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Bill Gates Bans iTunes From Windows
- batiudrami 16y agoThis would actually make iTunes for Windows much better.
- asnyder 16y agoI thought this was pretty silly. Perhaps I've oversaturated with blog posts on 3.3.1.
- gxs 16y agoOk, I'll bite and humor the author. The reason Microsoft can't do this is because Windows penetration is absurdly high- something in the mid 90%s of all desktop computers. Any action like this would be followed by immediate litigation from competitors crying monopoly. The reason Apple can get away with this is because contrary to what you would believe from reading the HN front page, apple's penetration in the cell phone market is minute and not a monopoly. edit: for the person that said apple smartphone market share is 88%, its 14% worldwide, I don't know where you got your figures though you claim wikipedia: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone-sales-2009-gartner/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone-sales-200... Having a stranglehold of 95% on an entire industry (desktop pcs) is very different than owning 14% of a subset of an industry (mobile phones in general)
- benologist 16y agoThe important thing is it'd fuck Apple completely while it drags through the courts. It's a shame Adobe, Google, Novell, Unity etc aren't in a position to do anything about it.
- chbarts 16y agoAlso, Windows doesn't have an App Store. How would Gates ban anything from the Windows platform?
- tptacek 16y agoAlso, Bill Gates doesn't run Microsoft anymore.
- bediger 16y agoOh, yeah, I forgot about that: the Pentavirate is now in charge. A secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including Microsoft, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows. The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up.
- mbreese 16y agoOh, I hate the colonel, with his wee beady eyes...
- stcredzero 16y agoMalicious software removal tool? Ironically, Windows XP Tablet has become the platform on which I run my FOSS software on a tablet.
- bbq 16y agoIt is a thought experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment
- jsz0 16y agoA pretty lousy one. People are just going to focus on the obvious logical problems of making this comparison.
- philwelch 16y agoThought experiments generally have the expectation that you don't quibble with them; Maxwell's demon doesn't make sense because demonic spirits don't exist, but that's not the point of the exercise.
- corruption 16y agoI keep trying to explain apple aren't in the cellphone business. Do you consider the ipod touch, which is outselling the iphone now, a smartphone? What about the ipad? Apple are in the mobile computing with a centralised app store business. And according to my calculations (based off data from wikipedia) they have ~88% of the market.
- mbreese 16y agoYes, the presence of the ipad is really hindering the slew of android tablets we are going to see this year. There is a very good reason as to why Apple has the market share it does. Apple makes the market. Once it's been shown to be profitable, others then join the market, but Apple has used it's first mover advantage very well to create and domante a market. It wasn't the first to make an mp3 player, but it remade the market. It wasn't the first to have a smartphone, but it remade that market too. In each case, they increased consumer choice by drastically advancing the state of the art. Look at the zune now. Look at the nexus one, the new blackberries. Would those even be here if it weren't for the iPod and iPhone? So, they may have a big share of the market (as you define it), but they are hardly a monopoly force.
- wmorein 16y agoApple is definitely not "minute" in the smartphone market, although obviously how you define the market is key. It is an interesting thought experiment to think about what would happen if the iPhone OS did start to head up in market share (e.g. if Apple actually released iPhone minis or something of the sort). As they approached dominance, there would be a whole number of things that they all of a sudden couldn't do. Blocking Palm from iTunes, exclusive App Store, this restriction, etc. Strategically if they started to head towards large market share it might even make sense to slow it down to preserve their freedom to operate.
- DannoHung 16y agoThey'd just raise prices.
- warwick 16y agoDoesn't this accidentally back up the 'third party frameworks lack quality' argument? iTunes for Windows is generally considered to be a lousy piece of software. Same with Safari for Windows, another piece released under the same approach.
- skeletonjelly 16y agoI think the point is about double standards. Not that I disagree with you.
- electromagnetic 16y agoAgreed, but any Apple software for a PC is horrendous. iTunes/Safari/Quicktime are all colossal memory hogs but worse of all they have so many hidden programs running behind the scenes that they continuously hog memory. I've seen malware infections less intrusive than a single iTunes instance.
