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Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync
adeelarshad82 writes "It's been just a little over a month since Apple blocked iTunes sync with Palm Pre, and now Apple takes that strategy one step further by blocking Snow Leopard sync with Palm-OS powered smartphones. Even though Palm has officially retired Palm OS and is now focusing hard on its next-generation WebOS in the Palm Pre, the company is still selling Palm OS-powered smartphones; two current models are the Treo Pro on Sprint and the Centro."
s/blocking/dropping support for/
Nothing, IIRC, is stopping Palm from doing the heavy lifting required to support their devices in OS X except Palm.
Palm dropped support for this YEARS ago. You can hardly blaim apple for not taking over support of a product that the manufacturer declared dead.
So why would Apple spend time developing a feature for it? Especially since all 3 of the people still using Palm OS devices can purchase an app that does the same thing. Looks to me like the press is making a mountain from a molehill.
Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of the operating systems market and, therefore, cannot drive competitors out of business through sheer price/compatibility pressure alone. The DoJ went after Microsoft because its monopoly over the operating systems market allowed it to distort the market in web browsers to its own advantage. That was illegal. Now, unless you can show that Apple's market power is sufficient to distort the market in PDAs/smartphones, then Apple hasn't done anything illegal.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Support for legacy technologies gets dropped all the time. It sucks, but it opens up new opportunities for enterprising developers. Besides, Palm themselves stopped making Palm Desktop for the Mac ages ago.
Obviously there is lingering demand. So, in due course there will be an open source solution to sync from the Mac OS to the Palm OS. After all, it's not rocket science.
So there you go. Competitiveness is restored.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Palm Desktop stopped functioning years ago, so Apple finally dropping support for it is not a bad thing at all. I'm sure Missing Sync for Palm OS will be continue to function or be updated to function in Snow Leopard. I know I had to use it with my Centro since the decrepit Palm Desktop didn't work for it. Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices also rely on third-party software to sync in Mac OS X. Apple dropping support on their side is a non-issue.
So Apple should keep working on a niche market that is already well served by a third party? Why? Should Apple keep parallel and serial ports alive? Should I be upset that 10.6 doesn't work with my 1998 Winprinter? Where does it stop?
So, all 2000 users of Palm PDAs / Treos can either 1) stay at 10.5 - which isn't such a bad OS or 2) Go buy Missing Sync (which, I imagine, since Palm synching in OS 10.5 and earlier was pretty rudimentary 1990 of said users probably already have).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If Palm want a way to sync on OS X they should write the software themselves. Oh wait, they did and discontinued it.
Just install Free Software and GNU/Linux and forget about all these stupid games! Take control of your computing with an platform created by the people, for the people. Use something which is designed to enable you, rather than restrict you - locking you in and exploiting you for cash.
Jesus, Jobs, have you no heart? First you killed off the floppy disk drive. Then you wiped out serial ports in favor of USB. Now you're blowing out syncing technology that barely anyone uses any more in order to streamline your OS... shame, shame on you.
Sorry, I'm having a real hard time getting worked up over this, or even seeing a nefarious scheme behind it.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Sure, but there is a difference between legacy as in hardware, legacy that requires lots of code and legacy that is relatively small. My guess is Palm OS sync isn't that big of a program, nor does it need constant updating. So either A) Release it as a downloadable update, B) Or include it as an option when installing. Taking it out though, that just screams anticompeditive.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Nothing stopping Palm releasing software to allow syncing on OS X. They just chose to discontinue it and instead rely on Apple to provide it.
Then went and pissed off Apple with the whole "I'm an iPod really" private USB vendor code spoofing thing.
Doesn't surprise me that Apple are hardly going to concern themselves with syncing with PalmOS - an OS that Palm itself is dead, out of goodwill for Palm.
Why does it have an obligation to ensure third party products function across OS releases? A third party product, by the way, that doesn't have native sync software because Palm discontinued it. Palm has also said that PalmOS is dead.
They have announced their intention. If Palm want to do something about it, they can release some software to make it all work again.
Nothing is being blocked. Apple is simply discontinuing their own support for Palm devices. Palm itself stopped officially supporting Macs years ago. There's nothing preventing users from running third-party software to sync.
Legacy?
This sync method was the foundation for a lot of devices beyond palm. The fact that Palm is moving on is not germane.
Its just code, code that has already been extensively debugged, widely deployed and is still in use by many people for many devices.
This isn't about legacy.
