Apple kills Palm Pre iTunes sync
Apple has struck a blow against Palm and its flagship Pre device, which some have heralded as stiff competition to the iPhone, by removing the Pre’s ability to masquerade as an iPod.
Palm had made a big deal of the Pre’s ability to interface with iTunes, allowing consumers to transfer and manage their music using the popular program. The Palm website still claims users can “use the Palm media sync feature to transfer your DRM-free iTunes music, podcasts, photos, and more to your Pre.”
However and iTunes update released Wednesday, taking the application to version 8.2.1, addresses an “issue with the verification of Apple devices.” In a nutshell, this means its puts a stop to the Pre’s pretending to be an iPod.
Earlier versions of iTunes still work with the Pre as Palm advertises, and users can still transfer music by treating the device as a USB drive, but it’s unsurprisingly clear that Apple is keen to protect its own innovation and new-found market share in the mobile space.
‘which some have heralded as stiff competition to the iPhone’…
Who? Surely no industry professionals would make such a naive statement…
IMHO Pre’s (non) future was already sealed before Apple desync’d them.
Bastards. 🙂
Maybe Apple deserves some anti competition lawsuit like Microsoft did.
This behaviour is probably illegal in Europe. So Palm should immediately take legal advice. IBM tried this with mainframes against Memorex clone disk drives” in the 70’s and had to pay million sin fines and provide Memorex with the specs. Microsoft tried to stop SCO doing filesystem and remote screen protocol “plug compatible” systems in teh 90’2 and Microsoft had to pay SCO millions to avoid teh wrath of teh European courts. SEGA had to pay millions for trying to stop unauthorised games plugging into their consoles.
Of course Microsoft tried to tie Internet Explorer to Windows and paid hundreds of millions in fines
Its time that this obnoxious, dogmatic, illegal and bullying behaviour by Apple was stamped down on by the legal system. Apple has a poor record for innovation in technology, thats probably why it tries to play dirty even when a minnow like Palm tries to compete.
There is nothing to be surprised of. Apple has never been very interested in being open to the industry. They are the kings of propietary faith.
It’s not anti-competitive. Apple already provides a sync mechanism for iTunes with an XML file and full access to all of the music in files and folders. Any third party can access this and use the music and information without any constraints.
But to make your device appear to be an iPod and try to shackle Apple to testing and developing for your device is certainly unfair behaviour on behalf of Palm. It seems they couldn’t be bothered to develop a sync mechanism of their own, or any user friendly software, or even actually ask Apple if they could synchronise using undocumented APIs.