- r0s 16y agoThe macs I use daily are admittedly old, G4s, but it's the same problem. When something like winamp runs so very well on old PCs you have to wonder if playing music really needs all that overhead.
- cookiecaper 16y agoI consider iTunes for Mac to be a lousy piece of software, too. I've found it to be a memory hog with inadequate features on both platforms. I think that most people don't complain about it on Mac because it meets their needs and they don't know any better, as most lay Windows users don't complain against Internet Explorer.
- panic 16y agoDo you know of any better music player software for OS X?
- frou_dh 16y agoWhile we're on the subject, iTunes could even do with being remade on OS X. It's a bit crufty and funky feeling (non-Cocoa?).
- flyosity 16y agoI think the crufty feeling comes from most of the App Store being implemented using a WebView and custom HTML/CSS to mimic Mac-like UI stylings. This makes it very easy for Apple engineers to update the Store but also makes the user experience a little choppy since it's not using native rendering for the interface implementation.
- GeneralMaximus 16y agoIt is non-Cocoa, AFAIK. And 32-bit. My information might be outdated, though.
- pohl 16y agoI realized my calling in life was to sell hand-knitted red, white & blue beer koozies. Alas, Walmart won't carry them in their store. Can I get some blogger outrage over here?
- stanleydrew 16y agoI'm pretty tired of this analogy. It doesn't even make sense! Of course Walmart can decide what to carry in its stores. It owns the store, and the land on which it's built (presumably). The problem is that Apple continues to "own" part of your device even after you've bought it! If I'm Walmart, and I buy some land from XYZ realty to put a store up, I don't have to take orders from XYZ realty about what I can and can't put in my store, or about how I have to produce the goods I want to sell! Now that's a proper analogy.
- pohl 16y agoWhy do you equate the brick-and-mortar store to the device - rather than to, say, the AppStore? Apple doesn't continue to own my device, but it does continue to own its store.
- stanleydrew 16y agoBut that's exactly what i did, isn't it? I suggested the app store is like the brick and mortar store. And the device is like the land the store is built on. Why does the owner of the land continue to own the store?
- pohl 16y agoI would say that the land would equate to the server farms. I don't see how the device is analogous to it.
- mbreese 16y agoNo one is forcing you to upgrade your iPhone. If you don't want iPhone OS4 apps and the licensing garbage that entails, then don't use it. Your phone will still have the same functionality as before. It's not like apple is taking away a feature that phones currently have. It's more like walmart opening a brand new store right next to an existing store. Something like an elite walmart (?) and the products in that section were all produced without sweatshop labor. You could still shop at the old store and get the same stuff. Or you could shop at the newer elite walmart next to the old one and get new shinier stuff.
- derefr 16y agoPlease, Microsoft, do this. An iTunes designed for Windows would take 90% of the irritation I have with my iPod away (and would just be a generally classy move on Apple's part—providing the best experience of their hardware, regardless of your choice of OS.)
- jrockway 16y agoThere are plenty of other media players that work fine with Windows. Some even let you just rsync your media to the device and they figure it all out. The only people who still use iPods are college kids and Apple fanbois.
- derwiki 16y agoI'm a huge Linux and Open Source fan, but my iPod Touch is the best portable music player I've ever owned. I'd say 50-75% of my coworkers use iPhones as their music players too. And we're not all college kids or fanboys.
- jrockway 16y agoI guess you guys don't have any music in open formats. My collection is mostly FLAC.
- derefr 16y agoWhy would you put FLACs on a portable device without transcoding them first? Do you have TBs of room on your player? (My collection is currently 300GB of average-quality MP3s, and growing...)
- msie 16y agoI would love to downvote this. The title is misleading. You find out it's a thought experiment only at the end of the page.
- drm237 16y agoUnless of course you use common sense in which case you would have realized it before even visiting the site.
- msie 16y agoCommon sense? That's being challenged everyday by news you read on this site. Reading the comments on this page would lead you to think that many believe the headline.
- msie 16y agoWhat I mean by "common sense being challenged" is that the recent actions of Apple do not seem to make "common sense" so I'm willing to believe that Bill Gates WOULD ban iTunes. So nothing is surprising anymore. But please, vote me down just for being frustrated by the misleading headline and then all these comments that seem to reflect people's belief in it. This is not reddit or slashdot. There is no way to mark a comment as being "Funny".
