Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync 290
adeelarshad82 writes "It's been just a little over a month since Apple blocked iTunes sync with Palm Pre, and now Apple takes that strategy one step further by blocking Snow Leopard sync with Palm-OS powered smartphones. Even though Palm has officially retired Palm OS and is now focusing hard on its next-generation WebOS in the Palm Pre, the company is still selling Palm OS-powered smartphones; two current models are the Treo Pro on Sprint and the Centro."
Trollbait (Score:5, Informative)
s/blocking/dropping support for/
Nothing, IIRC, is stopping Palm from doing the heavy lifting required to support their devices in OS X except Palm.
Palm dropped support (Score:5, Informative)
Palm dropped support for this YEARS ago. You can hardly blaim apple for not taking over support of a product that the manufacturer declared dead.
Re:Trollbait (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the article even points out that Apple dropped support for syncing with PowerPC Macs, so it's not like Apple is only dropping support for competitors; they're just weeding out anything non-recent. The argument seems to be that somehow dropping PPC support is acceptable, because they've been discontinued, but PalmOS is still an OS on phones currently sold, so couldn't be explained by the same "it's just being dropped because it's old and dead" logic. But Palm itself basically declared Palm OS dead [cnet.com] before Apple dropped support.
You could argue it's a bit premature, but it doesn't take an anticompetitive explanation for that: Apple has a long history of dropping support for stuff that was becoming obsolete in a way that many commentators considered a bit premature, starting with their decision to drop floppy support.
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Informative)
If Palm want a way to sync on OS X they should write the software themselves. Oh wait, they did and discontinued it.
Re:Palm dropped support (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up.
Palm hasn't updated Hotsync for the Mac in at least a decade. If it in fact worked under Leopard it was a miracle, as I doubt anyone from Palm even gave it a glance.
Mac Palm users almost all typically ended up getting Mark/Space Missing Sync for Palm OS. I was a late adopter for that, and I did it in 2005. At the time I was helping people with support on Palm OS devices, and the answer to any Mac sync problems was to dump hotsync and get Missing Sync.
To claim that Apple dropped support is pretty ridiculous, and just inflammatory. What next, an article on how Apple refuses to support running 10.6 on a Mac II from the late 80's?
Re:Trollbait (Score:3, Informative)
They are still selling them though right?
Re:Stay classy (Score:2, Informative)
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"? Apparently, Apple believes that all technologies that they don't sell you themselves is "legacy technology".
You have to really have Apple's dick in your mouth to defend this type of behavior from a corporation that has benefited so much from customer loyalty. At some point, one has to realize that Apple does not have one's best interest in mind, no matter how cool it makes one feel to display their nameplate.
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Informative)
Which is a niche. Treo sales have been in steady decline ever since the 700p, and that was 2-3 years ago. Contrary to the summary, the Treo Pro does not run Palm OS - it's Windows Mobile.
Users can still use the far superior Missing Sync, and Palm could always update Hotsync. This is a non-issue.
Re:Platform Politics (Score:2, Informative)
What does Apple have a monopoly over? Certainly they are not the only company to make computers or Operating systems.
Apple users can skip the new OS and buy an equivalent piece of hardware that runs MS Windows instead, or even install Windows on their Mac; these facts means Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing like anticompetitiveness to turn me off.
You seem misinformed, which is understandable given the misleading blurb linked to in this story. Here's what happened. Apple made iSync and told phone makers to use it to synch with OS X. Palm ignored them and continued to use a really, really old Palm Desktop program as their officially suggested method, but refused to support it. Apple, not wanting PalmOS phone users to be dissuaded from using Macs and thinking Palm's unsupported solution was crap, took it upon themselves to write iSync plug-ins for PalmOS. Now Apple has dropped those plug-ins. That's not even close to anti-competitive.
It's sad, too. I was considering getting a Pre...
The Pre doesn't use PalmOS and so is not affected.
Apple is a moving target (Score:3, Informative)
Apple is run by a guy who saw employees staring to legendary macs and decided to "throw them away" to computer museum saying they should look to future instead of past.
Like or not, that is the attitude and in fact, if you ask me, it always pays off.
Just an entry from my system.log
" Warning once: This application, or a library it uses, is using NSQuickDrawView, which has been deprecated. Apps should cease use of QuickDraw and move to Quartz"
In Apple land, if you ignore it enough time, one day your application will simply won't launch or crash (informatively) and of course, that time, blogs are open handedly waiting for your whining and slashdot submission :)
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Informative)
(Actually: They bought a piece of software Apple discontinued in the late 90's*, updated it a bit, then discontinued it themselves about 5 years later. Which is around 5 years ago at this point.)
*Claris Organizer, if you are interested.
Re:Palm dropped support (Score:2, Informative)
Also violating the USB Hardware Vendor contract for Spoofing the vendor id.
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Informative)
There is support for Vista here: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/32859_en.html [palm.com]
MissingSync (Score:3, Informative)
I actually thought the Apple Palm Sync stuff was horrid and I use MissingSync on my 10.4 MBP. It was far, far better. Also I never liked Palm Desktop, it was a pain and always broke easily for me.
Re:Stay classy (Score:2, Informative)
A few corrections on your errors in your post.
1. Apple did not block the Pre. Apple modified iTunes to not allow a vendor ID spoofing. Palm's low budget hack is what caused the issue with the Pre. Apple simply fixed an issue in their iTunes synch and closed a potential security/legal liability hole at the same time since a device spoofing an iPod could potentially be corrupted by iTunes when it attempts to update firmware on the device.
2. Apple dropping support for Palm synch is because Palm dropped their support of these legacy Palm devices years ago. Apple simply decided to no longer support Palm devices that Palm no longer supports. There is nothing nefarious in that decision. If there is then there must also must be something nefarious in Palm's decision not to support their own products.
3. There was nothing anti-competitive in what Apple did in either of these circumstances. In both instances Palm has showed a laziness in supporting their own products. If Palm won't properly support their own products then there is no reason Apple should do it for them.