Are you one of those lucky people who’ve purchased a Palm Pre? If so, you may have been pleased to find that the phone -- which, slow sales aside, is the only mobile device that comes close to the coolness of the iPhone -- syncs with iTunes. In fact, it’s the first and only non-Apple device that does so.

Apple, of course, is not pleased, and each time it updates iTunes, it blocks the Pre (or any non-Apple device) from accessing it. The result has been a months-long cat-and-mouse game as the Pre plays defense, updating its *own* software to restore access to the phenomenally popular Apple music software.

Many of us on the sidelines have silently cheered on the Pre, happy to see Apple’s tightly controlled service pried open by a third party. Until now, iTunes -- which, besides being used by millions, is also much better than the competition -- could only sync with other Apple machines (that is, iPods and iPhones). If you had an mp3 player made by any other manufacturer, you were out of luck. This is all part of Apple’s strategy of tightly tying software to hardware, something Microsoft abandoned in the early ’80s.

Here’s how Palm works around Apple’s walls: When connecting to a computer via a USB cable, the Pre pretends to be an iPod. It’s sneaky, but we hoped it would set a precedent forcing Apple to open up to all other third-party manufacturers.

Soon after Apple caught on to the Pre's stealthy behavior and blocked it, Palm reported the activity to the USB Implementers Forum, the industry group that oversees the use of the USB standard. (Fun stuff, right?)

But the response was unexpected: The group says that it was Palm that was in the wrong, and that if they updated their software to regain access to iTunes, it would violate the group's rules.

This is disheartening news. It means that going forward, any third-party device that attempts to access iTunes will be violating the group's rules. If you're one of the thousands of new Pre owners out there, this has gotta be disappointing.

Count one strike against device openness, and one big win for total device control.