- jkincaid 16y agoGood idea, not-so-great execution. I think this would have been better if the author wrote in a more serious tone. I think the point is that if you want to, you can probably conjure a logical-sounding, professional explanation for just about any 'evil' action by a company. From their standpoint, when isn't it logical to do something that hurts the competition? I'm not saying the explanation John Gruber came up with (and was later reaffirmed by Steve Jobs) is false. I just don't think it makes Apple's actions much easier to stomach.
- jsz0 16y agoHow about this as a better thought experiment/reality: Some Linux distro makers refuse to include closed source drivers because they don't pass their idealogical purity tests. It's no good for the end user in the short term because it makes setting up a fully functional Linux machine more difficult. Some people accept this because they believe ultimately open source drivers are better. A company like NVIDIA spends some money to develop these drivers yet they are denied inclusion into most distributions out of the box solely for idealogical reasons -- a choice made by a relatively small group of people who control how the distributions are packaged.
- blhack 16y agoUhmm...except for I can still install the nvidia stuff if I want to. This sounds exactly like what everyone is advocating. Allow people to install rejected apps, just make it tiny bit more difficult.
- 0x44 16y agoAllow people to install rejected apps, just make it tiny bit more difficult. I'd argue they already have. Jailbreaking the iPhone is trivial enough that anyone can do so if they desire rejected or non-AppStore applications.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoDidn't Apple argue this was illegal under the DMCA? http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/02/13/apple.jailbreaking.stance/ http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/02/13/apple.jailbreaking.st... I'm not sure breaking the law fits my definition of 'trivial'.
- 0x44 16y agoNot exactly, they argued that the arguments the EFF put forth for carving out an exception for jail-breaking did not meet the legal requirements for carving out such an exception.
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- gabrielroth 16y agoYes, of course! Every platform is exactly the same, and any statement that applies to one also applies to all the others in exactly the same way!
- psyklic 16y ago>> Apple MUST use native windows controllers such as our in built Windowing system and scroll objects. ... except that the Windows Presentation Framework (the successor to Windows Forms) does allow you to completely redesign the chrome and "scroll objects."
- danudey 16y ago…and pretty much every major application on Windows does this. Firefox, Chrome, iTunes, and even - no, ESPECIALLY - Microsoft's software, like Office and Internet Explorer, all do their own custom UI, custom behaviours. With Windows Vista, you could have a dozen different looks and behaviours for windows, using only Microsoft software. I get the point they're making, but you know what? Mac users already get that point. Cross-platform toolkits that have targeted Mac OS X have always been shit. They don't look right, they don't work right. This goes for everything I've ever used, from Java to Firefox (which was far, FAR worse pre-3.0, before Cocoa controls were added). From everything I've heard, iTunes on Windows is shit. Doesn't this make the same point Apple is making?
- ChuckN 16y agoThis guy's a dumb-ass. At least use Ballmer so that there's some reality to the satire.
- mambodog 16y agoI never would have thought of making that parallel. Maybe because Windows PCs don't have the limited interaction/input options of a touchscreen phone, nor the limited system resources, making this an apples to oranges comparison? Also, like others have said, if Microsoft did this, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing. Apple's not going to lose the Windows iPod/iPhone market, so they would capitulate, and we would likely end up with a much better Windows version of iTunes. Awesome.
- RevRal 16y agoAwesome, finally a place I get to tell you guys about when I banished iTunes from my house, in a fit of rage. Who's dumbass idea was it to put rounded corners on the iTunes window when it is maximized? What a wonderful feature, being able to close the window BEHIND iTunes, jackasses. I don't actually look for the close button, Apple, I just push my mouse forward and right, then click. So, I push my mouse forward and right then click, then see a pop-up asking to "save changes to my document." In a split, reactionary, second I decided not to save the changes to what I thought was iTunes, not my fucking WORK. I uninstalled iTunes from all my computers, then bought Media Monkey.
- taggerung 16y agoYeah....NO