Apple says iTunes syncing only for Apple devices, looks sternly at Palm
By Nilay Patel 
posted Jun 16th 2009 8:08PM
posted Jun 16th 2009 8:08PM
Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.Here's where it gets interesting: since the Pre identifies itself to iTunes as a bog-standard iPod, Apple would have to actively code in a USB node check to actually block syncing, which is just a little bit more aggressive than the "software changes over time" mentioned here. We'll see if Apple decides to engage in a cat-and-mouse with a company now run by the former head of the iPod division -- we've got a feeling this could get messy.
[Via Daring Fireball]
bring it crApple!
hehehehehehe love it ;)
Wow, how creative. Did you think of M$ too?
So Nilay is like Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz. The resident Apple wire services monitor. There isn't a bowel movement at 1 infinite loop not newsworthy enough.
Work on your own software Palm!
Well Apple can show good example by removing iPhone Exchange and OSX bootcamp.
Apple...you first!
We used to call it that in 1983 when the "flame wars" on BBSs were for Commodore 64 vs Apple IIe
@Walt,
I hated those smarmy C64 users with the Sprite graphics... APPLE //e forever. Why did they hobble the //gs... WHY?
Isnt that what they always say?
OMG, Palm just opened Pandora's box. But, its not an iPod, not using the iPod name or intelletual property of Apple nor is it using Apple code so i say it's pretty fair game.
Wouldn't it be a shame if iTunes accidently wipes Palm Pre devices that connect.
Would it be a shame when Apple gets sued for destructing/losing the property of 1,000's of users?
Wouldn't it be a shame if we all just got along?
NO!
Apple is just pissed that other products on the market rival theirs and also have more compatibility.
Here's an idea. Why doesn't palm just build a good competitor to iTunes? This is something every other company seems to be missing and where Apple excels. I was using iTunes for years before I ever bought an iPod. How many people can say the same thing about a lot of the crap software companies bundle with devices.
@Michael:
Two words:
iTunes Store.
iTunes has enormous amounts of traction. Palm doesn't want to get into the desktop music library/store business.
Everyone already has iPods and iTunes. Palm is never going to eclipse that with a smartphone.
Here's an idea. So long as Palm, or anyone else, isn't infringing on any intellectual property... why can't people use the hardware and software that they want to use??? Why is it right that there is any lock in between iTunes and specific hardware? Obviously, not the DRM stuff. But for DRM free... why not?
Hahhaha Springboard phail. Apple's upset their OS is garbage compared to Android and especially WebOS
@Jon
The world isn't ending tomorrow. People don't have to make their final choices right now. The game isn't over. It will never be over. Who knows, 20 years from now Palm could be as big as Microsoft and Apple could be a dying company. Things change. Just because someone has the market cornered right now doesn't mean someone else shouldn't try.
The Pre is a great start and shows that palm has some ideas and can make a decent competitive product. Maybe they could carry that same fight over to PMP's or even laptop/desktop computers.
@Michael: Palm needs to leech from the iTunes Store for now as they are lacking resources to build their own one for a little while. Rubinstein did say it'll be a long road ahead for Palm before it fully recovers.
Palm can do this because apple is using some of its patents in a round about way, trust me apple doesn't want to go this route
No biyatches allowed to leech from iTunes. Keep it strictly for the elite crowd of iPhone and iPod users. Palm Pre users should not be allowed to suck Apple's juice unless Palm pays Apple a percentage. Go hook yer Pres up to Windows Media Player or something.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. Next thing you know, Palm will be trying to stick a mirror-image Apple logo on it's products just to fool people into thinking Palm products are somewhat Mac compatible.
Apple should do something simple to discourage Pre iTunes leeching like making the Pre play all the tracks in reverse or inserting voice-over on each track announcing the Pre is an unauthorized device or maybe just lopping ten seconds randomly off each track.
If by leech from iTunes you mean give Apple more money.
