Slashdot Mirror
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."
*If* this is the only way to get data from iTunes, then spoofing the model and vendor should be like the Game Boy requesting an image of the Nintendo logo at bootup. There was a court ruling back in the 90s (Sega vs Galoob, I think) that said the image was treated as a password to go through the BIOS bootup, therefore, anybody could put it in their games. This is probably a completely different ball game, though.
They are pretending to be an Apple device. I don't think that's legal.
This computer is claiming to be an IBM PC. IBM sued. IBM lost.
They may be hit with a lawsuit, but if Palm did their job right, they'll escape scot-free same as Compaq did in the early '80s.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Why would Apple sue over this? On what grounds? There's no copy protection being circumvented, no cryptography being broken, it's a plaintext response. Also remember when that when Apple suggested legal trouble for Palm, Palm suggested that they wouldn't hesitate to strike back with their own patent portfolio. I can't see either party taking anything to court.
Sega v. Accolade protects trademark infringement that is necessary for the purpose of interoperability:
Because the TMSS has the effect of regulating access to the Genesis III console, and because there is no indication in the record of any public or industry awareness of any feasible alternate method of gaining access to the Genesis III, we hold that Sega is primarily responsible for any resultant confusion.
http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1561.htm
With the removal of DRM, there's no issue of monopoly whatsoever. 70% of the market is not 100% of the market; a clever player who can work a deal could get in and take over a big chunk of that.
The only issue before was the fact that anything you bought on the ITMS would only work on the iPod. While that sort of software-hardware vendor lock-in still does not constitute a monopoly--there are other stores that work with other devices--the removal of DRM means that you can buy from ITMS and play your files on anything. You might just have to take an extra step of importing your music into a different piece of software.
If anyone were to take that to court and claim that this requirement constituted a monopoly, the judge would try to say, between fits of laughter, "Buy your music from a different store and use that store's music management software. Now GTF out of my courtroom!"
The CB App. What's your 20?
Well, there is a standard for media syncing, but it's developed by Microsoft and apparently not followed. Especially by Microsoft with their Zune, as they decided to ignore the standards they had created and sold to third-party developers in favor of something that only works with their software.
Mass storage mode still seems to work better. Again, Microsoft will allow watching a video on the Xbox 360 from a mass storage device but not a MTP device.
But iPods can get firmware updates.
The older iPods will always be supported. But do you know what happens if you plug in a first generation iPod right now and don't permit iTunes to update its firmware?
All Apple has to do is put out firmware updates for all the legacy iPods (which they really have done in the past) and require those upgrades for iTunes to continue working. Apple can block this if they want to.
Which is kinda stupid on Palm's part, IMO.
You can use iTunes with other MP3 players -- I have several that still work with it. If iTunes sees a driver for your music player, it'll work with it. Palm could have done whatever they wanted and distributed a driver for their device, or they could have emulated a non-Apple device for which iTunes already had a driver (eg. Diamond Rio), which Apple doesn't have the freedom to require firmware updates for. I can understand why they didn't do the former -- they want users to be able to just plug in the devices and have them work, rather than installing device drivers. But I think it was unnecessarily risky to spoof an Apple device.
Okay, I have to set something straight. It doesn't look for the string "Apple." It looks for a 2 byte code which MEANS apple.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
You didn't read all the links in the article.
It's not the case that it's an iPod according to USB. That's not what Palm did.
It's a USB device with an array of sub-devices. The mass storage portion claims to be an iPod mass storage device... but if you look at the whole tree, you can see that it's connected via a Palm device.
The Pre does not pretend to be an iPod instead of a Pre. It pretends to be a Pre with an iPod inside it. Even easier for Apple to block than I had thought, if they care at all.
It's unlikely that this was the work of a 'rogue engineer.' Palm's Pre team is run by a former Apple VP who hired away Apple iPod team employees to join his new Palm Pre team. There's almost no chance that this wasn't intentional and by design, using inside information that the former Apple employees had. Apple, being famously litigious, will almost certainly try to build a case. On what basis is unclear—perhaps non-compete violations, perhaps trade secrets.
Here's John Gruber's take on the Pre's MediaSync.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
I think Palm is counting on them yelling than then Palm will lean on them with their patents.
Remember Palm defined this space long before Apple did and from a few quotes from palm recently they are going to use that as leverage.
Quote from Palm CEO:
"The whole area of patents is elaborate; a lot of issues there, and a very complex area. One of the things we've done over 15 years is build a very extensive patent portfolio in the mobile computing space, one of the highest-rated patent portfolios in this space, which contains more than 1,500 patents. And the reason you do that is to have a defensive position in the marketplace. It's kind of like two little porcupines going around, and you don't want to touch each other because you might get stung. You peacefully coexist and everything's OK and we keep working together."