Question 1 is plainly obvious. Can you use iTunes without an iPod? The answer is clearly and cleanly YES. Does it offer benefits and uses as a stand alone application? Again clearly yes. I don’t think anyone is denying that Apple has created a fantastic application with iTunes. Nor is anyone trying to diminish the quality or compatibility of it. But lets be honest if iTunes was meant to only work with iPod’s or any other apple hardware, why doesn’t ship with the iPod? I mean do you need an internet connection to sync? NO!!! You need an internet connection to BUY. The whole premise of what iTunes is, is a market place for buying music, video and what ever type of media that Apple decides to throw your way. Do they charge to download iTunes if you don’t have one of their iPod’s? Of course not. They still want your money for music purchases even if you don’t have one of their audio devices.

Now onto question 2. Come on Apple is it hardware or software you are peddling. Apple doesn’t give iTunes away with iPod’s nor is there a barrier to entry for getting iTunes. They are not going to stop someone for buying music on iTunes if they don’t have an iPod. Heck anyone can download iTunes with an internet connection. They aren’t even worried about it being a marketing tool. You don’t even have to register to download it. When I say play both sides of the fence I mean if iTunes can and is used as a stand alone application why are they insisting that it is only meant for use with Apple approved devices? Their devices are great and all, but there is a reason that other devices exist on the market. I have a 6 year old that can barely keep track of her shoes. Why on earth would I go and give her an almost $100 item to lose or better yet put through the wash? I have already taken the time and effort to put all of my music in iTunes. Dare I say hours making sure all of the albums have graphics and all of my cd’s are ripped and nicely organized into folders. Purchased music for my kids to listen to on the computer before they were old enough to be trusted with an iPod.

The idea of allowing other devices to work with iTunes is not one of compatibility it is market power. They are trying to keep iPod’s on top. iTunes is responsible for 69% of digital music sales. So by forcing consumers to only use iPod’s with iTunes they are locking the average consumer into their hardware, but it in a fairly deceptive way.

It isn’t that I think Apple is wrong for wanting to keep their hardware on top, but they got into the software market of pushing digital music long before they got into issues of who can work with iTunes. I realize Palm Pre is the first one to push it to extreme, but they won’t be the last.

Stac…

1. There are 100,000+ plus Pre users which have chosen a smartphone that is not the iPhone (for many reasons that include carrier, customer needs etc, as with any product choice) – nothing can change this. So Apple is left with either the option of either making revenue from this customer base buying non-DRM content on the iTunes Store, or not. If they shut out this customer base, they will increase sales to their competitor Amazon – so considering this, is it logical for Apple to take measures to forego this revenue in exchange for none?

2. Third party solutions that sync devices with iTunes are commonplace (such as Blackberry’s) whereby people can get their content managed on iTunes onto their device – so in a way, does it really matter whether a device like the Pre syncs within iTunes vs a device like the Storm which syncs with a minor third party element? No fuss was created when RIM introduced its third-party iTunes sync (and rightly so as an independent piece of software) but at the end of the day, the Pre (and RIM devices and others) are and will continue to access iTunes. If Apple block the Pre, they can release a RIM-style third party solution and Pres will STILL sync with iTunes. Locking the Pre out of iTunes wont change that…. so ultimately would that measure achieve anything? Ultimately, companies will seek ways to connect iTunes’ content management to their devices anyway.

I’m curious about third-party devices showing up in the sidebar and being writable — do you have any examples? I only know of things like the Slingbox and Simplify Media, which use DAAP to be playable through iTunes; they show up as shared libraries. But just like real shared libraries, you can’t copy music into or out of them through iTunes.

However, it is possible to manipulate the iTunes library through the COM API on Windows and through AppleScript on the Mac, so it _is_ possible for a third party to write a complete iTunes syncing tool, which reads from the XML file and writes through COM/AppleScript.

iTunes is not the closed system people think. Many devices can plug in and show up in the sidebar for manual drag and drop of media. Also, the iTunes library is stored as a simple XML file, which any vendor can write against.

As I’ve said before, the issue is not with a third party device using iTunes (Apple has no issue with that), it’s about using iTunes SYNC. Apple specifically limits this to iPods as a differentiating feature, and Palm has proven this since they had to hack the system to imitate an iPod in order to get it to work.

Apple currently has only one main competitor for online digital music distribution: Amazon.

Consumers should be able to buy their music and copy their music and sync their music wherever they like. Whether it’s an iPhone or iPod or BlackBerry or Palm Pre.

Reverse engineering for compatibility isn’t the same thing as stealing source code — or former employees revealing trade secrets (as the author here impugns the integrity of former Apple employees at Palm in this article).

I’m against vertical integration — and if you buy something from iTunes and have to use it with Apple hardware, it starts sounding to me like vertical integration, which the monopoly laws were conceived of to protect consumers from.

(I do see a business argument for ignoring/tolerating the hacky sync: it’s a known quantity. If they block it, and this pushes Palm into developing a full-on iPod/iTunes ecosystem competitor, Palm will _probably_ fail to make inroads. But what if they actually managed to develop and deliver as well as they have with the Pre device itself? It might be a smaller gamble for Apple to just tolerate the piggybacking… and of course, that means they keep a small part of Palm’s business under their thumb.)