When the Palm Pre was first released, a lot of people found a certain feature rather interesting (and controversial); the Pre itself could be directly synced with iTunes, meaning Palm could use Apple's software for its own purposes. Apple didn't take any nonsense, and soon after released an iTunes update (8.2.1) removing said ability, and many assumed that that would be the end of it. Not quite. Gizmodo is reporting that a recent update to the Pre's operating system, WebOS, "resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with [the] latest version of iTunes (8.2.1)." In other words, they've undone Apple's changes.An Apple tech note in June stated that, "Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players." Fair enough, and that's why they released an update to kill off Palm's sneaky abilities, but as we mentioned, this has been undone. How? Pre Central has the low-down on how this feature got re-enabled. What Palm has done here is masked their phone as an iPod, which tricks iTunes into syncing with it. When Pre Central plugged their Pre into a Mac, whilst in Media Sync mode, the following was revealed:
Product ID: 0x8002
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 0.16
Manufacturer: Palm Inc.
So, before the WebOS update, Palm has the Pre identify itself as a "mass storage device" which happened to be called an iPod, but now it's checking in as a "mass storage device manufactured by Apple" with the same name. However, when a company applies for a USB Vendor ID, it must adhere to the following:
Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.
Interesting. When chatting to All Things D, though, a Palm spokesperson named Lynn Fox said, "Palm believes that openness and interoperability offer better experiences for users by allowing them the freedom to use the content they own without interference across devices and services, so on behalf of consumers, we have notified the USB Implementers Forum [USB-IF] of what we believe is improper use of the Vendor ID number by another member." PC World speculates that perhaps Palm is in talks with Apple on making the syncing ability official, removing the need to go about it rather questionably, but given Apple's nature, this will probably end up going nowhere. Otherwise, Palm must be pretty confident in their lawyer's abilities, hoping they can pop Apple for anti-trust violations and ending up the victor. Regardless, expect to see this story develop pretty shortly.
Just what i needed, a reason for apple to push out more updates to stress my connection lol
I applaud Palm for the work, however sneaky and possibly "lawsuit-worthy"
Altho, I wish we could all "just get along" and end this kind of stuff and have everything work together.
Or maybe they're just tossing a stone in the lake to see what happens? How Apple handles this will be key. And really, now that Palm has shown how you get it to work, I figure unoffical WebOS updates will find their way out online. Palm has thus opened the lfood gates, and Apple can't really change the IDs now. That'd screw over real iPod owners as well.
Newer iPods etc could use some other way but that'd also be tricky cuz now you're once again casting off older iPod owners. Apples only hope in all of this is that Palm be forced to stop, but like I said already, we know how to do it now, so there's no stopping it.
I'd love to see other phones/players with "unofficial updates" come out to let them sync with iTunes as well.
+a Bajillion
Wait so iTunes doesn't know when you add music to the iTunes folder? Haven't used it in soooo long.
...as far as I know, it can :| Unless I'm wrong.
EDIT: I guess I was wrong
Last edited by Sam Symons on 24 Jul 2009 - 22:48
It used to read .jpg album artwork, but (I believe with 8.0) Apple changed this so that it used embedded artwork. You can right click on a song and "Get Album Artwork" if you wish. Or go into the song's properties to select artwork from your PC. I personally liked this improvement.
I've never added a song to the folder, I add songs through iTunes.
As for the bloat and slowness, I wish it were a bit faster, but no one has explained to me why it is slow... It's much faster than it once was...
I find version 8 to be much slower than 7 and it still doesn't read jpg album art. The only reason I tried this program was because of the Palm Pre but I didn't expect much since I used quicktimes before.
When it'll be Cocoa, it'll be screaming on the Mac.
If Palm had done it properly in the first place instead of trying to piggyback on iTunes, then you would have been able to sync with WMP (assuming they did actually do it properly)
When it'll be Cocoa, it'll be screaming on the Mac.
It'll run the same using Cocoa, there's no speed difference.
Err, it does do this automatically, assuming you're setting up the Artist / Album name correctly. Right click -> Get Album Art. Done.
Last edited by Deihmos on 26 Jul 2009 - 13:07
A friend of mine owns an iMac running OS X 10.4, and he is (to his utter disappointment), using iTunes, which he DESPISES, because it runs just as badly on his Mac as it does on his other PC's. He's already asked me to get him setup on a different platform next week.
And to answer your next potential comment, no he's not very tech savvy, and he got setup on iTunes by his previous techie, which happens to be a total moron. Once I showed him different software for media management, he immediately asked me to switch him over. Oh, and he also asked me to put his iMac on craigslist because he doesn't want it anymore after seeing my Vista laptop. Enough said.
Good for Palm though.
And I doubt Apple want to deal with support issues from a 3rd party trying to force their device to work with their software (look at jailbroken iPhones, issues with those are still blamed on Apple or software makers, even though it's the users fault)
I'm conflicted because I do think that companies should embrace open standards that enable hardware and software to play nicely with each other. At the same time, I think that companies should be able to choose their own direction with the software they write (even when it comes to limitations such as only providing a particular web browser written for a particular OS.)
ITunes is a part of OSX just like Windows Media Player is for Windows, it should be normal that interacts withother devices.
Still its sad that Apple feel the need to block other devices being synced from iTunes anyway, it's anticompetitive behaviour, and it is unnecessary.
They have an unrivalled market share in media management and are scared of anyone coming close to their precious software. So when anyone touches or tampers with its syncing abilities, its like disturbing a bees nest.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.