Neither of those apply to the iTunes database format. The point Bruno was making earlier is that Palm could have written their own app that reads the iTunes database to find where the music files are, and sync them to the device.
Ah. Sorry. I meant the iPod database and not the internal iTunes one. If you're going to the effort of making an app that looks inside the iTunes DB, finds the relevant playlists + music and syncs it then you might as well bolt on a GUI and make a preTunes app. The Palm method is basically a hack. They get to use iTunes as the desktop app and they just need to make a basic player on the Pre.
I did miss your earlier comment about the iPod database, and I do remember that specific "lockout". To me, it still seems like it was a change to help with DB integrity between the iPod and iTunes, as it contained the iPod device ID and a signature from the iTunes DB along with some other numbers. Had Apple been sitting there making the change only to lock out 3rd party sync tools, they could have easily changed it every version of iTunes. They haven't changed it beyond that one time though.
iTunes already knows if you're trying to sync with an iPod that it doesn't manage. The only thing the hash did was prevent a third party app from creating/modifying the iPod database.
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