Why the hubbub about Prē syncing with iTunes?

In case you haven’t heard, Palm’s forthcoming, multitasking, comes-with-slide-out-keyboard, gonna-change-the-world smartphone is called the Prē. Much like “Mac OS ex” vs. “Mac OS 10″, nobody’s quite sure how to pronounce the name, but many bloggers have weighed in regarding Palm’s announcement that the device will be supported as though it were a native device in iTunes: “Palm media sync is a feature of webOS that synchronizes seamlessly with iTunes, giving you a simple and easy way to transfer DRM-free music, photos and videos to your Palm Pre.” Included in that statement are two key points: 1) The device somehow mimics an iPod (anybody think Apple is happy about that?), and 2) DRM-free. Let’s take a look at both of these, and see if they stand up:

The most intelligent discussion of this press release can be found in nanocr.eu, which is the blog of Jon Lech Johansen. He looks at the details of some technical details regarding the how of Palm’s Prē syncing. But what about the practical implications? How much of the media in an average user’s library comes from non-DRM sources? Blackberry users face a similar conundrum; there is software to sync content in your iTunes library to a Blackberry, but that content can’t be from the iTunes store. So Blackberry users are stuck buying and then ripping CDs (how…last century!). Granted, there is a fairly high percentage of mp3 encoded music in the average library, but what about the real killer: video? Most iTunes users are content to purchase/rent their TV Shows and Movies from the iTunes store, rather than rip them from DVDs (although, thanks go out to Jon Lech Johansen for the tools that let us do that, too!). This means Prē users are stuck with a big wide screen full of nothing…which makes you wonder what purpose this Palm media sync serves in the first place! Is this just another smartphone/mp3 player integration?

If Palm really wants to provide a compelling media experience, they need to somehow cobble together a complete replacement for the iTunes/iPod ecosystem. Buy on iTunes, sync to your iPod, watch anywhere. It sounds ridiculously simple…but so far nobody has really been able to copy it. Zune marketplace? A distant second. Amazon has some great offerings in their mp3 music store and Amazon Video on Demand offerings, but they lack the integration with a media player. iTunes as a media management program is not incredibly complicated; rather than try to infiltrate the iTunes ecosystem, Palm should attempt to build a competitor by partnering with other media providers. That way, users could purchase content and then sync it to their Prēs. As it is, Palm has been excruciatingly specific on the compatibility with iTunes: “Compatible with iTunes 8.1.1.” Given the fact that Palm has likely done some slightly underhanded reverse engineering to achieve this compatibility, it is likely that iTunes 8.1.2 will break this sync capability.

Tight integration is really the secret sauce for Apple—slick interfaces are great, but without substance, you don’t have a killer device. iTunes compatibility for the Prē makes great PR copy, but let’s be real: this is hardly a sustainable feature. How can Palm sell this as a feature when it could be broken tomorrow? And are they seriously going to maintain this hostile environment by continually reverse engineering Apple’s iTunes syncing? People who buy the device may expect it to work with iTunes, so if media syncing keeps breaking every two or three months, it’s no longer a feature. It’s a nuisance, and will leave Palm with a smartphone that is missing crucial media capabilities that its rivals have working fine (albeit outside the iTunes family). Blackberry owns the market for dull-grey-suits-who-only-check-email, and Palm has clearly targeted the Prē at consumers. How long will the average consumer overlook non-functional media capabilities in their smartphone?

Read [Palm Press Release]