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Palm Pre To Sync Seamlessly With iTunes
Wired is reporting that Palm's new handheld device, the Pre, will be able to sync automagically with Apple's iTunes. Thanks to a team of ex-Apple engineers the Pre will sync everything but iPhone applications and some of the older Fairplay DRM music. "It does it by faking out iTunes, making the jukebox software think that it is connected to a real iPod. Hook it up and you'll be given three options: USB mass storage device, charging only or iTunes sync. This is a ballsy move from Palm, and we totally love it: a big fat middle finger at Apple. Apple will, we are sure, be readying its legal attack dogs as I write, and don't be at all surprised if an iTunes update pops up around June 6th. This fight just got a lot more interesting."
Is this really such a "big fat middle finger"? It's cementing iTunes as the default player and iTMS as the default music store, and putting Palm in the position of trying to pick up some of Apple's leftovers. Plus, if Apple doesn't like it, they can issue firmware updates and update iTunes, making everything connect some slightly different way, and suddenly Palm's stuff stops working.
If Palm really wanted to make trouble for Apple, they'd make their own alternative to iTunes, which wouldn't take much work. If they really didn't want to do it from scratch, I'm sure there are even some open source projects that could be used as a jumping-off point. And if they didn't want to make their own music store, they could probably strike a deal with Amazon. Now that would be a problem for Apple.
Will Amarok 1.4 work with the Pre?
I would love to have a Smart Phone that works well with Linux.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Pure speculation here but what if during that whole patent debate that Palm and Apple had regarding touch technology Apple conceded to let the Pre sync? Just a thought.
I mean I'm sure Apple told Palm, "Hey, you can't use multi-touch or anything like it."
So Palm said, "Oh yeah? Browse our portfolio. We've highlighted a number of patents the iPod, Touch, and iPhone clearly violate."
Apple: "Cross License?"
Palm: "Sure! Oh, and we want to sync to iTunes."
It's not so simple as that. What you call an "unlock" gets you double the bit rate too. A workaround that Apple execs have talked about publicly is that you burn it to CD and rip it back. If you're not at all interested in doubling the bit rate, the small amount of loss in re-encoding probably isn't going to be a big deal.
We can talk about coulda woulda shoulda, but I doubt Apple is the main problem here. If the RIAA is involved in the mix, I think the RIAA should get the lion's share of the blame if it doesn't go the way you think it should.