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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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PreCentral reports that Palm's webOS 1.2 has just been released, offering a number of improvements to the Palm Pre's operating system. Multiple posters in the PreCentral forums have noted, however, that the update does not re-enable media syncing via iTunes.

Last week, rumors had suggested that the update would in fact re-enable iTunes syncing in the latest move in Apple and Palm's cat-and-mouse game over the issue. A letter from the USB Implementers Forum questioning Palm's apparent misuse of Apple's USB Vendor ID in order to achieve syncing, however, may have caused them to at least temporarily pull the plug on re-enabling the feature.

Article Link: Palm's webOS 1.2 Released, Does Not Re-Enable iTunes Media Syncing
 

jaw04005

macrumors 601
Aug 19, 2003
4,513
401
AR
Palm should just license Missing Sync for Palm Pre and be done with it until they can write their own program.
 

noverflow

macrumors regular
Jul 4, 2002
188
0
Like Microsoft did? :D

I love apple. Sadly, probably too much. But it really is beneficial to everyone that they have real competition. Look at the aviation leaps we made during war. And how slow it was without it.

Apple will only advance so far without someone on their tail.


Stinks Palm, right? Next time, don't go screwing with Apple or you will always lose:D

Haha Palm, haha.
 

kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
Maybe webOS 1.2 was going to work with iTunes 9.0, but 9.0.1 prevented it?
 

casik

macrumors regular
Jan 18, 2007
245
5
Alberta
lol. it's about time. The Pre Sucks... maybe they are working on their next phone syncing with iTunes....
 

simsandwhich

macrumors member
May 20, 2009
43
0
It's just not right that Palm should get a free ride on iTunes. Apple spend alot of money to develop and maintain iTunes, and Palm has no right to piggyback of that. They should work out a deal with Apple (unlikely), or go find somewhere else.

It's not anticompetitive, it's just fair.
 

Zweben

macrumors member
Oct 7, 2004
65
0
Like Microsoft did? :D

I love apple. Sadly, probably too much. But it really is beneficial to everyone that they have real competition. Look at the aviation leaps we made during war. And how slow it was without it.

Apple will only advance so far without someone on their tail.

So they can make their own Mac software to sync with. As I understand it, there are also supported ways to make 3rd party devices work with iTunes, Palm just did it in a non-supported way.
 

FKR

macrumors newbie
Sep 28, 2009
1
0
Wow, you people (and Apple) are short-sighted

Does anyone actually believe that 100% of all iTunes users are also iPod owners? There are plenty of people out there who love the iTunes experience but still use other players or smartphones. Why not let them sync their music and potentially purchases to their devices? Apple is cutting off a revenue stream. Short-sighted. Stupid.
 

Peace

Cancelled
Apr 1, 2005
19,546
4,556
Space The Only Frontier
Does anyone actually believe that 100% of all iTunes users are also iPod owners? There are plenty of people out there who love the iTunes experience but still use other players or smartphones. Why not let them sync their music and potentially purchases to their devices? Apple is cutting off a revenue stream. Short-sighted. Stupid.

Palm can do that. All they have to do is write their own driver instead of trying to fake an Apple device.

I'm surprised the USB people haven't slapped some kind of sanction on Palm.
 

pdjudd

macrumors 601
Jun 19, 2007
4,037
65
Plymouth, MN
Does anyone actually believe that 100% of all iTunes users are also iPod owners? There are plenty of people out there who love the iTunes experience but still use other players or smartphones. Why not let them sync their music and potentially purchases to their devices? Apple is cutting off a revenue stream. Short-sighted. Stupid.

To quote Peace since he did a good job:

Palm can do that. All they have to do is write their own driver instead of trying to fake an Apple device.
Right. No point in directly accessing iTunes like the i Devices since they would never work with any fairplay content. The overall user base of iTunes is irrelevant anyway. Apple has never really promoted iTunes as a sync solution for devices outside of their own. Microsoft tried that approach with plays for sure and that approach failed horribly. All that matters is what Apple wants to do with iTunes. They make the XML file as accessible as possible precisely so that other software makers can query. They thought about this.

I'm surprised the USB people haven't slapped some kind of sanction on Palm.
Too early to say, bit my guess is that they don’t have the spine. My guess that the worse that can happen is that they strip Palms membership so that they cannot use Apple trademarks opening up Palm for trademark abuse suits if Palm doesn’t back down.

