Palm fires back at Apple, fixes Pre sync with iTunes - Page 2

Because there's case precedence and they know they would lose. So, why waste money on a trial? The simple fact of the matter is that Apple isn't trying to stop anyone from syncing from the XML file. RIM just announced their Blackberry client that's coming out in September for Macs will do just that and neither Apple, nor anyone else has a problem with that.

Palm is parading its phone around as an iPod in order to sync with iTunes directly. What Palm is doing is blatantly illegal. I would know, I own a Palm Pre, and the phone is nice, but there's no getting around that the phone can't even sync without having to change modes to project an iPod tag. Palm is just leeching off of Apple's research & development in order to save money and stir up press. Honestly, were it not for the iTunes syncing, very few people would still be talking about the Pre.

It's a nice phone with some kool features, but truthfully, the notification system is all it really has going for it. It's nice being able to flip between apps, but I don't exactly surf the web while text messaging, while talking on the phone, while reading my email (especially since it doesn't exactly work that way on EVDO networks anyway and more programs equals less battery life).

As a Mac AND Palm Pre owner, I'm a bit pissed at Apple for this one.

They are being assholes, pure and simple. The sync protocol is well defined and there are several third party software apps out there that can sync to iPods. Why shouldn't the other way around be possible?

If us Palm Pre users can use iTunes to sync, we will be more likely to buy stuff from the iTunes store. Apple benefits!

Not only that, but Apple isn't seen as a monopolistic company trying to destroy everything else.

I like Apple, I really do. But their behavior as of late is really frustrating me. They're becoming Microsoft in a sense.

Interoperability is a GOOD THING.

"It just works!" is one of their mottos. Stick to it? I can understand if they don't want to support a third party product, but DON'T FREAKING BREAK IT ON PURPOSE.

I got a kick out of the Pre users when Apple blocked them out of iTunes: they were rejoicing because nobody liked iTunes anyway. iTunes sucks, etc.

Now that Palm has reacquired access to iTunes, their tune is different.

Hey, it's a good question.

I'm just curious if Steve is going to show up in the New Jersey corruption will illegally buying a Liver form a Rabbi Priest in New Jersey and go down with the rest of the corruption.

The "Pre users" are not the enemy. They're not the "other side". Don't you people realize this?

Competition is a good thing. The iPhone and Pre are great phones in slightly different ways. Maybe the Pre's existence will kick Apple's ass into adding multitasking in a future release. Maybe the 3Gs will kick Palm's ass into getting video implemented sooner.

Competing products benefit each other greatly. Companies in monopoly positions get lazy and don't innovate. They don't get any inspiration from the competition, because there is none.

Wake up and stop being a completely blind Apple fanboy. Note that I own a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro so I'm not speaking entirely from the other side of the "fence".

Big Brother? Are you serious? Apple made sound investments that led to popular products that need to be protected and trying to do such makes it Big Brother? Does any company that doesn't let you do anything you want equal Big Brother in your mind? Cause what you're talking about has nothing to do with humbling a company, you're talking about fundamentally altering a successful business plan, which means you're really talking about destroying something.

Frankly speaking, I wish someone would create a third-party jukebox that would sync with the iPhone. I only use iTunes because I have to, but its largely broken for my needs.

Palm should work to create something that works for webOS, Android and Blackberry users, have a Mac/Windows/Linux client, and invite iPods and iPhones along to join them! I'd be down with that.

I guess Rubinstein and his cult (the employees) can't live without iTunes after all

Thank you for your opinion!

I'm with you here. Have you tried Songbird (Mac/Win/Lin) or Foobar2000 (Win)? Dunno how well they work with an iPhone though. Worth a look if you haven't already.

They don't have to create anything. There is already a software called DoubltTwist that works with all these devices except iPhone OS 3.0. All they had to do is instruct their users to download the software but Palm wants to pick a fight with Apple and people are lazy to do a simple search for an alternative.

This would be the smarter way to go, but you know that Apple would just do a software update to the iPod/iPhone software that breaks their ability to see that hypothetical Palm app.

I think it's fair game for Palm to figure out a way to make their device work with the current standard software (iTunes), just as much as it's fair game for Apple to use their software to only promote their devices. They're both doing what you should expect that they'd do.

I agree with those who refer to Palm as hackers! And to hack that openly is illegal. THIEVES would be more accurate description, I think!

But, if Apple sues Palm, that's free pr for Pre..., so, maybe Apple can ridicule them in a TV Commercial... Yes it's a pr too, but the one that Apple can control better!

