Unless you’ve been ignoring everything that deals with technology news, Palm’s Pre is the newest “iPhone killer” on the market. It hasn’t even been released yet, and there’s already some controversy surrounding a report that the Pre syncs with iTunes (and iPhoto) seamlessly.
Some are crying foul in that the Pre apparently looks like an iPod to iTunes to accomplish this process. Any songs or podcasts can be copied over, with the exception of the older Protected AAC files from the iTunes Music Store. Essentially, the process makes the Pre look like an iPod by mimicking the iPod’s USB ID. This is how your computer can tell one type of device from another. Nobody is for sure what specific iPod model it is pretending it is, but that seems to be the crux of the issue.
Many people forget that Apple supported MP3 players in iTunes long before the iPod or the iTunes Music Store were on the scene. However, this was done with Apple’s blessing and often using the MP3 players required either built-in functionality in iTunes or a plug-in that allowed the device to synchronize. The difference now is that the Pre has neither.
This has led to numerous pieces on whether or not Apple’s legal team will be fighting off Palm and their yet-unreleased device. To be honest, we really don’t know what the outcome will be, as the Pre isn’t likely to even be a threat to the iPhone. It works on Sprint’s network. The iPhone is on AT&T. People will choose based on their carrier or switch if they really want a device badly enough. Furthermore, it seems that the Pre’s synchronizing with iPhoto would not be a big deal—most third-party digital cameras work fine.
As for the issue of the Pre looking like an iPod to sync with iTunes—perhaps this is Palm’s way of testing the waters to see if Apple wants to play ball. For some, the iPhone may not be the product for them, but if they do buy a competing product, why not make it easy enough for them to transfer their songs (some that they bought from Apple) to a device without worrying about lousy third-party software? I remember Palm’s HotSync software and it was absolutely terrible—it worked great under Mac OS 9, but the OS X version stopped working after a few system updates and reinstalls were hardly fun or easy. That and the fact that my iPod and cell phone did basic contact and calendar synchronization on OS X really put the last nail in the coffin for using Palm OS devices.
As for Apple, this could be a great opportunity to demonstrate that the iPod and iTunes aren’t really a closed system. Most people would still keep buying iPods and iPhones for fact that they already have prior accessories or know their way around the devices. However, as Apple did remove the DRM restrictions on music, it would demonstrate that they would rather have you use at least iTunes and some other devices than some other jukebox software (Windows Media Player, anyone?).
It seems so many web sites are jumping to conclusions on how it’s accomplished or who’s wrong and right, and this is all based on a report about a pre-release device. For my thoughts on the subject, I could be totally wrong and Apple’s legal team could sue the pants off of Palm this week just before the device is introduced. We’ll just have to wait and see.
3 Responses to “The Palm Pre War?”
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06/01/2009 at 10:15 am
Nice post, but I take great exception to the sweeping line that Hot Sync did not work under OS X. I used it under Tiger and Leopard for years without any glitches. In fact, Palm’s synching system is still much better than Apple’s with its i-devices. With the iPhone or iPod Touches, 3rd parties do not have their own conduits, but have to set up cumbersome wi-fi or local networks; there is no easy way of accessing particular documents or apps that are backed up, etc.
Now, Palm Desktop on the Mac was a mess…multiple categories, mis-classifications, etc. the simpler version on Windows worked the way the PIMs did on the Palms.
06/01/2009 at 10:25 am
@robinson, I completely agree that HotSync’s flexibility did work much better for allowing third-party applications to play. I’ve noticed that with an iPhone or iPod Touch, if you’re using a Wi-Fi network in an office setting, the computer and handheld device may be assigned to different subnets, and you lost any sort of synchronization capabilities.
That being said, I seem to remember hitting the HotSync button and staring at my computer waiting for something to happen on more than one occasion—maybe it was because I had a serial-based Palm device and it was running through the Palm USB adapter.
There were a number of public fixes since it did seem that the software didn’t play nicely with certain updates for some users: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031112200739942
06/01/2009 at 11:41 am
It’s a major reason I stopped using Palm devices. They basically abandoned Mac users for several years with shoddy, half hazzard updates of their HotSync software for the Mac. Why should I support Palm again that basically treated Mac users as 3rd rate low class customers? No thanks.