RSSPalm Pre gets iTunes sync again
By Tim Conneally | Published July 24, 2009, 11:04 AM
Only nine days ago, Palm Inc.'s flagship touchphone, the Pre, lost its unofficial compatibility with iTunes when Apple updated the media management software to fix "an issue with Verification of Apple devices." After users updated the software, and plugged in their Pres, they found the software no longer recognized the device for syncing.
Already, an over-the-air WebOS update (v1.1) has been made available which renews the device's ability to be paired with iTunes. The update includes new feature support in Exchange ActiveSync, the ability to include emoticons in e-mail, MMS, and SMS, and the new NFL Mobile Live app from Sprint. As an additional jab at Apple, when Palm's Vice President of Business Products, John Traynor announced the update in the company's blog yesterday, he listed all of these features, but saved the iTunes fix for last, and prefaced it by delivering Steve Jobs' now trademark line: "Oh, and one more thing..."
Of course, diehard Apple fans see no humor in Palm's behavior. Blog MacDailyNews said today, "This is what parasitic Palm does while they twiddle their thumbs waiting for a buyout bid," while others see it as a simple game to keep the Palm Pre in the news for as long as possible.
Whatever the case, the next move is Apple's.
If apple wishes to only allow apple products to sync with iTunes then that's their choice. It's their product. Apple always try to keep tight control of their stuff and they have the right to do so. The fact that palm is actively trying to make the Pre sync with iTunes reminds me of the old days when AOL and MSN wouldn't allow any other IM programs to connect to their servers. Those open source coders would keep trying to one-up them each time they got blocked. Of course eventually AOL & MSN caved. maybe Apple will, someday, maybe not. Either way i just sit by and chuckle. It's really quite funny. Why doesn't Palm just make their own sync program that'll work on Windows, OSX & Linux
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|This is all so rediculous to me... Lets fight over iTunes, which is a bloated peice of crap...runs like crap on my computer...takes almost a full minute to load sometimes on my 3ghz duo core PC (w/2 gigs of ram & a 1tb hard drive)...which is totally rediculous...half the time it opens up in a few seconds, the other half it takes a minute...wtf? I am not doing anything different each time, lol. I remember recently, just before the new 3.0 software came out (that they actually have the audacity to charge you for after gouging you for the device...), I ran an update on iTunes to update my iPod (that I paid over $200 for) Touch's software and it just about bricked my iPod...it would not turn on after, it would just display the Apple logo from when you pressed the power button, up until you pressed the power button again to shut it off). Thankfully, at least, Apply built a failsafe factory restore into the update portion of the iTunes software where you can reset the iPod to the original factory software/settings. I tried to update it twice, resetting it to the original software both times, then trying the update... Needless to say I ended up resetting the iPod to origional factory software/settings (for the 3rd time!) and then said to hell with the update...
iTunes is garbage, I would never even use the bloody software if I wasn't forced to do so by my iPod... Palm should just do their own thing and make their own sync manager for their device. How can Palm expect Apple to allow them to sync their device to Apple's software? For crying out loud, with how tight they are with all of their proprietary crap, how could Palm have expected anything other than to have their device disabled...ASAP... Palm should have known better in my mind and not have wasted their time trying to utilize Apple's proprietary, bloated, peice of garbage software...
...Maybe its my fault though for running iTunes on my inferior Windows PC... *chuckles*
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|Seriously, both Apple and Palm can do what they want. Apple is free to make iTunes incompatible with the Palm Pre, and Palm is free to make the Pre work with iTunes. The battle only ends when one side gives up. Anyone who disagrees with this logic is either a Palm fanboy (or Apple Hater), an Apple Fanboy, or just a hater of freedom...
As far as cell carriers go, it depends on the region, in NYC, Verizon and Sprint have better coverage than AT&T, and T-Mobilei s garbage, full of dead zones.
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|Bascially you have a company, which has crap products....basically on the edge of bankruptcy...and you clone the iPhone and call it iPhone Clone #99. Few people are buying your clone, while record numbers are buying the iPhone. Your iPhone Clone #99 has a very high return rate due to poor quality manufacturing, not to mention very buggy software, and is tied to the worst Cell company in the USA.
You ignore the freely available, published API's for accessing content in iTunes, and instead choose to steal another companys USB identifier to make iTunes think you are using an iPod. (At least Palm is open about their iphone clone attempt).
It sure is a different kind of marketing scheme. But, it does keep a tiny company in the news so it is effective. I do not see how anyone would buy the Pre, but hey, people actually do buy Windows Mobile devices so their are plenty of idiots to go around.
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|"and is tied to the worst Cell company in the USA."
When did Palm make a deal with AT&T?? ;)
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|iphone clone does multitasking better than your iphone. fatty
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|fatty, you make a valid point ;)
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|It's amusing to see that Apple can't actually lock down their software even though they try really hard to do so.
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|what software has not been cracked?
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|The article didn't mention how Palm got around this, but there's a reason it would be diffuclt for Apple to lock down their software against *this* particular method: Palm is forging Apple's USB Vendor ID!
The USB Implementors' Forum, by the way, specifically prohibits this--but Palm thinks the Forum also would think Apple's new check for USB device Vendor ID is against USB's open nature. In fact, Palm believes this so much that they have filed a complaint (the audacity!) with the Forum. I think it's far more likely the Forum will scold Palm instead.
It's clear that this is probably just setting up a cat-and-mouse game between Apple and Palm and that Palm users will always be in a state of nervousness with regard to whether or not the next update of either product will break anything. What Palm needs to do is write their own software for OS X--just a lightweight utility that reads the iTunes database (iTunes even saves an XML version of it that would be easy to parse) and copies music to the Pre would be enough. This would be a much more legitimate way to do this.
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|True, but then they'd lose their marketing selling point "syncs with Itunes", that's REALLY what this is about....because as you've mentioned, there are other ways.
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|It's not about what the software does; it's about what the user does.
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