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iTunes versions older than 10.0 now incompatible with iTunes Store
A 9to5Mac tipster has discovered that Apple is apparently not officially supporting the iTunes Store for older G3 iMacs and any Macs that need to run older versions of iTunes. This isn't really surprising; if Apple won't support software for those older computers, it's unlikely that the company would bother to make sure its store was compatible with them. But what's interesting here is that it's only the store that's incompatible. As you can see from the screenshot above, the rest of the old iTunes 8.2.1 works as expected. It seems like Apple just created a new page for the latest version of the iTunes Store and redirected older versions to this one, asking customers to install iTunes 10. You'd think the company would want to at least let customers using older Macs spend their money buying iTunes audio and video, but apparently any potential sales from the older versions are outweighed by the costs of keeping the old site around.
MobileMe rumored to get alternative payment methods
A recently-published report from Germany suggests Apple will soon add brand new functionality to MobileMe: the ability to subscribe to the suite of online services with a form of payment other than a credit card. The rumor discourages hope for MobileMe becoming a free offering. According to macnews.de, one of its readers ran into trouble while trying to renew his subscription to MobileMe. Currently, it's practically impossible for Apple's customers to activate a subscription to the US$99 per year online service without a credit card. When the macnews.de reader, who doesn't have a credit card, explained his situation to Apple's support hotline, a support agent for the company told him, "We're currently working on offering customers alternate payment options." The support staffer could not provide any further details or a release date. Once upon a time, customers like this macnews.de reader could walk into a store, purchase a boxed "copy" of MobileMe using their preferred payment method, bring the box home and use the included activation instructions to enable or renew their MobileMe subscriptions online. But in February, Apple discontinued shipments of boxed MobileMe activation kits, leaving customers with only one option for buying the service: online with a valid credit card. This limitation could dramatically reduce MobileMe subscriptions in countries like Germany where about 80 percent of consumers use bank transfers to complete online transactions, according to research by The Nielsen Company. If Apple wishes to continue charging customers for all or part of its online services, it would be necessary for the company to offer more payment options. Prompted by an email from Steve Jobs promising MobileMe would "get a lot better in 2011," many speculate the service is due for a major overhaul this year. Today, Apple's suite of online services allows subscribers to publish websites and photo galleries, access ad-free IMAP email, synchronize data between Macs and devices over the internet, backup and share files online and locate lost iPhones. Rumors suggest any or all of these services will be revamped and expanded to include a "media locker" to give subscribers online access to certain content purchased from the iTunes Store. Speculators hoped Apple planned to offer MobileMe free of charge, especially after the company discontinued the service's boxed activation kits. But if Apple is exploring alternative payment options, an entirely free MobileMe seems unlikely. [via MacNN]
Steve Jobs ordered to provide antitrust deposition
There are some days when it feels like Steve Jobs is the only person who works at Apple, judging by the number of times his name is cited when anyone has a complaint against the company. Now, a US judge has ordered him to answer questions relating to monopolistic behavior over the iPod and the iTunes Store back in 2004. Then, Apple made changes to the iPod software which disrupted RealNetwork's Harmony software, designed to allow songs purchased from the RealNetworks online store to be transferred to the iPod. Thomas Slattery, who filed the class action suit against Apple in 2005, said this violated antitrust and unfair competition laws. At worst, lawyers can force Steve Jobs to spend two hours answering questions for a deposition on the matter, although Apple lawyers are pushing to have the whole case dismissed next month -- parts of it have already been dismissed. Today, you can put music downloaded or ripped from just about anywhere on your iPod, iPhone or iPad via iTunes, and music tracks sold in the iTunes Store no longer come with DRM. "The court finds that Jobs has unique, non-repetitive, firsthand knowledge about the issues at the center of the dispute over RealNetworks software," said magistrate Judge Howard R. Lloyd in San Jose, California. Like I said, some days Steve Jobs is the only person who's ever worked at Apple. [Via Macstories]
Apple takes 4 percent of US digital video market, Netflix reigns
