yeah.. btw, how's that Palm Pilot thing doing these days with its essential cut/paste?
Thought so.
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Palm Pre Emulating an iPod to Accomplish iTunes Sync?
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yeah.. btw, how's that Palm Pilot thing doing these days with its essential cut/paste?
Thought so.
I smell a bunch of iTunes compatible Smartphones and MP3 Players lying in wait.... 
Apple Lawyers, start your engines!!!
Apple Lawyers, start your engines!!!
The iTunes software license agreement does not place any restrictions on which brands of portable media players you are or are not allowed to attempt to synchronize with iTunes. In fact, the license agreement doesn't have anything to say on the topic of portable media players at all.
To paraphrase the agreement somewhat, you may reverse-engineer iTunes to the extent permitted by applicable law.
[edit]
But, if it turns out that the engineering team who designed the interoperability was relying on insider information leaked from ex-Apple employees, there'll be trouble. Cleanroom reverse engineering is the key - anything else would be unacceptable.
I really don't think that Palm is sending a fake Apple device id. This is really stupid idea and if they are they will get slapped with a law suit as soon as Pre gets released. Reverse engineering is a gray area at best and it'll be quite a dangerous game for Palm. I rather think that Palm developers have found a bug in the way iTunes identifies devices and that's what they are using ... in which case it still won't last very long. Hell if nothing else Apple can very easily amend the EULA for all future versions of iTunes so that you agree not to sync with devices not made by Apple.
Whatever the case is Palm is playing a really dangerous game and they are loosing my respect pretty much by the day. Such a shame since the Pre could've been the next great smart phone ...
Whatever the case is Palm is playing a really dangerous game and they are loosing my respect pretty much by the day. Such a shame since the Pre could've been the next great smart phone ...
But if they could hype this fact up then it doens't matter if Apple disables its ability to do it, it has already marketed itself as a device that can, and that's what's going to stick to the consumer. That's why this is rather shady, since if they really are trying to make the device look like an iPod it's (in my mind) a pretty flagrant case of infringing on IP...and from there they can completely make the consumer think it will work just fine to replace their iPod/iPhone when Apple very well may disable that ability.
I always love that argument. If that is so true then why is Itunes the number 1 music retailer and the one that everyone is trying to copy? So, I call BS on that statement! If Itunes didn't make money Apple would have dropped it long ago and allowed Amazon and others to take over.
Reverse engineering is explicitly legal. See Compaq, WINE, Samba, Sony vs Connectix, and many more. And that is as it should be. Do you really want the seller of a product to have total control over how you use it?
What's hard to understand? iTunes is the volume leader by far, but the margins are very small. It ain't complicated.
Wow people are seriously out of touch with what is going on if they think the Pre should be allowed to sync in iTunes.
Apple spent the time producing and refining iTunes to work with their MP3 player. Any company that wants to sell an MP3 player or phone should have to do the same.
People who are arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to block other devices are crazy. Why should Apple research and hard work be used by competitors for free?
As an example that might be easier to understand lets say Microsoft put out the next versions of Xbox but "reverse" engineered the way Sony identifies its players so that you could play any Playstation game in an Xbox. Would be great for gamers to be able to just buy one console and play everything they want. Obviously Sony would have major complaints about this as it would destroy their business pretty much if you could buy one device but play every game out there. And hey you bought the game so you should be able to play it on any platform you want right? That's the same argument that those who are saying iTunes should sync every mp3 player out there. Why should you have to mess with setting up 2 consoles to play the games you bought.
In fact you could go so far as say that what Palm may be doing is anti-competitive in that they are avoiding creating a competing software by trying to leech into another companies product instead of spending the money and time developing their own.
Lets say for a moment that Apple didn't produce iTunes for Windows. Would people be ready to accept Apple faking the Zune IDs to allow iPods to use Zune's syncing software to break into Microsofts market if there were no windows compatible iPods? Instead of trying to do something like that Apple rewrote its own program to be compatible with Windows. That's what any responsible company should do. Apple doesn't block competitors from making products that compete with them. I mean Office:Mac competes with iWork, though Apple doesn't try and update their OS to break that. They simply expect that companies that want to make a competing product spend their own money and fully develop it instead of trying to steal Apples work by cheating and faking its product IDs. If Palm makes a competing media player that is mac compatible Apple wouldn't do anything to stop people from using it.
It is really pathetic that people defend the Pre simply because it makes it easier for them. "I can buy the Pre and still take advantage of the great software Apple made for free!" It is a lot easier for me to download a movie off bit torrent than to work and make the money and go to a store an hour away to buy the dvd so the movie industry should just put the movie on the torrent site for me to make it easier right?
