Apple’s Latest iTunes Update Breaks Palm Pre Support

When Palm released their Pre smartphone, one of the perks was something unique. That of course was the ability to sync up with Apple’s iTunes music software, and this is a feature that Palm themselves boasted about in order to sell more units. Well, as it turns out, anyone who bought the Pre with that feature in mind has now been screwed, as Apple has just unveiled a new iTunes update that deliberately breaks the support.

I have many thoughts on all of this, but I can’t possibly tackle them all here. The main one I have, though, is that I find it ridiculous that Apple locks deliberately locks out devices simply because they’re not their own. Sure, Apple would lose out on an iPod sale, but they might in turn lose out on iTunes sales as well. However, I’m willing to bet Apple earns far more off of an iPod sale than iTunes for the life of a regular consumer, but it’s hard to say.

In some ways, it’s easy to side with Apple. After all, if they allow syncing with other devices, what happens if an update accidentally wipes out the device’s file system? On the other hand, you’d expect that companies like Palm have thought this out, and have some protections in place to prevent that from ever happening. Either way, it sucks for consumers, because if you want to use iTunes’ syncing feature, you need an iPod. It’s that simple.

The best thing for consumers to do, is something I failed at. Don’t use iTunes, and don’t use an iPod. I found this hard to pull off though, given neither Amazon nor Microsoft offers their respective music stores in Canada…

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, 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.