Originally Posted By: Dignan
Anyway, personally, I'll side with Palm on this issue.

Ignoring my opinions of either company, I'm siding with standards on this one. That that means Palm is the one doing the wrong thing here. Many sites point out this quote from the USB device application:
Quote:
Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.

If this was some hack an end user did to their own phone and distributed to others, I wouldn't really care. But Palm is marketing a feature of their device based on breaking the USB spec. Lax enforcement of specifications leads to confusion on the end user side when compatibility issues come up.

Oddly, Palm seems to think Apple is in violation of the USB spec as well, so I'll be curious to see where that goes. Noone complains that an HP printer driver uses USB vendor IDs to only print to an HP printer, or that the Zune media software only syncs to Zunes.
Quote:
“Palm believes that openness and interoperability offer better experiences for users by allowing them the freedom to use the content they own without interference across devices and services, so on behalf of consumers, we have notified the USB Implementers Forum [USB-IF] of what we believe is improper use of the Vendor ID number by another member.

Beyond the USB issue, I think it's a poor decision that Palm has made to involve their consumers in a media sync fight. They advertise iTunes syncing as a feature, and use tiny print that noone reads to explain it's only with very specific versions of iTunes that the hack works against. End users hacking their devices is fine, but a company selling a hack as a legitimate marketing bullet point seems bad.


Originally Posted By: peter
Yeah, it's also totally cheating to take advantage of people's existing copies of Windows, rather than writing and shipping their own desktop OS for people to use with their Palms like any normal company would have to do.

I know you were probably being funny with this, and I would find it amusing if every smartphone came with it's own desktop OS. There is a big difference though. Operating Systems are made to have programs run on top of them, either for free, or with a small payment to acquire the proper developer tools. iTunes isn't a open media sync program, though Apple has supported 3rd party devices in the past.

Western Digital was the most recent company that affected me with their lack of standards compliance. Their Velociraptor retail drives are marked as 3.5 inch form factor SATA devices. However, they use a 2.5 inch drive mounted in a heatsink, and mount the drive in a position that doesn't place the connectors in the proper place for a 3.5 inch device. If removed from the heatsink, the drive would be compliant with 2.5 inch SATA standards, however doing so voids the warranty. Why did I care? I bought one to mount in a standard cableless SATA carrier for my desktop. I had to return the drive, and wait for Western Digital to make a new model with the connector in the right spot, a drive that still sell for 30% more then the retail one.