It was revealed yesterday that Apple began blocking Palm Pre users from syncing with iTunes. Apparently the latest upgrade, which I installed just this morning won't allow Pre users to sync with their phones.
Seriously, Apple? Are you really going to be this petty? Do you really feel this threatened by another company's phone that you would sink to blocking the ability to sync?
Who Are You Hurting Ultimately?
Some days the colossal stupidity of these large corporations astounds me. It really does. As a blogger, I peruse the web on a daily basis looking for ideas, for situations to which I can react, but when a company like Apple does something this monumentally self-destructive, it just makes it too easy.
Apple makes literally billions of dollars from the iTunes store. It's one of their cash cows. iTunes is just a piece of software for organizing your MP3 files. It doesn't care if you use a Palm Pre or an iPhone or Samsung Propel.
As I wrote yesterday about Microsoft in a similar vein, when you sell software and services, you tend to be hardware neutral, and this is even truer now that Apple has removed DRM from its music on the iTunes Store. What this does is tell a large swath of users that you don't care about them, that you are going to let pettiness overcome good business sense. Not what I would ever expect from a smart company like Apple
Why Are You Threatened Anyway
When it comes down to it, it show a shocking level of insecurity for a company that sells great products, products that speak for themselves. I took Microsoft to task the other day for conducting business by reacting to Apple's ads (in What's Next? A Google Store?) when I wrote:
Yes, Apple has made a lot of us laugh with their very amusing Get a Mac ads, but Microsoft can't run a company because they are pissed off that Apple made fun of them. It's just not a smart way to run a business.
I say the same thing to Apple. Grow up for goodness sakes. This is the real business world and this is no way to run your business.
Stock Looking Good, So Why Complain?
A recent report by Apple Insider say analysts are predicting a bright short-term future for Apple as the iPhone 3GS and the new 13 inch Mac Book Pro sales have been robust out of the gate. Jobs is back at the helm. iPhones are flying off the shelves and the $99 iPhone provides a buffer at the low end. The Apple tablet rumors have resurfaced, which if true (and that's a big if) could provide another boost to Apple sales.
Given all this positive news, I'm guessing that Apple has little to worry about here, but like Microsoft, they sometimes seem to lose sight of sensible business practices. It makes me wonder if this is perhaps not an intentional slight at the Palm Pre , but an innocent engineering mistake being blown up out of proportion. If it's not though, it's time for Apple to smarten up and let the market decide. Indeed for the most part, it already has.
