Yesterday, John Paczkowski of the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital blog, reported that Palm has issued their own statement about the Pre’s ability to use the webOS Media Sync feature to sync with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software.
“Palm’s media sync works with the current version of iTunes,” Palm spokesperson Lynn Fox told me. “If Apple chooses to disable media sync in a future version of iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we could consider.”
I really hope this doesn’t turn into a battle of wills. Once the technology is put out there, the hacker community is going to find ways around whatever road block that Apple tries to throw up to defend the walled garden that is iTunes.
In my opinion, it is clear that Apple will end up fighting a cold war with Palm or the hacker developer community similar to the one that pits Apple against the hacks that have been jailbreaking iPhones since 2007.
The long and short of it, if Apple’s iTunes users and iTunes Store customers want to sync media to the Pre smartphone, someone is going to cook up a way to do it. So why not just let Palm’s customers sync up with iTunes.
Besides, Apple doesn’t think that the Palm Pre is a real threat to iPhones sales. Or do they?
[Via AllThingsD.com…]
2 Comments
BaDZeD
Considering the speed, with which Palm puts out updates for webOS, I am sure syncing solutions will reappear as fast as they are broken (Seriously, 2 updates in 2 weeks?! That's amazing!!!) Plus there is the Linux hacker community muscle behind this phone which is hell bent on fixing any shortcomings of the os there might be. We already saw native Linux apps run on there (NES, VNC, etc.) which means others will be ported soon (I am hoping for flash and Abiword). If Apple does break the compatibility, within hours, Linux enthusiasts would re-enable it.
So… I'm not worried 😀
Brett
I live in a part of Saskatchewan where SaskTel has a monopoly; there are many rural areas where a crown corp or co-op has a monopoly and Apple has not contracted these companies to sell iphones, so iphones are not an option and since itunes dominated the downloadable music market it is a real pain.
It's ironic a company founded by members of the Homebrew Computer Club are so restrictive with itunes.