The NPD Group crowned Netflix the heavyweight champion of digital, video-on-demand services in a statement released earlier today. Between January 2011 and February 2011, Netflix accounted for 61 percent of all movies downloaded or streamed over the internet or offered on-demand through a cable or satellite television service. Cable giant Comcast took second place with about 8 percent of the market. Apple, with a share of 4 percent, found itself in a three way tie for third place with DirecTV and Time Warner Cable. NPD used its new VideoWatch Digital tracking service to calculate its latest numbers, which also found digital video now makes up one quarter of all home video volume. "Sales of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs still drive most home-video revenue, but VOD and other digital options are now beginning to make inroads with consumers," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. VideoWatch Digital's results were based on 10,618 surveys completed by US consumers age 13 and older. In the survey, respondents recognized electronic sell-through (EST) services like iTunes had the most "current releases available," but Netflix won the titles for "overall shopping experience" and "value for price paid." [Via AppleInsider]
Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs killed music business
Is Steve Jobs music's savior, or is he the angel of death? Jon Bon Jovi cast his vote in The Sunday Times Magazine; the American rock musician thinks Jobs is "killing" the music industry with iTunes. The massive success of iTunes, says Bon Jovi, has caused the "magical" experience of buying records in a store to disappear. "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it," the rocker told The Sunday Times Magazine. Bon Jovi says that "in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business." I am not sure the record industry would completely agree with Bon Jovi's assessment of the situation. Labels and recording artists have sold more than 10 billion songs through Apple's music store since it launched on April 28, 2003. Today, the iTunes Store is the top music vendor in the United States and has proven to be a worthy competitor to the illegal peer-to-peer and music download services that preceded it.
Southwest Airlines now selling iTunes content
Last week saw low-cost airline Jetstar offering in-flight iPads to customers, and now 9to5 Mac is reporting on a Variety magazine story which says that Southwest Airlines is about to start selling media content through Apple's iTunes Store. Called InAirtainment, the program offers fliers a playlist of 20 free songs from new artists to entice customers to shop the iTunes store, and Southwest will be receiving a small percentage of sales like any typical iTunes affiliate. Speaking with Variety, Southwest spokesperson Whitney Eichinger said that "we want our customers to be able to find all their travel needs at Southwest.com and a big part of traveling is loading up on songs, movies, and all the television you've missed during the week." That should be a big selling point for passengers of the airline, which doesn't provide seat-back entertainment in their fleet of Boeing 737 jets. We have seen a lot of cross-promotion of late between different airlines and Apple media devices, including the approval of the use of iPads in the cockpit for flight planning and iPad check-ins in Malaysia. Seems Apple's products aren't just showing up in TV and film; they are also taking over the in-flight entertainment world. [via 9to5 Mac]
Warner packages movies as iOS apps, starting with The Dark Knight and Inception
Online rentals and purchases of movies are still just a tiny fraction of the home video pie, but Warner's latest effort to expand that is similar to Paramount's recent efforts on Windows Phone 7 (Thanks SteveyAyo), offering its highest profile flicks as apps for iPhones and iPads. The Dark Knight and Inception are the first two releases out of the gate, offering free apps with some bonus content and the first five minutes of the movie, then charging $9.99 and $11.99, respectively to unlock the rest. According to Warner, it offers a different experience than simply purchasing the flick over iTunes because of the extras which include Twitter and Facebook integration among the extras, plus the ability to offer the digital version in countries where iTunes doesn't sell movies yet, like China, Brazil and the Netherlands. There's a video demo and press release after the break, but the downside of being locked to portable devices is keeping us from clicking the buy button for now, but if you could sprinkle some Ultraviolet on it, we might change our tune. %Gallery-116925%
iTunes gifting grifter cleaning out British bank accounts
On January 25th, The Register reported that one unlucky bloke saw his bank account emptied through a series of iTunes monthly gift purchases sent to an unknown Hotmail account. He was informed of the theft by an e-mail from Apple, saying his gift purchase had been confirmed, but alas, he'd already been taken to the tune of £1,000. It's been over a week since the story appeared, but accounts continue to pour into an Apple customer support forum, echoing the accusations made to The Register -- and, boy are people mad. Apparently, customers seeking Apple's help have received a pat response that sounds awfully familiar: cancel your credit card and report the charges to your bank. We've yet to hear of this happening anywhere outside the UK, but we're still interested to see how the great iTunes heist shakes out. If a suspicious Hotmail account is sucking you dry, we want all the sordid details.
