

Palm restore pre iTunes sync. Your move Apple - nexneo
http://www.precentral.net/webos-121-re-hacks-itunes-support-brings-photo-album-synchronization

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protomyth
Palm's continued attempts to out-fake Apple are more for publicity then any
useful feature for their customers. Never mind a standards organization is not
happy with them (They signed a contract to get their USB ID, that they are now
violating), but they know that their current solution will continue to break.
Also, it seems that each time they change their sync, they break third party
solutions.

Write or buy a sync program and give your customers some stability.

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jpwagner
Certainly it's tactical, though I wouldn't say it's all publicity.

I think they're trying to hardball Apple into opening up (or negotiating an
agreement for use of) their distribution channel.

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tptacek
I'm not sure I see how this is "hardball" for Apple.

The risk for Apple is that someone else's product will work as advertised.

The risk for Palm is that at any given time, Apple can choose to turn off
their product.

Palm isn't playing from a position of strength here. Every time this cat and
mouse game cycles, more people hear that Palm's sync is unreliable. Palm
_never_ impacts Apple's product.

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jpwagner
There's a development impact...Apple has to find a way to close them off. Then
Palm writes a new workaround, and Apple has to expend more effort again.

The underlying statement to Apple is: if you don't want Palm to do this, you
have to open up the dialogue...

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protomyth
The dialogue so far is USB-IF telling Palm they are in the wrong and their
customers not having a feature they paid for. Palm doesn't have the sales to
keep this up, and, given the lawsuit happy lawyers, is in danger of a class
action suit by Palm pre owners.

There is obvious bad blood between the companies, but Palm needs to start
doing what's best for its customers. The realization that Apple can keep this
up far longer than Palm would be a good starting point.

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tptacek
At some point, Palm starts looking even less rational, because the cost of the
strategy they're pursuing exceeds the cost of just building their own sync
system.

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ZeroGravitas
The free advertising this generates probably earns more than the engineering
time costs.

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protomyth
They get a lot more column space in traditional publications for sure, but
they also get a lot of talk from people that the sync keeps not working.
Customer satisfaction and stability are better.

Given the current situation, could a person really recommend a Palm pre to a
friend who wants and a device with and easy sync to iTunes. You know you will
get a call right after Apple updates its software. Plus, if you tell your
friend to buy a third party solution (missing sync), the Palm pre version is
in danger of breaking because of Palm's current antics.

I think companies need to look at stability in their software / hardware more
then ever. This simple, reliably solution is often a better selling point then
the massive feature monster that is hard to use or unreliable.

~~~
tptacek
And what's the message they're _hoping_ to communicate? "Look, everyone,
Apple's locked up the media distribution market"? Because that message _gains_
sales for Apple in the real world.