THE COMMERCIAL:

A Scene at Sprint Store:

Customer: sir, I bought this Pre and now it doesn't sync with my iTunes...

[unlike Apple store, where almost everyone, knows iPhone in their sleep + 800 Support], there is 1 or to 2 people who know SOMETHING about Pre... [that's was the case in my local Spring Store, except Pre on display was crashing; I had to wait 15 min or more for the ONLY guy who knew Pre, and he did the demon on his OWN phone, not the floor mode, which was not even fully charged]

Sprint: don't worry sir, Apple is giving us a hard time, and we are going to fix it as we did before

Customer: ok, but was if Apple give you guys hard time again, how often am I supposed to be running back and forth like this?

Sprint: I don't know, sir/mrs! You can exchange it for another phone? But, like a said, we are working on it...

If the customer is not too savvy, who knows what they'll doo..

The commercial ends with:

Customer: When are you guys getting iPhone!

Or

iTunes -- There is an app for that

iPhone image... And some recognizable Apple jingle!

Common, Apple, LAUGH THEM out of town.,..

BTW, next door to my Sprint store, there is a T-Mobile store, and it's not a reseller! I asked to see Android Phone, and they had NONE available, just dummies, or brochures! And, like at Sprint store, they vibe was: what are you bothering us for... They did not look too educated... Can't even consider comparing them to anyone at Apple Store, and I don't even mean Geniuses!

Across the street, there is ATT store, with 3 iPhones, as opposed to ONE Pre at Sprint, and no Androids at T-MoBULL!

SUPPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's where it starts and ends, at least for me! But, if some Apple Hater wants to be Palm's beta tester, and wait on Hold for tech support, probably in Philippines, like it's been with Treo, let them PREspire!

I agree, I think this is nothing short of juvenile behavior on the part of Palm. That's their business plan, to pretend to be something else? To think I actually tried a Pre before buying my 3GS. Sprint must be proud to have Palm as a business partner. What's next, Palm? Pretending to be on the Verizon network?

This is a very interesting point. I like where it's going.

I'm wholeheartedly supportive of Palm writing their own conduit in order to simply relieve themselves of the hassle. RIM is doing it and by all accounts it's a welcome thing. It's the smart way around the situation, and I believe Apple is all for it, if I'm not mistaken.

The real question is what Palm will do as their next move, once Apple breaks syncing again. Hopefully, at least in my opinion, Apple will stick to simply and quite innocently thwarting Palm via regular updates to iTunes and they keep this out of the legal arena, for the simple reason that it's quite possible win this war without a shot having been fired.

Masquerading your product as an iPhone is asking for it. Does Palm want to invite a confrontation? Are they doing this to simply draw out Apple legal? Do they think they have a case should this ever go legal and want to test it? At this point I don't see how that would be the smart thing for Palm to do.

There is no anti-trust issue. The XML for the iTunes library is freely available and very easy to program for, read, and write to. It would be trivial for Palm to write their own app or users can simply use any of the open source solutions (http://www.sourceforge.net). There are numerous applications out there that sync perfectly with a users iTunes library. It is NOT Apple's responsibility to support a non-apple device, especially when that device competes directly with iPod and iPhone.

This is not an Operating System who's primary purpose to to integrate with 3rd party hardware and software. This is software. This is no different that MS Office not providing support for ODF format on the Mac, or Lotus 123 not reading Excel files, or Windows Media Player not supporting iPod. I wouldn't expect MS to put out an update that suddenly gets an iPod working with it out of the box. Neither did apple. They simple wrote their own.

If iTunes was the only method for users to access their iTunes library then you might have an anti-trust issue. This is not the case however. This is not Apple hardware for one, and iTunes never claimed nor are they required to support a competing vendors product. I think the Pre owners would be better served complaining to Palm to write them supported software that just reads and writes directly to the iTunes library.

How many times does this have to be said: Apple barely makes back operating costs on iTunes actual content. Most of the money is flowing to the movie/music studios and the artists. Apple only makes money when you buy either an iPod or an iPhone. That is why it has a vested interest in tying iTunes to its own products.

And Apple is only ever seen as monopolistic by people who have an extreme sense of entitlement. If you buy a Pre because Palm told you it would sync with iTunes and then Apple disables that to protect its investment, then Palm is the one at fault. Hell, if you're gonna bemoan iTunes not working with the Pre, you might as well start bitching about Palm not licensing WebOS to run on the iPhone. The concept between the two is ultimately the same: you want it to work with something its parent company does not.