Its about that child running Apple, and his petty tantrums.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Personally, it streamlines most of my home computing tasks quite nicely over XP or Vista. Its faster, more responsive and has a couple nice features that both vista and XP lack.
I don't see myself putting it on my netbook, work computer or server any time soon, but it seems to be a step in the right direction for personal use.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Its not a niche market, its every single palm phone except the absolute most recent one. Every single palm sold before June 6th, 2009 is affected.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I'll just put Windows 7 onto my MacBook instead of Snow Leopard.
There is a special place in Hell for people that put that abomination on good computers.
Thats why he's putting it on a MacBook and not a good computer....
The only one that didn't want Palm products to succeed was Palm. Horrible products. Support EOL for all their products were the day they shipped. Rarely got any sort of bug fixes, never any additional features. Palm Desktop for Mac is still a PowerPC only application (runs on intel via rosetta). Why bother trying to support something the vendor has no interest in supporting? I'll never make the mistake of buying another Palm product (I've had 2, Palm Pro and Palm T5). I've never heard anyone say a good thing about their Treo so I never went there. I don't expect anything will change with the Pre. I also don't understand the Pre hype, it's not bringing anything new to the table.
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"? Apparently, Apple believes that all technologies that they don't sell you themselves is "legacy technology".
You have to really have Apple's dick in your mouth to defend this type of behavior from a corporation that has benefited so much from customer loyalty. At some point, one has to realize that Apple does not have one's best interest in mind, no matter how cool it makes one feel to display their nameplate.
You are welcome on my lawn.
....Its about that child running Apple, and his petty tantrums.....
Why should Apple not be allowed to have its walled garden? Only those who pay Apple are allowed to enter. They are not like Microsoft, where for the longest time there was no alternative to Windows. If you do not like Apple products, nobody forces you to buy them. Vote with your wallet and stop complaining.
All theory is gray
Agreed on the Google Talk thing, but this Palm OS Sync isn't an example of anti-competitiveness, it's just dropping support for something that is long past its use-by-date anyway.
And Apple doesn't get away with things -- there's been a lot more bitching about Apple than Microsoft lately. People are even defending MS against the FSF.
Why should Apple not be allowed to have its walled garden?
Because they'll lose customers.
And customers are always, ALWAYS allowed to complain.
So, where is Palm's software to fill in now that Apple are discontinuing support for the PalmOS that Palm has declared dead (but still sells phones with it on)?
Oh right, they discontinued the sync software years ago.
Except the only universal praise ("all sensible accounts") is that it's better than Vista.
Compared to XP, it's not so clear a winner.
Which is a niche. Treo sales have been in steady decline ever since the 700p, and that was 2-3 years ago. Contrary to the summary, the Treo Pro does not run Palm OS - it's Windows Mobile.
Users can still use the far superior Missing Sync, and Palm could always update Hotsync. This is a non-issue.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
10.6 probably DOES work with your 1998 Winprinter if you have a parallel to USB adapter. Thank you, Gutenprint.
"I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!"
-Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon
So if they buy a copy of snow leopard, they're apple's customers, but if they also have a Palm, they automatically stop being apple's customers ?
Nice logic there smart boy.
If I already own a Palm handheld and an Apple desktop or laptop, whose customer am I? (Hint: it's not "somebody else")
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
What does Apple have a monopoly over? Certainly they are not the only company to make computers or Operating systems.
Apple users can skip the new OS and buy an equivalent piece of hardware that runs MS Windows instead, or even install Windows on their Mac; these facts means Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
The Palm connector, maintained by PALM, has languished for years. It suffers from TERRIBLE limitiations on Mac OS X, and it always had (you can only sync ONE address per contact, etc.). It was broken and really not updatedy by Palm as long ago as Mac OS X 10.4.
If you want to sync a Palm device, buy "The Missing Sync" and you're good to go. Works fine. Sure, it's extra $, but that's what you pay for that boat anchor.
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"?
Fairly often it is Apple - for better or worse. They're not always the first but when Apple decides something is no longer worth including in their computers, other PC makers often follow suit. They really were the big influence that finally got everyone to drop 1.44MB floppies even though everyone knew for years that they were a technology well past it's prime. They also were ahead of the curve on eliminating 1.2MB floppy drives, DB9 and DB25 serial ports, and a number of other ports. There are other examples besides. Apple isn't always right and not always first, but they are almost always influential.
What about MP3 players?
