Terril Yue Jones reports in the Los Angeles Times about recently announced Apple/HP deal around the iPod and the iTunes Music Store.
The most intense negotiations concerned myriad issues relating to digital rights, which were handled by lawyers, Anderson said. Apple already had worked out digital rights management and royalty agreements with the five major record companies, and HP hoped to eliminate the need for having to repeat those tortuous consultations with the record industry.
So, it wasn’t the beauty of the iPod — although that helped a lot — it was Apple’s ability to get the music industry to go along that was most attractive to HP.