

Apple threatens Palm Pre owners. In a support note. - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2009/06/16/bye-bye-palm-pre-media-sync/

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stevejohnson
This article jumps to some pretty ridiculous conclusions. The support note
just says that since Apple never promised to support the Pre (for very good
reasons I might add), it might break, and in that scenario, it will be up to
Palm to fix it.

They won't support your jailbroken iPhone for that same reason. Jailbroken
iPhones can run background processes which can cause apps to crash due to
reduced memory availability. In the case of the Pre, if Apple decides to make
some technical change to its syncing protocol that the Pre doesn't support,
then you really can't blame them.

Remember that if Apple were to implement such a protocol change, they would
probably have to update a lot of iPod firmware, resulting in a lot of
temporary syncing problems for a lot of users, resulting in an even bigger
support nightmare.

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mattmaroon
The only thing dumb is this article. It's a pretty big stretch to say Apple is
"threatening" anybody or that Palm is engaging in risky behavior. At the worst
we'll have a cat and mouse game that Palm will spend most of its time winning.

I'm not sure why any sane person would want to that bloated monstrosity anyway
when they could just drag and drop.

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ryanwaggoner
Sorry, but this article is bullshit. Apple is rightly covering their ass by
reminding people that if they're dumb enough to buy non-Apple-supported
products because they sync with iTunes, they should be prepared for the very
real eventuality that Apple's changes may break that capability in the future.
In no way is it threatening Palm Pre owners, just letting them know that Apple
won't be responsible when things go south for them.

And aside from that, even if Apple is deliberately telling Palm Pre owners
that they're going to break support in iTunes, so what? It's their product,
they support whatever they want. The tone of this article seems to imply that
Apple is doing something wrong here.

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GHFigs
In what bizarro world is _not supporting your competitor's products_
considered threatening behavior?

~~~
ars
You misread it.

They threatened to deliberately break support.

Yes, on the surface they said "we won't support", but what they actually meant
was "we'll break it next version".

If all they wanted was just no support they would just ignore the issue. By
mentioning it, it's an implied threat.

~~~
rictic
You say that with a lot of confidence but I can't see how you can possibly be
so sure.

Furthermore, Apple has already released one update to iTunes since details
about the Pre's USB signifiers were known. Breaking support for the Pre as it
is would be trivial, it reports itself as a subtly different device over USB,
close enough that the current version of iTunes treats it like an iPod but
different enough that it should be very simple indeed to block it.

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lurkinggrue
Techcrunch seems to have this gleeful hate of the palm pre.

No shock that they are not going to support it but I don't read that as they
are going to block it.

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jodrellblank
It's odd that Palm would risk this, since desktop sync is typically so poor
that I imagine it would be easy for them to do a pretty good job of it. Easy
considering things on the scale of creating a new phone and phone operating
system and application store, anyway.

Have you seen some of the tirades of hatred against ActiveSync there are out
there? Nokia PC Suite isn't exactly known as a shining example of a great
program and Windows Vista's Mobile Device Center is a typically charmless
Microsoft offering.

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duskwuff
From what I understand, the Pre is just using iTunes for media sync.
Everything else (contacts, etc.) is handled OTA.

