@Adam Williamson 1
Based on your reply you might want to add yourself to the idiot list. . .
"The problem is that Apple has abused its dominance in the _hardware_ music player market (iPods) to create an effective monopoly in the _software_ music player market."
- Wrong. Apple created a music player and the software to synch music to that player. They have NOT abused it as you stated. iTunes and the iPod grew their markets together, it was an integrated product offering. One was not dominant and then forced people to adopt the other. You characterization is either ignorant of the history of both products or an outright lie.
"since Apple do their damnedest to stop the iPod working with any other application, to preserve this monopoly situation"
- Wrong again. Apple does NOT have a monopoly. Please look up what a monopoly means. They have a large share of the market in this area, but not a monopoly. They also did not "stop the iPod from working with any other app". They desgined it to work seamlessly with iTunes. They are under no obligation to make the iPod work with any other app. In fact it would be stupid to do so from a competition reason as well as a waste of company resources.
"the Pre is at a clear disadvantage compared to the iPod"
- Only because Palm was too lazy to write their own synching app with the Apple supplied SDK.
"Because of Apple's artificially created dominance of the software music player domain"
- Not artificial. How is it artificial? They competed and they won.
" Wow, that's just wrong on every level. The whole point is that Palm initially shipped the Pre set up such that it worked fine with iTunes without _having_ to fake any USB IDs. "
- Wow, THAT is just wrong on every level. Palm originally had the Pre falsely identified as an iPod to synch.
"But Apple can do no wrong, apparently."
- Wrong again. Apple can do wrong, but your assertions above are completely untrue. Apple does lots of stuff wrong (app approvals for one) but Palm is the culprit in this case. They were either too lazy to write their own software, or they hoped to keep their mediocre product in the limelight for as long as possible by artificially creating (your words) a fake conflict like this for the press. Either way Palm does a disservice to its customers and from the sales numbers I've seen they are getting their just rewards.