Some comments in another thread, along with the new Apple adverts gave me an idea for a thread. What is everyone's opinion about Apple bundling iLife with OS X? (they make a big deal of it in one of their ads) Is it fair that Apple can get away with integrating Quicktime into the operating system when Microsoft can't do the same with Windows Media. Is the EU guilty of double standards? Just because Apple has a smaller market share why should they be allowed to tightly integrate their apps when Microsoft has been ordered to invest millions in separating windows media from the core OS to create a product that nobody really wants?

I originally was posting in the other thread... but I'm over here now.

iLife is not that tightly integrated. It's a separate product that can be quite easily removed if the user so wishes.

and come on. the EU ruling against MS was a joke. people still buy windows over there with media player.

but i will say when you have such a small percentage of market share... you kinda have to bundle your own productivity apps to a point.

however OS X is nowhere near as bundled up as Windows on any day. Everything in OS X is it's own piece that the OS can still work without.

Haha - what's funny is that MS stole some of the quicktime code for WMP...

...so technically the antitrust case should be against Apple, not MS. They're the ones whose code is getting the most milage.

The thing that gets me is that i can't figure out who actually cares if windows has media player built in - it doesn't prevent you installing other media players if you like, so who is the EU fighting for?

EU is fighting against monopol of microsoft, apple is not even near that with 3% market share so they dont care what apple embeeds in osx.
If or when apple will have monopol on market then they will be where microsoft is now.
Sure microsoft earned this, but they dont have the rights to go against smaller companies using monopolism.
I dont need to explain more...

Great minds think alike ouch. I was going to submit this article:


More bundling trouble for Microsoft... But what about Apple?


In an echo of the DoJ ruling against Microsoft's bundling of its Internet Explorer browser with its OS, the Korean Fair Trade Commission ruled in December 2005 against the software giant that bundling its Windows Messenger and Windows Media Player products with its OS breached competition laws in the region.

Today Microsoft have lodged an appeal with the Seoul High Court to overturn the decision, but, if unsuccessful, the ruling could leave other territories to bring similar actions against them.

In the current anti-Microsoft climate (especially amongs us Apple fanboys), its easy to dismiss Microsoft's position as petty whining, now that their anti-competitive practices have been challenged.

But wait... what are Microsoft actually guilty of? Shipping their own browser, their own media player, and their own IM client with their OS? I can think of another OS, popular amongst users of this site, which does the exact same thing. Exactly how big, how rich, how influential does a company have to be before they are accused of anti-competetive behaviour?

What do you think? In the glorious future, when Apple has significant market share, will they be forced to 'unbundle' Safari, iTunes and iChat?

Discuss in our forum.

Haha, beat you to it, but perhaps yours was more eloquently put.



Yeah but they aren't going against other companies, you can still load up any media player or browser you like.

Sure you can load any player or browser but windows users have mediaplayer and ie (for example) already in, so most of them dont even look for alternatives...

Apple bundles iLife because it sells more Macs (remember, Apple is still a hardware company disguised as a software vendor). The difference is (as others have posted) you can trash iLife, Safari, and QuickTime Player (well, maybe QTP, but not the QT components buried in the system) without seriously hosing your system.

Try deleting Internet Explorer in Windows and watch the system scream and cry.