Since some of the comments start to address some of the business issues (revenue, strategy, etc) influencing Apple’s decision making with iTunes, I’d just like to throw this one into the mix: the bottom line. Yes, anyone can download iTunes for free. That doesn’t mean it’s free for Apple to give it away for free. iTunes includes a number of non-Apple related IP (codecs, etc) and services (Gracenote, etc). You’d assume that given Apple’s position, they are able to negotiation yearly, worldwide, flat fee license payments for most of these. There might be a few they are still paying per unit (unit being a download). Back in early 2000s when Audio CD ripping was introduced into iTunes, Apple were rumored to be paying the RIAA a fee per Mac sold. Essentially blood money.

Apple blocking Palm Pre might primary be a competitive decision (if they do it), however it might also be a financial one. Just a thought.

Apple has had problems with some iTunes updates with his own ipods so think what would happen with a non tested device or are you implying that apple should buy a bunch of Pres so it test itunes against them as a favor to Palm.

Palm are on a bit of a slippery slope here if they are ignoring Industry USB standards and falsely identifying the Pre as an Apple device to sync with iTunes. Goes to show how limited and stretched the development budget is for Palm, given it wouldn’t be too hard to follow Nokia et al and develop their own Music Sync solution.

I’d almost hazard a guess this might be a strategic move on Palms behalf to create a legal counter action against Apple for the Patent infringement lawsuit that is going to happen soon after the Pre is launched. Apple sues for multiple violations of multi-touch patents and Palm counter sues that the iPhone is an illegal extension of the (legal) monolopy held by the iTunes ecosystem. They could take this challenge all the way through to the App store being solely for Apple devices and demand it be opened to Palm Pre and other devices. The objective though is to slow down Apples Patent lawsuits long enough to sell enough Pre’s so the company doesn’t have to file for Bankruptcy. Palm have nothing to lose and everything to gain if their Pre phone can establish itself as a iPhone Lite.

I see zero motivation for Apple to allow Palm to sync. Remember, iTunes exists to sell more Apple devices, not to sell music or enable competitors devices to play that music.

At some point, the cat and mouse game will be won by Palm. There are only so many changes they can do to break the Pre before it will take a complete update to their protocol for all their ipod devices. To maintain compatibility, they can’t just change their protocol.

The biggest stick that Apple has would be the court system. They can take palm to court using DMCA. I doubt Apple would win but they could get an injunction against Palm and kill this stuff.

I think from a technology point of view Palm has the upper hand because they can be more agile with “compatibility” updates

Why does Palm need Apple’s help when RIM and Nokia are doing fine?

The user’s music is stored in a standard Mac or PC file system, and on the Mac it is even all in their “~/Music/” folder because Apple had the foresight to create that structure at the turn of the century. Further than that, the last state of what iTunes did to the music is in a universally-readable XML file.

In a number of cases, people have asked Palm executives about various features of the Pre, and they just say “it has what the iPhone has” in many cases, as a shorthand, instead of just listing the actual features of the Pre. The head of their project is a former Apple employee. In their new OS, everything is a Web view, and the Web renderer is Apple WebKit. Now it turns out the Pre actually identifies itself as an Apple product?

The one thing Apple doesn’t like is cloners. They love to compete with Sony by making thinner notebooks, or with Microsoft by making software that actually works, or with Dell by making computers that don’t suck. Apple was happy to compete with Palm also: when the iPhone shipped, it made the top-of-the-line Palm device look like a pocket calculator.

Palm cloned the iPhone for Sprint and Verizon. It took 2 years, but they cloned it. The thing even identifies itself as an Apple device. What’s next? The Pre SDK requires XCode?

> *Way* back in 2001 my brick-sized Archos (but hey, 20 GB!) came with a binary plugin/hack
> for iTunes that enabled it to sync with Apple’s app. Good to know that everything old is new again.

I don’t think that was a hack. I had a Creative Nomad II in like 2000 that I synced with iTunes. Before that it was SoundJam and synced with music players also. But we’re talking about iTunes for Mac, not Windows. The 2 versions are entirely different in regards to this feature. On the Mac, iTunes has been built-in since Mac OS 9 and has always been able to play MP4/MP3. It’s not necessary to replace the built-in iTunes with something else if you know the user already has those features.

If you’re talking about Windows, there is nothing there to build on. You don’t know what version of Windows the person who bought your music player brand has, and they don’t have an MP4 player built-in from the factory. You have to provide software as well as hardware if you’re going to get the user up and running with your music player right away on Windows. That is why the music players have always provided their own jukebox software on Windows. Even if you buy a Zune, it does not work with Windows Media Player, but rather comes with its own jukebox software. If Palm wants somebody to blame for this, they should blame their partner, Microsoft, for not making their operating system as friendly to music players as OS X is. If Palm doesn’t want to build their own Windows application to work with their music player, they should license one from someone else, the way a number of players licensed MusicMatch Jukebox.

We’re all looking at this like the Palm Pre buyer will already have iTunes, because it’s so commonly used, but if I go out and buy a new Palm Pre and a new Dell box and plug them together, I’m not going to see iTunes anywhere unless I go to apple.com and download it. Is that what Palm will tell me to do if I call for tech support? They’ll point me to apple.com?

We should also remember that the reason iTunes media can play on other devices is because Apple chose to use MP4, which is the ISO standardized version of the QuickTime file format that is to digital media production as Unix is to Web production. Apple could just as easily used the QuickTime format and iTunes would be full of “.mov” files with a proprietary codec that only Apple can use. They would have actually been able to do their video features earlier and with less work. But they did the right thing and did not lock the user’s music and movies away inside an Apple box. Acting like iTunes is a lockbox as an excuse to send your users’ to apple.com to download accessory software instead of making your own is disingenuous. If Palm can’t read MP4 and XML off their user’s hard disks, there is something wrong there.

Unless that’s a very small check, or there’s a torrent of Pre revenues on the way, Palm might have to resist a deal. This is what comes from having a loose cannon like Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners sidestep Palm’s chairman and tell the world “our Pre is better than an iPhone.” I’m not sure what else to expect from a fellow who chipped in the $100 million from his investment group. What can the CEO do? McNamee recruited him for the job.

When you bet the company, like Palm has on the Pre, you get creative in ways in addition to development. Looks like Palm, which had to refute McNamee’s claims about the Pre this spring, will be getting creative about what’s public domain IP and what’s exclusive. It pulls everybody into the mud unless Apple abandons its IP rights. DOJ or not, companies have a right to protect their intellectual property like database formats.