And yes, interoperability is a good thing, but it's not a good thing when it allows a company to avoid doing its own R&D by just leaching off your work. That's like saying the kid sitting behind you and stealing your answers during last week's science test was just trying to improve interoperability.

Palm is just lazy.

Wrong. Blackberry wrote their own software to read the XML file. Apple is in no way stopping Palm from writing their own software.


EU anti Trust. There, I said it. Except it has absolutely nothing to do with iTunes. Maybe you should learn what anti-trust is before you go around saying it.

I figure it'll be an $8 stock in 2010.

I knew about doubleTwist, but no Mac client yet . Songbird is another alternative, but again, no direct syncing yet.

I'm not saying Palm is wise for taking on this battle - I just think its interesting. I don't mind a few jabs at Apple's pride every now and then . Come on, we all do it with Microsoft. Admit it.

There is a DoubleTwist Mac client. Go check their website. The difference is that MS products, except for one or two, actually sucks. From Apple products user, the reason these things irritate me is because right now we enjoy simple and clean user experience. For example, All Mac OS DVD are full version and requires no verifications or SN and iTunes works flawlessly with the iPods and iPhones (including jailbroken iPhones). If Apple responded to Mac cloners by changing how Mac OS is sold and installed and to Palm by causing problems for those who owns jailbroken iPhones then the loser will be us Apple products users.

Exactly right. If only those who keep saying monopoly and anti-trust would go and understand what's going on before responding.

And to those who notice their 70%+ marketshare of MP3 devices


Oh wow! I hadn't been to their site in a while I guess. Digg, you've failed me! I guess I have to wait for 3.0 compatibility first, however.

Copy much?

Representing a Pre as an iPod (which is a trademarked icon and name belonging to Apple) is an outright intentional lie. That's not something that just works; it's actually already broken.

If Palm wanted to make something that just works, they should spend some money and write a piece of software to read the iTunes XML file like everyone else does.

Okay...

Let me know if I've gone totally off the ranch with this... but shouldn't Apple be suing Palm claiming some crappy statute from the DMCA?!?!? **or** was DMCA only really intended to be used by mega corps against the unwashed masses and peons who couldn't possibly defend them selves and/or tiny companies who are in the same situation? I think the court would self implode if two mega corps actually went after each other with it...

Yea yea yea I know... there have been plenty of companies that have gone after equals.. I just felt like bashing a crappy law that never should have been considered for a vote.

But the Pre is a cell phone. And when music-playing phones are included, Apple's share is maybe 15% at most. And that's not a monopoly.

Palm was likely very careful to document the reverse engineering of the iTunes interface, especially with so many Apple insiders on board.

Amen. Thanks for writing this all out. Now if iPhone1982 and the others will read it...

It wouldn't be hard for Palm to keep pace with Apples updates and continue support for Palm Pre sync with iTunes. Apple has a shitty response time to security updates and hacks.

With Palm and iPhone hackers waging war with iPhone updates, Apple can only lose.

Proof ?

And apple was never contacted by palm about this asking for an agreement.That is how buisness is conducted. Your anger is for palm . grow up

Also palm has un synced apple a few times recently in a spiteful way.


ANTI TRUST??

85 percent of all itune users are on window machines

Except Palm is promising iTunes syncing, as a selling point. Until Apple breaks it again. Then it's no longer a valid claim and you're lying to your customers. Palm's whole claim is has no foundation to it. it's out of their control yet they are passing it off as legitimate and consistent.

I'd be very interested what would happen if Palm advertsed iTunes syncing as "some of the time", or "an estimated 2 months out of 4", etc. That is, for what it truly is.

So right now, Palm is essentially misrepresenting the situation to its customers.

Palm is probably licking its chops with all the priceless publicity this little act on their part is generating. Money couldn't buy this kind of advertising.

Apple should simply ignore them, and continue to go about their business. One day, soon enough, there will be a sufficiently important change in the software that Palm will be left stranded. This, after many of the Pre owners will have invested mightily in their iTunes libraries. They will then have little choice but to end up with an iPod or an iPhone.

Palm is being realy silly if they can't see this coming.

Why not?
Select the songs in iTunes then drag them to the Zen on the desktop.

And how many time does it have to be asked how the business model Apple employs is relevant to Joe User who wants to sync his music library?

