Apple warns of 3rd party syncing with iTunes

An Apple support ticket this week titled “iTunes: About unsupported third-party digital media players” warned of possible issues when using third party hardware with iTunes. Although this isn’t news in and of itself, as Apple has only let their products sync with iTunes since its existence, it is interesting to see it released right as the Palm Pre came out. Palm was touting this as a feature with the Pre, and it seemed to work really well for those who had it, at first. However, if this announcement from Apple is any clue, I don’t see this feature lasting long at all.

According to Apple:

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

Or, if you want the summed up version, Daring Fireball has what you need. According to them, this paragraph translates to, “Nice iTunes syncing you’ve got, Palm. Be a shame if something happened to it.” I’m going to have to agree with them on that one. Does anyone out there have a Pre that they can text to see if syncing still works on iTunes? I’m guessing it will be broken with the next update.