Palm Pre Mimics iPhone, Syncs with iTunes
It has recently come to light that the upcoming Palm Pre smartphone is capable of syncing with iTunes 8.1.1 on Windows XP and Windows Vista as well as Mac OS X 10.3.9 through 10.5.7; it can also sync with iPhoto. The Palm Pre, which will hit the market next month, when connected to a PC or Mac is recognized by iTunes; on top of that, it is also capable of seamlessly synchronizing with iTunes. The only downside is that the Palm Pre does not support songs protected by Apple’s DRM (digital rights management).
The fact that the Palm Pre is capable of doing so is not exactly a big surprise if you take two things into consideration. Previous reports had it that Palm’s WebOS would play nicely with Apple’s iTunes – the only surprise here is that they play so incredibly nice together. The other thing that you must keep in mind is that Palm’s Executive Chairman, Jon Rubinstein, used to work with Apple as head of the iPod division and as such he has intimate knowledge of how iTunes works.
This is exciting news indeed for the simple reason that some users out there might give the Palm Pre a second thought when deciding what smartphone to buy (an iPhone or a Palm Pre?). But it is not something too out of the ordinary; this is not the first time that Apple allows equipment manufacturers to license APIs that would allow their devices to seamlessly connect to iTunes.
Dieter Bohn, over at pre|central comments: “If you take a gander at the list of compatible players on Apple's support site, you'll see that Rio players, Nomad Players, and others will all work with iTunes directly (not to mention various Motorola phones). If true, the rumor raises a few questions: Will it work on PCs? Did Apple seriously license APIs for iTunes to a company that's releasing what many consider the best challenge yet to the iPhone? We're seriously doubting that latter option, which means we're seriously curious about how exactly Palm is pulling this particular trick off.”
The official word from Palm is that you can indeed sync your Palm Pre with iTunes. As Rubinstein said, the goal with Palm’s WebOS was to allow you to “take the content you own and put it on a Pre.”
UPDATE:Rumor on the web has it that the Paml Pre seamlessly connects with iTunes 8.1.1 because it gets iTunes o believe it is an iPod. If that is the case it will be quite easy for Apple to break it in a future iTunes update release.
The fact that the Palm Pre is capable of doing so is not exactly a big surprise if you take two things into consideration. Previous reports had it that Palm’s WebOS would play nicely with Apple’s iTunes – the only surprise here is that they play so incredibly nice together. The other thing that you must keep in mind is that Palm’s Executive Chairman, Jon Rubinstein, used to work with Apple as head of the iPod division and as such he has intimate knowledge of how iTunes works.
This is exciting news indeed for the simple reason that some users out there might give the Palm Pre a second thought when deciding what smartphone to buy (an iPhone or a Palm Pre?). But it is not something too out of the ordinary; this is not the first time that Apple allows equipment manufacturers to license APIs that would allow their devices to seamlessly connect to iTunes.
Dieter Bohn, over at pre|central comments: “If you take a gander at the list of compatible players on Apple's support site, you'll see that Rio players, Nomad Players, and others will all work with iTunes directly (not to mention various Motorola phones). If true, the rumor raises a few questions: Will it work on PCs? Did Apple seriously license APIs for iTunes to a company that's releasing what many consider the best challenge yet to the iPhone? We're seriously doubting that latter option, which means we're seriously curious about how exactly Palm is pulling this particular trick off.”
The official word from Palm is that you can indeed sync your Palm Pre with iTunes. As Rubinstein said, the goal with Palm’s WebOS was to allow you to “take the content you own and put it on a Pre.”
UPDATE:Rumor on the web has it that the Paml Pre seamlessly connects with iTunes 8.1.1 because it gets iTunes o believe it is an iPod. If that is the case it will be quite easy for Apple to break it in a future iTunes update release.
