It's far more than a technical fight -- it's an underlying policy fight. Apple is not wrong for calling Palm out for masquerading as their device. It's wrong for putting a bunch of engineering effort into blocking people from using the devices they own with software it has been designed to be compatible with. Palm devices only started masquerading as Apple devices after they were intentionally blocked.

Regardless if that change is a violation of the USB license, I'm not interested in paying money to a company who's spending that money making my other devices not work. If Palm made their phones not offer USB disk access when connected the the Mac, I'd drop them, as well.

-puk

Apple refused to repair my MacBook, which had 2 years of AppleCare left, citing a censor which showed evidence of liquid damage (despite my computer never having come into contact with liquids). They pointed out to me that the sensor can be triggered by high humidity, but nonetheless wanted to charge me 75% the cost of a new, better laptop to repair it. Then they sent me the laptop back with screws missing and not even booting as far as when I sent it to them. When I pointed this out in a letter, they told me "it was returned in the condition it was received."

Of course, as a result, my new desktop, laptop, and MP3 players are non-Apple products. And this type of technology can no doubt be useful and help reduce fraud. But when used blindly or by organizations with questionable support quality, it can become a way to get out of contractual obligations and avoid the cost of actually standing behind extended warranties.

Thanks again, Apple.

-puk