Palm has released the 1.1.0 update for the Pre and webOS. It is the fourth and largest update since the phone’s release just over six weeks ago and comes in at around 85MB.
Lots of updates in the 1.1.0 milestone. The focus was geared towards calendar and contacts, and a handful of usability items including a new gesture. On the calendar side they changed some of the default alert behavior for items created directly on the devices calendar as well as added support for Exchange Active Sync Policies. For contacts they are not updating Google contacts as soon as they are updated on the device as well as syncing deletions that occur on Google and Facebook contacts down to the device.
The biggest news with the update is the re-implementation of iTunes support a mere week after Apple updated iTunes to break the support. This kicks off a what 
will probably be several rounds of Apple breaking things, then Palm figuring out a work around to fix it again.
This battle highlights Apple’s walled garden monopolistic tendencies around its little media device empire that fuels its profits the past five years. They have achieved pretty much full penetration in the music device space and are looking for future growth in the iPhone and iPod touch as a gaming and video winner.
If I am an iTunes customer and can sync my iPhone to my music library why cant I sync my Pre or my Blackberry?
I do not see what Apple is fearing at this point with allowing other devices to sync to iTunes. Free music for streaming and download is rampant online. Amazon provides a kick ass, DRM free music selection with their download service, and the fact remains that users are not going to buy some crappy music player for $100 when you can get a iPod Nano starting at $150 and it has that nice little Apple logo etched on the back.
Now is the time to start taking a poll of how long it will take Apple to push out the next update to break Pre support. My estimation is sometime before the end of August, and the dance will continue until Apple threatens legal action or realizes they should focus their efforts elsewhere and ignores Palm all together when it comes to the subject like they should.
