> The money isn't in the iPhone or iPod, but it's in iTune.

The Steve claimed otherwise, though I can't find the reference which effectively makes this comment completely useless. He basically said the store covers its own costs, but fundamentally it's a way to sell iPods.

I'm not saying I believe him. I'm just saying he said it...at some point...somewhere....that I can't find in google....blurg.

> Most likely, the Pre is presenting itself to iTunes as a 4th gen iPod

Agreed, though I'm quite sure that they can overcome that /should they choose too./

I'm not going to speculate on the specifics since I don't have in depth hardware knowledge.

Anyway, if I were Steve Jobs I'd take the "walk around with a swagger in your step" approach personally. At least for a while. Apple is the undisputed king digital music right now. My approach would be to act as such: keep a close eye on all potential threats, but don't start acting like a dictator and lopping their heads off too soon. If Palm actually gains enough market share and starts to look like any kind of threat, a course of action can be undertaken at that time.

err....yeah...ok anony-boy. Sorry. Your comments more or less echo some ones I made below, which I posed before I read your post.

My apologies.

Why would Apple go the legal route?

Just block the damn device. When iSync my Gen 4 iPod iTunes knows it's a Gen 4 iPod. When I sync my shuffle, it knows it's a shuffle.

When I sync my Pre, it will know it's a Pre.

So just rev itunes to block it.

Or not, and just walk around acting like you're not scared. Frankly, I think the Pre is roughly the equivalent of pulling your goalie in the final minutes of your final playoff game when you're behind: a last ditch effort. Palm may well just die as a result, and maybe Apple should do nothing for a while and see what happens.

As an aside, I'm not sure why everybody thinks this is new. Diamond Rio players used to mount in iTunes and you could sync playlists. I have a Nike PSA Play sitting in a drawer that I bought in 1998 that did this. It stores...96MB of music thanks to the MMC expansion card I bought (not compatible with SD.) Woo hoo!

> but it took failing at being a civil servant to
> get here.

Failing as a civil servant is usually as good a sign as any that you're well qualified for private sector work.

I didn't claim it was anything but a marketing line.

Football's not a sport, at least not as practiced in the NCAA or the NFL. Football amounts to a human trial on every possible growth hormone known to science.

Anyway, that's WAY off topic. I just wanted to defend my country's honour...something I feel compelled to do regularly when I visit the U.S....which I'll be doing in about month (assuming Homeland Security doesn't find this and label with a terrorist.)

That depends on how you define your terms.

Canada was granted its independence by most definitions in 1867. This was when we became self-governing (when a "responsible government" was installed.")

1982 was when we got our own constitution. Though it's often called the repatriation of the constitution this is not stricly true...you can't "re-" what you didn't have in the first place. It was the patriation.

The United Kindom has no such document, so arguing that we were not "independent" until the achievement of that document is fairly misleading. A constitution is not required for an independent nation state (unless you're going to argue that the United Kingdom is not independent.)

There's nothing strange about it. You can have my country as a "territory" when you pry it from my cold dead hands, because I will always be a Canadian.

I find it strange that any citizen with a choice chooses to live in a country that has a death penalty, a history of drafts in offensive war time, and a gun lobby that's so powerful it scares politicians.

If it were me, I'd have gotten the hell out as soon as Reagan was elected. (If Harper ever gets a majority up here I may well try to flee as well...)

Yes. Hockey is the more recent...but as has been pointed out above watching a Lacrosse match makes a hockey game look about as passive as Baseball...America's favourite past time.

(For the record, baseball is my personal favourite "major" sport...if you define "major" as having a professional league in North America."

It's usually at this point that I like to remind Americans that Canada is the only country to succesfully attack the White House, and there are still scorch marks on the walls of that hallowed building to commemorate it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

So keep it up skippy. We're a feisty lot. Don't fall for that "Canada is a peace loving country" crap either. Hockey is our national sport.

> too many iterations of changes in the VM and the
> OS wants to re-activate.

If by "OS" you mean "Windows" then yes, that is potentially true.

Just to be clear though: those two terms are not interchangeable. An "OS" is not by definition Windows

Some would argue that the reverse is also true: Windows is not, by definition, an OS :)

You don't actually think that Duke Nukem Intellectual Property is going to be worth anything after this debacle, do you?

I'd think real estate in Phoenix would look quite favourable in comparison.

There's no rational economic rationale for expensive television advertising a software product for which you charge no money.

Please don't say "Netscape!" either. That was an economic failure at the end of the day...it made a tonne of people very rich and, indeed, helped to change the world. These may have been noble goals, but it was an irrational bubble that created the wealth. The company failed...finally.

I think fear might explain this: fear of an antitrust probe (either into Google, or into its relationship with Mozilla...I think 75% of the reason Chrome exists is so Google can continue to lobby for Mozilla's "non-profit" status which provides a tax benefit to one of Google's major investments.)

I fail to understand Blackberry Love. I have a bold, and frankly it's junk.

The most basic interface issues haven't been considered. I'm surfing a restaurant web site and I want to call and make a reservation. I need to get out of the browser to type a phone number in, which I do incorrectly four times because I'm driving and can't use a pen and paper to write it down.

On an iPhone, I'm surfing the same web site...I tap the phone number and the phone asks me if I want to call it. One more tap and I've dialed.

I really don't understand Blackberry love. (I still like the Nokia N95 personally.)

I'm not sure that's really "funny" as it's been modded. Anti-Trust measures WERE being considered against Apple in some jurisdictions, on the basis of Apple's iTunes DRM.

When Apple dropped DRM those calling for anti-trust prosecutions basically lost any grounds on which to fight. The iTunes Music Store doesn't lock you into an iPod anymore...you can play what you buy anywhere and your iPod can play tunes purchased from anywhere. iPods are a bit locked to iTunes in terms of loading data onto it, but there's lots of ways around that and Apple's not the first company to only support one piece of software for loading music...

Now, on the VIDEO side there's still the DRM issues to content with/resolve in a legal sense but that's as much a reality of the HDCP lobby as it is anything to do with Apple.