It’s a dog-eat-dog world in the technology jungle. For the best part of two years, Apple’s iPhone has had the top end of the smartphone market to itself. But then along came the Palm Pre, which has had a very favourable reception from the geek crowd, and is a much more polished product than early versions of the Android (aka Google) phones. Personally I thought it unlikely that the Pre would seriously challenge the Apple product, but it seems that Steve Jobs & Co are taking no chances.How do we know this? Well, the Palm phone had an intriguing feature: it could sync (techspeak for synchronise) with Apple’s iTunes software, thereby enabling Pre owners to take their music with them, just as iPhone owners can. Quite how this was possible is an interesting question. Was it a happy accident that the Pre could exploit a loophole in the iTunes system? Or was it a clever wheeze dreamed up by Palm engineers? Either way, Apple was not amused.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/19/apple-palm-pre-microsoft-retail