Back in the day, AOL and Microsoft went through a similar war their messaging service. It was great from the consumer's perspective, interesting from the hacker's perspective, and petty from a business perspective--like the insistence on trying to kiss the hot girl in the bar last Saturday, drunk.
Now, here's the other thought: Apple has a lot of reasons to block imitation devices from accessing iTunes, the least of which includes perhaps security issues for its users, but also for the fact that being able to access iTunes, iTunes Store, and iTunes content might have very specific clauses drafted in its agreements with Apple's content partners. By not protecting that, Apple in itself might be in legal trouble.
So, this isn't just pettiness that Apple is taking in full delight of. Just a bit.
I don't think that we can really site security issues on this, as the pre cannot access any DRM data at this point. So there cannot be any aggreements with vendors.
Only if the Pre was accessing DRM protected media would that be a valid point. I think there is more than a dash of pettiness involved here.
Now, here's the other thought: Apple has a lot of reasons to block imitation devices from accessing iTunes, the least of which includes perhaps security issues for its users, but also for the fact that being able to access iTunes, iTunes Store, and iTunes content might have very specific clauses drafted in its agreements with Apple's content partners. By not protecting that, Apple in itself might be in legal trouble.
So, this isn't just pettiness that Apple is taking in full delight of. Just a bit.