Steve Jobs has been ordered in front of the court to testify in an antitrust suit against Apple. The suit has been running since 2005, and alleges that iTunes constitutes a music downloading monopoly.
The questioning will be limited in scope:
The deposition can’t exceed two hours and the only topic allowed is changes Apple made to its software in October 2004 that rendered digital music files engineered by RealNetworks Inc. (RNWK) inoperable with Apple’s iPod music player.
Seriously? There’s an antitrust case because Apple dropped a horrible brand-specific encoder in the place of industry standards? And if you’re going after Apple on antitrust grounds, isn’t iTunes theleast viable one ever? You can buy music off Amazon, CDBaby, BandCamp, any number of third party sites, or just buy a CD and rip it yourself. All of which will work fine on your iPod.
The App Store situation is a whole different case.
Written By 