More on the iTunes-Palm Pre connection: what will Apple do?

Jake Widman
Friday, 05 June 2009 00:40

Your IT - Mobility

Some speculate that Apple's focus on iTunes alternatives springs from the company's desire to protect the iTunes Store.

Consumers can already buy music from stores other than Apple's, put it in iTunes, and load it onto an iPod, of course. But there's always an extra step or two involved, compared to the seamless experience when buying from the iTunes store.

Alternative music stores, such as Amazon's, have APIs that can be used by media management software to make that buying process equally painless. If such software could also sync with iPods, it could represent a threat to the tightly knit iTunes-iTunes Store-iPod ecology.

Being able to load an iTunes library onto the Pre as seamlessly as onto an iPhone doesn't threaten the iTunes Store in that way, but could conceivably lure some potential iPhone buyers away.

The usual way for Apple to block competition in the field is to release an iTunes update that breaks non-Apple-approved software and devices, and presumably some future version of iTunes could attempt to block the syncing ability of the Pre.

What remains to be seen is whether the Pre can accept iPod software updates to maintain compatibility.

Longtime Mac observer John Gruber writes on his Daring Fireball blog, "Ultimately, my guess is that Apple won’t take any immediate action -- technical or legal -- against Palm. I think Apple will treat it more or less the way they’ve treated iPhone jailbreaking."

 But you can bet they'll get one of the first Pres available and start tearing it down to see if it violates any intellectual property.