MySpace banned in Apple Stores


Business decision getting some press
I'm not surprised by this , after all, Apple wants to sell computers from it's stores, not provide a cybercafe.

From a black MacBook laptop at the cube-shaped retail store on Friday morning, most Web sites were loading at full speed. But when an attempt was made to load MySpace's Web site, the Safari browser delayed and failed to load it. Indeed, a post Thursday night on the Apple rumor community ThinkSecret had said Apple was in the process of blocking the popular social-networking site from the Macs in Apple Stores because MySpace users were taking up too much time on the machines.

A statement from Apple Friday confirmed this. "Nearly 2 million people visit Apple stores every week," the statement read. "We want to provide everyone a chance to test-drive a Mac, so we are no longer offering access to MySpace in our stores." According to an Apple representative, the News Corp.-owned MySpace is the only site that has been blocked.

Representatives from MySpace were not immediately available for comment.

An Apple Store employee (who does not work in the Fifth Avenue store), confirmed to CNET News.com that this has been an ongoing problem. "MySpace is a big issue for the Apple stores because people come in, Photobooth themselves (using Macs' built-in webcams), then stick their picture up on their MySpace account and loiter at machines for hours," the source said in an e-mail. "It is especially troublesome at the flagships and high-volume stores, and for a while there was no official word on how to deal with it."

I posted this not only because it was an example of the free market in action, but because it illustrates the abuse of hospitality and "gaming the system." Apple is under no obligation to provide access to MySpace, but it did until it slowed down traffic in the stores. This is a logical response.

It does go back to one of the questions that libertarians have to face from time to time though. What do you do when the other guy doesn't play by the rules?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - May 28, 2007 at 05:05 AM  Tag


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