The back and forth between Apple and Palm concerning the Palm Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes finally may have come to end. Palm yesterday pushed an OS update to all Pixi and Palm handsets that does not support the feature.
The Palm Pre was released with the ability to masquerade as an iPhone and in turn sync with iTunes. Apple succeeded in blocking the function a number of times, but in the past, Palm has promptly retaliated with a fix of its own that restored the feature.
In August, Palm filed a complaint with the USB Implementers Forum, a nonprofit founded by companies that developed the Universal Serial Bus specification, charging that Apple was hampering competition and infringing on its trade by not allowing the Pre to connect to iTunes.
Fast forward to September, when the USB-IF released a letter to both companies that sided with Apple. The letter not only cleared Apple of any wrongdoing, but went on to say that Palm was violating its USB-IF membership agreement by using Apple’s vendor ID number so its devices could masquerade as an Apple device.
Palm put everything on the line when it developed the Pre, hoping to put up a real competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Since the launch of the Pre, Palm has released another handset, the Palm Pixi, a scaled-down Pre based on the company’s webOS.
Amazon and Wal-Mart have already lowered the price of the Pixi to $24.99, a 75 percent drop from its original price $99, after only three days on the market. Additionally, Amazon is selling the Palm Pre for $79. Both offers require a two-year contract with Sprint, which sells the Pixi for $99 and the Pre for $149.
