Virgin: Apple’s not playing fair with iPod | CNET News.com

Virign: Apple’s not playing fair with iPod | CNET News.com

I would just like to make the point that Apple is not quite as innocent as everyone makes them out to be.

Someone’s attempt at defending Apple’s ethical business practices…

“… this is not an unfair buisness practice. Infact its quite the opposite. The companies that are complaining about what Apple is doing are the ones commiting “unfair buisness practices”. Just because apple developed a successful product and marketing scheme doesnt mean everyone else should have the right to use what they have done. Apple is in no way preventing anyone else from doing the same thing they did. Obviously its much harder to do now, but its not unfair.”

This persons well worded response sums up basically everything I would have said otherwise:

Completely wrong.

Apple has committed the following crimes in my book:

1) Misleading customers, by not advertising that A) The music they sell *only* works on their player. And B) The player they sell *only* works with music bought from their store.

2) Unfair use of monopoly status to affect a different market. They have, for some unfathomable reason, the best selling portable audio device on the market. That part is fine and dandy.

Now they enter a new market, selling music online, and actively block competitors in that new market from being compatible with the iPod.

This isn’t at all like Microsoft including Internet Explorer with Windows. This is like Microsoft BLOCKING Netscape/Mozilla/Opera/Etc. from working on Windows at all. It’s absolutley outrageous. And I hope others in this market follow suit (no pun intended).