And for those saying its better for the consumer it really isn't. If companies just ignored other companies taking their ideas and repackaging them very few companies would make enough money to come up with new ideas and why would they? Why would a company bother investing in developing something new if their competition could copy it a month later without repercussions?
Apple spent the time producing and refining iTunes to work with their MP3 player. Any company that wants to sell an MP3 player or phone should have to do the same.
People who are arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to block other devices are crazy. Why should Apple research and hard work be used by competitors for free?
As an example that might be easier to understand lets say Microsoft put out the next versions of Xbox but "reverse" engineered the way Sony identifies its players so that you could play any Playstation game in an Xbox. Would be great for gamers to be able to just buy one console and play everything they want. Obviously Sony would have major complaints about this as it would destroy their business pretty much if you could buy one device but play every game out there. And hey you bought the game so you should be able to play it on any platform you want right? That's the same argument that those who are saying iTunes should sync every mp3 player out there. Why should you have to mess with setting up 2 consoles to play the games you bought.
In fact you could go so far as say that what Palm may be doing is anti-competitive in that they are avoiding creating a competing software by trying to leech into another companies product instead of spending the money and time developing their own.
Lets say for a moment that Apple didn't produce iTunes for Windows. Would people be ready to accept Apple faking the Zune IDs to allow iPods to use Zune's syncing software to break into Microsofts market if there were no windows compatible iPods? Instead of trying to do something like that Apple rewrote its own program to be compatible with Windows. That's what any responsible company should do. Apple doesn't block competitors from making products that compete with them. I mean Office:Mac competes with iWork, though Apple doesn't try and update their OS to break that. They simply expect that companies that want to make a competing product spend their own money and fully develop it instead of trying to steal Apples work by cheating and faking its product IDs. If Palm makes a competing media player that is mac compatible Apple wouldn't do anything to stop people from using it.
It is really pathetic that people defend the Pre simply because it makes it easier for them. "I can buy the Pre and still take advantage of the great software Apple made for free!" It is a lot easier for me to download a movie off bit torrent than to work and make the money and go to a store an hour away to buy the dvd so the movie industry should just put the movie on the torrent site for me to make it easier right?
And for those saying its better for the consumer it really isn't. If companies just ignored other companies taking their ideas and repackaging them very few companies would make enough money to come up with new ideas and why would they? Why would a company bother investing in developing something new if their competition could copy it a month later without repercussions?
Because your only looking at unit sales numbers. You're not looking at actual revenues generated for Apple. Your also making things up
I never said iTunes doesn't make money for Apple. Your making things up. Apple makes a majority of its revenue through hardware sales, and iTunes is the catalyst for those sales.
???
The CEO at the Palm keynote yesterday announced the syncing with iTunes. It is definitely not fake.
I understand what you are saying (well not the stuff about the xbox and sony), but it only makes sense if you view iTunes as part of an iPod product.
So what is iTunes?
(1) Part of an iPod/iPhone product?
(2) Or an independent product that syncs really well with iPods?
It really seems to my that it is (2).
* iTunes is distributed independently from iPods.
* It's a useful media management tool whether you want to sync media to an iPod or not (e.g. my wife used iTunes for years berfore getting an iPod -- mainly because she liked the store and it was very simple for her to burn CDs)
* With the iTunes store going DRM-free, the music you buy though it is not specific to iPods.
In other words, I don't think your argument makes sense.
On the other hand, I don't think Apple is under any obligation to support what the Pre is doing. Apple could try to abuse that, as DVD Jon predicts, and release frequent updates to iTunes that all break compatibility with the Pre. That has a lot of potential to backfire, though. For one thing, if they break compatibility with older iPods at the same time, people will freak and make Apple look very bad. Also, Apple will get sued. In the US they probably have nothing to fear, but the at least one EU country will slap them down, as happened over Apple's iTunes store DRM.
I hope you're joking... you'reWe all need to share iTunes children. It's only nice. The pre wants to have fun too.
says "joking", but you never know on this board.------- >
So, let me get this straght. Apple buys SoundJam MP almost ten years ago for an untold fortune. Keeps the 3 men who wrote the program on for probably millions more over time so that they could convert it to what was iTunes 1.0 (released on 1-9-01).
Apple continues to pump MULTI millions more into the development of the software and the music store, server farms >>> building the whole thing up into a colossal structure that now sells more music on the planet than any brick and mortar store -- and it's ok for Palm to simply walk in, without permission and use it like it was nothing.
