All Articles Tagged iphone vs palm pre

Yes folks, given the release of iTunes 9 today, our sibling site PreCentral.net rushed out to check and surehawtdang, Palm Pre sync is deader than dead dead… again!

Will Palm, also again, pick up this latest, brick filled gauntlet from Apple and re-enable Pre Sync, maybe on the molecular level this time?

Sigh. We hope they don’t. Their resources are better spent, you know, making the Pre and Pixi even more spectacular. But given the odd father/son issues between Jobso and Ruby — and for the sake of fun internet soap opera everywhere — they probably will.

Game. Back. On.

Did Apple CEO Steve Jobs approach former Palm CEO Ed Colligan back in 2007 with a gentleman’s agreement to stop hiring each other’s employees? (Similar to the agreement allegedly just terminated between Apple and Google?)

Bloomberg, based on communications revealed by Palm’s Derick Mains, says indeed he did. The conversation reportedly took place in August 2007, after Apple unveiled the iPhone in January and shipped it in June — and after Apple had hired 2% of Palm’s workforce to do it. Palm then brought former Apple iPod executive Jon Rubinstein on board to reboot their smartphone efforts, and it’s at this point Steve Jobs apparently stepped in:

Jobs, Apple’s CEO, told Colligan he was concerned that Rubinstein was recruiting Apple employees. “We must do whatever we can to stop this,” Jobs said in the communications. [...] Jobs said Apple had patents and more money than Palm if the companies ended up in a legal fight, according to the communications.

Palm’s response?

“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan said to Jobs, 54, according to the communications. Colligan said he thought about Jobs’s proposal and considered offering hiring concessions, before deciding against it, according to the exchanges.

Palm, of course, did go on to hire liberally from Apple’s iPhone engineer ranks. Still, it’s interesting to see Palm offering up this exchange on a silver platter during a time when tech companies in general, and Apple in particular, is coming under higher government scrutiny. It comes on the heels of other recent Palm vs. Apple scrapes, of course, including the ongoing jousting match over iTunes sync and USB access, the still simmering patent dispute Jobs hints at above and that Apple and Palm have played about in the media, and of course humorous comments from investor Roger McNamee and Colligan himself about how the iPhone is/was doomed.

[via Engadget]

UPDATE: MacRumors is saying they have good reason to believe these images are, indeed, fake…

Boy Genius received some more screen shots of what’s alleged to be iTunes 9, showing a Samsung YH-J70JL Black — of all things — purportedly syncing with the front end of Apple’s media management empire. PreCentral.net jumped on this to ponder out-loud if Apple was having a change of heart regarding locking out Palm’s previous attempts to spoof an iPod ID and sync with iTunes on the down-low, and will now allow non-Apple devices access. TiPb, however, can see this playing out in only 3 ways:

1. The screen shots, or that specific feature at least, isn’t real
2. The ‘verse gets rebooted, Star Trek-style, and Steve Jobs ain’t in it.
3. Jobs is going nu-cu-lar and will allow every device except the Palm Pre to sync with iTunes.

Option 3 looking the most likely at this point?

Our sibling site, PreCentral.net has put together something we’re openly and admittedly jealous of — a brand-spanking new Homebrew Apps gallery for the Palm Pre. For those unfamiliar with Homebrew, think of it as something akin to the iPhone’s Jailbreak ecosystem, where apps are developed outside “official” SDK channels and installed without the built in App Store (or App Catalog in this case).

Jailbreak, of course, is and has always been one of the brightest, most creative and vibrant parts of the iPhone (and TiPb!) community, and it looks like Homebrew is every bit the same for the Palm Pre (and likely future webOS devices).

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Join Dieter, Chad, and Rene for iPhone 3.1 Beta 3, Google Voice rejection, iTablet and Verizon rumors, Palm/iTunes escalation, SMS exploits, and all the news and how-tos. Listen in!

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Dieter did some digging over at PreCentral.net and goes through how Palm re-hacked the iTunes sync. It looks pretty much like what we figured. Palm is spoofing the Apple USB Vendor ID so as to present as an iPod. This is one step deeper than last time, where they still ID’d themselves as a Pre. In a further display of chutzpah, while violating the prohibition against misuse of USB vendor IDs themselves, Palm has filed a complaint against “another company” (we’re guessing Apple) for improper use of same.

So let’s follow the logic here. Palm is seemingly objecting to Apple using the USB vendor ID to filter out non-Apple devices. Palm doesn’t feel that filtering is in keeping with the openness of the USB standard.

What’s the alternative, however? For Apple to maintain control over their own software by putting an authentication chip in every iPod/iPhone that handshakes with iTunes before syncing? Or to agree to freely license iTunes interoperability to every device maker on the planet?

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Palm Pre got webOS 1.1 today and the surprise feature was that it re-hacks iTunes sync, once and for all proving Palm’s new management — in this area — cares more about thumbing their nose at Apple and strutting in front of the press than they do about Palm and the Pre user base.

Yeah, this will be an editorial of the scathing variety. You’ve been warned…

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iPhone vs. Palm Pre combat and comparison is nothing new, but is the latest rivalry in smartphones ready to take to the skies? Ars Technica certainly thinks so:

Ultimately, traveling with the Pre made me want my iPhone back

Though user-changeable, battery life on the Palm Pre was cited as one of the biggest disadvantages, draining rapidly under the onslaught of the famed Synergy and Card systems, and an estimated death in just 30 min. of Sprint TV viewing(?!). Lack of Apps was another.

Far from negative, however, the article gives Palm lots of suggestions to help the troubled Pre traveller out. (Ours, of course, would be actually getting that iPhone back…)

If you have any travel tips of your own to share, drop them in the comments!

[Thanks to Icebike for the tip!]

With the return of Steve Jobs to Apple comes the return of Fake Steve to the interwebs. Fake Steve also returns to being bitingly satirical, something that had been lacking before its own hiatus. Recent gems include the excoriation of the New York Times, and lambasting Palm (twice) for focusing on Apple rather than the Pre in their own advertisements:

Do you remember what the ads for the original iPhone looked like? You remember seeing anything in those ads about the BlackBerry or the Treo? No. It was a whole new thing — sui generis, as the French say. It had to be. If all we could do was to make a slightly less s****y BlackBerry, and offer it for a few bucks less than what RIM was charging, we would not have bothered to make the product.

(Though he may be reaching in his claims of just how far Jon Rubinstein will go to be like “him”.)

If you’re easily offended, stay clear. Otherwise, enjoy it while it lasts…

Sprint and the Palm Pre just decided to bring it to Apple’s iPhone via a perfectly nifty, if factually inaccurate(1), little ad-esque banner posted on Facebook. PreCentral.net already pipped us to the relevant quote post, citing McNamee’s infamous CEOh-snap moment from the past:

You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone, [...] Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.

The relative thriftiness of constraining their marketing budget to a Facebook fan-base aside, does it really behoove Palm to remind iPhone 2G owners that their contracts are up, right after 1,000,000 people jumped on the iPhone 3GS last weekend alone?

How does that compare to Palm Pre numbers to date?

(utter silence)

That’s what we thought…

1. The iPhone multitasks iPod, Mail, Phone, Safari iTunes, and App Store, phenomenally well — the iPhone 3GS more snappily than the arguably laggy Palm Pre. Apple simply chooses not to allow 3rd party multitasking at this point, something that admittedly chaffs, but is still a far cry from what’s insinuated in the “ad”.