No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. You could store your music on your Xbox and push it to your iPhone - or in iTunes and push it to your Windows Phone.
Imagine if your BlackBerry could only send emails to other BlackBerry devices. We wouldn't accept that (although BBM is trying to push us that way) - so why should we accept it with other services?
>> No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it.
If there were one published specification for storing a music library, before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it, and some software vendor will create and sell some piece of software that extends the format to provide it. It's just supply and demand.
I really can't wrap my head around this, are you really asking for generic, one-size-fits-all file formats, applications and hardware for everything, or are you just being naive?
Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked.
Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial.
Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end.
>> Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked.
Bad example. E-mail is basically just formatted text with binary attachments to be interpreted by the e-mail client. Still, almost every e-mail client uses some internal database-like format to store your inbox and augment it with metadata to make it easily searchable and whatever. E-mail clients are to e-mail what music players like iTunes are to music files. You can't just pick up your Thunderbird e-mail database and drop it somewhere for Outlook to use, just like you can't pick up your iTunes library and drop it into Windows Media Player or whatever other music player. With some effort you can often import/export e-mail databases between clients, but that's no different from importing/exporting an iTunes library.
>> Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial.
One of the most-heard complaints about the HTML standard is that it moves so freaking slow, and is still full of cruft and inconveniences from 20 years ago. HTML isn't actually that great at all, it's just the least worst option we have if you want cross-platform markup with all the features HTML offers today. That's not to say I propose a proprietary alternative to HTML by the way, just that HTML is hardly the prime example of a model you'd want to apply to every other piece of software.
>> Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end.
First of all that's not entirely true, because USB only defines a transport layer, not how the data going over the wire should be interpreted. It isn't all that different from something like RS-232 serial communication, just a lot more advanced. In itself there's nothing you can do with USB alone, you still need a protocol, which is usually implemented by a driver. Apart from generic hardware such as mass storage devices, almost any USB device that implements any kind of specialized hardware functions needs a hardware-specific driver, and more often than not, thesre are proprietary. Don't confuse 'open' with 'generic' by the way, because even if some piece of hardware uses an 'open' protocol, it's still not 'generic' as you can't do anything with it without a (very specific) driver. Second, USB is not really the epitome of 'openness' either, as you have to pay royalties to sell hardware that uses the USB standard and carries the USB logo.
Your Thunderbird email store is just a bunch of mbox files, which is a standardized (RFC 4155) and rather well supported file format. Outlook can't read it, of course, but that's because Outlook is shitty. You can certainly pick up your Thunderbird email store and drop it on (Al)pine, Mutt, Kmail, Atmail, Claws, Cone, Gnus, Opera Mail and others.
Outlook can pick up mbox, but how about moving your filters around? Or Apple Mail VIP contacts? Virtual folders, fancy tags and indexed search databases?
You can just move around the mails themselves, just like you can move around your music, and as a small bonus, the static playlists.
>before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it
Eh, what? Features don't matter. It's just the data that should be portable.
If one platform supports "dynamic playlists" (which is just the equivalent of a view in SQL) and another platform doesn't, that might be a bit inconvenient, but it really doesn't matter. At least your data can be converted.
Apple doesn't need to do anything to make iTunes work with other devices. In fact, they go out of their way to make sure it doesn't. Palm figured out how to make it work, and Apple figured out how to break it.
Palm made it work? Isn't this the same hack where they advertised themselves as an Apple device completely breaking the USB standard? They made it work by breaking their own agreements to be USB certified.
Let me be clear here, advertising your device as another manufacturers is a BAD precedent be setting. For any company.
It also violates the agreement companies agree to to be usb certified. What Apple did afterwards to ensure only their devices were being advertised is their own business. But lets be clear. Palm was in the wrong here. It doesn't absolve Apples decisions, but I can see why they did what they did.
It also likely explains why Apple started doing drm-like authentication to its devices.
True. But that was Palm's decision. Apple was under no obligation to make any changes to prevent Palm's questionable decision.
That's literally the only point I was making. Apple didn't need to do anything to have other devices working with iTunes. Once they were, by whatever means, Apple made the decision to make changes to further disallow it. Apple didn't need to go out of their way to provide interoperability, but they did go out of their way to break interoperability, no matter how the competitors achieved it.
What Apple did wrong and what Palm did wrong are not part of my argument.
Its a bit of a useless point then to be honest. Apple is under no obligation to allow anyone to impersonate an iphone as a usb device with their software.
Apple making changes to disallow it were because they were breaking their usb agreement to do it. You are not supposed to identify your devices as anything but what they are. Explain to me how Apple is doing anything bad here because of what Palm started doing? As mentioned elsewhere, the xml file itunes generates is there for interoperability, Palm chose to do something they should not have. There is a difference of "breaking interoperability" (sic), and acting as if you are some other device to an operating system. Palm was doing the latter, not the former.
It's not beside the point. Do you know for a fact that Apple went out of their way to break functionality? Perhaps they had some reason for making the breaking changes and since they were under no obligation to support this 3rd party hack, why not do it?
The fact that Apple complained to the USB-IF about Palm's constant attempts to make the Pre sync with iTunes and that every update to iTunes after that broke the compatibility is enough to have a reasonable belief that Apple deliberately broke this functionality.
Apple had no obligation to let Palm sync with their software. Palm had no right to sync with their software. But Apple released three updates in a row that each conveniently broke compatibility with Palm's hardware. That's the extent of what I am saying. I'm not arguing that Apple had to support it, but rather that they explicitly disallow it, and will fight to keep it disallowed. Arguing that this was mere coincidence sounds like a violation of Occam's Razor. Possible, but unlikely.
In fact, they go out of their way to make sure it doesn't.
No they don't, iTunes offers the Library.xml file for interoperability. My Nokia E71 and E6 work just fine with iTunes (on Mac OS X) via Library.xml. In fact is works better than my iPods since iTunes doesn't need to be running to sync with my Nokia phones.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but Palm is out of business, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world. Might not be your best example for making me want to strive for this as a capitalist.
Palm isn't technically out of business, they were acquired. The fate of their assets were controlled by their parent company.
Capitalist or otherwise, my point wasn't "this will put you out of business", it was that iTunes was working with other devices without Apple needing to do any work on their end. The work they performed on their end worked to destroy that.
As a capitalist, I hope that you understand that shutting Palm out is not the reason, or even a contributing factor to Apple's success. I'm honestly not sure what point you're trying to make, as the Palm v Apple software dispute has nothing to do with Apple's valuation nor does it have anything to do with Palm's fate. That is a non-sequitur.
Apple shouldn't have to provide software for its competitors, and if it doesn't want them to fake a device being an iPhone they have every right to make iTunes not work for Palm. The point is that it is better for Apple that it doesn't work with Palm or anyone else.
Palm wasn't the biggest competitor, but they were certainly a competitor. If all of them went away it seems pretty obvious that that would be good for Apple, and Palm being gone is a contributing factor, albeit a small one.
Palm was acquired, and then for intents and purposes shut down last year.
