Originally Posted By: drakino
There is a big difference though. Operating Systems are made to have programs run on top of them, either for free, or with a small payment to acquire the proper developer tools. iTunes isn't a open media sync program, though Apple has supported 3rd party devices in the past.

Yes, but the whole question is how much Apple's intent as to what people do with the software, can constrain what people actually do with the software, and how exactly under law the licence acts to do that constraining. Clearly Apple are going to want to restrict the use of competitors' devices with their software, but then equally clearly their users are not going to want those restrictions.

This seems less clear-cut legally than the "clone Mac" wars, where the MacOS licence calls for Apple hardware only, because in that case installing or running MacOS involves making a copy of it -- so Apple can use copyright law to restrict people from performing that act in ways they don't like. Here you have people who've installed and run Itunes in ways Apple can have no qualms about (because they could, theoretically or even in practice, then plug a real Iphone into it) but who have then used it in a way they didn't like. Copyright law doesn't let them stop that, it doesn't give them the right to impose their terms on use alone.

Peter