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Could Apple be sued for Anti-competitive practices for not including Blu-ray?

thejadedmonkey

thejadedmonkey

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 28, 2005
9,464
4,066
Pennsylvania
Just like the title says. I woke up this morning and realized, since Apple is no longer supporting the current disk-based standard, and (if you want HD) forcing everyone to either use iTunes or not at all, couldn't that be seen as an anti-competitive move?
 
"current disk based standard" where did that come from?

surely blu-ray will be standard when its included in all computers "as standard" not as a 100 quid add on from bestbuy, wallmart, arianet, or any other site like that..

they support DVDs (the current disk based standard im guessing) CDs (still hugely popular) i mean blimey we havent even got DVD based audio car stereos yet, i dont know how you can justify blu ray being the standard when DVD is still being implemented in some way shape of form in most of our ways of life.. When DVDs reach that point then i think Blu Ray can be feasible.

At the moment, if i was still working at currys i would say to a customer that unless you have the TV and entertainment system to accomodate Blu-ray its pointless cos you wont get optimal quality out of the system in the first place.. thus i dont think its ready to be made a "standard" and not included in the apple range
 
MWPULSE said:
"current disk based standard" where did that come from?
Click to expand...

Sorry, what I meant was the current crop of optical media.

Also, let's not include DVD-Audio. It's a format that never really took off. If you go into any store, you'd be hard pressed to find a DVD-audio disk. That same store will hit you over the head with Blu-ray however.

Considering every Apple machine has the resolution to take advantage of Blu-ray, and that every computer sold these days can have the dvd-rom drive upgraded to blu-ray-rom, it seems like the only reason that Apple isn't including blu-ray is due to the fact that it competes with their own iTunes store.
 
Anyone else laugh at the title?

How in the world could they possibly be sued for something like that? Could car companies be sued for still putting in 8 tracks while cassettes were gaining ground?
 
No. Apple has almost no market power when it comes to movie distribution. If you want to watch HD movies you can buy a Blu-ray player from half a dozen different companies, use the HD options from your cable/sat provider, buy a windows-based computer that has Blu-ray playback or stream HD Netflix movies via an xbox 360. In the big picture of movie distribution Apple is a small time player.


Lethal
 
NT1440 said:
Anyone else laugh at the title?

How in the world could they possibly be sued for something like that? Could car companies be sued for still putting in 8 tracks while cassettes were gaining ground?
Click to expand...

car companies don't offer a competing service that they own as the only way to listen to music. I'm pretty sure someone would have said something if Ford owned 8 track and refused to even include cassettes as an option.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
car companies don't offer a competing service that they own as the only way to listen to music. I'm pretty sure someone would have said something if Ford owned 8 track and refused to even include cassettes as an option.
Click to expand...

Uhhhhhhh, so according to you, there is no alternative to itunes available for macs to listen to music. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Quite a stretch there jaded.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
car companies don't offer a competing service that they own as the only way to listen to music. I'm pretty sure someone would have said something if Ford owned 8 track and refused to even include cassettes as an option.
Click to expand...


The big difference though is that Blue ray is just a format - iTunes is a distribution system. Two very different things. There is no requirement that says computers have to include any sort of optical format whatsoever. The option to do is is purely a marketing decision and nothing more - even if Apple is in the media distribution business. Apple has no requirement whatsoever to support Blu-Ray. And even if they had a larger control of the media industry, they have no control over other hardware companies.

Not only is this miles away from anti-trust, you aren't even in the same county. You simply cannot force a company to support competing format unless they become a monopoly and a public trust. No way Apple could be argued to be that. Furthermore, the media companies control the media distribution, not Apple. If Apple was engaging in thins kind of activity, the media companies would abandon Apple - its their content. Apple is just a distributor, not a content creator.

Besides. Apple is on the Blu-Ray board. He wouldn't be on it if there was a conflict of interest...
 
i agree with the above posters in that apple doesnt have any obligation to include Blu-ray, it sure would be nice for alot of people. I dunno if i would be able to utilise it to its full capacity but it still would be cool.

The system that apple has is good, and works so i wouldnt change it unless blu-ray was going to dramatically increase my user-experience (not just watching DVDs in better quality) but burning them, using them in other computers to transfer data etc etc.

Also if blu-ray was to be included, would that not mean that upgrades would have to be carried out on the screens in their line up.. Just a thought/question..

PTP
 
Another thing we should point out that Aplpe does not own nor control Blu-Ray. That is the basis for anti-competition - having control to dictate the overall market. The only thing Apple has exclusive control over is the Mac, which is understandable, being that it is Apple's product. It would result in suing the wrong organization or simply arguing that one cannot control their own product that they manufacture.

Both arguments are, of course, absurd.

ETA: I wouldn't mind if Apple offered Blu-Ray, but there's not much I can do if Apple does not want it.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
Just like the title says. I woke up this morning and realized, since Apple is no longer supporting the current disk-based standard, and (if you want HD) forcing everyone to either use iTunes or not at all, couldn't that be seen as an anti-competitive move?
Click to expand...

These words and concepts don't mean what you think they mean.

In other words, NO.
 
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