8.7 Update on Apple

On the commercial front, Apple's iTunes service, through which tens of millions of songs have been sold, is now seeing increasing competition in the music downloading services available. In July 2004 Apple were ‘stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod.’ Real had developed a program to let consumers buy songs from a Real Music Store and play them on their Apple iPods. By December 2004 Apple had upgraded their iPod software so it would no longer play songs purchased from RealNetworks. There were similar shenanigans relating to the Apple iPhone in 2007. By the end of 2008 Apple declared their intention to drop drm ("digital rights management") of technologies.