An industry group says Palm’s Pre shouldn’t pretend to be an Apple product in order to make iTunes syncing functional on the Pre.
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) was acting on a complaint by Palm that Apple had disabled automatic Pre-to-iTunes synchronization. At issue is their “USB Vendor ID” that is supposed to identify the manufacturer of a USB device.
Palm had developed a clever hack that allowed the Pre to adopt Apple’s vendor ID when connecting to iTunes. The USB-IF told Palm in the letter that using another vendor’s ID was a clear violation of its rules. Apple has, with iTunes 9, again locked Palm out, perhaps for good. Earlier, Palm had changed its software to resume automatic synching of non-protected content after Apple first locked it out.
It seems to us that Palm should just develop an alternate way of syncing the iTunes materials (perhaps non-automatic, or using a different method, especially now that all iTunes songs are DRM-free). It shouldn’t take long or be all that difficult, should it?
