We're still not 100 percent clear what Apple's next move is, but we do know they're a little more than nonplussed about Pre's ad hoc iTunes syncing methods. Despite Cupertino's update to its support site last night, Palm seems unconcerned, as relayed by a spokesperson to Digital Daily. In a statement, the company said disabling the sync "will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience" and that "there are other third-party applications we could consider." In other word, it'd be Apple's loss. We're not quite sure we agree there, nor would we really think "stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre" method is really the best suggestion, but hey, we're not the multimillion dollar phone manufacturer here. We anxiously await to see if and when this cold war is turned up a few notches.

So now that the iPhone 3.0 launch is in full swing, we're wondering how it's going out there. Team Engadget appears to have made it through without any problems, but we're hearing sporadic reports of Apple's iTunes activation servers being slammed and potentially some kind of IE security certificate problem on Windows, which is leaving a few people with unusable phones while things get sorted out. Everything work out okay for you?

Looks like Apple's response to the Pre's support for iTunes syncing is starting to take form -- a snippy little note titled "About unsupported third-party digital media players" was just posted to the company's support site. The money quote:

Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

Here's where it gets interesting: since the Pre identifies itself to iTunes as a bog-standard iPod, Apple would have to actively code in a USB node check to actually block syncing, which is just a little bit more aggressive than the "software changes over time" mentioned here. We'll see if Apple decides to engage in a cat-and-mouse with a company now run by the former head of the iPod division -- we've got a feeling this could get messy.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Careful analysis of a Pre's identity to its host system when connected via USB has now confirmed what's been suspected for a few days now -- the way it hooks to iTunes is very shady indeed. Turns out that the Pre identifies itself as an iPod when it's in Media Sync mode, but only on the system's mass storage interface; the root USB node still comes through as a Palm Pre, which Apple could easily tease out and block if it so chose. We're still up in the air on whether Cupertino would actively move to do that, but regardless, you've got to give a tip of the ol' hacker hat to Palm for its wild ways on this one.

We'd already heard through the gravevine that iTunes support would be baked into Palm's forthcoming Pre, but now it's official. During Palm's D7 keynote today in Carlsbad, Paul Cousino showed attendees that non-DRM music, photos and videos could be synced with the Pre via iTunes (on Mac and Windows, naturally). In his words: "It shows up in iTunes just like a regular device."

Update: So, Palm has issued an official press release detailing the new webOS features shown today at All Things Digital. The so-called media sync feature is straight up designed to "synchronize seamlessly with iTunes," giving users the ability to use Apple's media management software for transferring all non-DRM media. Furthermore, the Pre is engineered to act as a "mass storage drive," letting users side-load content on the fly. The full release also details the App Catalog and Twitter in Universal Search.

There's been no direct confirmation just yet, but Fortune has it that Palm's hotly anticipated Pre actually syncs with iTunes. Yeah, iTunes. According to the report, the Pre works "seamlessly" with iTunes on a Mac, with the only notable limitation being that it can't handle older DRM-laced files from the sad, sad days of our past. Even wilder, we're told that the iTunes Store "treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone" save for the aforesaid exception, which leads us to wonder how Apple will react. There's little doubt that this factoid sweetens the Pre value proposition for diligent Mac users, but is this functionality kosher with the software's creator? We already saw Tim Cook glance sternly at Palm while uttering that if anyone else "ripped off its intellectual property, it would go after them," and we highly doubt he plans on backing down if push comes to shove. If true, this could definitely trigger an interesting chain of events -- we'll know soon enough, now won't we?

[Via TUAW]

Just two weeks after the last revision went up, Apple's released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 to the developer community alongside an iTunes 8.2 pre-release. No word yet on what has / hasn't been updated, but we do know the new iTunes is required to activate beta 4. More information as we get it.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Update: We've toyed with beta 4 for just a few quick moments now, and naturally, the first thing we had to check out was that previously-empty "Store" settings pane. It's now populated, and it's mega-boring; all it does is allow you to sign in and out of your iTunes account, and while signed in, there's an Account Info button that lets you get booted out to an unstyled web page where you can view and edit your credit card information and the like. On the iTunes 8.2 side of things, we noticed that we were explicitly warned that the app would verify that our phone was activated for use with the beta firmware -- we don't remember seeing that before -- and the Gracenote legal mumbo jumbo in the About window now specifically calls out both DVD and Blu-ray metadata, which we're taking as a promising sign of playback support in the not-too-distant future. Thanks, David!

