Update: Today, July 24t4, Palm struck back - releasing a fix that reenables Pre use on iTunes. But just how this did it is interesting - and the war of word between Apple and Palm has stepped up to a new level. Read this to learn more.
I think this is another in a line of mistakes that Apple has made regarding the iPod and iPhone. Apple today released a new version of iTunes which now prevents the Palm Pre from syncing as it does with an iPod or iPhone.
I understand that Apple has to control its ecosystem - but every Palm Pre user is ostensibly also a user of iTunes and has purchased music from the iTunes Music Store. Apple, remember when you only made iTunes and iPods for Mac users? Why should this be much different? The marketing effect of enabling this will generate more demand for iPhone as the Pre really hasn't hurt your iPhone marketshare at all.
On a similar point, why has Apple made it impossible to recover your own music library when your computer crashes? I recently lost my entire hard drive on my MacBook Pro and had to rebuild it from scratch. I had my entire music library on my iPhone, but I could not simply rebuild it from that backup. While I eventually found a 3rd party solution, why can't Apple do this for us? It definitely gives the user another reason to trust Apple as music provider and would encourage more sales from the Music Store.
Finally, why give Microsoft any reason to crow about it's "It's a PC" ads. This seems like a gross miscalculation and just empowers a competitor, if in fact it is true. Anyone care to comment?
Steve