What about them? Apple is the dominant player but they aren't by an stretch a monopoly like Microsoft has with Windows. Might get there someday but they sure aren't there now. Frankly the dedicated MP3 player market has probably peaked and will slowly but steadily decline. MP3 players are going to get increasingly integrated into cell phones. As popular as the iPhone is, Apple has no where near the pull in the cell phone market they do in the MP3 player or even PC markets.
The iPod and iTunes don't exactly play nice with other software or hardware.
And there are plenty of other options available so that really isn't a big deal. ITunes is nice but hardly the only way to sync an MP3 player with your song collection. Apple has to be careful. They've gone too proprietary before with their PCs (resulting in 10% marketshare) and it would be easy to make the same mistake with their music businesses.
Nothing like anticompetitiveness to turn me off.
You seem misinformed, which is understandable given the misleading blurb linked to in this story. Here's what happened. Apple made iSync and told phone makers to use it to synch with OS X. Palm ignored them and continued to use a really, really old Palm Desktop program as their officially suggested method, but refused to support it. Apple, not wanting PalmOS phone users to be dissuaded from using Macs and thinking Palm's unsupported solution was crap, took it upon themselves to write iSync plug-ins for PalmOS. Now Apple has dropped those plug-ins. That's not even close to anti-competitive.
It's sad, too. I was considering getting a Pre...
The Pre doesn't use PalmOS and so is not affected.
Its not a niche market, its every single palm phone except the absolute most recent one. Every single palm sold before June 6th, 2009 is affected.
Even Palm does a crappy job providing integration with computers for their own devices and has for years so I don't see why this is Apple's fault. I dropped my palm years ago because they fell WAY behind the curve on keeping their software modern and it was a pain to communicate with my PC. Unless I happened to use Outlook (I don't) or the near useless Palm Desktop I couldn't sync the address books which pretty much made their PDAs and phones useless to me since there are plenty of smartphones on the market which are much more capable and modern than the Treos. (I'm not about to tie myself to some third party integration tool either) Furthermore Palm themselves declared PalmOS dead. If you purchase something which the maker itself is telling you that it has a limited future, that is just dumb.
Apple is run by a guy who saw employees staring to legendary macs and decided to "throw them away" to computer museum saying they should look to future instead of past.
Like or not, that is the attitude and in fact, if you ask me, it always pays off.
Just an entry from my system.log
" Warning once: This application, or a library it uses, is using NSQuickDrawView, which has been deprecated. Apps should cease use of QuickDraw and move to Quartz"
In Apple land, if you ignore it enough time, one day your application will simply won't launch or crash (informatively) and of course, that time, blogs are open handedly waiting for your whining and slashdot submission :)
I don't guarantee anything but, as Leopard which you boo boo is a Unix 03 compliant operating system with entire toolchain to support open source software, Fink Project and Macports did considerable amount of work to make automated package management.
I know Fink and it has some Palm related software but I have never,ever saw a Palm in my life to begin with so I can't guarantee anything.
http://www.finkproject.org/ (official site)
http://pdb.finkproject.org/ (Package Database web interface)
So, no need to go Linux just to have Palm support. While people buy OS X, they also buy UNIX.
I know one way or another, you can get Sync support under snow leopard but let me tell you something. If I was a Palm owner, I would be having very nice and polite communication with Palm Inc. over this. They should spend money to hire couple of Cocoa/OS X developers rather than renting some astroturfers and shady blogs.
We are! Apple are now bringing their support for Palm in line with Microsoft: None.
I always wondered where this setting was...
(Actually: They bought a piece of software Apple discontinued in the late 90's*, updated it a bit, then discontinued it themselves about 5 years later. Which is around 5 years ago at this point.)
*Claris Organizer, if you are interested.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
There's already a solution, in Missing Sync for Palm OS, which already handles synching to more recent Palm devices (Centro and Treo) much better than Apple's legacy support. I don't know anyone who has a Mac and a Treo and /doesn't/ already use Missing Sync anyway over Apple's grotty and outdated legacy Palm code. I would guess that Apple yanking Palm OS support from iSync and letting Missing Sync fill that particular slot in the Sync Services food chain is an acknowledgment of that fact.
--Rachel
"No, as Palm themselves dropped support years ago, these cries scream unfounded BS."
Umm, they blocked the pre. They now don't support any Palm prior to this year, which I believe the Pre is really the only new release.
iow, this year alone, they've phracked with every Palm device ever made. This seems pretty established, so I think you mean something else when you chose the word unfounded. It's directly anticompetitive by definition, as it eliminates or hinders another products viability on their platform for the time being.