It's finally here, and even a few minutes early. Skype for iPhone is now available in the US iTunes store, free of charge. We've heard great thing from the folks in Japan who've been fiddling with it for the last twelve hours, and so far it's sounding pretty good for us, too, with only minor hiccups. Not sure if it's a glitch, but despite what we heard earlier, we seem to be able to dial out while on 3G and not over WiFi (at least running OS 3.0 beta). Hit up the read link for quickest route to the app store page, and let us know what you think. Betcha wish you could ditch that AT&T voice plan now, huh?

Update: We're getting reports the app is crashing for jailbroken iPhones -- and possibly non-jailbroken ones as well. We just got our first denial when dialing out over 3G via a popup notification, but it only happened once and we were back to old habits one call later. We did experience a brief period where no sound was coming through, but that might have something to do with using OS 3.0 and was remedied by restarting the phone.

Update 2: So far, it looks like dialing over 3G's only working for those with OS 3.0 beta, but unfortunately all of us in that situation are now suffering from frequent crashes and loss of audio. Things seem to be going smoothly for those running the latest non-beta firmware, but the calls only work over WiFi. That said, when using the app as intended (non-beta firmware over WiFi), audio quality was surprisingly good, far better than any third party apps we've used.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Fresh off an extensive corporate decaffeination downsizing and a scaling back of its foray into music sales, it's a fair question to ask: just how ironclad is Starbucks' commitment to rolling out iTunes WiFi Music Store integration across its entire chain? We just happened to notice that the Starbucks page on Apple's site is now stone-cold gone, redirecting to the standard iTunes 8 stuff. You might say "no big deal, Apple's just playing down an agreement that's now been in place for a full year," but there's some other weirdness, too -- the company's iTunes WiFi Music Store at Starbucks FAQ, for example, still references the dead link. The partnership was kinda ill-conceived to begin with; getting access to the store meant hooking up to AT&T WiFi, which you wouldn't normally have configured unless you actually had an AT&T WiFi account. We haven't heard any official word here that the deal is in danger, but really, would anyone be welling up if it fell apart?

We'd always taken nuTsie to be an indie app that was going to get most of its traction outside the surly bonds of a corporate partnership, but color us totally wrong. Alltel has announced that Melodeo's iTunes companion app is now available on eleven of its handsets (with more to come in the coming months), offering users of non-iTunes-friendly phones a creative way to get access to their playlists on the go. nuTsie works not by downloading your own tracks, but by matching the names of the songs in your playlists to those in its own database and loading the actual music from its servers -- that way, not only do you get access to your stuff, but also to friends' playlists and those cobbled together by nuTsie's own "experts." It'll run you $4.99 a month or $19.99 a year, and it's available now.

Just how badly do you want the iPhone 3G, Singapore? Badly enough to do without two of its headline features? SingTel kicks off sales today (local time) along with a whole host of other countries, but neither visual voicemail nor the iTunes WiFi Store will make the cut. In the case of iTunes, the reason is kinda obvious: Singapore has no iTunes Store at all, and it never has. The explanation behind the mysterious absence of visual voicemail is less clear, other than carrier laziness in getting the feature implemented on its back end. The silver lining here seems to be pricing, though -- subscribers will be able to pick up the phone for diddly squat, assuming they sign up for a S$205 monthly package (about $145).

[Via mocoNews]

Apple's experimented with allowing iTunes to stream over the internet as well as your LAN in the past and quickly removed the feature (probably due to RIAA pressure), so we're not placing too much stock in this, but AppleInsider's unearthed a patent that seems to describe a way to stream music over the 'net to your iPhone / iPod touch. The goal is to prevent you from having to selectively sync content to your device -- instead, you'd sync just the metadata and stream whatever you wanted direct from your machine as though it was all stored locally. There are some obvious problems here -- it wouldn't work if you didn't have service (or over EDGE, really), most home upstream connections aren't that fast, etc., etc., -- but it's certainly interesting, and a welcome addition to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app?

[Via Macrumors, thanks Mark]

The thoroughly-discussed, briefly-available conduit betwixt the realms of RIM and Apple, BlackBerry Media Sync, is now available in a totally official capacity for your downloading pleasure. Owners of Pearls, Curves, and 8800s (and pretty much everything that's released out of Waterloo from here on out, we'd imagine, starting with the Bold) can now snag music and playlists right off iTunes, though DRM'd tracks are naturally off limits. Then again, aren't BlackBerry owners too busy having power lunches, signing contracts, picking out new suits, and generally being important to enjoy trivialities like music on the road?

[Via MobileSyrup]