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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 can't imagine a major competitor to the Apple iPhone will be allowed to do this without a lawsuit smacking them in the face. Then again, perhaps Palm wants a lawsuit to bring additional media attention to their device.
Seems like a risky move by Palm, their entire future most likely rests on this device. Without it succeeding the risk of Palm going under are pretty high. Might as well shoot for the fences I guess.
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
Silly Apple, if it only identifies its devices via a USB identifier, but interacts with them in standard, easily emulated ways, all the while going for the exclusivity angle.
If it's only identifying devices in a standard, easily enumerated way - then they obviously are not going for the exclusivity angle. That part is your assertion but actual technical details seem to prove your assertion wrong.
Silly Palm, for thinking Apple will take this lying down.
I honestly don't think Apple will care much. It leads to more people buying things from iTunes after all and cements the dominance of iTunes for managing media. Perhaps they even did this in conjuction with Palm... if you think about it they would have been smart to do so.
But kudos for the balls to do it anyway.
Can't argue with that. Palm is an amazing company to come back the way they have, makes me think of the Palm of old...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But Palm wont be able to certify their device as USB unless the hack is an aftermarket hack.
Why not? When you hit "Mount as Storage", the device acts as a bog standard USB mass storage device.
When you hit media sync, it acts totally differently. But why should a special mode of using USB stop certification when it does offer a standard mode...
Offering different options when plugging into USB is sheer genius.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There was an earlier case involving game carts and embedded trademarked identifiers where it was ruled that another company was allowed to use a particular trademark embedded in ROM because it was required to enable the full functionality of the game machine. So using your trademarked name as a "magic number" will not prevent others from connecting to your device or software legally. Once you use the trademark for a purpose other than identifying your business or product, it may become fair game in that other context.
If they were misrepresenting themselves to USERS as an Apple device in order to make sales (like the famous "Rollex Watch"), then they'd be in big trouble, but if all they're doing is misrepresenting themselves to the machine in order to get around some technical limitations of the software, then they should be fine.
They are pretending to be an Apple device. I don't think that's legal.
What's the charge? "Impersonating an Apple Device"? What law is that exactly...
As I noted, the only hook is that the USB id has the word Apple which could be a trademark violation... but all the car adaptors looking for iPods have the word "Apple" embedded in order to look for said iPods. There's a strong case to be made that the string is there for the purpose of interoperability.
I don't even think it's grey enough an area to be worth a lawsuit. Did you hear of a suit filed today? Apple has known exactly how this mimicing would work for a few weeks now, you would have heard something either before or around launch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And Apple's computers pretend to be running "Windows NT 4.9 Server" over a Windows network. It's not exactly out-of-the-ordinary.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
What makes you say that? A quick google search shows most sites estimate iTunes market share as between 50% and 70% of the legal downloads market. That's comfortably enough for most regulators to consider it a monopoly.
Of course being a monopoly isn't illegal. It only becomes a problem when you try to use your monopoly in one area to create or expand a monopoly in another. Say like taking a monopoly in digital music sales and using it to help a monopoly in digital music players? Maybe or maybe not. Still, I'd be hesitant to describe Apple's digital music business as something other than a monopoly.
Dumping the USB registers: cool.
Commentator confusing USB registers with code: not cool.
Mod DVD Jon +1
Mod Slashdot -1
You really think that there isn't a SINGLE Apple employee who couldn't get hold of a Pre if they wanted to, or that they don't already have one? Even in their hardware, PR, developer etc. departments? And that "revelation" was basically revealed by plugging the device in and looking at the usbid... lsusb would have done it in a single command and there are even prettier interfaces for Windows for free.
Obscurity is a waste of time when you're hoping the *designers* of a system don't realise how you've worked around it - it's like "telling" the DVD forum about the CSS hack - they already know *how* you circumvent it, but they may not know the exact method by which you discovered it (that's the bit that *doesn't* matter). The designers of any such system already know, or it would take seconds to make 10 guesses at how, and it would take minutes to actually discover how even without basic knowledge - you just run it through a debug version of iTunes and see what happens.
Don't be silly. It's like saying Microsoft don't know how people are installing pirate copies of Windows, or upping the TCP connection limit, or Nintendo not knowing how the Wii hacks work. It takes *seconds* for them to work it out once it's been revealed, even if they would never have thought of it. They DESIGNED the system, after all.
I've never seen the rules one should follow when releasing a device that might end up in millions of hands, but I'm sure they include the following:
1) Don't use an unstable hack to enable a feature that a very large percentage of potential users will be counting on.
2) Don't base a feature on a cat-and-mouse game. Especially with the likes of Apple, who are really good at that particular game.
3) Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup. Jobs was bragging about patents in the iPhone announcement keynote, for Christ sake.
How is this any different than Opera/Firefox/whatever changing the User-Agent string?
Neither looks like anything complicated nor like anything illegal.
What I *REALLY* want, is the old style Palm Visors with graffiti area to come back and just get rid of all the buttons. I was so much better at graffiti than typing, and we could have MASSIVE screens in the same form factor. I *LOVED* my Kyocera 6035.
P.S. If Palm had just gone to Apple and said "we want to make the Palm Pre sync with iTunes", would Apple have been reasonable about it? I saw a comment on Slashdot mentioning that there are non-Apple devices that sync with iTunes, implying that Apple can be reasonable.
That ability is left-over from the SoundJam days, which is why the list is so antiquated. I'm also pretty sure that whatever sync code there is for 3rd party devices was written by Apple, not the device manufacturer.
Personally, I think this is one of those, "Easier to ask forgiveness than permission" things. Assuming that Apple will sue Palm, this is just another thing that Apple can add to the list and will be worked out in whatever settlement Apple and Palm come to.
That's not entirely accurate. In the case you may be referring to, the accused had literally copied copyrighted code and re-used it in their product.
Apple v. Franklin (1983)
Palm didn't copy Apple's code in this instance. You're comparing oranges and fish.
I'm a 2000 man.