Sure, okay, since Palm has been faking iPod status to provide iTunes sync for a while now, and Apple has been updating iTunes to stop them every chance they get, when a new version of Palm’s webOS comes out and it DOES NOT re-enable that sync, it’s news. Right?

So, to be clear, neither the newly introduced Palm Pixi candybar or the just-updated Palm Pre can sync with iTunes 9.0.2 (though older versions of iTunes 9 might still work).

Meanwhile, PreCentral.net’s own Derek Kessler has a suffered through for a year. Of course, this gets the iPhone part of the blame:

But I’m afraid that Apple has also changed the mobile computing space for the worse on the features front. Apple made it acceptable to launch a phone without all the standard phone features intact.

Derek excuses Apple somewhat, the iPhone being their first foray into the smartphone space. He’s not as forgiving with Palm, who’ve had decades of Pilot and Treo experience.

Given Palm’s financial position and the limits of all human resources, I’ll ask on their behalf what I asked on the iPhone’s in 2007 – what feature that was implemented would you have had them not implement, so they could have implemented something else instead? Would you have waited 2 years for cut and paste so you could have a great music app at launch?

Give the full rant a read and let us know what you think!

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webOS 1.3.1 Did NOT Restore iTunes Sync, but is That the Least of Palm’s Worries?

UPDATE 2: Apple comments to Digital Daily:

“As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.”

UPDATE 1: PreCentral.net is back with the low-down on how Palm re-enabled iTunes sync in webOS 1.2.1:

by setting its Manufacturer to Apple and also perhaps by changing the USB Product ID to the iPod Video’s (they even changing the serial number that appears when you plug it in with Media Sync).

ORIGINAL: Palm has just updated their software to webOS 1.2.1, and according to PreCentral.net, the changelog reads “Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (9.0.1)”

Congrats Palm, just after we went and praised you for finally putting users ahead of your own ego, for spending your limited resources on solidifying your own software rather than hacking someone elses, after the USB-IF slapped the hand you yourself raised, you went ahead and showed your desire for blog press and whatever “daddy issues” exist between you and Apple, Rubinstein and Jobs, are what’s most important to you. Kudos. Golf clap.

Bored now.

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UPDATED: Palm webOS 1.2.1 Re-Hacks iTunes 9 Sync

According to PreCentral.net, the upcoming Palm webOS 1.2 update will NOT be re-hacking iTunes 9 sync. In other words, the cat and mouse game between Apple and Palm may soon be missing it’s mouse. We’d heard Palm was in this for the long haul, even though we thought it was more ego than good sense, and at the expense of their own customers, so if true — huge kudos to Palm (even if it took a little help from the USB-IF). And to Palm Pre users, our sibling site is:

suggesting people at least dip their toes into the non-iTunes-direct-sync waters. DoubleTwist, Salling Sync, Drag ‘n Drop, The Missing Sync: learn them, love them, switch to them.

In the opposite of kudos department, it looks like Palm may be cloning one of least popular aspects of Apple 2-Billion download iTunes App Store — developer alienation. According to JWZ, he’s gone through dozens of emails, jumped through countless hoops, bended but refused to break, and now has faced an Apple-esque 2 weeks of silence.

Could it be that introducing, setting up, and running an app store is difficult, and until a few years from now, when all the bugs have been worked out, Apple, Palm, and almost every company will have their share of stumbles, falls, and face-plants?

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Palm NOT Re-hacking iTunes Sync, but ARE Alienating Developers?

UPDATED: Icebike makes and interesting and opposite argument in the comments:

If you ask me that wording amounts to tacit approval to use third party devices, without Apple assuming any liability for their continued operation.

ORIGINAL: Not quite “get off our lawn”, yet clearly a sign post warning that the lawn might on day get a tad hostile if you choose to linger there without leave. Here it is, via Daring Fireball, Apple’s latest Knowledge Base Article: iTunes: About unsupported third-party digital media players, aka the Palm Pre syncing saga:

This article is about iTunes and unsupported third-party digital media players.

Products Affected iTunes

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players 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.

So, if/when iTunes breaks compatibility with the Palm Pre — intentionally, incidentally, or otherwise, does this cover Apple?

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Updated: Apple to Palm — Careful Playing on our iTunes Lawn!

Remember that brouhaha over the Palm Pre syncing with iTunes? (Check out PreCentral.net’s massive Palm Pre review for more on it from a functional perspective.)