Yeah, I'm sure that's what you meant.
It doesn't matter how malicious apple is being its their product and they certainly shouldn't support competitors.
If I were them I'd allow syncing but make it completely wonky, like copy 5 copies of every song over, or make volume way too loud.
It's so rude of palm to think they can use Apple's software and get away with it.
lol @ blurmagic. yeah 1,000 users is about accurate
well, if you ever read those EULA's that everyone agrees to, there is a specific line in pretty much every single one that says, basically, "we are not responsible for your data, and you can't sue us if it gets erased. Even if it's our fault"
Add on top of that the fact that the Pre is "unsupported" hardware, and Apple could technically wipe the Pre clean, including the Operating System, and there's nothing anyone could do about it.
Of course, that would be P.R. suicide, but it could be done.
The thing that is probably pissing apple off is that itunes is one of the biggest selling points for the ipod. It makes purchasing and transfering music easy for even non technically inclined people. So by allowing its competators to sync with itunes, they are making it easier for people to switch away from apple hardware and pick up something like the pre.So, based on this explanation, I wouldn't be surprised at all if apple were to disable pre syncing in itunes.
I'm going to assume most of you are forgetting that Apple has a legal obligation to keep tight wraps on songs, videos, and other things that have DRM. If they are being synced with a non-Apple device, they have no way to insure that the device is breaking the DRM. Apple itself could be sued if they don't patch up the problem.
@Lazarpander Stop being an idiot. They identify the Pre as an iPod, iTunes thinks its an iPod, there is no harm done to anyone except Apple worshippers who believe this is some sort of sacrilege.
@John It can't sync DRM'd music because Palm didn't try to reverse engineer anything related to fairplay. It will just copy non DRM'd music to the Pre, so this is not a problem.
Holy crap people. Stop jumping to conclusions. Nowhere does it say "We will not allow unauthorized third-parties to interface with our software."
Apple's quote suggests that although the Pre is compatible with the syncing features of iTunes, they will not help out users who can't get it to work properly, nor will they attempt to make sure things will always work properly in the future.
Now if Windows would only block iTunes ...
They have to say that - otherwise some Palm Pre users will sue them when compatibility breaks.
That said, if the Pre behaves like an older iPod, Apple will have to keep supporting it - I don't think Apple will force users to update iPod firmware. As long as Apple doesn't break compatibility with older iPods, Pre should be safe.
If Apple did actually block it, couldn't they be sued for anti-competition and trying to keep a monopoly with their closed ecosystem?
I mean, not actively supporting it is one thing, but actively blocking attempted at making compatible devices, that must be bordering illegal.
why does the pre want to be an iphone so bad? .. get your own application
@ BlurMagic
havent you ever read the terms of sale and terms of service for apple products ... "not responsible for data loss" but you can try to sue if you want the army of lawyers
Where's the European commission when u need them?
Yeah I'm First!
So Palm Pre iTunes Sync may not work later?
Either you were not taught the meaning of the word "First" or you have some major network latency issues...
Either way, FAIL!!!
yeah you will be the first that will fade away !!!
I dont see the need to sync my pre with itunes anyways,
If you sync your Pre with iTunes, and then get a new computer, does the new iTunes try to delete all of your stuff just like it would off of an iPod?
@alex itunes interacts with the pre exactly as if it were interacting with an older model ipod...
for my own contribution: apples not going to cut off those potential music sales... but they are just giving themselves lee-way if they botch something up and it no longer works. apple wants zero responsibility to support those devices and customers
when you move to a new computer, just copy the iTunes folder and put it at the folder on the new computer, will work as if nothing has changed! You just have to tell iTunes where to find the Music on the new Computer.
AS for syncing with pre, just don't update your iTunes... easy as that.
Maybe Apple can just make it part of the software licensing agreement (the thing that you always click yes to) that you don't use deception to sync a device with the software, i.e. devices have to be identified as what they really are. Then Palm would be in violation of the software licensing terms or at least be instructing others to violate the terms.
