There must come a point when legally the music industry can't supply just one online store with DRM-free music, or worse exclude one to purposely damage its sales.

I use iTunes as I like the way it works, not because it's Apple. When I like music but find it has DRM via iTunes, personally I don't find a music store that sells it DRM-free - I either buy the CD and rip it myself, or more usually just don't buy the music.

I'm all for competition, and if a competitor can provide something better then go for it. But at the moment it seems the music industry can only 'win' the race by cutting off a leg of it's opponent to stop it running as fast. To my mind that's not open competition...

Neither is it open competition to tether your industry leading smart phone to one cell company and force consumers to pay outrageous prices for phone service and not be able to just get a data plan. The bastards at the record labels are doing the exact same thing with their IP as Apple is doing with their iPhone - using anti competitive practices to maximize their profits and control.

I doubt that they will compete well with iTunes.

The primary reason that iTunes sells well is that the iPod sells really well and dominates its market. Both make one highly integrated product.

iPod users gravitate toward iTunes since iTunes makes music so much easily accessible.

Apple makes money from the iPod hardware. It makes little from iTunes itself.

Thus it doesn't matter to Apple where you buy your music.

I buy music from Amazon since it is DRM free and I rip from CDs. Occasionally I buy from iTunes then convert it to DRM free music using Audio Hijack Pro. It's easy.

In any case, I have the iPod - or actually - several iPods including the iPhone and iPhone 3G.

Music is a loss leader unless it is sold directly from the music company itself. This makes it difficult for anyone to compete against Apple.

Yeah, I agree this makes no sense. In some way this has to be bordering on illegal. At very least, just ignorantly ludicrous. The rest of the world and industries don't do anything like this. If they did, all the big name software companies would be boycotting Microsoft and developing exclusively for OS X and Linux just to force the deterioration of Windows' operating system market share. But of course that's not happening. Why? Common sense will tell you that.

Following your logic, with iTunes killers released almost every month, by now Apple should be pinched to death by Amazon, Real, Universal, Microsoft, Dell, ad nauseam.

For all of us who have seen this same argument play out a hundred times before, I would think that you could come up with a more cogent argument to support a genuine attack on the iTunes ecosystem juggernaught.

DRM free material, bit-rate-of-the-month MP3, "rare" catalog releases, all play right into the iTunes trap of being managed within iTunes, and played back on an iPod or (in case nobody has heard about it) the iPhone. Everybody and their brother has come up with a competing MP3 player (remember the Zune?), yet I don't see Apple feeling any pinch.

They may be surrounded, but I still don't think it's enough.

Not only did Apple create this market by making a great store - they also showed everyone how to make a great store and how to make a great music player ( and now a phone).

Each and every company now just copies them shamelessly whilst delivering some ghastly uncalled for, rude and ungrateful quote to the media to defend their petty 'ideas theft'.

I have barely seen ANYTHING I'd call innovation from a major company other than Apple this decade and yet these idiots want to try and take it as if they'd earned it and they have been cheated...

unbelievable...

Well, one things for sure they'll still continue to copy Apple year in year out because they don't have a clue...they think they have a clue because they know what they can copy RIGHT NOW but a year or two from now they'll be lost in the dark again looking for Apple's leading light...

Shameless...

Universal and the likes should be seeking make there product equally available to as many digital outlets as humanly possible in order to sell as much as possible. It's about total revenue for goodness sakes, it's why they're in business to begin with. This kind of thing is petty and irresponsible to the shareholders. I'm surprised they even put up with it. Even Microsoft makes Office for Mac and it makes them a lot of money! It's business for heavens sake. To willfully snub a vendor that has 70% of the digital download market is corporately irresponsible.

The studios develop "talent" and give them a certain amount of money and get rights to sell the music and other rights. The musician might get a percentage, but from what I have heard, incurs all sorts of costs and expenses which eat into their percentage. Since it is the studio that does the accounting, a cost could be incurred multiple times, charged multiple times to multiple artists, thereby making the studio major bucks.

iTunes disrupts this business model severely by cutting out the studios from all their "extra costs" and allows a musician to cater directly with iTunes if they desire and by giving a third party accounting statement on sales. Since what comes out of iTunes is pure revenue, (no returns, no damaged goods, etc.) the artist can say they should get a percentage of that amount. Studios lose their ability to pad their expenses.

As to Apple not selling OSX, OSX would NOT make Apple money, it would cost it a FORTUNE and bankrupt the company. Apple makes money selling HARDWARE. OSX runs on a LIMITED and KNOWN number of hardware items and simply does NOT support any hardware out of this limited base. If Apple sells OSX to run on any hardware, the support costs would skyrocket to kill Apple.

Microsoft doesn't provide much support to the end user, it provides support to the hardware manufacturer who in turn has to provide it to the end-user. Microsoft can't afford a lot of dollars in support costs and with the continuous reductions in commodity hardware pricing, no computer maker can either.

So forget Apple selling OSX for other than Apple hardware. It is a pipe dream for cheapskates who want the base system to operate who will bitch about how something doesn't work, or want to trick out a computer with the highest amount of hardware and bitch about how their "best" computer doesn't work properly with OSX. OSX can ***NOT*** support all hardware because not all hardware is created equally well. Some high end stuff is CRUD. It might work well for some stuff, but not for everything, and that little piece of hardware could lead to all sorts of support issues that would fall on Apple's shoulders.

Follow the money and see the real reasons for things to happen. Or not to happen, as the case may be.