As many predicted it would happen, Apple has released an update to iTunes that effectively prevents devices “falsely pretending to be iPods” from syncing with the media software. This of course is seen as a direct response to Palm, which had previously touted the Pre’s ability to effortlessly sync DRM-free songs and even photos with Apple’s software.

A number of sites were able to confirm that the recently-released iTunes 8.2.1 prevents the sync from working, which was later corroborated by Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. If Palm decides develop and issue a workaround this could end up in a long cat-and-mouse game that’ll only hurt customers. The Palm the Pre still acts as a USB device, though, so users could just add music the old fashioned way: by manually dragging and dropping songs to the device’s memory.

Besides breaking compatibility with Palm’s smartphone, Apple says iTunes 8.2.1 “provides a number of important bug fixes” but falls short of offering details. In any case, if you’re a Pre user and rely on iTunes for transferring music, you should probably hold off on updating to the latest version for now.