Edible Apple

With the Palm Pre hitting select stores tomorrow, Jon Jonansen, who you might know better as DVD John, gave us some more information on how exactly the Pre is able to sync up with iTunes.

As I speculated in my previous blog post on Palm Pre Sync and now confirmed by the image above, when the Pre is in “Media Sync” mode it identifies itself as an Apple iPod. However, it’s only the Mass Storage interface that identifies itself as an iPod. The root USB node (IOUSBDevice) still identifies the device as a Palm Pre (not visible in the image above). This means that Apple can very easily update iTunes to block the Pre.

Again, why would Palm enable iTunes syncing if Apple can so easily block it in the future?  In an earlier post on the topic, we wrote:

What happens when Palm Pre users accustomed to using iTunes to sync up content to their Pre suddenly discover that iTunes no longer recognizes their device?  Will Palm and Apple then get involved in a cat-and-mouse game where each side continuously issues software updates in attempts to stifle the actions of the other?  What a horrible situation for users to get stuck in the middle of, and it makes absolutely zero sense that Palm would subject its users to that.