It came up briefly at CES in January when a Palm representative let the cat out of the bag (see here). Nobody followed up. But with more and more Palm Pres appearing in the wild  in the hands of Palm employees, Elevation partners, one of my high-school buddies, even the Boy Genius we can now confirm this little secret.

Plug a Pre into a Mac and it syncs, seamlessly, with Apple’s  iTunes. In fact, the iTunes Store treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone with one two exceptions: it can’t handle old copy-protected songs or, naturally, iPhone apps.

Third party programs that sync music with various non-Apple MP3 players — including the Palm Treo and 700p –  have been available for some time. But team Pre has apparently built the necessary code right into the device’s firmware.

They certainly have the know-how. The team is chock-a-block with former Apple employees and is led by Palm president Jon Rubinstein, who built the original iPod for Steve Jobs. How Apple legal will respond to a presumably unauthorized invasion of their music store remains to be seen.

via:CNN