Today, iTunes 8.2.1 broke that. But despite the ridiculous accusations of lock in, Palm doesn’t need the Pre to sync music to the iTunes.

iTunes saves its entire music index as an XML file in iTunes Music Library.xml. It’s XML. Palm can open it, read it, and get whatever they want.

New music is unencumbered by DRM. There’s an exception, music bought before DRM was removed, but Palm wasn’t able to play that before.

And, of course, the USB bus is available to any Mac or Windows application programmer.

So, then, nothing stops Palm from shipping a Pre Music Sync program. All it would have to do:

• Read the XML file.
• Grab the music using standard file I/O.
• Send the music to the Pre over USB.

If Palm is less dumb than a sack of hammers, they expected Apple might fix how they validate the iPhone to exclude the Pre’s tricks.

If Palm is less dumb than a sack of hammers, they would already have a Pre Music Sync program almost ready for deployment. ((But Palm being Palm, you should probably expect a Pre Music Sync program some time in October or November.))

In fact, this should have been their solution all along. Why wasn’t it? Well, assuming Palm isn’t a bunch of idiots ((And, again, this is Palm.)), Palm probably didn’t have their music sync program ready. Ship the hack or slip the date? And somewhere along the line, some marketing type probably decided that impersonating an iPod was a good idea. They wanted a bullet point that it worked without installing software. Well, now Palm is going to have to write software and get users to install it.

They just did an entire OS. I think they can handle Pre Music Sync. And if they can’t, I’m sure Markspace can handle it with The Missing Sync.

I estimated at the time they were at least four years ahead of the competition in terms of an operating system.

But since then?

Buying and selling themselves to… themselves.

Absolutely nothing on the OS front.

Since then? Windows CE and successors have caught up in many areas, exceeded Palm in others. Blackberry, and iPhone exist, both of which make Palm look pathetic.

Loss of professional-level development tools.

Hardware quality control problems.

It’s hard to believe that Palm has thrown away this much of a lead. But they have.