NEW YORK [AP, 07/24/2009] — Palm Inc.'s Pre phone can again connect to Apple's iTunes software — just a week after Apple Inc. shut it out.
A software update delivered automatically to the phones re-enables the transfer of music, photos and video from iTunes, according to a Palm blog post made late Thursday.
The $200 Pre launched in early June as a competitor to Apple Inc.'s iPhone, and became the first non-Apple device that could connect directly to iTunes. Apple crippled that function with an iTunes update last week, saying Pres were "falsely pretending to be iPods."
An Apple spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The iTunes battle is part of a larger rivarly developing between Apple and Palm, whose chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, once was an executive at Apple and oversaw the iPod. The Pre includes a "multi-touch" screen like Apple's iPhone, which lets users do things like pinch the display to zoom in and out.
Apple has obviously been trying to get away with "tying" iTunes software and iPod hardware. From a legal perspective, Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., 504 U.S. 451 (1992) shows us that the antitrust prohibition against tying arrangements – classically enunciated in Standard Oil Co. of California v. United States, 337 U.S. 293 (1949), and United States v. Loew's, Inc., 371 U.S. 38 (1962) – is still relatively robust.
Clearly, there is no legitimate reason for Apple, as a vendor of iTunes software (i.e., digital recordings of music performances) to care whether the client device seeking a download of such software is an iPod, is "pretending to be an iPod," or neither of the above, so long as the same license fee is paid for each download.
From a technical perspective, Palm should always be able to engineer a way around each new barrier Apple deploys to "fence in" its iTunes software (unless perhaps Apple goes to the lenght of incorporating some sort of "true iPod authentication" feature using high-security encryption into each (new) iPod. Maybe somebody should just bring the tying suit now, and forestall such shenanigans.)
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