“Plug a [Palm] Pre into a Mac and it syncs, seamlessly, with Apple’s iTunes,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “In fact, the iTunes Store treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone with one exception: it can’t handle old copy-protected songs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Whoops, Phil forgot another exception: Another thing the Pre can’t handle, besides iTunes Store’s feature-length movies and TV shows, are drum roll, please… apps from the iTunes App Store. Not a minor point. Have fun looking at tens of thousands of apps that you can’t use, Pre iTunes syncers.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “Third party programs that perform the same service for various non-Apple MP3 players — including the Palm Treo and 700p – have been available for some time. But team Pre has apparently built the necessary code right into the device’s firmware.”
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “They certainly have the know-how. The team is chock-a-block with former Apple employees and is led by Palm president Jon Rubinstein, who built the original iPod for Steve Jobs.”
MacDailyNews Note: John Rubinstein didn’t build the original iPod, by which we mean he didn’t create the iPod, Tony Fadell did along with Apple engineers. Rubinstein certainly helped in some capacity, but it would be clearer to state that he oversaw the group of people who conceived and built the iPod for Steve Jobs.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “How Apple legal will respond to a presumably unauthorized invasion of their music store remains to be seen. Asked about the Pre during a quarterly earnings call in January, COO Tim Cook said Apple would use whatever weapons it has at its disposal to fight companies that rip off its intellectual property.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JES42” for the heads up.]
