Palm Ignores USB-IF Warning, Restores iTunes Sync 656
An anonymous reader writes "Palm's cat and mouse game with Apple continues. Ignoring the warning from the USB Implementers Forum, with its WebOS 1.2.1 release this morning Palm has restored iTunes media synchronization in its new Pre smartphone — and gone so far as to extend sync to photos. And, according to Digital Daily, it has done this, once again, by using Apple's USB vendor ID. Does the USB-IF have any recourse here? Does Apple?"
Stop buying from Apple. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't get why so many people who are against action like this keep buying Apple products. Of the people who are going to respond to this, I know that a large portion of them will have a MacBook, a larger portion will have an iPhone, and an even larger portion will have an iPod.
If you dislike their business behavior, do your duty as a responsible consumer and don't buy from them.
I remember (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember a time when it was legal to reverse engineer things for compatibility purposes. (Was a long time ago... the 90s, perhaps?)
I lot of people are complaining the Palm thing smacks of fraud, but it is no different than telling Microsoft Word that the document is opening was made by Word instead of Open Office for compatibility reasons.
Also, the argument that Apple needs to break compatibility in order to protect itself is complete bullshit. If my Palm doesn't sync with iTunes, I'm going to bitch about it to Palm. Nobody expects iTunes to work.
Re:I remember (Score:5, Interesting)
If that ensures compatibility, of Palm's products, I guess they are making the effort to keep their customers happy (even though iTunes, at least for Windows, is the worst piece of software ever).
Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, neither is criminal. No law was violated... (IANAL, so just kick me if I'm wrong and I'll go back to my X-Plane).
Palm HAS violated a 'gentlemans agreement' with the USB-IF.
Just because you don't agree with Apples actions, does not make Apples actions criminal.
It seems that you are prioritizing...
Palms money grubbing desire to make a profit off Apples work over...
Apples money grubbing desire to make a profit off Apples work.
Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score:5, Interesting)
IANAL *BUT* I do believe that Palm can legally do whatever they like with the USB-compatible ports but what they might be doing wrong is continuing to call the port USB. to be USB to must meet the specs, and palm is breaking those specs so might be in trademark violation of the USB name and logo. They could just name the port something else and maintain compatability but I done think it is legit to call the port a USB port.
Re:Stop buying from Apple. (Score:5, Interesting)
Third possible explanation:
They don't let a political argument between two companies stand in the way of buying the device they see as best suiting their needs.
Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
I do believe that Palm can legally do whatever they like with the USB-compatible ports but what they might be doing wrong is continuing to call the port USB.
Unless USB-IF ties the USB patent license to the USB logo license.
Re:I Wonder What Would Happen If... (Score:5, Interesting)
One difference: with Ethernet, duplication of MAC addresses causes a malfunction of the network itself. Prefixes are assigned to companies for a technical purpose: to insure no two companies ever manufacture cards that share an address. The USB vendor ID isn't used for addressing, so as long as the device correctly implements the capabilities it advertises itself as implementing (which aren't tied to vendor ID) there should be no hardware-level malfunctions. Apple's trying to use the vendor ID merely to block sync with devices that would otherwise be technically perfectly capable of correctly syncing with iTunes. IMO it's Apple's right to try that, but nobody else is obliged to go along with them.
I'd note that vendor impersonation has a long history. Microsoft themselves do it, Internet Explorer to this day claims to be Mozilla in it's user-agent string, and this was done with the deliberate intention of fooling Web servers into thinking it was actually Netscape.
Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score:3, Interesting)
One way for Palm is to have the USB id configurable by the user, which means that the user can change to the Apple ID at will to circumvent any lock-down by Apple.
That way Palm is conforms to the USB requirements and the users can be happy.
Re:Patents (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless USB-IF ties the USB patent license to the USB logo license.
Or USB-IF could revoke the patent license because Palm is not following their regulations. Then Palm can be sued for patent infringement.
Re:To give people an analogous situation (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft has already been taken to court and lost for behavior that is quite similar to what you describe.
Re:Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Or USB-IF could revoke the patent license because Palm is not following their regulations. Then Palm can be sued for patent infringement.
Which'll never happen. Palm may not have the best product now, but they had several years' head start on just about everyone. Can you imagine how many iPhone features are covered by Palm patents?
If Apple sues Palm, or if they start a proxy war through the USB-IF, they might as well move their company from California to East Texas, because they'll spend the rest of their lives in patent litigation.
How do they sync back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Answer: they don't, because iTunes just overwrites the XML file. Apple devices sync back, and so do Palm devices when Apple isn't getting in the way.
Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Hard drive mode support. Almost every other player lets you just view your video/mp3 files on the device as a hard drive and copy files back and forth as you see fit without using ANY software other than your operating system. You want to sync your files? Use iTunes. Nevermind that it's one of the buggiest/bloated/unintuitive/god awful pieces of software I've ever used. You're stuck with it.
Unless you just enable hard drive mode support on the ipod. If you do it shows up as a hard drive just fine. I know it is hard to check a box these days though.
