Death is a certainty and as inescapable as the people who will prey on your grief. The new Pocket Cemetery App on iTunes lets you create virtual tombstones for "dead relatives, friends, pets, or celebrities" that you can decorate with bitmapped flower images. You can even use the on-screen QWERTY to tap out and "send" a little prayer. As Wayne Perry describes it, Pocket Cemetery is "like having a little virtual heaven in the palm of your hand." Unfortunately, heaven will cost $2.99 and there won't be any connectivity -- this App runs isolated on your iPhone without any means to share your memorial, prayers, or grieving. But hey, maybe we're alone in our criticism; Pocket Cemetery already has a first "user review" rating it 5 out of 5 stars by a first time reviewer just 1-hour after launch. Impressive.

P.S. Don't just stop at the video above, Wayne's generated a different pitch on his YouTube channel capitalizing on the deaths of Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Farrah Fawcett. Elvis too, even though we know he's just in hiding.

We're still not 100 percent clear what Apple's next move is, but we do know they're a little more than nonplussed about Pre's ad hoc iTunes syncing methods. Despite Cupertino's update to its support site last night, Palm seems unconcerned, as relayed by a spokesperson to Digital Daily. In a statement, the company said disabling the sync "will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience" and that "there are other third-party applications we could consider." In other word, it'd be Apple's loss. We're not quite sure we agree there, nor would we really think "stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre" method is really the best suggestion, but hey, we're not the multimillion dollar phone manufacturer here. We anxiously await to see if and when this cold war is turned up a few notches.

So now that the iPhone 3.0 launch is in full swing, we're wondering how it's going out there. Team Engadget appears to have made it through without any problems, but we're hearing sporadic reports of Apple's iTunes activation servers being slammed and potentially some kind of IE security certificate problem on Windows, which is leaving a few people with unusable phones while things get sorted out. Everything work out okay for you?

Looks like Apple's response to the Pre's support for iTunes syncing is starting to take form -- a snippy little note titled "About unsupported third-party digital media players" was just posted to the company's support site. The money quote:

Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

Here's where it gets interesting: since the Pre identifies itself to iTunes as a bog-standard iPod, Apple would have to actively code in a USB node check to actually block syncing, which is just a little bit more aggressive than the "software changes over time" mentioned here. We'll see if Apple decides to engage in a cat-and-mouse with a company now run by the former head of the iPod division -- we've got a feeling this could get messy.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Careful analysis of a Pre's identity to its host system when connected via USB has now confirmed what's been suspected for a few days now -- the way it hooks to iTunes is very shady indeed. Turns out that the Pre identifies itself as an iPod when it's in Media Sync mode, but only on the system's mass storage interface; the root USB node still comes through as a Palm Pre, which Apple could easily tease out and block if it so chose. We're still up in the air on whether Cupertino would actively move to do that, but regardless, you've got to give a tip of the ol' hacker hat to Palm for its wild ways on this one.

We'd already heard through the gravevine that iTunes support would be baked into Palm's forthcoming Pre, but now it's official. During Palm's D7 keynote today in Carlsbad, Paul Cousino showed attendees that non-DRM music, photos and videos could be synced with the Pre via iTunes (on Mac and Windows, naturally). In his words: "It shows up in iTunes just like a regular device."

Update: So, Palm has issued an official press release detailing the new webOS features shown today at All Things Digital. The so-called media sync feature is straight up designed to "synchronize seamlessly with iTunes," giving users the ability to use Apple's media management software for transferring all non-DRM media. Furthermore, the Pre is engineered to act as a "mass storage drive," letting users side-load content on the fly. The full release also details the App Catalog and Twitter in Universal Search.

There's been no direct confirmation just yet, but Fortune has it that Palm's hotly anticipated Pre actually syncs with iTunes. Yeah, iTunes. According to the report, the Pre works "seamlessly" with iTunes on a Mac, with the only notable limitation being that it can't handle older DRM-laced files from the sad, sad days of our past. Even wilder, we're told that the iTunes Store "treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone" save for the aforesaid exception, which leads us to wonder how Apple will react. There's little doubt that this factoid sweetens the Pre value proposition for diligent Mac users, but is this functionality kosher with the software's creator? We already saw Tim Cook glance sternly at Palm while uttering that if anyone else "ripped off its intellectual property, it would go after them," and we highly doubt he plans on backing down if push comes to shove. If true, this could definitely trigger an interesting chain of events -- we'll know soon enough, now won't we?

[Via TUAW]

We've been wondering when we'd see the next Laptop Hunters ad from Microsoft, but it looks like the company's throwing a change-up: its latest 30-second spot features Wes Moss, Certified Financial Planner, explaining that iTunes "costs a lot" while Zune Pass "costs a little." The argument, of course, is that at a buck a song (or more), filling up your iPod costs way more than the $15 / month cost of the Zune subscription service, but we've got a feeling that Wes just won't convince as many people as Lauren and Giampaulo -- while we certainly think Zune Pass is a great deal, especially with the 10 free tracks a month now included, most people have plenty of music from all kinds of sources already, and an additional monthly bill in the current economy doesn't seem all too appealing. Plus, well, this argument has never really worked for services like Yahoo and Rhapsody in the past, so we're not sure it's going to work now. But that's just us -- we're sure you've got your own opinions, so check out the vid after the break and sound off.

P.S. If Wes looks familiar it's because he was a contestant on Donald Trump's The Apprentice. He was fired.

[Via Ars Technica; thanks Travis and Michael S.]

This is not the first time we've heard talk of an Apple media download kiosk, nor does it seem any more plausible this time around, but who knows? According to patent docs dredged up by Apple Insider and dating back to the halcyon days of late 2007, the company has certainly put some thought into this, detailing a wireless iTunes station that would allow users to access the iTunes store on the go, using a "virtual physical connection" to the player. As for the kiosk, it would both access media stored locally (perennial faves and new releases) and the rest of the iTunes store over its Internet connection, with users ponying up by either providing their iTunes account credentials or by credit card. Not a bad idea, eh? Well, we won't hold our breath. One more pic for you after the jump, jump, jump...

[Via Apple Insider]

Just two weeks after the last revision went up, Apple's released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 to the developer community alongside an iTunes 8.2 pre-release. No word yet on what has / hasn't been updated, but we do know the new iTunes is required to activate beta 4. More information as we get it.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Update: We've toyed with beta 4 for just a few quick moments now, and naturally, the first thing we had to check out was that previously-empty "Store" settings pane. It's now populated, and it's mega-boring; all it does is allow you to sign in and out of your iTunes account, and while signed in, there's an Account Info button that lets you get booted out to an unstyled web page where you can view and edit your credit card information and the like. On the iTunes 8.2 side of things, we noticed that we were explicitly warned that the app would verify that our phone was activated for use with the beta firmware -- we don't remember seeing that before -- and the Gracenote legal mumbo jumbo in the About window now specifically calls out both DVD and Blu-ray metadata, which we're taking as a promising sign of playback support in the not-too-distant future. Thanks, David!

To think, it's only been three months since we talked about Apple's iTunes store crossing the 500 million download threshold, and now it looks like the gang in Cupertino are gearing up to celebrate their 1 billionth app. To celebrate, the company's released two lists showcasing the top 20 free and paid iPhone apps, respectively. Presuming these are in order (they're certainly not alphabetical), that puts Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D for paid apps and Facebook for free apps. Interestingly, Crash shares with Super Monkey Ball the dubious honor of being the only two apps on the list at $5.99, the highest price here. Eight of the paid apps cost $0.99 apiece, and the rest fall somewhere in between. Check out both lists after the break.

[Via i4u]