Apple to Relent, Add 3rd Party Sync to iTunes Officially?

The Boy Genius Report recently posted up another series of screenshots supposedly from the upcoming iTunes 9 release that's coming down the pike.  The part most people are noticing is that it will integrate social media like Facebook, but Philip Berne of infoSync just made the smartest Tweet I've seen today:

People are burying the lede on this iTunes 9 story. The big news, if true, is 3rd party device support. If you can't beat 'em, sync 'em.

Yes indeedy - the screenshot you see above from BGR shows a "Samsung YH-J70JL Black" as a full on device within iTunes. That would be a Samsung MP3 Player and we can't help but notice that it's not an iPod.

Of course, the history of the Palm Pre and iTunes is storied, to say the least, but the latest round included Palm's complaint to the USB-IF about Apple's policies of blocking USB devices by Vendor ID.  That goes against the policy of openness surrounding the USB spec, but Palm is of course not pure in this situation either as they're spoofing Apple's own vendor ID on the Pre.  The full story is here, if you're interested.

It obviously goes against every assumption we have had about Apple to assume that they'd buckle to the USB -IF and Palm by opening up iTunes as a result of Palm's letter. Maybe the fact that iTunes is now responsible for 25% of all US music sales has Apple feeling magnanimous.  Either way, if this pans out, we're going to chalk it up as a big win for Palm, even if it's not fair to say they're directly responsible for it.

Update: MacRumors has an update: "We have good reason to believe these screenshots are fake."  More if/when we get it.