Apple has no obligation to support or help Palm, is the way I look at it. What they did is legal anti-competitive behavior, but unhardly contradictory to the anti-competitve claim--that is the fundamental nature of business.
Someone smarter than me can maybe elucidate this breakdown further, but I had to respond given your comment was mod'd a +3 insightful for some odd reason.
Maybe I don't know, Palm could write their own Mac stuff instead of relying on Apple to do it for them ? I don't see how this is anti-competitive, Palm OS is not a Apple product, they don't have to support it, write software for it or update legacy code to work with their new OS.
Palm can do the work themselves if they think it's worth it. Apple isn't stopping them from downloading Xcode and writing a Cocoa based app to sync with their own hardware.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
AAC files downloaded from the iTunes store are encrypted using Apple's DRM technology, "FairPlay", they can only be played using devices that support Apple's DRM technology
1.) Apple updates OS, modernizing and streamlining the codebase.
2.) Some legacy app that hasn't been maintained in 4-5 years breaks.
3.) Apple must have deliberately broken the software in an anti-competitive move.
I'm an ace at logic.
There is support for Vista here: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/32859_en.html
Can you still use Missing Sync though?
I actually thought the Apple Palm Sync stuff was horrid and I use MissingSync on my 10.4 MBP. It was far, far better. Also I never liked Palm Desktop, it was a pain and always broke easily for me.
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
A few corrections on your errors in your post.
1. Apple did not block the Pre. Apple modified iTunes to not allow a vendor ID spoofing. Palm's low budget hack is what caused the issue with the Pre. Apple simply fixed an issue in their iTunes synch and closed a potential security/legal liability hole at the same time since a device spoofing an iPod could potentially be corrupted by iTunes when it attempts to update firmware on the device.
2. Apple dropping support for Palm synch is because Palm dropped their support of these legacy Palm devices years ago. Apple simply decided to no longer support Palm devices that Palm no longer supports. There is nothing nefarious in that decision. If there is then there must also must be something nefarious in Palm's decision not to support their own products.
3. There was nothing anti-competitive in what Apple did in either of these circumstances. In both instances Palm has showed a laziness in supporting their own products. If Palm won't properly support their own products then there is no reason Apple should do it for them.
And one for high UID morons.
Oh, look... Anonymous Coward just slammed you for your high numeric UID! XD
Bow-ties are cool.
Apple has a monopoly on the voice chat features of its phone. It banned Google Talk to maintain the monopoly. It means you have no choice but to use the iPhone's own build in voice chat. They're purposefully locking you in, without competition. Monopoly means:
1. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity.
2. A commodity or service so controlled.
Apple lets other Applications on its platform but as soon as something competes with their monopoly, they block it! Is this not obvious?
Microsoft gets into the same problems with antitrust, why not Apple? I find it funny how I was modded up to 3 insightful then modded down by the Apple fanboys.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
The only one that didn't want Palm products to succeed was Palm. Horrible products. Support EOL for all their products were the day they shipped. Rarely got any sort of bug fixes, never any additional features. Palm Desktop for Mac is still a PowerPC only application (runs on intel via rosetta). Why bother trying to support something the vendor has no interest in supporting? I'll never make the mistake of buying another Palm product (I've had 2, Palm Pro and Palm T5). I've never heard anyone say a good thing about their Treo so I never went there. I don't expect anything will change with the Pre. I also don't understand the Pre hype, it's not bringing anything new to the table.
Well, I've enjoyed my Treo 650 - though perhaps more because of the hardware than the software. The combination of a good screen and a dedicated keyboard area was just the right design for me - and the Treo was one of the first products to do that well in a smartphone format.
After the way Palm has handled PalmOS over the last several years I'm more than a little hesitant to buy any new Palm devices myself. I mean, there was the never-ending reign of PACE, followed by the adoption of NVFS (which was great, in a way, since it protected the device from data loss due to power failure - but in older revisions it could lose entire databases if your device crashed while the database was open - and it changed a fundamental assumption about how databases work on PalmOS...
Had Palm rolled out a new OS platform... I don't know... before they allowed PalmOS to degrade into a complete joke... Before it completely ceased to be a reasonable fit for the devices on which it was running... Then I would be a lot less skeptical about the stuff they're rolling out now... I'm with you on the Pre - I can't understand the hype of it.
Bow-ties are cool.