Following months of back-and-forth between Palm and Apple over the Palm Pre’s “Media Sync” feature, which enabled the handset to masquerade as an iPod in order to sync with iTunes, the latest update to the Pre’s webOS fails to restore the functionality, perhaps signaling an end to the dispute. According to Boy Genius Report, webOS 1.3.1 does not include iTunes support, although the company’s last webOS release, 1.2.1, did include a fix for iTunes syncing with iTunes 9 and 9.0.1.
Apple later released iTunes 9.0.2, which again broke Palm’s Media Sync functionality. USB Implementers Forum executive director Traci Donnell told Palm in September that using Apple’s Vendor ID to falsely identify its devices as iPods and circumvent iTunes’ restrictions was “specifically precluded” by the USB-IF’s policies.
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