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Palm Pre to Sync with iTunes on Macs?

Apple would be smart to permit this and open their market to a larger audience. Of course, this means that the 'experience' would have to meet with Apple's stringent expectations.
However, they could easily take the position that the best way to broaden their market is to force people wanting to connect to the iTMS to buy an iPhone. That would be short-sighted and dangerous, for reasons already listed in this thread.
 
But isn't iTunes one of the steps in the seamless, no-hassle iPod integration that made all of Apple's music players so popular? iTunes sells iPods, iPods don't sell iTunes.

How much money is Apple actually making via selling music? I'm sure it's not a significant number. If 25% of all Pre-owners bought it because of this integration over their other choice, an iPhone. That's (say) 100 000 iPhones that would've been sold at some revenue of $30 million dollars to Apple. How is that money going to get recovered via music? Even it were 5%, that's still $6 million. I don't think 6 million songs will get sold.
 
Yeah, why not allow syncing?

Apple's main issue with the Palm Pre was a concern they were stealing their multi-touch gestures and the like, making something that was too similar to the iPhone. That will still likely be where any legal battles take place - arguing whether or not they had the right to use some of Apple's ideas.

The fact that a device incorporates syncing with iTunes, though? It'd be totally counter-productive for Apple to fight that. As nice as iTunes may be, consumers aren't thinking "Well, gee... I was all ready to buy this new Palm phone I wanted, but now that Apple's saying it isn't allowed to sync with iTunes? I better scrap the whole idea and buy one of those iPhones instead. Buying my music and videos from Apple's online store instead of anyplace else is the MAIN concern I have with buying a new smartphone device!"


thetexan said:
Perhaps Palm licensed the APIs necessary from Apple to make this happen. In the tech world you always see competing tech companies actually working together.

Apple should be careful pursuing this in the courts if they are so inclined, they could be stuck with an anti-trust case on their hands. Apple dominates the billion dollar industry that is online music and if they aren't playing nice with their software some legal courts might frown on that. Just look at how much nonsense Microsoft got buried in over a web browser.

Also financially Apple would be stupid to try to block WebOS users from accessing iTunes. This OS will sell millions of phones, I'm sure Apple wouldn't mind them plugging in their phones and buying some music.
Click to expand...
 
Two thoughts

1) Palm could have licensed this, which okay, who cares then

2) Palm could have used their ex-Apple employee's knowledge which would be considered trade secrets; in that case it could blow up in their face.
 
This reminds me of a video I watched yesterday on CNN with Arnold Schwarzenagger who said that for the GOP to remain relevant they need to "enlarge their tent." I'm not saying that apple won't be relevant if they don't but having other devices that provide great experiences with apple and it's platforms is a good thing IMHO.
 
I think this is something that apple could really help apple sell music, let's say this is supported by more manufactors and suddenly a lot more people will be exposed to the itunes store and the excellent synchronization capabilities (the latter is oen of the few things i personlly miss the most on other players, sure you could probably use WMP but who bothers.)

On the other hand this sort of thing could impact on hardware sales, a lot of people would stop using iPods and probably use other players. But then again none of these players are as good as apple's products, some of them have about the same specifications, but Apple has got the design, the software and the "Everything just works" to its .

EDIT: I forgot to mention sound quality, get yourselves a lossless quality song, a pair of 100$ headphones and compare the same song on an ipod, and an iRiver, it's day and night difference, apple really has got to make the iPod sound quality better
 
Soon all these Pre users will notice the App store and say "man why cant I use all these cool apps!" and then go buy an iPod Touch.
 
MD5Hash said:
I was just thinking about this last week; this was one of the number one reasons why I feel locked into using an iPod/iPhone, because I need it to manage my playlists and music.
Click to expand...

I have friends who use non-Apple MP3 players with iTunes (yes, latest version). Obviously you can only play the formats (non-DRM) that the player supports, but iTunes recognizes the 3rd-party players, shows them under Devices by name, and syncs. I doubt EVERY player is supported, but I can verify than many are--and always have been.

iTunes existed before the iPod and supported various devices. They didn't strip out that support to lock people into the iPod--it's a common myth that probably comes from people being confused by the iTunes STORE, which did used to be locked to the iPod because it used to use DRM.

If the Pre goes even farther than the support that many other devices already have, that would be cool--but the article is not clear on that.
 
I would be more surprised if Apple stood by and did nothing about this rather than release an update that stops the sync from happening...why you ask? Because while Apple would make $$ from Pre users buying music, that would be one less device able to use app's from their app store, of which Apple makes 30%.
 
iTunes recognizes Pre... not the same as blackberry

Folks, to sync a blackberry, you have to download a helper application called Blackberry Media Sync. Even then, you don't sync the device from within iTunes... you sync from within the helper application, which reads your iTunes library file.

Fortune is reporting that iTunes seamlessly works with the Pre, just as if it were an Apple device. To my knowledge, only basic manual syncing support is provided for other devices, and this was developed before the iPod was released.
 
nagromme said:
I have friends who use non-Apple MP3 players with iTunes (yes, latest version). Obviously you can only play the formats (non-DRM) that the player supports, but iTunes recognizes the 3rd-party players, shows them under Devices by name, and syncs. I doubt EVERY player is supported, but I can verify than many are--and always have been.

iTunes existed before the iPod and supported various devices. They didn't strip out that support to lock people into the iPod--it's a common myth that probably comes from people being confused by the iTunes STORE, which did used to be locked to the iPod because it used to use DRM.

If the Pre goes even farther than the support that many other devices already have, that would be cool--but the article is not clear on that.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The fact that the Pre syncs with iTunes isn't exactly revolutionary. iTunes has been around long before the iPod, and it's been syncing with plenty of devices since then.
 
The method for syncing to itunes as always been open for use by other device developers, They just chose not to support it.

There are a range of older mp3 players that did use the same method and have compatibility with itunes however. If this does happen then i can see other devices getting updates to do the same not long after.
 
Apple is in business to make money, yes I know this is obvious, but no one is mentioning the obvious....
If the pre threatens Apples money flow don't they have to respond in a
hostile way? Wouldn't you?
 
If Apple disabled Pre's ability to Sync, that would be insanely stupid.

I love how we as a community have blasted Microsoft over the years for being anti-competitive and monopolistic, when the crap Apple is starting to pull is worse than anything MS did.
 
A simple but smart move by Palm.

And nothing Apple could (or should) do about it really. Don't think anyone would support Apple in tweaking its code to support Western Digital drives but not Iomega. And tinkering with iTunes to stop a native connection with the Pre would be exactly the same.

There won't be an iota of legal action here, as it seems the code is on the Pre, which they're completely entitled to do.
 
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