Hasta La Gadget!

Considering that the Palm Pre was designed in part by ex-Apple employees, and that its iTunes syncing function works by pretending to be an iPod, it was predictable that Apple would try to shoot it down.

The Big Fruit today released a very thinly veiled attack on the Pre’s iTunes capabilities, in the form of a support note. While it never mentions the Pre by name, it’s clear what they’re talking about here. 

“Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.”

In other words: we’re going to do our best to break the Pre’s syncing with our next iTunes update. When I’ve spoken to Palm, though, they’ve said in a similarly thinly veiled fashion that they’re ready for Apple to do something like this.

Let the cat and mouse game begin.