The last time I messed with an iPod it was not possible to directly copy a music file and play it. I had to use iTunes on windows or MacOS (or a barely working hack on *nix) to copy the file.
Re:I remember (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, they "allow" it by providing a human readable, documented XML file which is kept updated by iTunes only for the convenience of third parties (iTunes uses it's own, binary database). I'm not sure what more they could do to "allow" third party access to the iTunes database.
No, Apple doesn't write the sync software for you. Why should they? Write your own.
The point about legacy DRMed music is interesting. Do DRMed files work on a Pre synced through iTunes?
Re:Patents (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you imagine how many iPhone features are covered by Palm patents?
Given that Apple was the first into the whole PDA space with the Newton - remember, they coined the phrase Personal Digital Assistant - I should think that quite a few Palm features are covered by Apple patents. Palm isn't exactly in any financial position to wage a lengthy patent war with Apple. Whereas Apple is sitting on enough cash to buy Palm many times over.
You'd think Palm would go around the whole iTunes sync issue entirely. Just develop software (or customize existing software, like MediaMonkey) that pulls in the existing iTunes library and allows it to sync with the Pre.
Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score:2, Interesting)
So, in airy fairly land of Open Source/Academia, standards are eschewed in favor of pragmatism, while Corporate America, with shrinking revenue streams, is obsessed about the standard?
A few days, in your spare time, off the books? Or would you rather just hack your Vendor/Device ID in five seconds to get it working? Which is cheaper?
How dare those bastards take advantage of extant libraries or programs. Next thing you know, they'll be compiling against Windows libraries and using Internet Explorer to display things.
Non-GPL software piggy backs on GPL software all the time. A large part of the web servers runs on GPL software, and every proprietary web browser is piggy backing on them. It's not sufficient to "piggy back" some software to violate copyright/trademark/whatever. If it were, the only way you could run software is if everything on the system was copyrighted by one entity.
Now, as for this being a USB IF violation, that's an actually valid point. But, to that end, if Palm is stripped of being able to advertise USB devices, so should Apple since clearly Apple's Vendor/Device pairing has nothing to do with iPhone specific quirks. No, Apple intentionally broke working software by misusing the USB specification.
RMS is leader of the Free Software movement. The OSS movement sprung about precisely because there were people interested in Open Software who didn't want to be associated with Free Software ideology; ie, they were more interested in pragmatism than "[Free Software]/Academia" ideology. It's funny you're actually argue for RMS's position and chastising Perens for being more OSS movement oriented.
Re:Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Brief answer: Yes, a mere figment. The Apple Newton is recognizably an ancestor to the current iPhone/iPod touch. The Psion products from the late 80's are more like pocket calculators with an attitude. Apple created the category of PDA's at least a decade too early and dropped it because of the product being commercially untenable at the time. Remarkably they managed to sneak back in under the pretense of creating media players and arrived just as the needed technology and infrastructure matured.
To be less brief in my dismissal of Psion compare the API's and development system that Apple provided for third party developers for the Newton versus what Psion had. The difference was much more than slight.
Re:How do they sync back? (Score:3, Interesting)
If Apple let third party devices to sync back to iTunes then it would be possible for a poorly designed device to cause serious harm to your media library. Supporting such devices in a relatively safe manner is possible but it would be very expensive.
I hear this sort of argument all the time from Apple fans. The thing is, this sounds like Apple insulting their users -- in effect, calling them all dumbasses that need to be restricted in what they can do because in the end they'll blame Apple for things Apple has no fault in.
Perhaps that's true, and Apple fans are largely stupid. Or perhaps Apple fans are largely intelligent and Apple is wrong in being so condescending.
Either way, that argument tells me that Apple does not make products that are aimed at people like me -- intelligent,sophisticated users who want flexibility and freedom.
That, at the root of it, is why I don't, and won't, buy anything Apple and discourage others from doing the same.
"Proxy War" (Score:3, Interesting)
If Apple sues Palm, or if they start a proxy war through the USB-IF
So how is it a "Proxy war" to have a standards body uphold the standards they publish?
Again, this is not about Apple. It's about the meaning of USB-IF, at all, in any context. Do you honestly think it would be a good thing for the whole USB standard to crumble like a house of cards, just to spite your hated Apple? The ironic thing is, it doesn't even end up hurting Apple - just every device that uses USB, anywhere.
Re:Apple's activity is criminal here, Palm's is le (Score:3, Interesting)
You really don't understand what a monopoly is do you?
the USB IF acts to maintain the USB standard - and it features vendor ID codes that are assured (by the specification) to be unique to each individual vendor who uses them.
They *must* act to prevent other companies from just deciding to use a Vendor ID *that does not belong to them* (read: have not licenced to use because the ID has been licenced by someone else, namely Apple).
How on earth did this get +1 informative?
The sole reason the USB IF exists in the first place is to prevent (or correct) issues like this arising, when one company breaks the spec for their own ends.