Not trying to be argumentative, but I am curious to know what types of
open standards you say they don't comply with.  I am aware that there
are hundreds (thousands?) of things that are "open standards", but I
mean ones that are actually used.  Having proprietary things doesn't
mean you don't comply with open standards.  For me, the classic example
of not complying with open standards is Microsoft trying to subvert HTML
with proprietary extensions.  Microsoft aren't the only ones (Netscape
invented the notion, as I recall).  In this particular regard, Safari is
the most standards compliant browser out there, and Apple is pushing to
standardize things that Adobe/Microsoft want to maintain as handled by
their own respective software (Flash/Silverlight).

I suspect you might be talking about the iTunes store, but I wouldn't
even agree there.  Apple encodes using the open standard AAC (not a
proprietary Apple codec, as many seem to think).  The DRM (Fairplay) was
proprietary, but I am not sure what "open standard" they could have used
to supplant that.  They could, of course, have opened it up as a
standard themselves, but that does not qualify IMHO as not being
compliant with open standards.  They elected not to support other's
proprietary DRM, but neither Microsoft's or Real's schemes could be
considered a "standard".

Does Apple look after their own interests?  Absolutely.  But when I
think of any open standards over the last several years, I see Apple
embracing them.  Would USB have become so ubiquitous without the iMac?

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:42 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: FW: Palm confirms that iTunes update kills Pre sync

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Mayo, Bill<[email protected]>
wrote:
> Apple absolutely does play nicely with open standards ...

  In much the same way MSFT does: Only when it suits them.

  I'm not accusing Apple of being the worst evil known to mankind, but
they aren't everybody's friend, either.

-- Ben

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