iTunes 7.6 is fully Pre compatible
June 20th, 2009, 10:29am by KelvinOne of the features of the new Palm Pre that Jake and I have is the ability to masquarade as an iPod and connect with iTunes to sync music, podcasts, video, and photos. A few niggles aside, it seems to work quite well. Here’s what I discovered as the major deficiencies:
1) no podcast bookmarking. The music player on the Pre doesn’t remember where you left off in the podcast file after you quit it, let alone transfer that bookmark back to iTunes.
2) on a related note, there’s no bidirectional transfer of data whatsoever… No updated playcount, star ratings, etc.
3) Pre can’t play HD video podcasts.
4) Pre can’t recognize the “optimized” photos that iTunes creates, as they are not simply jpgs. To see pictures, you have make iTunes “Include full resolution” photos, then the Pre will ignore the optimized files and work with the full-res folder like it would any other folder of jpgs.
Overall, it’s a pretty seemless experience if you have music and podcasts in iTunes. The album art support is more reliable than using something like WMP to transfer music. On the downside, music from iTunes is still stored in Apple’s odd obscured folder format, making it harder to get music off the Pre at another computer. You can email mp3’s as attachments, and unlike any real iPod, you can add music to your Pre from any computer and it will show up alongside your other music from iTunes.
So, is this a big selling point? Would it be worth it for Apple to disable this compatability for competitive reasons? Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with iTunes, so while this is a feature that’s nice to have, it wouldn’t kill me if it weren’t offered.
PS. Be forewarned– I initially wrote this post from my Pre’s browser, but the Post (Save) button doesn’t actually work. Clicking it went to a Search page instead of publishing the post. So I had to go back and copy the text, email it to my self, then post from a PC.
June 20th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Thank goodness for copy & paste!
June 20th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I feel like I read somewhere that the code the Pre sends to iTunes identifies it as one of the iPod nanos (maybe the 3rd gen? Can’t find the link again). Some of the things you’re seeing may be related to the fact that iTunes 7.6 predates that iPod model by quite a bit.
Why aren’t you updating iTunes? At least through the most recent version, Pre still works.
You might also try DoubleTwist, which syncs photos, movies, and music. The newest beta supports Pre, and as I said to Jake, you’ll be supporting DVD Jon in his ongoing fight against Apple.
So the post button on The Board doesn’t work from the Pre? I hope that’s not true, since I’d have no idea how to fix it, given that it works on every other browser we’ve ever used!
July 15th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Well, the inevitable has happened, so in case any Pre own out there needs to install a Pre compatible version of iTunes, here’s an archive.
http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.php
July 15th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
I sold my Apple stock in protest. Unless I buy a new Mac in the next 30 days, looks like I’ll be dumping iTunes eventually.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
My very long post on the subject, which I’ll post in a few minutes, starts out the very same way!
July 15th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Not sure I follow your logic of eventually stopping the use of iTunes– why not just install an older, Pre-compatible version of iTunes on your new Mac, unless you have reason to believe that only 8.2.1 is compatible with snow leopard?
For my part, I challenge Apple to innovate enough in iTunes to make it worth my while to upgrade. I don’t have to use iTunes at all, but I certainly see no reason to use the latest one.
BTW, to address Mike’s question as to why I’m not updating iTunes– The main reason was that everytime I do, i have to install the new quicktime, which puts itself in the windows system tray. Then I have to go into preferences and check off that I don’t want it in my system tray. Plus, 7.6 still lets Windows users choose to not show the Genre column as a preference. Based on that, subsequent versions have been a net downgrade as far as I can tell.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
So Jake, you feel so strongly that you sold your stock, but would still buy a Mac? That’ll show them! 😉 Maybe you should buy a Psystar computer instead, and be upset when it can’t be upgraded, too.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
The new Mac likely won’t run iTunes 8.2. The 8-core Macs (can you say overkill?) are a little north of $3K at Amazon. I would like to have a new rig by early fall– I’ll have a LOT of photos to process. But I’m thinking new Macs will be released w/ Snow Leopard. Decisions, decisions…
July 16th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Before you do anything rash, Jake, you can always try one of these solutions to keep syncing your Pre with latest versions of iTunes.
I’m really looking forward to a podcatcher app, which would pretty much replace any desire to ever sync my Pre with iTunes (although I’d still use my Nano occassionally).
July 16th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Yeah, the ability to stream podcasts pretty much dispenses with the antiquated need to download and sync them — Jake, didn’t you stream podcasts on the bus from NYC to Boston? Why would Kelvin need a podcatcher app?
July 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am
I’m envisioning an app that runs in the background that checks for new podcasts every 15 minutes or so and automatically downloads them (then generates a new podcast notification). I’d probably want the option to set it to work only on wifi or while on an AC adapter, etc. There are lots of reasons why having a local copy might be better during playback (battery life and bookmarking and heat would be 3– the Pre gets hotter when running the cellular radio).
But you are right, streaming podcasts is also pretty cool. What was the website you used where you could subscribe to podcasts and the site would stream the podcast mp3? Did it work with video too?
Or was that an iPhone app?
July 16th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I’d also add that Missing Sync for Pre looks awesome — not only does it sync music between a Mac (or PC) version of iTunes and Pre, but also syncs contacts, calendars, and other things from the appropriate Mac apps to Pre. And it’ll do it all over wifi, which is something I wish I could do with the iPhone.
Since I haven’t bought into this cloud syncing thing yet, I think this would be the route I would go if I had a Pre.
July 16th, 2009 at 9:48 am
In the meantime, here’s another alternative to native iTunes sync, courtesy of Mike’s old friends at Salling (both Mac and Windows versions available).
July 16th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Played around with Google Reader this morning. If you stick podcast feeds in there, you can launch Pre streams of both audio and video podcasts from either the main site or their suped up mobile site. Quite nice.