Tag Archives | Palm Pre

File this one under Utterly Unsurprising News Stories: Apple’s new version of iTunes blocks the technique that the Palm Pre was using to provide seamless of music and video with the Apple application. That was, of course, by far the likeliest scenario all along. Pre owners can sidestep Apple’s move by keeping with the old version of iTunes for the moment, but long-term, the Pre’s iTunes syncing–which was accomplished by tricking iTunes into thinking the Pre was an iPod–is dead.

I know it would be better for consumers if Apple opened up iTunes enough to let the Pre and other non-Apple devices sync with the application. (It might even be better for Apple, since it would help it sell music to folks who don’t own its music players and phones.) But given that iTunes isn’t designed to sync with other companies’ devices, I can’t be bitterly angry at Apple for cutting off Pre owners. Or at least this ranks pretty low on my list of things to be irked at Apple about.

I remain a little mystified by Palm’s actions to date, since the company used iTunes syncing as a selling point, even though it’s run by smart people who knew that Apple probably wouldn’t stand for it. There’s a a pretty obvious step it can take now, if it so chooses: release a piece of software for Windows and Macs that handles the iTunes syncing that it’s been doing directly. It can license the technology if it needs to. It may not be morally obligated to do something like this–at the moment, the Palm site still touts iTunes sync and uses fine print (in light gray type) to say it may not work forever:

…but I still think it would be classy on Palm’s part. Maybe it’s been planning to do something like that all along.

Sometimes threats are angry, blustery, and public. Sometimes they come in the form of…mundane product support notes. Let’s call this one Warning Shot HT3642.

Last month, Palm announced that its Pre phone would sync directly with Apple’s iTunes software on PCs and Macs. It does, rather well, by pretending to be an iPod. It seemed unlikely that Apple would be thrilled with that scenario.

Now Apple has published a support note concerning iTunes that says that it’s aware that some “unsupported third-party media players” (read: the Palm Pre) “claim” to sync with iTunes, but that Apple can’t support or test such compatibility. And “because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.”

It’s conceivable that it’s just sayin’ that you never know what might happen, but virtually everybody is going to assume that the message here is that an iTunes update (possibly the next one) will kill Palm’s Media Sync feature real soon now.

I still feel like we don’t know what’s going on here. If someone sticks his head into a lion’s mouth, he’s either really, really smart or really, really dumb. Offering iTunes syncing through a clever hack is the equivalent of sticking your head into a lion’s mouth. But I don’t think anyone involved with the decision at Palm is dumb.

The thing is, Palm could implement perfectly satisfactory–if slightly less seamless–iTunes syncing by supplying its own utility that talks to an iTunes library and the music and video files on the hard drive. I wonder if it’s already done so, just in case? And if there are already lawyers somewhere drawing up suits claiming that people bought Pres because Palm told them that they’d sync beautifully with iTunes?