Tony how's your Pre holding up? Are these just a smattering of isolated incidents?

Does anyone know who manufactures the Pre?

My first two had screen issues. The third has a pristine screen, but the slider wobbles a bit (2-3 degrees at most) when it's closed. Not enough that it bothers me, but it's something many folks have noticed, and something they should really fix.

Overall, I'd say build quality is definitely an issue with the first batch. I can't say I'm totally surprised, since it's a new design and the product was rushed to market. I'd expect things to improve soon, because if they don't, it's certainly going to affect sales.

Well, that didn't take too long. Now to see how this game of cat and mouse plays out.

http://www.precentral.net/apple-blocks-palm-pre-itunes-syncing

Looks like WebOS 1.1 is out now, with iTunes 8.2.1 support.

The Pre apparently also has a new landscape mode:

Also, this gem:


Clearly whomever implemented this gesture doesn't actually use a touchscreen phone. Or maybe it's just me. One would think Right to Left would be forward - as in moving the current page to the left which is moving your view to the right, being forward for most people. Similar to swiping up to move the view down a page.

Oh, the Pre is now using Apple's vendor ID - this is absolutely against USB licensing agreements.

I'm eagerly waiting for the next move in this pissing contest. I wonder how long Apple will play before they just buy Palm and scuttle it. It would hardly even knock a notch in Apple's cash on hand, at just over 2 billion.

Well, technically weren't they already using their vendor ID? I thought it was just identifying its self as a Palm First and iPod second, and this latest update swapped those two

Anyway, personally, I'll side with Palm on this issue.

They were using the iPod product ID, which is also not kosher.

Palm are a bunch of whining thieves for pulling this stunt. They simply recognize that they can't deliver a solution to rival iTunes, due to both financial constraints and lack of talent (head count), so they think they can leverage the millions that Apple has spent to provide their phone with a syncing solution.

This is the exact same scenario as if HP didn't want to make their own scanning software and instead modified their firmware so people could use Canon's software. It's against USB spec, it's a DMCA violation and it's a breach of licensing agreements. I'm sure it can be argued in court to also violate copyright on the software.

If only Apple were a private company and not accountable to its shareholders and the SEC.

Yeah, sure.


So let me ask you (and I know you'll go 100% Apple Fanboy on this issue like all the others), how do you feel about 3rd party syncing software like Media Sync? It's effectively the same in the end, and Apple has no problem with it. Why? Because they know that users of these other devices will be annoyed by the process (or not even realize it's available to them), and they'll theoretically want to move to an Apple product.

I'm not saying that it isn't Apple's prerogative, but this entire issue has nothing to do with whether Apple is letting a non-Apple product sync with iTunes, so that argument is invalid. The walled garden already has a visitor's entrance. This is about making it slightly easier for the average consumer to sync to iTunes, instead of making it a complicated mess.


Oh sweet Jesus, we should all be so lucky as to have HP give up on their own software.

I'm just curious, but do you have something that backs up that DMCA violation claim?

Yeah, it's also totally cheating to take advantage of people's existing copies of Windows, rather than writing and shipping their own desktop OS for people to use with their Palms like any normal company would have to do.

Peter

I don't see how this is a DMCA violation. Palm isn't circumventing any copy protection mechanism. Lawyers will probably argue that a VID/PID combo is a protection mechanism and yet again, the DMCA will be used for something it shouldn't be. *sigh*

Ignoring my opinions of either company, I'm siding with standards on this one. That that means Palm is the one doing the wrong thing here. Many sites point out this quote from the USB device application:

If this was some hack an end user did to their own phone and distributed to others, I wouldn't really care. But Palm is marketing a feature of their device based on breaking the USB spec. Lax enforcement of specifications leads to confusion on the end user side when compatibility issues come up.

Oddly, Palm seems to think Apple is in violation of the USB spec as well, so I'll be curious to see where that goes. Noone complains that an HP printer driver uses USB vendor IDs to only print to an HP printer, or that the Zune media software only syncs to Zunes.

