It appeared as though Palm had given up its iTunes syncing fight recently when the details surrounding webOS 1.2 became available. Nope. Today, Palm announced webOS 1.2.1, and it brings back the ability to sync with iTunes 9.0.1.Oh, the game continues. As we all know, Apple and Palm are enjoying a good round of cat-and-mouse over the issue of iTunes syncing. Palm used some software wizardry concerning the USB port to trick iTunes into thinking it was connected to an Apple iPod, and not a device made by someone else.

Apple has updated iTunes several times, each time making sure to break the Palm Pre's ability to sync with iTunes. Palm has responded with updates of its own, restoring the ability to sync.

Ever since iTunes 9.0.1 has come out, however, Palm remained silent. It decided to take the matter to the USB Implementers Forum, which oversees how manufacturers use USB ports. Unfortunately for Palm, the USB-IF sided with Apple, and even told Palm that using this USB-based method of tricking iTunes was a violation of the USB-IF's rules. It warned Palm, and forbid the company from using the USB workaround.

Either Palm found another way to trick iTunes, or it doesn't care about what the USB-IF thinks, because today it announced webOS 1.2.1, which repairs iTunes syncing. Who knows how quickly Apple will respond with yet another iTunes update that breaks the syncing capability.

Here's the full changelog for webOS 1.2.1, which will be pushed out to end users over the next few days. There's actually a pretty good number of fixes for webOS.

Email

• Resolved an issue where after installing the 1.2.0 webOS update some customers running Exchange 2007 could no longer synchronize with their Exchange account for Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks.

System

• Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (9.0.1).
• Media sync now synchronizes photo albums, maintaining the album structure in the Photos app.
• Media sync now allows for synchronizing photos without requiring the full-resolution originals. This provides faster display of high-quality full-screen images and enables users to store more photos on the phone.

Web

• Resolved an issue where if a user tried to play streaming music or video, the media stream might drop out or have a long delay before starting.

Security

• This release implements several security fixes, including the following:
• Addresses a security issue encountered by webkit developers. This issue did not impact end users.