Hasta La Gadget!

Oh, and one more thing: Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync. That’s right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).

John Traynor

VP, Business Products

So states the official Palm blog post on the new Palm Pre WebOS 1.1 update, and if it isn’t blatant baiting, we don’t know what it is. Not only have the Pre engineers worked around the block Apple put in place to stop the Pre from “syncing seamlessly with iTunes”, but also Palm’s VP of business products uses Steve Jobs’ catch phrase to announce it.

This got me thinking about the real reasons for this cat-and-mouse game. While it’s certainly handy to have the Pre work just like an iPod when you plug it into iTunes, the third party solutions are far from clunky. We have a feeling that this is all about the PR. It’s known that the Pre team contains a lot of ex-Apple engineers. It looks like the marketing department also has some Apple juice, and is capable of keeping the publicity ball in the air at all times.

What’s certain is that the only people being hurt in this slap-fest are the customers. Yes, iTunes 8.2.2 will block things again, and surely webOS 1.1.1 will fix it, but in between are a whole lot of innocent Pre owners who are scared to plug in their handsets lest the music stop working. Is that a good idea?

Palm webOS 1.1 enhances support for enterprise — and beyond [Official Palm Blog]

Software update information for Palm Pre Sprint p100eww [Palm]

See Also:

• Sync Your Palm Pre with iTunes. Again
• Snap! Palm Pre Will Sync Seamlessly With iTunes
• Apple on Palm Pre iTunes Sync: ‘Watch Out’
• iTunes 8.2.1 Cripples Palm Pre Sync