Beyond the USB issue, I think it's a poor decision that Palm has made to involve their consumers in a media sync fight. They advertise iTunes syncing as a feature, and use tiny print that noone reads to explain it's only with very specific versions of iTunes that the hack works against. End users hacking their devices is fine, but a company selling a hack as a legitimate marketing bullet point seems bad.



I know you were probably being funny with this, and I would find it amusing if every smartphone came with it's own desktop OS. There is a big difference though. Operating Systems are made to have programs run on top of them, either for free, or with a small payment to acquire the proper developer tools. iTunes isn't a open media sync program, though Apple has supported 3rd party devices in the past.

Western Digital was the most recent company that affected me with their lack of standards compliance. Their Velociraptor retail drives are marked as 3.5 inch form factor SATA devices. However, they use a 2.5 inch drive mounted in a heatsink, and mount the drive in a position that doesn't place the connectors in the proper place for a 3.5 inch device. If removed from the heatsink, the drive would be compliant with 2.5 inch SATA standards, however doing so voids the warranty. Why did I care? I bought one to mount in a standard cableless SATA carrier for my desktop. I had to return the drive, and wait for Western Digital to make a new model with the connector in the right spot, a drive that still sell for 30% more then the retail one.

Yes, but the whole question is how much Apple's intent as to what people do with the software, can constrain what people actually do with the software, and how exactly under law the licence acts to do that constraining. Clearly Apple are going to want to restrict the use of competitors' devices with their software, but then equally clearly their users are not going to want those restrictions.

This seems less clear-cut legally than the "clone Mac" wars, where the MacOS licence calls for Apple hardware only, because in that case installing or running MacOS involves making a copy of it -- so Apple can use copyright law to restrict people from performing that act in ways they don't like. Here you have people who've installed and run Itunes in ways Apple can have no qualms about (because they could, theoretically or even in practice, then plug a real Iphone into it) but who have then used it in a way they didn't like. Copyright law doesn't let them stop that, it doesn't give them the right to impose their terms on use alone.

Peter

I'm sure in the next firmware update on the iPods and iPhones Apple will introduce some sort of relatively sophisticated authentication method which would require the hacking and reverse engineering of the Apple written firmware. Surely then Palm could only provide a workaround if they could prove they arrived at it without reverse engineering, otherwise 'then' it would be a legal issue wouldn't it?

Personally I think it's pretty shitty move by Palm to do it this way. Surely they'd gain more cred if they had proof they discussed the possibility of doing legitimately with Apple who then told them to fsck off. Why is it no different than me trying to impersonate a college student to avoid paying full price entry at the cinema?

Sorry, but another bad analogy. The only way to make that one work is if the theater had a table where you could fill out a form saying that you were a college student, even if you weren't, and then you could get the discount.

Remember, there are non-Apple devices that sync with iTunes, but they require 3rd party software. I don't see why all of a sudden it's so terrible that Palm wants to sync with iTunes directly. I see it as making things easier on their own customers.


I'm sorry, I didn't expand on my thought there because I figured it wouldn't be worth arguing with Bruno. I just wanted to play devil's advocate here. I make no claim that Palm is in the right, either legally or with the USB specs, but I maintain that I don't see why it's such a terrible thing for a company to want its devices to sync with iTunes in a way that consumers want.

I agree that they should have tried to work with Apple, but we all know how that would have ended. I also agree that they probably shouldn't advertise iTunes support as a feature when they know full well that Apple will be working to break it.

Yep, and there are 3rd party MP3 players and phones that sync directly with iTunes because the companies that made them worked out agreements with Apple. Some of those are OS X only due to the companies making the agreements prior to the Windows iTunes release, and some work with iTunes on both systems. Just as there are many MP3 players that work with Windows Media Player due to agreements with Microsoft. Same situation.

Much like Andy, I am curious if Palm ever talked to Apple about it. Being that Palm isn't saying that they were blown off by Apple to try and help their case, I'm guessing the USB hack was their first choice for getting iTunes compatibility.

If Palm really wanted to look like the good guy here and the one fighting for standards and the consumer, they should have ignored iTunes and built the foundation for a SyncML based media sync, or something similar.

