Palm Pre Will Work with iTunes

Palm revealed today that the upcoming Palm Pre will be able to to synchronize with iTunes to transfer DRM-free music, photos, and videos.

Jon Rubinstein, Palm's Chairman, and Roger McNamee, a Palm director and co-founder of Elevation Partners, made a presentation at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, where they talked about iTunes support and other new Pre features.

Palm Media Sync
Thanks to Palm media sync, users will be able to connect their Pre to a PC or Mac via the USB cable, select "media sync" on the phone, and iTunes will launch on the desktop computer. The user will then be able to choose which DRM-free media files to transfer.

"We designed Palm media sync to be an easy and elegant way for you to take the content you own and put it on Pre, and it's just one of the ways we think you'll be amazed by webOS," said Rubinstein.

Twitter Support
One of the hallmarks of the Palm Pre's webOS is giving users access to online information, and there's a new addition to this: Palm also announced that Twitter search will be integrated into webOS universal search.

This function will allow those with a Pre to look for a contact or an application on the device, and also search the Web via Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and now Twitter.

App Catalog
Rubinstein and McNamee also gave conference attendees an advance look at the beta version of the App Catalog, which will be available on Pre at launch. At next month's launch, the beta will feature applications from developers such as AP News, Citysearch, Fandango, Pandora, and uLocate.

"We've received excellent feedback from participants in the Mojo SDK early access program and look forward to the SDK's public release. Developers are very enthusiastic about the platform's ease of use and industry-standard development model," said Rubinstein. "We're excited to launch Pre with the beta version of the catalog, which will give a taste of how the overall webOS ecosystem will work."

An Overview of the Palm Pre
The Palm Pre will use Palm's webOS, the replacement for the venerable Palm OS. This will be a new, multi-tasking operating system able to wirelessly synchronize a wide variety of data with online services like Google and Facebook.

The Pre itself will feature a sliding keyboard as well as a multi-touch-capable 3.1-inch display. This device will also be equipped with 8 GB of on-board Storage (7 GB available to users), Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, and a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash. 

This smartphone will launch on June 6 from Sprint, who will add its mobile broadband service EV-DO Rev. A, Sprint Navigation, and Sprint TV.  It will cost  $200 with a two-year contract and a mail-in rebate, though some non-Sprint stores are going to offer it at that price without the rebate.

A Canadian version from Bell Mobility will be released later this year, while the GSM version for Europe and Latin America is also expected before 2010, and will have the 3G standard HSDPA.

A follow-up model called the Palm Eos is reportedly on its way to AT&T and Sprint.

Source: Palm