Tuesday, October 6 12:00 AM ET

Apple Removes Sync from iTunes to Thwart Palm

By Brian Briggs follow me on Twitter.

Cupertino, CA – Apple has decided to take extreme measures in the back and forth battle with Palm.  To prevent the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes, Apple has removed the ability of iTunes to sync with any devices, even iPods and iPhones.

The Palm Pre launched with the ability to sync music using iTunes, which eased the adoption by former iPhone users.  Apple countered by issuing an update which prevented unauthorized devices from syncing with iTunes, however, Palm quickly issued an upgrade to WebOS, which fooled iTunes. The battle has been escalating for several months now.

Apple's head of iTunes development Eric Schoenberg said, "This really was the only solution.  Every move we made to lock them out didn't work.  Now, there's no possible way the Pre can sync with iTunes."

Schoenberg said that engineers "removed the ability to sync from iTunes 9.0.3" and that all future "iPods, iPhones and any music device that Apple produces in the future will be unable to sync."

He agreed that these changes might make it hard for users, but that "keeping the Pre off iTunes was much more important, and would improve user experience in intangible ways."

Apple fans supported the move by Apple, "I can't sync any more, but I think it's the right response," said Martin Fillmore of San Francisco.  "If we allow Palm Pre users to use iTunes, then the next thing you know we'll have Zune users too.  Do we really want those devices polluting the purity of iTunes?"

There hasn't been an official response from Palm yet, but sources inside Palm have suggested that the company may even have a work around for this move by Apple. The sources neither confirmed nor denied that the work around may involve alien technology.