Well the Pre itself isn't going to iTunes and saying, hi my name is iPod. It's just some "shear coincidence" that iTunes is thinking its an iPod :D Ha, good for Palm to stick it to the big A.
Actually, the Pre IS going out and saying it's an iPod. It's using the vendor and product ID's of a real iPod to fool iTunes into syncing. Meanwhile, it's not like this is an open standard they're using - it's reverse engineered, and quite likely to break as Apple further upgrades the platform.
No, iTunes syncing was a bad, bad idea on Palm's part.
If apple is reading this and they saw that, we could be in trouble!
You want vendor and product ID's, look in the Details tab in your Device Properties window when you view a device in Device Manager, public VID and PID's galore.
i can sync my nokia with iTunes. [it thinks its a shuffle]
Really? What model is your Nokia phone?
"I'm taking my ball and I'm going home!"
+1 for the funny mental image you put in my head of Steve Jobs grabbing a kickball and stomping off.
We have OTA updates, ten to one says Palm has a fun time fixing it a few minutes after.
We know they are probably going to break it on purpose. But really iTunes is horrible all the other media players can sync with it.
iTunes may be crap, but so many many people use it out of sheer convenience. I've used it on rare ocassion to get easy access to some internet radio... so compatibility would likely be desirable, not for me, but the others who use iTunes.
The only reason people use iTunes is because most don't know about this: http://www.techniqal.com/blog/2005/05/25/winamp-itunes-plugin/
Or maybe it's because iTunes puts such immense pressure on the people that make alternatives to iTunes that they are all eventually forced to shut down.
Or maybe it's because iTunes is actually a good piece of software that's easy to use and has a lot of great features. People love to hate things that are popular. But sometimes they get popular because they're actually good. Crazy concept, I know.
Michael, I would argue that iTunes is popular because of the iPod. For a long time it was difficult to use any other music store since they all used DRM, and iTunes DRM was the only one that worked with iPods.
Wow, someone other then Microsoft leveraging a monopoly in one sector to gain control in another, crazy isn't it?
@Shyam D
I'm sure the iPod helped a great deal, but iTunes was popular even before people had iPods. I know I switched after using Winamp since the late 90's. I was happy to get away from that software and fell in love with iTunes, as did a lot of my friends.
@Shyam D
Anyway, my point is, iTunes was actually a decent music player that people (who didn't even have iPods) wanted to use. Of course you wouldn't know it now, because for the last three or four years since iPods and iTunes got incredibly popular people have started talking s*** about it. Like I said, there is a subset of people out there (usually younger rebellious people) who like to hate things that are popular just for the sake of it.
But it Palm (or anyone else) can get their crap together and make a decent iTunes competitor that's simple, easy to use and looks decent, then Apple might actually have a fight on their hands.
Except that it isn't a good piece of software at all.
The reasons people stick with it are that they are either unaware of other options or they purchased all of their songs off of the iTunes music store and are now locked to it.
That's all fine and dandy, but think of the average consumer. When it comes to almost everything else non-apple all the apple fan boys go on trumpeting about the average consumer. Well in this case think of the average consumer. Ipod + Ipod Software CD which has iTunes. iPod becomes popular, iTunes becomes wildly popular. Before the iPod, the defacto MP3 player was in fact winAmp, not iTunes. There was no defacto music store, but none-the-less iTunes probably gained that defacto standard for music stores because everyone that bought an iPod installed it. That was the only way to get music on to your iPod. If you can't see a clear parallel between this and IE, you're looking at a very narrow and obsessive view of the world.
You guys do know that music on the iTunes Store has been DRM-free for a couple months now?
iTunes is a half-decent player. It has a basic EQ and good batch tagging features. Plus, the 8.1 update sped things up quite a bit. I don't see what's wrong with it.