I hope that Palm realized they bit off more than they could chew. It was cute the first time, but they should have taken the hint after Apple outright said that iTunes was not open and they do not like people abusing their properties.
 

E.Lizardo

macrumors 68000
May 28, 2008
1,776
305
Does anyone actually believe that 100% of all iTunes users are also iPod owners? There are plenty of people out there who love the iTunes experience but still use other players or smartphones. Why not let them sync their music and potentially purchases to their devices? Apple is cutting off a revenue stream. Short-sighted. Stupid.

Incorrect.Apple spends a lot of money to develop a program and GIVE IT AWAY.It is there to sell iPods and phones.Period.Get it through your head.You or anyone can write a competing program for OS X to sync with the device of your choice.
And you can put iTunes purchased music on any player.
 

Icaras

macrumors 603
Mar 18, 2008
6,343
3,380
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

E.Lizardo said:
Does anyone actually believe that 100% of all iTunes users are also iPod owners? There are plenty of people out there who love the iTunes experience but still use other players or smartphones. Why not let them sync their music and potentially purchases to their devices? Apple is cutting off a revenue stream. Short-sighted. Stupid.

Incorrect.Apple spends a lot of money to develop a program and GIVE IT AWAY.It is there to sell iPods and phones.Period.Get it through your head.You or anyone can write a competing program for OS X to sync with the device of your choice.
And you can put iTunes purchased music on any player.

Well said.

In no way is this move short sighted or stupid. How in the hell is Apple losing money or sleep over not having Palm, or any other company for that fact, be able to sync with iTunes? Please explain.
 

vant

macrumors 65816
Jul 1, 2009
1,231
1
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Well said.

In no way is this move short sighted or stupid. How in the hell is Apple losing money or sleep over not having Palm, or any other company for that fact, be able to sync with iTunes? Please explain.

I believe the person believed that iTune's store was very profitable, which it is not. Most iTunes users do not buy from the iTune's store anyways.

Apple would stand to benefit more if they limited the Pre's ability to sync with a robust and popular app. By preventing the Pre from syncing they have shown that:

1. Palm is a company that makes risky decisions that do not pay off well.
2. Reminding Pre users that the iPhone is backed by iTunes.
3. Apple will defend it's IP. Retaining value/exclusivity in it's products.
 

pdjudd

macrumors 601
Jun 19, 2007
4,037
65
Plymouth, MN
In no way is this move short sighted or stupid. How in the hell is Apple losing money or sleep over not having Palm, or any other company for that fact, be able to sync with iTunes? Please explain.


There are several but the biggest one is support (or implied). You let other players in, people expect support since it is seen as endorsement. Unfortunately, there is no way that Apple sells enough content to justify that level of support (which is never going to compete with what the i Players will support) to make it worth is. Not to mention the obvious: They are competing with these guys - Apple is not going to support it’s competition any more than they have to. Their music store is intended to support sales of related devices, not their competition.
 

scaredpoet

macrumors 604
Apr 6, 2007
6,627
342
Like Microsoft did? :D

I love apple. Sadly, probably too much. But it really is beneficial to everyone that they have real competition.


I agree with this, but let me ask you this: Is it real competition to develop a phone that, in order to "compete" with the iPhone, has to piggyback off its competitor's syncing tools?

Palm could have potentially partnered with Amazon, or eMusic or some other online music vendor and really competed with Apple both in hardware and media sales. Instead, they've pretty much said they're not going to compete and aren't even going to try, but here, we'll hack our own phones so they pretend to be our competitor's iPods, so you can have the best online media store experience there is without us putting much effort into it.

But, we already know how much effort Palm wanted to put into media syncing. If it's more than 40 total development-hours, then it's too much work for Palm. Kinda pathetic, really. And this is coming for someone who used to keep coming back to Palm, from the PalmPilot all the way to the Treo 750, and about a dozen models in between. That is, until the iPhone came out...
 

DMann

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2002
4,001
0
10023
I agree with this, but let me ask you this: Is it real competition to develop a phone that, in order to "compete" with the iPhone, has to piggyback off its competitor's syncing tools?

Palm could have potentially partnered with Amazon, or eMusic or some other online music vendor and really competed with Apple both in hardware and media sales. Instead, they've pretty much said they're not going to compete and aren't even going to try, but here, we'll hack our own phones so they pretend to be our competitor's iPods, so you can have the best online media store experience there is without us putting much effort into it.

