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Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync

Posted by timothy on from the exclusivity-demands-it dept.

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."

11 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Trollbait by Microlith · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Palm dropped support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Palm dropped support by Shawn+Parr · · Score: 5, Informative

      Mod parent up.

      Palm hasn't updated Hotsync for the Mac in at least a decade. If it in fact worked under Leopard it was a miracle, as I doubt anyone from Palm even gave it a glance.

      Mac Palm users almost all typically ended up getting Mark/Space Missing Sync for Palm OS. I was a late adopter for that, and I did it in 2005. At the time I was helping people with support on Palm OS devices, and the answer to any Mac sync problems was to dump hotsync and get Missing Sync.

      To claim that Apple dropped support is pretty ridiculous, and just inflammatory. What next, an article on how Apple refuses to support running 10.6 on a Mac II from the late 80's?

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      Shawn's Tech Articles
    2. Re:Palm dropped support by KylePflug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple didn't "drop" sync support for it through iTunes. Palm tried to sneak support in by spoofing an iPod vendor ID, which Apple undid. Nothing about iTunes gives competitors the right to use it as a selling point for their phones.

      I think it's pretty shitty of Apple to refuse to play nice, but it's not like Palm didn't have it coming when they tried to pass off a pasted-on hack as some kind of official feature.

  3. Missing Sync for Palm, anyone? by donovansmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Ugh by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone who had a serious Palm jones already used The Missing Sync anyhow, but this is seriously irresponsible.

    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).

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    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  5. Re:Stay classy by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Informative

    If Palm want a way to sync on OS X they should write the software themselves. Oh wait, they did and discontinued it.

  6. First the floppy, then serial, now the palm? by That's+Unpossible! · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
  7. Sensationalist headline by dn15 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Stay classy by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:Stay classy by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 5, Informative

    (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.

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    'Sensible' is a curse word.