Palm Pre "iTunes Hack" Detailed By DVD Jon

CNETNate writes "As the reviews of the Palm Pre start to roll in, DVD Jon expands on previous coverage of the Pre showing up in iTunes as some sort of an iPod, by publishing the offending code Palm has used to enabled the feature. As suspected, in regular USB mode, the phone addresses itself as a standard peripheral. But in 'Media Sync' mode, it claims to be an iPod ... from a vendor known as Apple."

Re:How Long Before Apple Files a Lawsuit?

[sys.stdout.write]

I very much doubt this was orchestrated in order to gain publicity. Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by a rogue engineer who wanted his phone to work with iTunes.

Re:DMCA ???

[Gay for Linux]

Their trick, in other words...

Pre: "Knock knock"
Windows: "Whoâ(TM)s there?"
Pre: "iPod."
Windows: "Cool, come in. Hey iTunes, Iâ(TM)ve got an iPod for you."
iTunes: "You donâ(TM)t look like an iPod but if Windows says you are, thatâ(TM)s good enough for me. Smoke some of this music."
Pre: "Kickass."

Re:Apple cannot block and it's not illegal

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

I agree with you completely! On a completely unrelated topic...what is a quid? Is it a type of bird?

Re:Apple cannot block and it's not illegal

[harryandthehenderson]

A Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination [wikipedia.org]

Re:DMCA ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, the text encoding in Windows is terrible.

Re:Poor Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like MrEricSir is down one iPod Nano.

Re:Umm... why the fuss?

[d'fim]

Right now Verizon has exclusive rights to the Pre.

Re:Umm... why the fuss?

[X0563511]

It's like MAD [wikipedia.org], only with patents!

Re:Apple cannot block and it's not illegal

[maxume]

I take it you thought the virus in Independence Day was awesome?

Re:DMCA ???

[sootman]

Reader: Knock, knock
Slashdot: Who's there?
Reader: Unicode.
Slashdot: Fuck off.

Back on topic, John Gruber has covered this pretty well here [daringfireball.net] and here. [daringfireball.net]

"But is it illegal? And would it be illegal for Apple to take countermeasures against it? My guess is "no" to both questions... I don't think WebOS's media sync is a mistake on Palm's part because it is wrong, I think it's a mistake because it is risky and unnecessary."

Re:Apple is not a Police Officer

[R3d M3rcury]

What's the charge? "Impersonating an Apple Device"? What law is that exactly...

If there were a law, these people [engadget.com] would have been arrested.

On second thought, maybe we do need such a law... :^)