But, we already know how much effort Palm wanted to put into media syncing. If it's more than 40 total development-hours, then it's too much work for Palm. Kinda pathetic, really. And this is coming for someone who used to keep coming back to Palm, from the PalmPilot all the way to the Treo 750, and about a dozen models in between. That is, until the iPhone came out...
Yes, much as a blood sucking leech vying to gain popularity through iTune's established ecosystem, Pre and its users would also have been siphoning the resource of Apple Customer Service with requests for technical help regarding syncing with iTunes. Hopefully, now that this is over with, Palm and Pre will find their own way.
 

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
I agree with this, but let me ask you this: Is it real competition to develop a phone that, in order to "compete" with the iPhone, has to piggyback off its competitor's syncing tools?

Palm could have potentially partnered with Amazon, or eMusic or some other online music vendor and really competed with Apple both in hardware and media sales. Instead, they've pretty much said they're not going to compete and aren't even going to try, but here, we'll hack our own phones so they pretend to be our competitor's iPods, so you can have the best online media store experience there is without us putting much effort into it.

But, we already know how much effort Palm wanted to put into media syncing. If it's more than 40 total development-hours, then it's too much work for Palm. Kinda pathetic, really. And this is coming for someone who used to keep coming back to Palm, from the PalmPilot all the way to the Treo 750, and about a dozen models in between. That is, until the iPhone came out...


You some how think that would work. It is near impossible to knock off the top dog even if you have a better product. case and point is windows vs OSX. OSX is better than windows yet still only has a pathetic 5% market share world wide.
Right. No point in directly accessing iTunes like the i Devices since they would never work with any fairplay content. The overall user base of iTunes is irrelevant anyway. Apple has never really promoted iTunes as a sync solution for devices outside of their own. Microsoft tried that approach with plays for sure and that approach failed horribly. All that matters is what Apple wants to do with iTunes. They make the XML file as accessible as possible precisely so that other software makers can query. They thought about this.

My worry for those companies is what is to stop apple from checking that so it no longer users the XML file. Currently iTunes uses the XML file for its own libary as well but what is to stop apple from changing that. I would not put it pass apple to pull a stunt like that if they feel some one like blackberry, palm or other player is threatening there position.

Apple is chicken when it comes to going head to head with a companies so they leverage there force threw other markets. The only companies that has both the skills and the money to fight with apple on those terms is Microsoft. No one else as the time, skill and money.

Palm made a poor choice trying to force sync with iTunes but apple proved to me it is a chicken and does not have the balls to compete head to head with a company.
 

TitoC

macrumors 6502
Jun 15, 2007
311
26
. . . Most iTunes users do not buy from the iTune's store anyways.

Ooooookaaaay. Ahem . . . a little light reading might help you get your bearings straight. If itunes is THE #1 music seller in the world, OF ANY KIND (online, in store, etc.), then WHO is buying from iTunes? Non iTunes users? Windows Media Player users? Who?

Maybe a little research and thought before you start your off-the-cuff comments. Just saying.
 

Stratus Fear

macrumors 6502a
Jan 21, 2008
687
413
Atlanta, GA
You some how think that would work. It is near impossible to knock off the top dog even if you have a better product. case and point is windows vs OSX. OSX is better than windows yet still only has a pathetic 5% market share world wide.

How does that legitimize hacking somebody else's product?

My worry for those companies is what is to stop apple from checking that so it no longer users the XML file. Currently iTunes uses the XML file for its own libary as well but what is to stop apple from changing that. I would not put it pass apple to pull a stunt like that if they feel some one like blackberry, palm or other player is threatening there position.

This was discussed ad nauseam in the other thread. iTunes does not use the XML file. It merely exports library data to it so that other applications may use it. Apple documents usage of that file for developers.

Apple is chicken when it comes to going head to head with a companies so they leverage there force threw other markets. The only companies that has both the skills and the money to fight with apple on those terms is Microsoft. No one else as the time, skill and money.

Palm made a poor choice trying to force sync with iTunes but apple proved to me it is a chicken and does not have the balls to compete head to head with a company.

So a free syncing app is now an entire market? Because we're not talking about the iTunes Store here; the only thing that's being blocked is direct syncing.

Companies create competitive advantages for themselves. These are not illegal and it doesn't make them "chicken." It's called competition.
 
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