Two weeks ago, the USB-IF sided with Apple in the dispute, and in a letter castigated Palm for abusing the group's rules. "Under the Policy, Palm may only use the single Vendor ID issued to Palm for Palm's usage," the USB-IF told Palm, according to the blog, which had obtained a copy of the letter. "Usage of any other company's Vendor ID is specifically precluded. Palm's expressed intent to use Apple's VID appears to violate the attached policy."

At the time, the USB-IF declined to confirm Digital Daily's account. "The USB-IF has been contacted by its members Palm Inc. and Apple Inc. regarding the use of USB-IF Vendor IDs and the Vendor ID policy," said Traci Donnell, USB-IF's executive director, in an e-mail to Computerworld on Sept. 23. "Yesterday, the USB-IF communicated its position on the matter to both companies. The USB-IF does not intend to comment publicly on this matter at this time."

Neither Apple or Palm replied to requests for comments two weeks ago.

The spat between the two firms started in June, when Palm started selling the Pre, and told users they could use Apple's iTunes to sync their music collection on Macs or PCs to their Pre smartphones. The following week, Apple threatened to on the Pre synchronization. It in mid-July with iTunes 8.2.1. Palm got iTunes synchronization working again a week later with the webOS 1.1.0 update, which Apple again broke with iTunes 9.0.

Apple's reaction to webOS 1.2.1 was to again threaten to disable iTunes. "As we've said before, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players," said company spokesman Tom Neumayr.