The “Break it Down” Blog

Looks like Apple is getting the Microsoft-treatment from Germany, France and likely more.

I’m actually happy to see this for two reasons:

1. It is incredibly frustrating that using an iPod requires iTunes. On Linux? Tough luck.
2. I think it’s fair that a company that completely dominates a market needs to play by some different rules than if it’s just another smaller competitor. Otherwise what would phone, cable, OS and digital device markets look like? AT&T iPods?

iTunes is actually the only reason I’ve ever been interested in another player, namely for the multi-platform support. And since all I listen to are podcasts, the idea of DRM and needing to monkey around with metadata formats on Linux getting corrupted on my iPod just so I can sync to the stupid thing is ridiculous.