Palm pre which was considered as the direct rival to Apple’s iPhone and also the one which was its closest competitor has recently had a setback from Apple . Apple has updated its iTunes version from 8.2 to 8.2.1, this was however expected.

Palm pre which was able to sync with Apple’s iTunes 8.2 version and used the iTunes library to sync itself up by posing as an iPod to Apple’s iTunes, would be able to work with previous versions of iTunes.

Apple was soon able to figure out a security hole in the iTunes and announced in June that “does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players” and warned that “newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality” with them.

The hole has now been fixed by Apple,which was pretty much expected. Apple stated in the release of 8.2.1 that “also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre”.

However Pre’s response stated that if Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience.Pre is also thinking of taking other third party applications to sync Pre in place of iTunes or it would enable a direct drag drop to transfer media files.

Apple might have taken a step to wipe out Pre’s one of the advanvantages but Pre has more advantages which Apple iPhone cannot beat, certainly the multitasking and the lower usage cost the difference comes to about $1200 between an iPhone and a Pre as per usage taken in a span of 2 years. The recent addition of Mojo SDK for Pre is another window which Pre might be looking at to increase  participation and give a healthy competition to the iPhone.

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