According to Fortunes respectable Apple 2.0 blog, the Palm Pre has a rather sneaky trick up its sleeve. First, a reminder of the main reason for the iPods original success: iTunes. The vertical integration of iTunes (for organization) and the iPod (for playback) was a killer combo.
In order to work as well, the Pre needs something like iTunes. So what about iTunes itself? Thats the Pres trick it will sync with Apples own software. Fortune:
Plug a Pre into a Mac and it syncs, seamlessly, with Apples (AAPL) iTunes.
It wont pick up iPhone applications, of course, or older, Fairplay DRMed music, but everything else should just work. The Pre team is full of ex-Apple engineers, so they should certainly know the strings that need to be pulled inside iTunes to get this working.
It does it by faking out iTunes, making the jukebox software think that it is connected to a real iPod. Hook it up and youll be given three options: USB mass storage device, charging only or iTunes sync.
This is a ballsy move from Palm, and we totally love it: a big fat middle finger at Apple. Apple will, we are sure, be readying its legal attack dogs as I write, and dont be at all surprised if an iTunes update pops up around June 6th. This fight just got a lot more interesting.
Scooplet: the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes [Fortune Apple2.0]
Photoshop job: Charlie Sorrel
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by publisher on May 29, 2009
