and if that’s a silly form of surrender then i’m not sure what marching lockstep to the beat that apple provides you with is. certainly not rebellion. in the end do whatever you want to do but don’t blame apple for locking you in a prison in which the walls would take 3 minutes to obliterate rendering you completely free to do as you wish. and you are not going to void your warranty as i said you can do a restore from itunes and everything is as good as new.

hell there are even apps in Cydia that will keep track of the jailbroken apps you have so if you have to restore you won’t completely lose track of what apps you have on your phone.

so, icebike, hold up your white flag and walk the perimeter of your self imposed prison and keep repeating to yourself that to jailbreak is a “silly form of surrender” while believing you are doing all you can to make the app store everything it should be.

1) Apple’s QuickTime + iTunes software can be considered both as applications within an OS and platforms themselves for media playback, content authoring and/or streaming etc.

In the same way the web browser has become a platform in itself — Microsoft’s worst fears of the browser were realized of it making the Windows OS irrelevant as browsers could be cross platform compatible among other operating systems. Also developers could write web applications or even native plugins and extensions like the Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar etc for browsers that given the browsers ability to run on different operating systems you can have the same software for your browser across operating system platforms.

Case in point I was a Microsoft Windows user for a while and had Google Toolbar for IE and Firefox on Windows, then when switching to Mac I got Google Toolbar for Firefox on the Mac.

Similarly media players can be platforms in themselves for delivering media playback etc. Just as a browser can function as an independent platform so can media players. Third party visualizers are available for download for iTunes — and before Apple bought CoverFlow and bundled with iTunes it could be installed as a plugin for iTunes.

Anytime software can piggyback on top of other software the software that has third party apps piggybacking on it is a platform.

Apple has thwarted attempts to make iPods work with software other than iTunes, and prevent users from running software like iPod Linux on their iPods. Now they are even preventing devices like the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes to the best of their ability — a cat and mouse game has begun between Apple and Palm with Palm hacking continuously into iTunes and Apple closing the holes allowing Palm to do so with future iTunes updates — as Apple updates iTunes Palm updates its Web OS on the Pre to sync with new versions of iTunes.

It is ironic that Apple uses some open source code in Mac OS X but keeps the kernel closed and proprietary so it is not an open source operating system even if it can run open source software and works with some open source technologies it is far from it.

I too am tired of Apple’s lock-in. If I ever do get another iPod (my latest is iTouch 2nd gen) or an iPhone I will hack it to run Linux am tired of running only apps Apple thinks I should be permitted to run.

Otherwise I will leave Apple and invest in hardware products that come with Linux.

if you are concerned about warranty status all you have to do is restore the settings through itunes and then take it in and you are good to go.

Restore is pretty hard to do on a bricked phone, or one with an internal problem like so many 3G phones had around the 2.0 software period.

In those days you had to stand in line to return your phone because there were so many bricks out there.

Yes, we could all jailbreak. But recommending that we break our warranty to do something we should be allowed to do anyway is a silly form of surrender.

Well Itunes software IS Apple’s sales platform. Since th iPhone won’t let you sideload music via any other method, it seems pretty blatant to me.

Most other phones I’ve seen let you treat it like a USB thumb drive.

You can’t do that with the iPhone. I don’t even know if its possible with various iPod models. It is possible with most third party mp3 Players and other phones I’ve used.

That was my only point. I don’t think Apple has a complete monopoly on anything yet.

But you don’t need a total monopoly to run afoul of the laws in various countries. Near dominance is sufficient, especially in the EU.

Its clear APPLE is trying to use the market dominance of the iTunes store to achieve dominance in other areas. I don’t think they have achieved this yet, (although 692% of online music sales argues otherwise).

It never ceases to amaze me how many people do not know the meaning of the word “monopoly”. A simple lack of worthy competition is not the same as a lack of actual competition.

Put away your dictionary.

The LEGAL standard is all that applies here. Webster does not get a vote.

Nor do monopolies have to be complete for the government to decide to step in.

To punish Apple for that would be utterly ridiculous!

so in reality the iphone straight from the box and with literally 3 minutes of running jailbreak software you are well on your way to a device that can do anything you want it to (within it’s hardware capabilities).

how exactly is apple “evil”? is something happening I’m unaware of? Are they comtroling the weather? Holding an oil rich country for ransom? I mean what is it? Or are you one of these bleeding hearts that think anyone who makes a dime in this capitalist society is evil!

I also thought there are third party utilities that can let you directly manipulate the media stores on the phone. It isn’t perfect, I am just suggesting that there may be alternatives.

Think about how it was in the days of Palm. They gave you a sync program and people like DataViz wrote conduits that worked with the sync program so you could set a folder on your PC for the conduit to monitor and when you change an excel spreadsheet on the PC it was loaded to the phone and vice versa.

With iPhone, the only way for third parties to get data on the phone is by WiFi and on an app by app basis. This is horribly cumbersome and really needs to change. If Apple won’t do it somebody else needs to. Oh, wait, Apple has locked out other sync programs.

Because iTunes sucks (and blows simultaneously) on Windows. Because I hate the interface (why can’t it show a pane with the songs in the current play list along with the whole library, among other things). Because it does not do as good a job of managing my library as, say, Media Monkey, just to name a few.

Just because you don’t have a reason for not using iTunes doesn’t mean nobody else does.

Apple is already evil. Perhaps the most evil of the software giants.

The relevant portion of competition law for iTunes is not the Sherman Act, but the essential facilities doctrine. First tested in 1912, essential facilities deals not with a monopoly position, but control over a specific type of bottleneck in a market. Unless you want to argue that iTunes is an indivisible part of both the Music Store and the iPhone, it is at least reasonable to debate that Apple has created such a bottleneck in iTunes.

While in the USA essential facilities usually requires a monopoly position, in both Europe and (I think) Australia only the presence of bottleneck where competitors are denied access is required. I am not saying that iTunes does run afoul of essential facilities in any jurisdiction, but that, the more Apple actively tries to block others, the more likely one of those governments is going to take a long look.

http://crackberry.com/iphone-ad-youll-never-see#comment-379597

That said, I do use iTunes as my music sync solution and have no need to use other media sync techniques.

(maybe we need to start moaning about video DRM. Oy there’s a new ‘bag of hurt!)

A simple lack of worthy competition is not the same as a lack of actual competition.

There is plenty of competition in every space in which Apple operates.

To do so requires ex anti facto measures: punishment before any actual wrongdoing.

If you end up becoming a monopoly by user choice (as iTunes is STARTING to be) then steps to preserve the ability for others to enter the online music sales busness are appropriate.

This would include looking clostly at the music industry to assure it remains open to new resellers.

This would also include looking closely at devices to assure they can accept music from multiple sources.

Apple forcing all music installation on the iPhone to go thru their sales engine is pretty close to anticompetitive. There should be no imediment to sideloading music thru USB.