k wrote:
] The several thousand dollar Macintosh is mostly
] external to the argument. If any of the other DRM'd music
] stores made Macintosh clients, you could use them, and if any
] of the other hardware vendors made Macintosh drivers/sync
] software, you could use those as well. Their decision not to,
] in most cases, is probably more due to the miniscule Macintosh
] market than to the inability to break through the iTMS/iPod
] linkage.

I don't agree. Apple's dominance of their own platform (including itunes for free with the operating system, etc...) makes it very difficult for other companies to compete, in the same way that Microsoft washes out the market for certain applications on their platform through bundling. There is no DRMed music store that works with the Mac other then iTMS. If there was a single example in the market then maybe you might have an arguement, but of the many companies that do this not one of them supports the Mac. Likely, if those services could support the ipod they would roll out support for the mac.

For the record, I'm not sure if this is really an anti-trust issue per say. I simply feel that its a bad idea on the part of Apple to be limiting their customer's options in terms of the kind of music they can listen to and the way they can listen to it.

RE: ITunes user sues Apple over iPod