All of you that think that Palm has every right to worm it's way into syncing with iTunes never went to business school or law school. iTunes is not an operating system. Mac OS X and Windows are designed with APIs so that developers will do as much as possible with it so people will go out and buy Macs or Windows machines respectively. This is how their business models for these products works.

iTunes is an individual program running on Mac OS X or Windows. Because of that, it's not designed by Apple to promote selling Macs. It's designed to promote that other profitable Apple venture, iPods and iPhones. Yes, iTunes used to support third party MP3 players in the early days but those days ended after iTunes came to Windows. Since iTunes business model is iPod/iPhone profit margins, Apple has zero interest in having any other company's device talk to it.

And iTunes is not just a program with a few dozen developers supporting the product on Mac and Windows. iTunes has hundreds of programmers supporting one of the most complex infrastructures in modern computing. The iTunes store is a huge technology operation covering millions of SKUs (songs, music videos, movies, TV shows...all with contracts that have to be honored), dozens of countries of operation, an iPhone app store with 60,000+ apps in it (with their own pricing policies) and a security model that keeps your credit card information safe. And they spend lots of money promoting it and marketing it. The technical operation is reportedly the largest single instance of SAP ERP software on the planet. The Oracle database is also likely to be enormous and complex. And all of it has to run on thousands of servers in several parts of the world just to keep up with the load. You think Apple is building that data center in North Carolina at the tune of 1 billion dollars because it feels like it?

Apple has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over several years making sure this operation works every time a user accesses it. And sometimes its been stretched to the breaking point (remember when iPhones first had problems in activation? They have spent countless hours in design, architecture, programming, regression testing (involving every iPod & iPhone ever made) and go-live projects...all of which you never see.

So now Palm wants to piggyback on those efforts just to sell a few Pres and avoid having to invest in the man-hours and infrastructure Apple has done. Are you kidding me? At best, its intellectually lazy. At worst, it' probably illegal due to the DMCA, or violation of the EULA. Now, I have no doubt that Palm will make its own music program eventually. They are exposed to too much risk with the current hack. Palm doesn't have the resources to build its own music/video store so I would think they would partner with someone like Amazon. But that will cost money too. Every wonder why Apple says that the iTunes store isn't that profitable? Read my piece about the infrastructure costs again.

Palm needs to stop iTunes integration before Apple decides to make an example of them.

They're not allowing RIM to do anything and Palm not to. RIM created its own software to sync with the XML music file, Palm hacked iTunes. What RIM did is completely legal and ethical, what Palm did was neither.

There's no anti-trust case to be had because the only thing stopping Palm from syncing with that XML file is Palm.

If I was a Pre owner, I'd be disgruntled with Palm, thankfully I am a 3GS owner. Shouldn't Pre owners feel like they are getting substandard service and attention. Palm keeps marketing their "great" WebOS and how revolutionary it is and how it allows you to do soo many things, yet they tell users to piggyback on someone else's software and ingenuity to sync.

To me this is like buying a brand new, 3 bedroom, $700,000 (Cali price) house with an in ground swimming pool and the contractor says you can't get cable & internet conntected, you must steal them from your neighbor. And your neighbor keeps cutting the line from his house to yours. You love the house, but the constant on/off of cable and internet would piss you off.

If the house (Palm) is so great and smart, why don't they build their own stand alone software that allows users to sync? If smart, they'd make their own 'iTunes' type program and tell the world how superior it is to iTunes as they are trying to do with the made from cheap plastic, baby finger Pre. To me Palm is telling their users, "we need Apple - you need Apple." If that is the case, why even buy a Pre, just buy an iPhone and avoid the b.s. hacks. Just like the MSFT laptop hunter ads, they are unknowingly telling users how great and superior Apple is. Silly Palm.

Well, for one, you agree to the EULA when you install iTunes (it's the first thing you see before it installs). Even beyond that though, if you screw up Apple's business plan then there's no money to run iTunes with and the store shuts down and you have nothing to sync to or with anymore. One company doesn't have to allow something just because it's convenient for a user who apparently doesn't even use their products.

I have to laugh at the pretensions of those who preach to Apple that it should learn how to multi-task like the really great Pre OS.
Problem is that iPhone OS DOES multi-task. Apple has just taken a deliberate path of waiting until battery life can support it properly. All reviews I've seen indicate that rampant multitasking on a Pre drains battery life like a sieve.
Apple prizes the 90% of users who want battery life over the small sub-sector that wants to multi-task. Argue with that all you like, but Apple doesn't need Pre to get them to multi-task.