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Palm Pre "iTunes Hack" Detailed By DVD Jon
CNETNate writes "As the reviews of the Palm Pre start to roll in, DVD Jon expands on previous coverage of the Pre showing up in iTunes as some sort of an iPod, by publishing the offending code Palm has used to enabled the feature. As suspected, in regular USB mode, the phone addresses itself as a standard peripheral. But in 'Media Sync' mode, it claims to be an iPod ... from a vendor known as Apple."
I very much doubt this was orchestrated in order to gain publicity. Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by a rogue engineer who wanted his phone to work with iTunes.
Their trick, in other words...
Pre: "Knock knock"
Windows: "Whoâ(TM)s there?"
Pre: "iPod."
Windows: "Cool, come in. Hey iTunes, Iâ(TM)ve got an iPod for you."
iTunes: "You donâ(TM)t look like an iPod but if Windows says you are, thatâ(TM)s good enough for me. Smoke some of this music."
Pre: "Kickass."
I agree with you completely! On a completely unrelated topic...what is a quid? Is it a type of bird?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
A Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination
Ugh, the text encoding in Windows is terrible.
looks like MrEricSir is down one iPod Nano.
Right now Verizon has exclusive rights to the Pre.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
It's like MAD, only with patents!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I take it you thought the virus in Independence Day was awesome?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Reader: Knock, knock
Slashdot: Who's there?
Reader: Unicode.
Slashdot: Fuck off.
Back on topic, John Gruber has covered this pretty well here and here.
"But is it illegal? And would it be illegal for Apple to take countermeasures against it? My guess is "no" to both questions... I don't think WebOS's media sync is a mistake on Palm's part because it is wrong, I think it's a mistake because it is risky and unnecessary."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
What's the charge? "Impersonating an Apple Device"? What law is that exactly...
If there were a law, these people would have been arrested.
On second thought, maybe we do need such a law... :^)