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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."
Apple could sue, and Palm could counter-sue with antitrust claims. After all, Apple does control most of the music market via iTunes.
I vaguely recall a lawsuit where Apple was sued for limiting the iPod to only iTunes (Apple won), but I don't think anybody has challenged the reverse (using something else with iTunes) in court.
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.
Silly Palm, for thinking Apple will take this lying down. But kudos for the balls to do it anyway.
Two points:
1) This is impossible for Apple to block. If according to USB it's an iPod, how can Apple distinguish? They can try to see if any little details are missing, but in the end any probing they do can easily be met by Palm.
Nor is it even unsafe, because the code to support older iPods is pretty stable and will not change over time - the older iPods will always be supported.
2) I'm pretty sure Apple sill not sue. What legality is there around USB identifiers? Nothing. The only hook there is the Apple string in the ID, but I don't think it's enough to put a case around. Why bother with the expense of a suit.
It's a clever idea from Palm and I applaud them for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
*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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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