App Store could surpass total iTunes music sales by March
Anyone who has visited the Apple website in the past few days knows that sometime in the very near future, the total number of apps sold through the iTunes App Store will go over 10 billion. After all, Apple is conducting a contest in which the person who buys that magic 10 billionth app will win a US$10,000 iTunes gift card, so many of us are taking a frequent peek at the numbers. What most people might not realize is that the iTunes App Store is poised to reach the 10 billion app mark in less than half the time it took for iTunes to sell 10 billion songs. An insightful analysis by Asymco published yesterday shows that while it took approximately 67 months from the opening of the iTunes Store for the number of music downloads to hit 10 billion, only 31 months will have elapsed between the day the App Store opened and the point where 10 billion apps have been sold. The article, by analyst Horace Dediu, supplies another fascinating statistic: more than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold -- iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Dediu points out that not only are more than 30 million apps being downloaded each day, but that rate is accelerating quickly. By March, the number of app sales should exceed the cumulative number of music sales. Dediu ends the article by pointing out three conclusions: apps are a new medium that will impact all other media; as the number of apps on a device increases, apps create increasingly higher switching costs for users, and; app consumption is increasing so rapidly that the market will soon overshadow the PC software market. It looks like it's a great time to be in the app market as a developer. [via AppleInsider]
Got time to spare? Read the iTunes store agreement
The other day, I was innocently about to update a couple of apps on my iPhone when a message interrupted me asking -- well, forcing me -- to read an updated agreement for the iTunes store. No problem, I think to myself, until I scroll down and see that the agreement is 56, count 'em, 56 iPhone screens long. Now I'm a pretty careful guy about reading the fine print, but I was mobile, and I either had to accept the agreement, or not get my updates. Apple had another great idea. It would email me the agreement. Huh? What's the advantage? It will take just as long to read as an email as it does on the App Store page. Apple is proud of making things easy for users. This Kafkaesque approach to getting users information about an updated agreement would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Why not give the reader a chance to read a summary of the changes? After all, the only reason for the new agreement is that some changes were made.
iTunes celebrates its 10th birthday, still takes too long to sync your iPhone
If you've managed to use any piece of technology for ten years, it's safe to say that said piece has some serious lasting power in an era filled with flavors-of-the-week. It's a bit startling to think that Apple's iTunes has now fallen into that category, but sure enough, the music-turned-media-application is now a decade old. Fittingly enough, it just hit version 10.0 a few months ago, and it may very well be tweaked to play nice with an all new device later this week. Head on past the break for a look at the very first iTunes introduction at Macworld 2001, and then think about how many times you've hated your life as you watched that sync progress bar crawl along at glacial speeds. No, seriously, think about it.
