Geekanoids: Palm taking the micky with iTunes syncing

Palm taking the micky with iTunes syncing
Friday, July 24, 2009

iTunes might be free for the Mac & PC, but it is not free for anyone to financially benefit from as a feature of their product. So when Palm released the Pre, everyone was surprised that it synchronised with users iTune libraries. Yes, Palm had taken a somewhat risky move in my opinion. They had done nothing less than hacking into Apple's software, to find out how to make the Pre appear as an iPod (or iPhone). Instead of Apple setting the lawyers loose, they simply released iTunes 8.2.1 to fix the so-called problem.

Well, Palm are either stupid or ummm stupid, as they have now released webOS 1.1.0 for the Pre. Their release notes cite in black and white that the new version "Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1)."

They may well be spelling this out to gain publicity from writers like myself. So, to a certain extent, they are getting some free publicity. However, let me put you right, if you are reading this as a Pre owner (or someone who is considering this product). For a company to release a mobile phone, capable of playing back music and video files, to hack into another company's software is very underhand... and that stupid word comes up again. How lazy, they have the manpower to do their own software. From a buyers point of view, how annoyed will the dozen or so Pre owners be, when they have relied on iTunes from day one, only to find that it no longer works (and believe me, Apple will make sure that it stops working).

Apple is being very kind about the situation. They are well within their rights to slap Palm for this and if it went to court, the conclusion is pretty obvious. Maybe Palm are already admitting defeat, clocking up as many Pre sales to pay the big legal bill that they will likely face. In my opinion Apple deserves recompense for every version of iTunes that has been used to sync a Pre... that would be sweet justice for Apple, but if it is on a per-Pre-sale basis it might not equate to much.

Labels: Opinion

posted 19:15,

1 Comments:

At 1:37 am, Hackeron said...: How is Palm taking advantage here?

While I love my iPhone, the Pre does have some tangible advantages for some users.

If those users buy a Pre and want music on it, they have 2 choices:

1) Buy music on iTunes provided you can use it with your new phone.

2) Buy your music elsewhere and use songbird, floola, winamp, media monkey, amarok or windows media player to purchase and manage your music.

Which is better for Apple?

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Dave

Dave has been in the graphic design industry for 14 years. Long time reviewer of technology related products, he is Owner/Editor of Geekanoids.

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