Since the Palm Pre was launched in June with the capability of syncing directly with iTunes, Apple has been obsessed with breaking that feature for Pre owners.  It seems that this effort by Apple isn’t helping them in any way and is probably hurting them in the media.  Here’s why:

Apple is alienating Palm Pre customers who could later be converted to iPhone customers.

Palm Pre customers obviously have an interest in new technology and, for whatever reason, they chose the Pre over an iPhone.  Maybe they were already long-time Sprint customers or maybe they preferred Sprint’s service over AT&T’s.  Either way, they are now locked into a Sprint contract for probably two years.

Put this all together and every Palm Pre customer is a prospect that could be won over and converted to an iPhone customer by the end of their contract term with Sprint.  However, with Apple focusing on hurting these potential customers rather than promoting goodwill and their iTunes offering, they will likely alienate any Palm Pre converts.

Apple is wasting valuable resources and getting nothing of value in return.

For Apple to safely “break” Palm Pre syncing with iTunes, they must allocate valuable resources in management, software development and quality assurance to name a few.  They have to insure that they carefully break the Pre’s syncing capability without affecting any other devices.

So, after putting forth all of this effort, what do they really accomplish?  They basically hurt the non-technical user’s ability to sync with their Pre.  For the other more experience and technical users, there will always be a way to get their iTunes media onto the device of their choosing.

Apple’s preoccupation with this issue is making them look overly concerned about the Palm Pre

Apple’s constant preoccupation with blocking iTunes from the Palm Pre does not play well in the media.  With the constant Apple-broke-it-Palm-fixed-it articles in the media, it’s obvious that Apple is preoccupied with this issue.  It begs the question, if Palm continues to “fix” the Pre’s iTunes syncing capability every time Apple disables it, would Apple go so far as to file a law suit?  It seems there is nothing to be gained here by Apple since nothing is really lost.

Windows Mobile and BlackBerry users have been syncing iTunes with their devices for years through various workarounds.  Palm Pre users will be able to do the same regardless of Apple’s future actions.  It can be done very easily through a simple two step process.

Apple is putting a great deal of attention toward making iTunes syncing less convenient for Pre users, but not impossible.  Once Pre users realize just how easily they can copy their iTunes media to their phone, this will likely become a non-issue as it has been for other devices.