Loading ...Is the Palm Pre stealing Apple’s Mojo?
No, I don’t mean Palm’s software development kit, named “Mojo.”
There’s been lots of discussion lately about the Pre syncing with iTunes despite the fact that iTunes is an Apple product meant to only work with Apple products (iPods and iPhones).
However, there’s a new post over at Pre Central about how the thousands of applications (really web pages made to look like applications, called “web apps”) that were developed for the iPhone during the whole year between the first generation iPhones and the release of 3rd party applications via Apple’s App Store. These applications work fine on the Pre because the browser on it and on the iPhone use the same core code.
Many Apple fanb… er, fans, are calling the iTunes sync a unsportsmanlike piggyback ride, or worse, “stealing”! Of course, iTunes is an Apple product and it can do whatever it wants with it, but it cannot do anything about the thousands of web apps that exist for the iPhone since these are made by third parties. I suppose it could prevent the Pre’s browser from accessing the online catalog of these apps, but doing so I think would probably make them look even more closed and vindictive in this age of greater platform openness - heck Palm just released the source code for their WebOS operating system! Oh, and a hack to the browser could easily work around said blockage.
It’s a testament to Apple that so far we haven’t seen them react more forcefully, beligerently, against Palm. Then again, I think, or at least hope, that the growing sense that people should be able to use the software and the tools in the way they want despite whatever the almost-never-read EULA states, means that companies are less likely to attempt blatent blockages for fear of bad press/bad online buzz.
What do you think, is Palm a scrappy company that is doing everything (even breaking a few rules) to compete against the 50,000 lb goliath, or is it just stealing Apple’s IP?
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