Apple Blocks Palm Pre Syncing (Assignment 2-1)

Apple has a controversial philosophy about their public image, and recently, the controversy has become a little stronger. The philosophy that they have is that it’s better to be viewed as the strict grandma as long as they can provide the best cookies for their grandkids. This means that as long as everyone plays by the rules and none of the pesky neighbor kids come over and start touching all of the nice things, grandma is happy; and when grandma is happy, the grandkids are happy too.

In the past, Palm’s Pre (a competitor to Apple’s iPod / iPhone line) has been able to sync via iTunes. This was done with some creative engineering by Palm and without Apple’s blessing. Why is it so important to get Apple’s blessing? Well, in this case it was because Palm had actually designed the Pre to trick iTunes into thinking it was really an Apple product.

The overwhelming majority of responses to this move seem to indicate that people are very upset by this claiming that Apple is more concerned about hardware lock in than customer satisfaction. Some people have even gone so far as to say that they have created a monopoly with the iTunes Music Store. While all of this may have some merit, I tend to see it a different way.

Many of the moves that Apple makes that are viewed by the masses as “lock-in” have a common underlying thread. That goes back to the philosophy I mentioned earlier, but it’s actually bigger than that. Apple is simply not interested in supporting products that it has not control over. What if Apple decides to make a massive change to iTunes that is well tested with all of their iPods and iPhones, but completely destroys the Palm Pre when it’s connected? Will Palm’s customers get angry with Palm or will they see that the smoldering pile of crap that used to be their Pre was rendered so by Apple’s changes? Will Palm try to sue Apple to help offset the cost of having to replace the broken devices? Sure Apple might make some extra money off of the deal, but they lose the absolute freedom that they have by keeping other kids off their lawn.References

Zeman, Eric Apple Kills Palm Pre’s Ability to Sync With iTunes, retrieved July 16, 2009 from http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/07/apple_kills_pal.html