Palm blinks in iTunes sync battle
It looks like the Apple vs Palm iTunes synching contest may have finally been resolved by Palm blinking and taking the synch request out of their phone’s operating system.
When the Palm Pre was introduced, it had a feature which allowed it to imitate an iPod for the purpose of synching music between the Pre and a customer’s copy of iTunes. Apple then released an upgrade to iTunes which turned the Pre away at the door and did not allow syncing. Palm then upgraded their cell phone operating system in a way that once again allowed the Pre to synch with iTunes. Apple followed up with another OS patch that blocked it. This game went through several iterations.
Now, with the release of webOS 1.2, Palm appears to have blinked: the new Pre OS version no longer contains the ability to sync with iTunes, according to an article in The Register. The announcement of the new Palm OS did not mention the lack of what Palm called “media sync” but a Palm spokesman has confirmed that the new OS does not contain that feature, saying that “webOS 1.2 did not reestablish media sync with iTunes.”
As a part of this ongoing battle, Palm had involved the USB Implementers Forum, guardian of all issues Universal Serial Bus. The Palm argument was that Apple was unfairly locking the Pre out of iTunes rather than allowing them to sync with it. The USB group, however, took the side of Apple in the dispute last week, announcing that Apple had every right to allow or disallow iTunes syncing on a device-by-device basis.
Palm did not shut the door on the idea of syncing with iTunes, however. A Palm spokesperson said, in reponse to the comnpany’s plan for syncing with iTunes in the future, “We never comment on what might or might not be on our product roadmap.” Therefore, although the battle appears to be over, it may be that the war has not yet run its course.
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October 7th, 2009
I wish Palm would create a more elegant solution for their users though (like RIM have). It doesn’t scream ‘quality workmanship’ to me when they have to use an underhand tactic like falsely reporting to be an iPod just to get the device syncing. What else have they bodged?