“Three years after his death, legendary Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs held a federal courtroom transfixed on Friday as attorneys played a video of his testimony in a class-action lawsuit that accuses Apple of inflating iPod prices by locking music lovers into using its players,” Brandon Bailey reports for The Associated Press.
“Jobs was pale and hoarse during the deposition that he gave a few months before his death in 2011,” Bailey reports, “but spoke firmly in defense of Apple Inc.’s software, which blocked music from stores that competed with Apple’s iTunes store.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s criminal that Steve had to waste even one second of the time he had left on such ambulance-chasing stupidity.
Related articles:
Apple punches holes in plaintiff’s purchases, asks for dismissal of iPod class action suit – December 5, 2014
Apple’s Eddy Cue explains why DRM for music was a necessary evil – December 5, 2014
Apple iPod judge asks if lack of plaintiff dooms trial – December 5, 2014
Apple on trial: Were iTunes updates really an anti-consumer scheme?
Steve Jobs on RealNetworks in 2011 deposition: ‘Do they still exist?’ – December 3, 2014
Steve Jobs said Apple took pains to protect record contracts – December 3, 2014
Star witness in Apple lawsuit is Steve Jobs – December 1, 2014
How to kill the DRM in your old iTunes Store music purchases – March 18, 2014
Apple asks judge to dismiss FairPlay lawsuit following Steve Jobs’ deposition – April 19, 2011
Apple’s iTunes Store goes DRM-free and 3G via iPhone; variable pricing coming soon – January 6, 2009
Major music cartels demand concessions from Apple before inking DRM-free iTunes Store music deals – December 15, 2008
RealNetworks ‘Harmony’ stops working on iPods but nobody notices for a month and a half – December 15, 2004
Real’s online petition for music ‘freedom’ backfires bigtime – August 17, 2004
Real cracks Apple’s Fairplay; to sell iPod-compatible songs without Apple’s authorization – July 25, 2004
Jobs to Glaser: Go pound sand – April 16, 2004
fightin’ em to the end, what a guy he was.
One of a kind.
It was not the first Jobs’ testimony where he was is bad shape. There was another one back in 2006-2007 where he had to ask judge for pauses to take care of pain he was experiencing.
Hari Seldon like…
Pinch me. Wake me up from this nightmare where Steve Jobs is dead.
MDNs take, for me, is dead on. Yes indeed.
Oh yes MDN’s takes… what a pile of crap.
What is that American saying, oh yes, stuffed a Feather up his ass and called it macaroni.
I have no idea as I am not American…thank goodness.
Sorry, I believe that was:
“Stuck a feather in his _cap_
and called it macaroni !”
This is just another comedy court sequel. I just hope this judge has some common sense. I’m sure a background check will come to light.
The record labels should be sued instead. They insisted that copy protection (DRM) MUST be employed in the online sale of their songs. It’s to Apple credit that Apple’s software designers and engineers devised a method that was not onerous to the customer, yet met the requirements of the record labels. But the system did require customers to use iTunes and iPods for songs sold online by the iTunes Store.
Proof… Later, after the requirements for DRM were removed (in 2009), there is no longer justification for this lawsuit. Enforcing DRM is a significant expense, and Apple was happy to NOT do it anymore for songs (going forward).
It would seem that Apple could pull out the contracts and put an end to this quickly as a defendant. I’m pretty sure there is language in the contract specifying Apple’s obligation to only limit it to Apple products, etc.
Assuming the writer of this story has the facts straight on the plaintiff’s, ….
“locked in by inflating iPod prices” ?
Somebody needs a pilot at the keyboard.
Let me see. . . as an economist, I am trying to wrap my brain around the economic theory of this trial.
According to the plaintiffs, Apple is locking in their customers by keeping them tied to their high-priced iPods and high-priced music by keeping other music stores’ music out of the iPod. . . which people could easily use by buying cheaper players with cheaper music bought from the other stores? Which they could then migrate their iTunes music to their new cheaper players by converting it to MP3 format which is allowed by Apple’s liberal conversion rules.
Right. I think I’ve got it.
Now, tell me again, exactly what force keeps all these really STUPID people down in the expensive Apple iTunes/iPod ecosystem?
The whole lawsuit was just to see a new video of Steve. They can go home now.
She’s a liar… A real…
It’s all a setup, and they have no case.
Agree 100% with MDN…this country needs some serious lawsuit reform from this class action cluster-f**kery…
What does “inflated iPod pricing” have to do with anything?
The lawsuit has nothing to do with the cost of an iPod. Apple can set the price of their products to whatever the hell they want.
So, the two plaintifs have iPods bought after the timeline covered by the lawsuit. They have dropped one and claim that the second had also used the credit card of her husbands business to buy two other ipods in 2008.
Strangely her husband is a lawyer – well that pretty much tells you all you need to know about this mockery of the legal process that is ‘Class action’ in the US courts.
Let’s trust the judge has the gumption to dismiss this ambulance-chasing activity and charges them for the time wasting to deter other lawyers looking for a freebie windfall payout (plus all their inflated costs of course).
Is anyone else getting really tired of the whole “Steve Jobs (Apple) is the biggest robber baron on the planet since the railroad era and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil” meme ?
I hope this case goes to trial and the judge finds Apple totally innocent. Jeez, Louise, the legal system needs to start getting some modern precedent on these important issues. Current US anti-trust precedent is about 100 years old and is exceedingly simplistic. Moreover, it has misconstrued and mis-applied, most recently in the Amazon vs Apple & publishers e-book price-fixing case.
Please, DOJ, start laying some legal pipeline here.
Crazy world we live in…
“It’s criminal that Steve had to waste even one second of the time he had left on such ambulance-chasing stupidity.”
Amen to that.