What's wrong with iTunes? It does what it is supposed to do and doesn't, in my own experience, mess up. I am quite sure that other media players are available but unless they do something really exciting that iTunes does not then I don't see much point in switching just so I can be using "something else" and boost my geek-cred. So, no, I don't agree that iTunes is "horrible".
NOTE: I am using iTunes on a Mac, so perhaps that makes a difference.
Shyam D:
How quickly we forget!
iTunes was available on PC shortly before the iPod was. And there was a mad rush to download it when it was released even without the iPod, *because it was better than Winamp*. Winamp was the defacto standard player before that because there was nothing else better, not because people loved it so much. In fact, most people hated it, especially the latest version (I think it was version 6 at the time), which was so bad that the developers were forced to re-offer version 2.5 on their web site. As soon as there was a decent alternative in iTunes, people started jumping ship.
The only thing I liked better about Winamp was the skins, but I can live without them. For most users, iTunes offers better features that are more easily accessible (smart playlists, album art downloads even for stuff you ripped yourself, etc.) .
Now, *obviously* the iPod helped iTunes take over. But the point is iTunes was popular even before the iPod appeared on PC. Some people really do just like it, they don't only use it because they have to.
what's a "Pre"?
oh ya, its a iPhone and an ipod --- iPhonee?
I know what you're thinking. "will they stop at Microsoft?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is the EU, the most powerful organisation in the world, and would fine your profits clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Do you know what EU means? Because I highly doubt a piece of hardware would be the EU, just saying... You might be the EU using a Palm Pre, but you can't sue a phone! I mean, you can try, but good luck getting any money from it... Do you carry money in your electronic devices? Didn't think so!
I am guessing my humour flew right over your head or was just a huge fail, lol
Haha, Yeah, I failed. I thought you were referring to the EULA, because anyone in their right mind knows that the EU is not "the most powerful organization in the world..." Also this talk about suing apple, I thought the topic was still focused on licensing issues, my B...
isnt the fact that the pre reports itself as an ipod, borderline infringement anyway?
Apple soon with their "innovative" ideas will stop allow apple users to sync their iPods. They will have to pay a subscription that will be very "innovative" :P
Pre: Oh, hey iTunes, whats up?
iTunes: < HELLO. I NOTICE THAT YOU ARE AN iPOD >
Pre: Uhh... yeah?
iTunes: < I LIKE YOU >
Pre: Um, I like you too.
iTunes: < ASSIMILATE... ASSIMILATE... ASSIMILA... >
Pre: Woah, woah, just kidding, I'm unsupported!!!
LAWL. This brought me to tears as I even imagined the whole comic strip in my head.
LOL
I, sir, up-rank you.
Hahaha! This has just made my day!
This is where webOS's Mandatory Updates will come in handy, I guess?
How Monopolistic, Draconian, and Anti-competitive..
DEAR APPLE
YOU SELL MUSIC, YOU ARE THE NUMBER ONE ONLINE DIGITAL MUSIC RETAILER! For you to say that the program used to purchase and sync music BY MILLIONS can ONLY BE USED WITH iPods when you now sell unprotected music that is compatible with any MP3 Player is Not only EVIL, Monopolistic, and disgusting, its MONOLITHIC!
iTunes is Huge, The iPhone is Huge, to make it so 3rd Party media players cannot sync with iTunes is to actively work against your competitors, This doesnt benefit consumers, This doesnt benifit the industy, it may not even benefit YOU! Live with competition instead of fighting it and you'll get your market share from simply HAVING THE BETTER PRODUCT.
EXACTLY! Just because people use a "non-Pod" device doesn't mean they don't or won't buy their music from Apple's store through iTunes. Apple should welcome the ease of Pre (and any other) owners TO sync their purchases to the device. If not, chances are they'll (Apple) will just end up pissing everyone off (yet again). They should welcome the fact "anything will sync with iTunes" seems like a great way to keep customers as well as obtain a few new ones who don't have/want a "Pod" device.
