It's inevitable that people would find ways to get the most out of Apple's new video rental service available via iTunes, but I expected it to be this easy. The hack that has emerged is like the oldest trick in the book when it comes to circumventing time-restricted materials on your computer, and I figured by this day in age companies like Apple would been a little wiser.
Oh the benefits of competition are a sweet thing, really! It took Apple approximately three weeks to respond to the launch of Amazon's DRM-Free Music Store. It was a simple as this- Amazon started selling DRM-free songs for 89 cents to a maximum of 99 cents while Apple's iTunes was selling DRM-free songs for $1.29.
It was just a few days ago that Amazon launched their DRM-Free music store which left many wondering if iTunes will be able to remain the top digital music store for long. Now rumor has it that Facebook is in the process of putting together their own iTunes competitor.
It's been about a day since Amazon launched the Public Beta of their DRM-Free Music store called Amazon MP3, and so far the reviews are extremely positive and users are happy with the ease of use, and the prices. Their slogan is "Play Anywhere, DRM-Free Music Downloads" but they should have added "for cheap" on to it.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that NBC announced that it didn't intend to renew their contract with iTunes once their current contract runs out in December. Some people thought the little argument between Apple and NBC would soon be over, and NBC shows would remain on iTunes come December. Unfortunately for iTunes users, there's no kissing and making up here.
While Apple's new lineup of iPods sure does look impressive, Linux users and those who prefer not to use iTunes probably want to think twice before buying one. According to BoingBoing, the new iPods are blocked from synching with any third party app like Winamp. Seeing as there's no version of iTunes for Linux, that means there's no point for Linux users to purchase a new iPod.
We've already heard over and over again that sales of CD's are down, way down. People are turning to online services like iTunes to get their music and therefore have no reason to go out and purchase entire CD's from retailers. The recording industry isn't willing to let CD sales slip away quite yet though, so they've come up with a new way that they hope will help.
It appears as though movie rentals from iTunes are on the way! This is one of those things that just makes sense for Apple to do. They already sell movies on iTunes, and they sell Apple TV which they promote as "iTunes to Apple TV, wire free," so why not rent movies to make Apple TV and their iPods capable of playing movies that much more appealing?
Aside from the iPhone price drop and the release of the new iPod Touch, the next biggest news coming out of Apple this week was the announcement that NBC doesn't intend to renew their contract with iTunes once their current contract runs-out in December. The reason is because neither party can agree upon a price to sell NBC's TV shows at.
There are a lot of Apple fans out there these days, and I have nothing against them. I don't use any Apple products aside from the iPod, but I do think it is good that they are emerging successful in the computer market so that there is more competition. And good competition often means that the consumers win.
It's a big day for Apple at their "And the Beat Goes on" gathering today in San Francisco. The two biggest announcements are the launch of the iPod Touch which looks extremely similar to the iPhone, and a huge price drop for the 8GB iPhone. There were also a handful of other announcements which I'll include at the end in brief. Without further ado, let's talk about the iPod Touch!
While Wal-Mart may have entered the digital music scene a little late and didn’t really come in with a bang, they’re proving that they can compete with the competition, namely iTunes. Their recent announcement that they will be selling DRM-free music at $0.94 per song is proof of this.
The iPhone has been out for over a month now, and on Tuesday we saw Apple release the first security update for it. I’m sure a team of people over at Apple had been working around the clock to push out that update because they were working under pressure.
There seems to be a lot of news in the land of Apple today, so instead of covering everything in-depth, we’ve got all the Apple headlines in-brief:
Lately I’ve been what I like to call a "patent stalker enthusiast" because I find it interesting to watch what companies have in store for us. On my daily scavenger hunt I came across an Apple Patent that is pretty blatant in its purpose.
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve at least heard of iLike. If you’re not on Facebook and you haven’t heard of iLike, it’s a social music discovery site that has recently exploded into popularity ever since the launch of their Facebook Application.
If by chance you’d like to watch the entire Bill Gates/Steve Jobs D5 interview without watching it in segments as previously offered, Apple has made the interview available via an iTunes download.
Apple has finally stepped up to the plate by offering a small taste of the high-quality (256 kbps AAC encoding) DRM-free music that we had all been longing for.
While iTunes has exploded into popularity, could 2007 be the last year of the upward trend and growth? Forrester Research just released a report, and from the looks of it, 2007 will probably in fact be the last big year for iTunes as well as other services that sell TV shows and other video content online.
Ever since March when Apple launched iTunes 7.1, it wasn’t smooth sailing for Vista users because ejecting an iPod from the Windows notification area using the “safely remove hardware” feature could have corrupted your iPod.
