Hasta La Gadget!

You should be refilling that popcorn bucket right about now. While we thought the next round of the Pre / iTunes syncing fiasco would probably be something simple like Apple releasing another quick patch, Palm has stepped it up a notch by complaining to the USB Implementers Forum over what it sees is “improper use of the Vendor ID number” by the gang at Cupertino. What the company means is that when an ID is applied for, a form is signed that states:

“Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.”

The implication here is that Palm believes Apple is violating this stature by disallowing certain Vendor IDs — namely, Palm’s — from using iTunes. So how’d Palm manage to “fix” that syncing hole Apple managed to fill? From the looks of it, by misrepresenting its own Vendor ID, so that the Pre now shows up as a iPod / mass storage device made by Apple (ID 0x05ac) as opposed to one by Palm (ID 0x083) — hence the complaint. Of course, lying about your own ID would seem to break with the aforementioned rule, too, so what we’re left here is some muddled grey area and Palm apparently being okay with fudging some data to correct what it sees is an injustice. If anyone’s curious, DVD Jon points out that the root USB Node is still identified as “Pre,” so we very likely could see another round of these shenanigans in the not-too-distant future.

Finally, now’s as good of a time as any to take a look at some of the peripheral casualties from this war of attrition. In an essay on his personal site that’s been circulating the interwebs, Marc Deslauriers outlines the pangs he and the Linux community have felt over the years trying to use iPods on the open source platform, surmising that Apple is intentionally and repeatedly seeking ways to block non-iTunes programs from syncing in any way with its devices. This story is far from over, and as ugly as it looks now, it’s probably only gonna get worse.

[Via Digg and Pre Central]

Read – Marc Deslauriers, “Goodbye Apple”
Read – Palm’s lodges complaint with USB IF
Read – USB Vendor ID application
Read – Palm Pre USB hack confirmed

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

Palm complains about Apple to USB governing body, while Pre / iTunes sync “fix” is explained originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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

Some healthy escalation in the Palm vs. Apple iTunes scuffle: Though Apple tried to block the Pre from syncing with iTunes, Palm has struck back with WebOS update 1.1, which un-breaks Pre-iTunes coupling and adds some great new features.

There are a ton of minor fixes to the Pre, which you can read about in the changelog below. The big standout is re-enabled iTunes compatibility. As Palm says in their blog, “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).” How they managed to hold back from adding in “…Bitches!” at the end of that, we’ll never know. But there are a bunch of other sweet new features, especially “person reminders,” which let you set individual reminders for each person in your contact list (imagine a buddy calls, and a message pops up, reminding you to, say, congratulate him—or, if you’re like me, to ask him to pay you back the money he owes you). So cool! [Palm]

Update: Confirmed.

Version information

* Version: webOS 1.1.0
* Release date: 23 July 2009
* Configuration: Sprint 1.7

New applications
NFL Mobile Live from Sprint

* Watch or listen to live NFL games right on your phone.

Feature changes to existing applications
Calendar

* For Calendar accounts you create on your phone, the default reminder intervals are 15 minutes for timed events and one day for all-day events. A few notes:
o This change applies only if software version 1.1 was on your phone when you bought it, or if you did a partial or full erase on your phone and signed in to your Palm profile again after updating to version 1.1. If you simply update your phone to software version 1.1, the default reminder intervals in Calendar do not change.
o This change applies only to Calendar events you create on your phone, not to events that are synchronized to your phone from an online account.

Camera

* The Photos application opens more quickly when launched from the camera.

Clock

* Enhanced support for time zones in Clock.
* When you set an alarm in Clock, an alarm icon appears in the notification area at the bottom of the screen. Tap the icon to display alarm details. Alarm details include the following:
o If the alarm is set for the current day, the alarm time appears.
o If the alarm is set for tomorrow, the alarm time and “Tomorrow” appear.
o If the alarm is set for any day other than today or tomorrow, the day of the alarm appears.

Contacts

* Friends added and deleted in Facebook on the web are now correctly added and deleted in the Facebook account in Contacts on the phone.
* As soon as you create or makes changes to a Google contact on the phone, the phone begins a sync to reflect those changes in Google on the web.

Email

* When you set up an Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) email account, you can enter the mail server name as an IP address.
* Support for self-signed certificates with multiple common names has been added.
* When you reply to an email in HTML format using an EAS account, the formatting of the sender’s original message is now retained in the reply.
* Palm’s EAS implementation now supports several Exchange ActiveSync Policies, including the following:
o PIN/Password Required. IT administrators can ensure a password is assigned to the phone. Administrators can also specify the minimum length of the password.
o Inactivity timeout. IT administrators can ensure that an inactive phone goes into a locked state after a certain time period. You cannot set a higher timeout interval for your phone, but you can set a shorter interval.
o Remote Wipe. IT Administrators can remotely erase all data on a phone from their Exchange console. IT administrators can also have the device wipe itself if an incorrect password is entered more than a specified number of times.