It depends on what people you are talking about. For end users, sure, I don't see much use for EULAs as long as the software isn't being used for illegal purposes. The same doesn't apply to the people at Palm, who are marketing their device compatible with software that it isn't without Palm using a hack.

Lets change the name of the players here. empeg Ltd. made software called emplode that was used for syncing to the empeg car. Would there be a problem if SSI made their Neo-35 player show up over USB as an empeg-car (using the same vendor and device ID) for the purposes of syncing with emplode? All being done without a person from SSI contacting empeg for permission or approval. This includes using the possibly trademarked name "emplode" in marketing material for the Neo-35.

The weird thing to me about all of this is that Palm could have hired three programmers for two months and developed a better piece of software than iTunes.

iTunes is one of those pieces of software, like Outlook, that people use and claim to like, even though it's a piece of crap, because it's what's been plopped in front of them, and it's the client for a system for which there are no other clients (Exchange Calendar/iTMS).

Sorry, how is that a bad analogy? To qualify for student prices you need to be able to present an NUS card. If I forged a card and presented it, I could probably pass myself off as a student and get the discount. But I don't do that because I'm not a cheap bastard, unlike Palm.....

So they're seemingly happy to pretend to be an iPod so they don't have to pay someone to write some software.

So, it isn't just me, then? I think iTunes is ridiculously complex and unintuitive, and always thought it was because I just wasn't smart enough to use it.

tanstaafl.

Sorry, my analogy wasn't all that great either, but I said it was a bad analogy because there are already "non-students" (Blackberry) that can go through an annoying process like "filling out some paperwork" (Media Sync) to get the discount, even though they aren't "real students" (iPods).

In the end, what I should have said is that I don't care much for analogies for technology issues. I don't think they clarify very much at all.


Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Could you give me a few examples?

Still, I wonder how the conversation would go now that Apple is on top and the #1 music store is selling their hardware for them.

Rio has quite a few, including some where a bundle (driver package basically) downloaded from Rio enabled native iTunes support. Apple has the full list. As for phones, there were a number of Motorola phones that had an "iTunes" player on the phone and would sync to the iTunes desktop software.

peter said this earlier in the thread regarding Rio and iTunes players:

So while it was a move to benefit Apple, it did also show they were at one time willing to work with other MP3 player manufactures. The phones were likely an experiment for Apple to get their feet wet prior to starting in on major development of the iPhone. Similar to Microsoft helping out with the Dreamcast, then turning around and developing the XBox.

I too wonder how a conversation would go now, but thus far Palm hasn't indicated that conversation even took place.

Thanks for the reminders. I'd forgotten about those products (and in the case of the ROKR, I'd put those phones out of my mind on purpose). Of course, Apple wasn't all too friendly towards Motorola. They had that arbitrary 100 song limit for the phones, and there was that press conference where they totally overshadowed the ROKR with their own product (can't remember which one it was at the time).

*edit*
Ah yes, that's when they introduced the Nano.

No, really, it's MacOS-only. "iTunes for Windows can only sync with iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV." And even that MacOS list is long-obsolete players only. The ROKR phone is the only exception, but the device itself was co-branded Apple, and I wonder how keen Apple would be to enter into phone cross-branding agreements nowadays when they have their own phone products?


Quite a different situation, in fact: even after the Zune was released, Microsoft carried on entering into new agreements for WMP sync to newly-released competing players. (Maybe you can even do it with their published APIs now, and no further explicit agreement, as long as you don't care about DRM.)

Peter

Trademark law means they'd have to attribute that trademark correctly if they use it in their marketing materials. In other words, our competitor would be naming us directly, and as the standard they try to be compatible with, in their marketing materials. We'd be turning cartwheels.

I always thought it was dumb that Rio Music Manager would only sync to VID/PID pairs it knew about. I wish we'd sneaked in a registry entry or something that would make it list, and sync to, all mass-storage and MTP devices. (The restriction, AIUI, wasn't there for product-tying reasons particularly, but because we didn't want it to be our tech-support problem if Rio Music Manager stored a bunch of stuff onto a third-party device that couldn't actually handle it.)