Well, DVD Jon’s nanocr.eu site (via Engadget Mobile) says he’s confirmed that:

the way [Palm Pre] hooks to iTunes is very shady indeed. Turns out that the Pre identifies itself as an iPod when it’s in Media Sync mode, but only on the system’s mass storage interface; the root USB node still comes through as a Palm Pre.

This leads them to believe it might be something Apple could more easily block, if Apple so chooses to. We’ve already gone over the reasons why we think Palm’s decision to sync directly with iTunes (as opposed to with the iTunes library XML file like RIM and Nokia do) is ballsy but ultimately bad for Apple (since they’ll get blamed for problems by consumers who don’t understand the hacky nature and limitations), Palm (since they will have to work at maintaining unlicensed compatibility), but most importantly consumers (because the experience is flawed and unreliable).

Here’s hoping Palm finishes their strut around the launch-day press lines and the next update contains something closer akin to a non-shady, yet still iTunes and user friendly solution for everyone…

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Palm Pre Hack: Pretends to be iPod to Interface, not Node

Palm faithful rejoice, Gizmodo — via an unnamed source — claims that Palm Pre still syncs with iTunes 8.2 release, same as it reportedly did with the pre-release version.

Meanwhile, Daring Fireball weighs in on the situation again, this time wondering if what Palm is doing is illegal, and if Apple stops it, whether that would be illegal. PreCentral.net, for their part, looks beyond the what to the why:

we’re increasingly getting the feeling that Palm is either trying to goad Apple into a legal showdown or they are so confident in their patent portfolio that they feel they can throw these features in Apple’s face.

To which Gruber aptly footnotes:

And, when judging the likelihood of Apple filing such a lawsuit, consider the perspective of a certain highly-competitive quasi-paranoid Apple founder and CEO who is famously sensitive to what he perceives as being “ripped off”. The one and only company to ship a product that successfully masquerades as an iPod via USB is the company whose engineering division is run by a former Apple senior VP and has hired a slew of former Apple engineers.

In — as they say — deed.

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Confirmed-ish: Palm Pre Still Syncs with iTunes 8.2!

nanocr.eu (via MacRumors) has a theory on how the Palm Pre is managing to sync so seamlessly with iTunes. Read the full post for details, but their conclusion is a tad concerning:

• When you select “Media Sync” on the Pre, it will switch its USB interface to use Apple’s Vendor Id and the Product Id for a specific iPod model
• The Pre exposes a filesystem through Mass Storage Class that mimics the structure of an iPod
• The Pre responds to Apple’s custom USB command and returns XML info about the device

They warn — like we have — that this will be pretty simple for Apple to intentionally prevent, uncaringly break, or accidentally bug up (they’ve done all three to jailbreakers in the past, after all, and expecting Apple to devote time and engineers to maintaining compatibility for unlicensed devices is just this side of silly).

Their advice? Anticipate Palm Pre iTunes sync to go the way of the dodo and fast. Then get a copy of DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist and sync your hearts out that way…

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Is the Palm Pre Syncing with iTunes by Pretending to be an iPod?

Fortune scoop’let’ed the story: the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes. No, not like a dumb USB disk. Not even like a 3rd party-enabled BlackBerry on the PC. Somehow, when Jon Rubinstein joined Palm, someone at Apple forgot to frisk him for iTunes keys.

Our friends over at PreCentral.net, of course, are all over this:

If the Pre does indeed just show up as a standard device on iTunes, it would be big news — but it wouldn’t be unprecedented.  Apple has allowed other OEMs to license the necessary APIs to talk directly to iTunes so they can show up as a device.  If you take a gander at the list of compatible players on Apple’s support site, you’ll see that Rio players, Nomad Players, and others will all work with iTunes directly (not to mention various Motorola phones).

Still, the level of integration purportedly available to the Pre makes us feel more than a little violated. Did Apple really license them that deep a hook into the system? Given the existence of one Steven P. Jobs, we somehow doubt that. But if not, which 3rd party hook did Palm embed, is it all nice and legal, and how — if at all — will Apple react?

We know! At WWDC Phil Schiller will announce — iPhone compatibility with Palm Desktop!!

Ahem

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Okay, Who Gave Palm Pre Keys to the iTunes Sync Kingdom?!