The article suggests that the workaround took ~40 hours.
Plus, it's not just "free-riding" on Apple's software, it's using Apple's music distribution hub.
You may be thinking it's as simple as writing a winamp skin and having a "PalmTunes" installer disc come with each Pre, but it's not...
Actually, this is a reference to Palm saying they will continue making the Pre sync with iTunes until a fix would take more than 40 hours to implement. They said the last fix took just a few minutes, and I'm sure this one took about the same amount of time (add one more line of code to change the Manufacturer ID in addition to the Vendor ID when media sync is selected).