And in fact when I was still at Sigmatel working on the Trekstor Vibez firmware, I hacked my own copy so that Vibez had the Rio Carbon VID and PID, and thus could be used with existing copies of Rio Music Manager.

Peter

I'm not going to argue this (VID/PID and proprietary software) point because there's no grey area. It's pure, simple and black and white. This has nothing to do with the wronged company being Apple. This has only anything to do with Palm acting in violation of standards.

If you do want to argue, then yes, one can go either way on the laws in the US.

The bottom line is it's Apple's piece of proprietary software and Palm should keep their grubby hands off it.

If they (Palm) think they can hire 3 programmers for 2 months to write a replacement, I'm sure they would have. The problem is that it's been demonstrated elsewhere in the industry that you can have a dozen people working on this for two or three years, starting with existing code and still have but a shell of a program that relatively speaking, still doesn't do what iTunes does well. Case in point are Songbird and Media Monkey.

They could however have produced, as I suggested long ago, a program to communicate with iTunes using existing interfaces. A bridge/sync program if you will. This is totally and utterly different than what's been done now. Loudly claiming "iTunes compatibility" and using iTunes as part of their promotional points should also be avoided unless they get Apple's blessing.

I'm sure we'll see iTunes rightfully locked down, Palm made out to be the bad guy and eventually they'll get swallowed or fizzle out. The Pre is not doing well and this type of attention doesn't help it.

I'm also sure a real Apple Fanboy would have issue with anyone labeling me in the same camp. I'm super critical of Apple and think iPods (the music playing software and UI) completely suck. I don't think Apple make the best designed nor best working applications and I choose to use many third party alternatives. I've even replaced the desktop GUI because I think the Finder is extremely weak. But over-all they make far and away the best computers. I don't resent them because they cost BMW money compared to other brands, because the value proposition is fair.

Does anyone have any contacts in the engineering department at RIM? I need to give them a call to tell them to scrap their Blackberry desktop application for Mac OS and put its engineers onto another project or the unemployment line. They just need a small 8 character firmware tweak.

You mean like the agreement the NUS has to endorse international student ID's in the UK (Blackberry). As opposed to someone knocking up a dodgy ID card in Photoshop (Palm).

Surely 'filling in paperwork' is not the same as ripping something off.

The Windows software is no better.

No, it's not just you. I absolutely HATE iTunes. It even took me some figuring out before I could even start to use it! I never had this problem with Emplode, or with the synching software the Karma etc. (was that also Emplode - can't remember) used. That software was intuitive and simple: 1) Drag the files you want to see synched from your windows explorer into the Emplode window. 2) Hit the big Sync button. That's was it, and it worked!

I also find iTunes incredibly SLOOOOOW... Clicking from the library to 'my iPod' so I can sync takes more than 10 seconds! (and I don't have a slow computer either - it's a dual core CPU system bought last year) It'll also crash more times than not when I close the program. I can't believe this program was developed by people who also code stuff for the computer system that is said to be the easiest to use for the average consumer in the world. (I would like to point out that I have no experience whatsoever with Apple software - I can only hope the Apple version of iTunes does not have all these problems)

What you describe as easy in Emplode is exactly how iTunes also works. I don't use it with automatic syncing, but I believe it's the default unless you turn it off (like I did).

iTunes has a lot of really slow portions, but clicking from one item to the next in the source list (the list on the left) is usually instantaneous. And I have 30000 tracks in my library.

Things that I find really slow it down are accessing your music over the network, especially when it's doing things like checking for gapless information and updating artwork. Things it does every time you add new tracks and that you cannot (in any way) disable. You can cancel, but it will do it again/continue the next time you add tracks or restart iTunes.

I think iTunes is the most intuitive music management program in even moderate use today. This is after version 7. Prior to that it was crap because it didn't have any concept of albums. My empirical evidence for this is that every other would-be music manager is copying from the iTunes UI design. This includes Media Monkey and Song Bird which I mentioned earlier. Song Bird developers defend this by saying that they're not copying, they just implementing the most reasonable methods, which iTunes just so happens to also use. Yeah right.

iTunes has a LOT of (huge) room for improvement. But no one has written anything even half as good for any platform.