Apple blocks Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes

The latest version of iTunes stops Palm Pre owners from syncing their handset with their music library.

The ability to synchronise the Pre with iTunes was one of the big selling points of Palm's new smartphone, but Apple has moved quickly to nullify it.

Palm's workaround involved the Pre effectively pretending to be an iPod to fool iTunes into allowing it to synchronise. The newly-released version of iTunes, 8.2.1, plugs the loophole.

"iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of important bug fixes," an Apple spokesperson tells Business Week.

"It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we've said before, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players."

Palm has responded by reminding Pre owners that they don't have to update iTunes to version 8.2.1 if they don't want to - which is fine for now, but may be less appealing once there's a major update to the iTunes software.