M$ are attacking their opposition in a massive "monopoly" type of way.

Imagine you worked for WinAmp!

Its difficult for us to pass judgment on the Media Player topic as we're all computer literate, however I'm sure there are thousands of PCs that get shipped each week to people who don’t know there is an alternative, and further more probably don't care.

Same with the browser wars a few years back....now look what’s happening now with Firebox.

The point is that if M$ put all other media player developers out of business, there is nothing to stop them charging a premium for their player, or filling it with spyware, or what ever they like.

Therefore personally I agree that M$ shouldnt ship their Media Player with Windows but offer it as a download, like every other developer.

so how come apple can do it? surely itunes isn't the only media app for osX

[robdos]

Originally Posted by Jamez_Warner

so how come apple can do it? surely itunes isn't the only media app for osX

I dont know. Stupid isnt it? I dont know how many mac players there are??

[robdos]

Originally Posted by [M]uuhh

but that also means that peopel will have to have acces to the internet to even watch media on there pcs. when i first got my first PC i did not have acces to the internet for anotehr 2 years.

so now peopel are forced to downlaod things to even watch an AVI or move movie?

Indeed a good argument. I guess you'd have to buy a player on CD??

[matkubicki]

I understand the courts reasons for not allowing microsoft to bundle media player, but i also disagree with them.

Microsoft have spent years bulding up windows and its base of users, supporting software etc. And now they have to take features out.

You can get alternative file managers to Explorer, so should they take that out? What about the bundled games? Come on, i didnt really agree with the IE thing a few years back but i reall think its got silly now.

And if the courts are going to say they cant bundle things, it should be the same for every OS sold. The key point is this is all bad for the IBM compatible PC market as these PC's are now going to be seen as not complete when you buy them, people will think i'll have to download a media player, and all sorts of other things. Where as with Apple they still get a complete package, image editing, audio editing, media player, browser the lot.

[dangel]

Imagine not getting *IE* with windows... Just a note to say you can download a browser using the command line ftp tool... That'd go down well with me!

What they should of done is force MS to display a start screen, with a list of links to alternative media players and browsers etc.. Then it's up to the user to go download/try alternatives (at least they've been made aware of their existance). A simple browser window that pops up after install, linking to a non-microsoft controlled web page 'advertising' the alternatives to the bundled software for example.

Absolutely nobody is going to buy the reduced version of Windows - so it's pretty much missing the point anyway. Stupid isn't it?

Meanwhile, back on topic - why isn't Apple forced to release a plugin codec dll that all other media players can embed (for free I might add)? I'm sure that's not beyond the scope of possibillity for them since it doesn't stop them forcing you to go and buy one of their IPods for hardware playback, and you've still paid (through the nose) for the DRM locked file in the first place.

Out of interest, does anyone know if (as a hardware manu) I can actually licence AAC for my device to playback iTune$ files? And how much is the per unit cost of the licence if so? How does it compare to WMA licencing?
I just wonder since the major factor putting me off iTune$, aside from price, is not being able to choose my hardware playback device.