I hope Apple sues their balls off.
If Apple pulled a stunt like this (say, make their iPhones work with some software Sony or Microsoft had written), people would out picketing over in Cupertino. But it's ok for everyone to crap on Apple.
This is completely and utterly and ridiculously wrong.
You're an ___________ (rhymes with "idiot"). Songs bought off iTunes can be played on any device that plays AAC files (which is ALL of them) -- Apple fought long and hard to get the major companies to lift DRM.
*yawn*
So much speculation about what is legal and what agreements may or may not exist between the two companies, we're all filling in the blanks with maybes and what-ifs. I love the knee-jerk "sue their balls off" comment. Since, you know, suing is the solution to every "problem".
Yep, you got it exactly straight. It is indeed OK for Palm to do that. It's called interoperability, and it is permitted by law. Palm can't bundle iTunes with their phones, because that would fall under copyright law, but if there's an open and obvious way to make their device talk to iTunes, they're in the clear.
? I think you may have missed the decade we called the '90s. MS got sued every which way for striving to make it difficult for other manufacturers to allow their stuff to inter-operate with MS software. That's why it's considered OK to do clean-room reverse engineering, because it's understood that companies will obfuscate communication layers and APIs to make it hard for others to use them, leading to monopolies.
As it is, Apple make it extremely easy to dig into the iTunes library, so for the most part this kind of thing is a moot point. Palm don't actually *need* to do what they're doing to get iTunes interoperability into their device, but if they want have true 'syncing' then sans an open, licensed API by Apple, they're in their rights to take the path they've taken.
XML Library
iTunes utilizes a very well structured XML database / library that contains all information about content stored. Content such as Artist, Album, Song Title, Album Art, ... Playlists, ... Play Count, Genre, Rating, ... Equalizer (if included by user by enabling via Advanced Options), etc.
Synching hardware to software involves checking XML library on each device against one another.
I still wish Apple would include "AutoEQ" to pre-set Equalizer settings for each song based on Genre or Group. However, since the library is in XML format, a simple parser script can be produced to produce same result (e.g., Depeche Mode = Pop and/or Rock, therefore Equalizer = Loudness, OR Depeche Mode = Electronic.
However, I think that it would be nice if artists would choose best EQ presets, then sync against database via Gracenote!
iTunes utilizes a very well structured XML database / library that contains all information about content stored. Content such as Artist, Album, Song Title, Album Art, ... Playlists, ... Play Count, Genre, Rating, ... Equalizer (if included by user by enabling via Advanced Options), etc.
Synching hardware to software involves checking XML library on each device against one another.
I still wish Apple would include "AutoEQ" to pre-set Equalizer settings for each song based on Genre or Group. However, since the library is in XML format, a simple parser script can be produced to produce same result (e.g., Depeche Mode = Pop and/or Rock, therefore Equalizer = Loudness, OR Depeche Mode = Electronic.
However, I think that it would be nice if artists would choose best EQ presets, then sync against database via Gracenote!
For the same reason that competitors of MS feel that they should be able to create clones of NTFS, SMB, and .NET.
MS create those technologies to further their interests in the Windows ecosystem, directly to the detriment of competitor OSs such as UNIX, Linux, and OSX. MS are under no obligation to make NFS work on OSX, but they are restricted from doing things to the protocol specifically to make it fail.
The only difference between iTunes and SMB, is the arbitrary idea that iTunes is somehow part of the iPod. It's software, and as long as it is distributed/acquired in a manner that is compliant with the license, it can be used however the user sees fit.
I don't see the utility there. The ideals for equalization should have already been applied per the artists requirements as the mixing/mastering stage.
I do the artists and engineers the courtesy of not screwing with their choices unnecessarily by leaving my eq as flat as the room and speakers will allow. They know what they're doing. By inverse, I expect my eq preferences to be honoured since I'm the one sitting in the room actually hearing how the audio is being articulated within my listening environment.
Agreed about not changing EQ settings, but I do wish however that they would choose some "standard" volume setting. Now every CD or song that I buy is a different level, and no, the iPod/iTunes volume check does not do a good job of equalizing the average volume (it seems pretty worthless IMHO).
That's the way it is, as long as no proprietary information - insider info gathered by former employees or nefarious means - is used. This was legally resolved in the days of the S-100 bus, and is no longer in doubt. A long time ago, Atari tried to sue EA for the same thing and failed.
Sony loses money on PS3 hardware sales, and makes it on games, so this would, in fact, be advantageous for them. It doesn't matter, though, because reverse engineering is not illegal, as long as it is done purely through engineering, not through insider information.