Apple disables iTunes on Palm Pre | Hacker News Reader

Apple disables iTunes on Palm Pre

smh.com.au

14 pointsxelfer25 comments

iTunes is cross-platform, widely in use, and comes with a built-in music store. If I bought a non-Apple music player, I'd much prefer it to support iTunes than to come with its own music management software.

Apple's being an ass for not letting third-party music players legitimately interface with iTunes.

(though to be honest, I would much prefer my music player to require NO software. I love that my iriver is just USB storage when hooked up. If I wanted to sync music, I'd like the choice to do whatever I want.)

You can select the music you want through playlists using iTunes. I find dragging and dropping audio files (usb storage) very un-intuitive .

I already using Unison to sync my music between my various computers. I would much rather have a usb device that I can just use with unison then have to add another program to my computer-use-flow.

So how do you manage playlists?

I...don't?

I have a now playing queue that repeats and shuffles. (I actually use windows media player to listen to music. Because it er, lets me queue up a few hours of music and then plays it. I've used winamp, foobar and itunes, but I really don't need any features beyond "plays whatever I drag/drop in".)

Okay, fair enough. Glad that works for you. But you should understand that some people (such as myself) do want playlists, and that making MP3 players just appear as USB drives (rather than syncing with a client) would make this a pain.

Are m3u files enough? Or do you actually want things like smart playlists?

Because I think everyone supports m3us as well. I recognize other people use their computers differently. I'm just kind of disappointed that so many things are bound up in proprietary databases or formats.

I agree. In fact, I thought one of the reasons Apple was contesting for non-DRM songs was so users could be free to choose their media players. Sort of a... sign of good faith if you will.

I guess I learned something today.

Apple only made the move to non-DRM songs when Amazon opened their DRM-free music store. There's no good faith in anything Apple has done recently - as a Mac user I'm disappointed with how draconian Apple has gotten as of late.

I believe there is an API of some sort that allows 3rd party players to integrate with iTunes. The Pre didn't bother to go that route, instead choosing to emulate an iPod.

Although it's possible that the 3rd party devices are not first-class devices the way an iPod is (in fact, knowing Apple, that's almost certainly the case).

Apple makes money off selling iPods, not selling songs through iTunes. Why would they want to make other music players better by writing software for them?

hey it would just be nice if they opened this up, standards help everybody in the long run.

standards help everybody in the long run

Well, except for Apple.

Apple being an ass for storing the library in an open xml document any other third party client can read? like Nokia has been doing for years?

Don't you think it's completly rational what Apple is doing here?

Not really. If I had a Pre and was using it with iTunes, Apple intentionally crippling it would make me less likely to consider Apple products in the future. Come to think of it, it's having that effect on me anyway, even though I'm not affected at all.

Apple is certainly within their rights to cripple their consumer applications in any way they want, but it does not make me think they're looking out for my best interests as a user.

The previous conversation:

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=706403

I agree with the thoughts on the other story more. Palm hacked the Pre in a bad way, tried to make it emulate an iPod. I think that Apple ought to open up iTunes more, but I understand why they don't, and because they offer an alternative syncing method for other devices, Palm's being underhanded here was unprofessional.

iTunes stores all of its music in neat folders. It's not hard to sync that folder directly. It's created in the same directory every time. Couldn't Palm just use that? What's the advantage to doing it through a proprietary program when the current storage system is open and doesn't need hacking?

Honestly, this is no big surprise. I can definitely see the benefit for Palm providing syncing support, but if they thought it was going to last very long they were only fooling themselves.

Sounds like a good opportunity for someone to undermine iTunes, or at least make a decent music synchronizing app for competing smart phones.

It seems that Doubletwist is doing just that, and I think that hthey're going through iTunes' api, so it seems to just work from version to version. Either that or they're doing a fine just keeping up to date on things.

Doubletwist has promise but was a bit buggy last time I tried it a few months ago. Maybe it is worth another shot

The Songbird guys should talk to Palm, and vice versa.

I currently sync my music to my Pre via iTunes. All of my music is tied up in it, so it's convenient. I didn't think it would last, but I can hold off on an iTunes upgrade until Palm patches. Ad nauseum, I'm sure.

Apple is trying to be Microsoft, then why there is so much hate about Microsoft not for Apple?

Fuck Apple.

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