Get an iTunes or Mac App Store account without a credit card
Parents, the safest way to keep your kids from accidentally spending your money in any of the iTunes stores, including the App Stores, is to give them their own iTunes Account that doesn't have an associated credit card. Whether you want to let your kids play around safely, or just don't have a credit card, you can use an Apple Account with no credit card to try one of the hundred free apps in the new Mac App Store or download free apps on an iPhone or iPod touch. You can't create an account in the main iTunes Store without a credit card, but you can from the App Stores. From iTunes, if you're already signed into an account, sign out. Choose your country (use the country flag at lower right), then navigate into the App Store section using the top nav bar. Now, you must try to "buy" a free app, such as Apple's iTunes Remote. You'll be prompted to Create a New Account. Go through the process, making sure to choose "None" for your payment option. Check your email and click the link to verify your account. The process is essentially the same from an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, but you'll specify your country after you click Buy. Now you have an iTunes Store Account without a credit card on file, and you don't have to worry about your little snowflakes raiding your wallet for the latest holiday edition of Angry Birds. We found this tip in the new Mac App Store Support site. For a step by step guide, along with instructions for setting up the free account from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, see Apple's Knowledge Base article. UPDATE: In the comments, some readers are saying this is not working for them. I've confirmed on the iPhone, in iTunes, and even in the Mac App Store itself: as of 10 PM UTC on 7 January 2011, this tip still works as described. Sign out any existing ID. Find a free app, click to buy, and follow the steps to create a new account. For your Credit Card type, choose None, exactly as shown in the screenshot above for iTunes, the button labled "None" in the Mac App Store, or the last item in the scrolling menu on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Apple granted patent behind new iTunes extras features
Today, Apple was granted a patent covering the ability to sync movie extra features with particular times or locations in videos. This is the same technology Sony is quietly testing now in the iTunes store with The Other Guys, Salt, and Resident Evil: Afterlife in which movie buyers can enter search terms to see scenes in the movie where that term was used. Since the extra features are only available for iTunes content, like iTunes LP, Apple clearly hopes to woo bonus feature-loving consumers to purchase digital copies over Blu-rays or DVDs. Of course if this strategy is going to succeed, you'd think Cupertino would want to expand support for iTunes extras beyond the original Apple TV and the desktop to include the one million second generation Apple TVs sold and three million plus iPhone 4s out there. But hey, what do we know?
UK teen buys $750,000 of his own music from iTunes using stolen credit cards (update)
A UK teen named Lamar Johnson has recently plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud. His crime? It seems that he and his band (both in a musical sense and in a "Robin Hood" sense) used stolen credit cards to purchase something like $750,000 worth of their own music from both Amazon and the iTunes Store between January 2008 and June 2009. There's no telling how much the group would have earned from royalties, and the name of the band hasn't been disclosed (believe us, we looked), but something tells us that they probably recorded dubstep. Also, something tells us that -- since the royalties would have to be paid out to someone with a bank account -- this was a painfully easy case for prosecutors to crack. While Johnson will find his sentence tacked onto the 5-year jail term he is currently serving for grievous bodily harm, the rest of his 12 member "band" will have to wait until they appear in court in January to discover their fate. Update: One of our fine commenters (christianoliff) dug up an article from the Sunday Mercury that discloses a little more info on the perp, including a dashing photo and the name of his MySpace artist page. Apparently his criminal enterprise was more of a 2-step thing.
Verizon FiOS Mobile app hits iPad, a virtual remote with no streaming in sight
You know that Verizon FiOS iPad app we spied back in August, the one that streamed TV and VOD content? Nope, still not here -- check back 2011. Want to use your Apple slate as a giant remote for your (HD) set-top box, browsing TV / VOD listings and remotely programming DVRs? Set parental controls and bookmarks, even update your STB names? Look no further than the iTunes store; all it's gonna cost you is 3MB of space.
