http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2009/07/apple_to_palm_i.html

Apple To Palm: It's On. The Pre Is Locked Out Of iTunes

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 15

Reports are coming in that Apple’s latest update to its iTunes software has locked out Palm’s Pre. Precentral had the first reports on the matter that I saw, and now Apple is confirming the matter itself: “iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of important bug fixes,” says Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. “It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.”

No word from Palm though I’ve seen a spokeswoman there quoted as saying the company is looking into the matter.

This is not a big surprise given how the two companies have been growling at each other over such things as touch screen technology and so on. Its unfortunate for Palm Pre users who may have a lot of their music in iTunes, whether on a Mac or a Windows PC, but it’s not painful necessarily, just inconvenient. There’s an application out there called DoubleTwist, which debuted early last year that lets you manage all your media across your many devices. There’s also the option of not updating iTunes.

I’m expecting a back-and-forth battle between Apple and Palm on this. Give it a few days and Palm will probably have a workaround announced because it has probably planned for this.

If it becomes a back-and-forth, it would recall a somewhat similar back-and-forth in 2004 pitting Apple against RealNetworks. (I wrote about it at the time for another publication.) RealNetworks mistake at the time was in trying to rally people on the Web to its cause by manufacturing outrage. People were indeed outraged, but not at Apple. The lesson for Palm? Don’t fight this battle in public.

Update: Just got a statement from Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox. “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider.”

I wonder if Palm will be able to fool the Apple software again.

They should practice what they preach.

i'm not surprised that apple did this but i am surprised they admit it so publicly.

Meh, I can't say I care for Itunes anyway. Putting media on my D2 is much less annoying than trying to put media on a family member's ipod for them. Syncing and syncing profiles feels like such a useless process to me. I can see how it can be nice, but only if you never lose your profile (like we did during a reformat).

Still, what's so bad about plugging it into a computer through USB and having it be read as a flash device?

or palm could buy licenses to sync with itunes and not reverse engineer its way in (which is illegal in the US).  

I will say though they do  need to watch their step in online music sales where they have a strangle hold. I think what has been saving them is despite being the worlds largets seller of music now, they still do not make up a monopolistic % of total music sales other retailers walmart and amazon still control enough on the market.

or do you dislike the vertical integration of the itunes store itunes ipod? they dont force you to keep your music there you can move to other jukboxes or if its older protected media just burn it to  CD itunes strips its own drm as many times as you want it to. (play lists can only be burned 5 times, but you can always make another with the same thing). so they are not holding you hostage to use their software. so you can still get music from the itunes store to the palm pre

or do you have a problem with how appstore apps wont work on competitors devices, or may not work on older hardware? I dont see why you would expect something different when older hardware is unable to handle or lacks features to use newer hardware. 

or do you dislike how they tie the OS to the hardware? or provide extra functionality that MS can not due to law suites (things like built in pdf viewer and in Europe web browser)  

unless they are hurting the consumer why file against apple? are you upset you cant own a mac? is your inability to figure out how to move music out of itunes hurting you in some way? do you just hate the ipod? 

Im not im only surprised they have not sued palm for reverse engineering to get it to work with itunes yet. illegal and a violation of the eula, its not like there are not other ways to get to the music,  most of them vary easy. 

Uhm.. can't palm make an own sync app? That's cheap to piggyback on the succes of iTunes...

sorry i did take it a bit far, it was more i was implying jealousy of the brad.... fanboys have an unfortunate habit of lashing out unnecessarily, and as an apple fan boy (not quite as hardcore as back in the PPC days) I do that from time to time.

It was  a dig that cheapens my argument, and again sorry for that, i should spend a second and read over my stuff before posting and try and edit that stuff out more vigilantly in my mac related postings 

http://gizmodo.com/5315682/how-to-get-music-onto-your-palm-pre-now-that-itunes-hates-you

f you're one of those unfortunate Pre users that updated to iTunes 8.2.1 without seeing our warning, there are two options. You could either downgrade to iTunes 8.2, or use one of these alternative apps and future-proof yourself.

The problem with downloading to iTunes 8.2 from 8.2.1 is that isn't quite as straightforward as replacing the iTunes app. You have to replace some other support files. The easier way is to use one of these four options. And, you have the freedom to update iTunes to any future version without worrying about whether or not it'll mess up Pre syncing.

1) doubleTwist, by DVD Jon. [Download]

doubleTwist lets you access your iTunes Library in that you can see all the music and playlists (even smart ones) you've already established. Once you connect your Pre in USB mode, all you have to do is drag playlists or individual songs over to the Pre to have it sync. There's no library view, as in you can't drill down into artists, so you should organize your songs into playlists you want to sync inside iTunes first.

The downside of this method is that there's no progress bar so you can't see how much of your sync is done. The syncing process also isn't foolproof, and froze on me mid-sync. But it does have the ability to import YouTube videos, which is kinda awesome. And, it doesn't support the actual playlist function on the Pre, so your songs are going to be in one big pile. (You can sift through Artists, Albums, and Genres, of course.)

Update: The Windows version has automatic playlist sync (screenshot here), and the Mac is getting it this fall. What I meant to say was, the playlist support doesn't work on the Pre side, not to be confused with the playlist support on the computer side. Jon of doubleTwist tells me that the Pre doesn't actually support playlists in non-iPod mode right now. Hopefully that'll come some time in the future now that the iTunes sync is becoming an issue. Thanks Jon!

Best all-around experience since this is a media-manager in itself

Doesn't support playlists, and lack of progress bar when syncing

2) Just dragging music over into the media folder

One feature of iTunes that not many people know about is its ability to just drag and drop songs from iTunes the app to any location. So if you open up iTunes to the playlist, select all the songs inside the playlist and drag it into the Pre's USB drive.

Drawback to this method is that it's still one-way sync (you can't uncheck or check a playlist to sync or de-sync easily), so you'll have to clean things up yourself after your sync. It has the same no-playlist support problem as doubleTwist

Easiest method

Bare bones: no playlist support, no song management

3) iTunes Sync on Windows [Download]

It's essentially a very simple version of doubleTwist, where you can select playlists one by one and sync them over to the Pre while it's in USB drive mode. This doeshave a progress meter, but it's Windows-only.

Progress meter is a plus

Windows-only

4) iTuneMyWalkman [Download]

Mac-only, but it creates a M3U playlist when you're syncing music.

There are other utilities, of course, but one of these four should be enough to get you started. If you have one that does something better than the ones here, feel free to share them in the comments.

Playlist support!

Mac-only

Update: Commenters are also recommending Mediamonkey, Missing Sync and Salling Media Sync. You can give those a try as well.

short round up, and you could write some script if you know what your doing

Actually reverse engineering is legal in the US as long as you have legally obtained the product and are not under any area-specific legal provisions.  Lawsuits typically happen after reverse engineering takes place and the suspect runs afoul of a patent held by the owners of the original product.