This, may indeed, get very ugly. Lawsuit in 1....2....3
Reid: "Live with competition instead of fighting it and you'll get your market share from simply HAVING THE BETTER PRODUCT."
This is a great point. Palm should make their own music library software and store, if they can do it better they'll eat Apple's lunch. Plus they can deny iPods the ability to sync, which would be a great burn.
Being the number one music retailer /= Monopoly.
There are other digital music retailers out there. There are other MP3 and media playing software packages out there. You are free to choose something other than iTunes. It's when you don't have a choice in these services that it's a monopoly.
Beau: So what you're saying is the EU had no right to strongarm MS into dropping IE preinstallation? I'm really just glad someone knows what a monopoly is :p
And if Apple prevents people from using their software, then by all means people SHOULD use a different media software, and buy their music from a different retailer. How ironic that you prove Reid's point in your fanboy post.
I guess Palm can now sue Apple for using "Palm's" touch screen technology.
Monopoly - A situation in which a single company owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. This would happen in the case that there is a barrier to entry into the industry that allows the single company to operate without competition (for example, vast economies of scale, barriers to entry, or governmental regulation). In such an industry structure, the producer will often produce a volume that is less than the amount which would maximize social welfare.
Apple is the largest retailer of digital media, is it not?
Apple is barring a company entry/integration with it's product, is it not?
I'm just saying, the definition of a Monopoly can be twisted to fit this situation.
Shadoblak: And what was the effect of the EU's action there? Aside from tons of legal fees?
I'd argue Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome have improved market share over IE because they out-innovated Microsoft, more than any wonderful lawyering out of Brussels.
European Windows 7 shipping without a browser because of illogical whinging about "unfairness". People still had the option to switch to Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Wyzo, Camino, stainless, etcetc, yet somehow this was considered unfair and people even threw around the word monopoly.
Besides, Safari is in the same boat as IE. More people are choosing Mac, thus the Safari usage is increasing, but more people are also abandoning system defaults for things like Firefox and Chrome, as Safari's numbers are sinking too.
Actually, using the market leading share of one product (iTunes) to leverage the sale/use of other products (IPhones/iPods) at the expense of a competitor (Pre) is also a monopolistic practice, and is one of the many reasons that the EU tries to fine companies like MS.
simply make these substitutions in the first sentance and you have the basis for the latest EU investigation into Windows:
"Actually, using the market leading share of one product (Windows OS) to leverage the sale/use of other products (Internet Explorer) at the expense of a competitor (Firefox/Chrome/Opera) is also a monopolistic practice"
see how that works.........
That's like shipping my playstation without controllers because it's not fair to MadCatz
Of course there's something rather silly about the EU getting involved in a dispute between two American companies about a product that's only sold (for now) in the United States.
I hope this adverts Apple from the real problem... Thats right, I am talking about jailbraking! The more time they spend fending off pre, the less time they can spend reverse engineering their reversed engineered iPhone OS! GO PALM PRE!!!
Something tells me Apple isn't that stupid...
Viva la monopoly! Apple Vampire Nation -- ACTIVATE!
Yeah. And OS X is only for "apple branded devices" Ok Apple ;)
Oh while you're at it, you can't use your Sandisk, Creative Zen, or other WMP compatible mp3 player with Windows Media Player because it's not made by Microsoft. C'mon Apple, quit being dicks. You make your OS proprietary, you make your media players and phones proprietary, now you're making your making your software proprietary. I don't see Microsoft up in your Kool-Aid cause you are running Windows on a non-PC by using a program that "tricks" the OS into thinking its on a PC.
well played sir, well played.
I still don't see what the problem is with this. Doesn't Apple make money off of this assuming people are buying their music off iTunes?
No, before the price changes apple didn't make any money off itnes. Don't know since then, but they probably still don't.
You can't sync music bought from iTunes to the Pre, so Apple isn't losing any money and it's not gaining any either. They just like to be dicks.