Apple releases "iTunes 12 Days of Christmas" app in UK
Apple has released an "iTunes 12 Days of Christmas" iOS app and companion site in the UK, all meant to treat their customers to seasonal goodies. Between December 26 and January 6, Apple will give away free apps, songs, books, movies and episodes of TV shows, one per day, via the app and the website. The app can be configured to send a push notification when each giveaway is ready, for those who just can't wait. The app isn't available on the U.S. App Store, so you'll need a UK account to download it here. [Via MacStories]
Ping allows users to share playlists
Apple continues to improve Ping, its iTunes-based social network, by adding support for shared iTunes playlists. Customers can now create a new playlist (or import an existing one) and share it with their Ping followers. Here's how it works. To create a new playlist to share, connect to Ping and then click your account. You'll see "Create a new Ping playlist." From there you can give it a name and description and start dragging tracks from your iTunes library into the list (any song that's in the iTunes store can be included). Songs can be re-ordered if you change your mind. When you're satisfied, click Publish. To import an existing iTunes playlist, simply click its title and then the arrow icon. A dialog box appears. Click Publish Playlist. A similar composition window appears, this time with a montage of album art. Once you're satisfied with everything, click Publish. Note that songs can be re-ordered at any time, even after publication, and you can opt to let users add songs to your playlists. It's a nice new feature and the latest evidence of Apple's dedication to the service. Recent Twitter integration and a new, Ping-exclusive Michael Jackson song also appeared in recent weeks. [Via MacNN]
HD Movies hit iTunes UK
Good news for Apple fans in the UK: Apple has finally added HD movies to the iTunes store. The selection seems to be rather limited for now. MacRumors notes that Twilight is among the more high-profile selections. Pricing works like this: movies that sell for £9.99 in standard definition are £12.99 in HD, while those priced at £6.99 for SD are selling for £7.99 in HD. Until now, HD movies were only available to rent in the UK. The Japanese market only received movies in iTunes last month (SD and HD) while in the U.S., Apple added HD movies to the iTunes Store in March of 2009.
The ballad of the Beatles and iTunes (and EMI, too)
After decades of bickering that's nearly as infamous as the Beatles' breakup, the actual deal that finally united Apple, Inc., Apple Corps and EMI was hammered out in July, the Wall Street Journal reported today. We touched lightly on this history yesterday, but the WSJ outlined the exact route that EMI and Apple Corps navigated since this summer to reach an agreement, which was then brought to Apple. In Cupertino, Apple began quietly reserving ad space in major publications with only the reassurance that they would deliver the ads to make press time. Meanwhile, Billboard magazine -- as reported via MacRumors -- revealed that much of the issue post-lawsuit wasn't between Apple Corps and Apple, Inc,, but rather Apple Corps and EMI. Apple and Google vied to be the first to host the Beatles, with rumors of Apple paying a "substantial advance" to EMI floating around. Regardless, Apple won the race and the Beatles now dominate the iTunes charts ... though none of the albums have yet to surpass the latest Glee album on the charts. The Beatles remain exclusive to Apple until at least January of 2011, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the digital tracks on Amazon shortly after it runs out.
The Beatles invade iTunes charts within 12 hours
It's been just over 24 hours since the release of The Beatles' complete back catalogue on iTunes and they are already dominating the album charts in a rather unusual way. In fact, as reported by MacObserver, within 12 hours of availability The Beatles had 15 albums placed in the Top 40 best-selling albums chart and 17 albums in the Top 100. That's a lot of albums to have in the Top 100 at any one time, let alone the Top 40. As of this writing, the numbers are even more impressive. The Beatles now have three of the top ten albums (Abbey Road is at number seven) and 16 of the top 50. Apple announced the release shortly before 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday morning, after a full-page takeover tease was displayed at Apple.com on Monday. Some have felt a tad let down by the announcement, following the hype and speculation that ensued after the tease appeared. However, ifoAppleStore.com notes that Apple is making the most of the announcement in its retail stores across the U.S. and Canada. Apple staff are being issued special name tag lanyards with the slogan "The Beatles. Now on iTunes" with the Abbey Road album cover just below it. The name of the staff member is printed just below that. Also, high-profile Apple Stores are replacing their current window displays with special Beatles promotional presentations. Other stores will replace the current FaceTime display with a picture of The Beatles looking out at shoppers.
