Taking care of business

Tuesday, February 06, 2007 by Dave Winer.

Apple is a big successful company with lots of customers and lots of employees. Microsoft is also a big successful company with lots of employees. 

The iPod is a publicly released product. Vista was in public beta for many months.  

Yet, Apple is warning iPod users to not install Vista, which shipped last week, until they get a chance to adapt their software so that it doesn't destroy the user's music and podcasts.  

From outward appearances it seems someone isn't taking care of business, and it seems that's Apple, since you didn't need a special agreement with Microsoft to test software with Vista. Apple can hardly plead poverty, they make enormous amounts of profit from Windows iPod users. Further, it's so typical of Apple to ding users of Windows, to use them as pawns in their psychic battle with Microsoft, which serves no one, except perhaps them. Putting the users in the middle is bad business.  

Now, it could be that a bug surfaced in the final shipping version of Vista, one that wasn't in earlier test versions, in which case it's just a bug, and no one is to blame. If not, it seems someone screwed up. Lots of people, actualy.