Messaging

* You can enter emoticons in new text, multimedia, and instant messages. Emoticons also display in incoming messages.
* If you set the phone to use a 24-hour time format, the message times shown in a conversation appear in 24-hour time.
* If you go into an IM account’s preferences, all the options are available even if you are signed in to the account. You can tap Remove Account to delete the account, enter a new password to update the password, or tap Sign In to sign in with your updated password. Previously, you needed to sign out of the account before you could use these preferences.
* When you delete an IM account, a message now appears asking you to confirm that you want to delete the account.

Phone

* When multiple missed call notifications are displayed on the dashboard, the time of the most recent missed call is shown.
* When you slide the ringer switch off, a bell icon with a slash is displayed. Previously, the icon was a speaker with a slash.
* In Phone Preferences, the Show Contact Matches preference is now turned on by default. When typing on the keyboard in the phone app, the phone automatically displays both the numbers being entered and any contact matches for the characters entered.

System

* Improved functionality of person reminders. A person reminder is a notification that you create in a contact entry. The notification appears when you have a call or exchange an email, text, multimedia, or IM message with a contact.
* Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).
* When you enter a search term in Card view or the Launcher to perform a universal search, if you select the Wikipedia web search option, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.

Web

* You can now use symbols from the symbols table (Sym Sym key icon + key) when you enter text into a web page dialog box.
* If you have a page open at a certain zoom level, leave the page, and use the onscreen Back Web Back button button or the back gesture to return to the page, the zoom level is restored right away.
* A new gesture is now available that works the same as the onscreen Forward Web Forward button button. To move forward through open web pages, make a short swipe left to right in the gesture area.
* When using the Wikipedia drop-down search feature in the address bar, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.
* When you tap a link, the link appears highlighted to indicate it has been activated, even if it takes a moment for the linked page to open.

YouTube

* After you enter search text, you can tap the Search Search icon icon to perform a search. You still have the option of pressing Enter Enter key to perform the search.

Palm’s webOS has never been a platform to stir the interest of the casual gamer. While there are many advantages to being built around HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, those tools don’t excite game developers who need direct access to advanced graphics hardware to render animations smoothly. Unfortunately, as described by Craig A. Hunter, a self proclaimed “pretty dedicated iPhone developer” who’s been poking around the WebOS SDK, Palm does not provide the environment to develop serious games or the kind of sophisticated apps users now expect from their handhelds. Chief among his concerns is lack of OpenGL access despite the hardware supporting it. Palm also limits devs to a 4Hz sampling of raw accelerometer data, far short of the 20Hz minimum required for games utilizing tilt control. In his summation:

With such amazing software capabilities flourishing on the iPhone, Palm can’t afford to wait a year while they make the transition from web apps to native apps in their SDK. Palm might have had a chance against the 2007 Apple SDK, but not the 2009 version. Not even close. With this limitation, webOS will not be taken seriously by consumers who place importance on games or sophisticated third party apps.

Of course Palm, now with its deep Apple roots isn’t blind to the issue. In fact, the kids at PreCentral have uncovered a Palm job listing from June 29th seeking Game Frameworks Engineers who will “design, implement, debug, and optimize frameworks for game development.” So while the beta release of the webOS SDK might be limited, we’ll key on the word beta for now. Remember, Super Monkey Ball wasn’t built in a day — it took a bit more than 365 of them before being offered after the launch of the original iPhone.

Read — Craig A. Hunter
Read — Palm game engineer listing

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software

webOS SDK bemoaned by iPhone developer as Palm seeks game API engineers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Success! For all you developers hankering to get in on the webOS and Pre action (or at least see the action), your wishes have come true. Today Palm announced on its corporate blog that it would be making the Mojo SDK beta and accompanying documentation available to anyone who is interested… effective immediately. Furthermore, the company says it will begin taking submissions for new applications in the fall — so if you’re planning on getting something in, it’s time to start cranking. For those of you haven’t already torrented the previously available leak of the kit (or just want some real docs), this news should be music to your ears… er, eyes. Well what are you waiting for? Get downloading!

Read – Palm blog post
Read – Palm’s developer site

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm makes Mojo SDK beta and docs publicly available, officially opens developer floodgates originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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