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.<p>Apple's being an ass for not letting third-party music players legitimately interface with iTunes.
The previous conversation:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=706403" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=706403</a><p>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.<p>iTunes stores <i>all</i> 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.
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.