The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac
A few minutes ago Apple released a minor update to iTunes, addressing issues found with music videos and playlists. The download is available now in Software Update or on Apple’s website. It’s a 39MB download for Snow Leopard users.
iTunes 10.1 came out on November 12th and added support for iOS 4.2, which was released by Apple 10 days later. Full changelog below. Read more
Yesterday we told you Apple re-launched the “iTunes 12 Days of Christmas” website in Europe for the 2010 holiday season. On the website, a banner suggested that an official iPhone app would come soon to let users receive push notifications for exclusive offers in the iTunes Store. The app is now available, it’s free and it runs both on the iPhone and iPad.
From December 26th until January 6th, Apple will give away a selection of books, apps, songs, movies and TV episodes for free. The app doesn’t show much right, except that it asks you for push notification authorization and it displays a countdown to the daily giveaway on screen.
The app is not available in the US Store, I downloaded my copy from the UK one. I guess it should be available in other European stores as well. If you have a UK account, you can go download the app here. Read more
Just like every year since 2008, Apple is having a special Christmas promotion on the iTunes Store. Ever day from December 26th to January 6th, users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes. This year’s “iTunes 12 Days Of Christmas” website went live in Europe a few hours.
You can check out the UK version (which was unavailable until today) here. Read more
Last week, Apple launched a new feature for Ping users: social playlists. As the name suggests, a social playlist allows you to group two or more songs together and share the playlist with your friends (followers) on Ping.
It’s a very simple and effective concept, but the menu to get started with it is somehow buried into Ping’s homepage. Here’s how you can create your first social playlists. Read more
I know a lot of people who don’t listen to music through their iTunes library, or a Music folder saved somewhere on their computers. Every time they want to listen to their favorite band, they fire up Youtube. This behavior is particularly common among my friends, who find it “easier” to search for a video rather than organizing a media library. Maybe they just don’t want to buy songs and don’t feel like downloading pirated copies, either. I don’t really know why they keep doing this.
There’s also another reason why people listen to music through Youtube: rare footage and live performances. iTunes offers a large selection of official live performances from thousands of artists, yet Youtube manages to keep an impressive archive of unofficial, yet high quality, footage from millions of bands. That 1994 Oasis concert at New York? Go find it on iTunes if you can. Sometimes the quality isn’t exactly record-like, but the average user (and fan) doesn’t care.
That’s where an app like Grappler for Mac by The Little App Factory comes in handy: it’s a beautiful and simple utility that helps you save music and videos from the web, especially Youtube.com. It’s deeply integrated with iTunes, so you can have the best of both worlds with an organized library that relies upon a huge web archive. Read more
Short version: The Smiths are now on iTunes, as reported by TUAW. Long version: no, the popular band from Manchester didn’t get the same kind of attention granted to another English band we’ve heard a certain CEO is a big fan of.
Apple’s promotion aside, yeah – you can check out The Smiths on the iTunes Store here. Seven albums are available, a bunch of music videos and before you ask: The Queen Is Dead, Meat Is Murder and The Smiths are all available for purchase. At least the band got a nice profile page.
Perhaps the Smiths’ arrival on iTunes won’t be regarded as a day we’ll never forget by Apple, but Morrissey and Marr are in there, guys. Morrissey and Marr’s band.
I’m off to download now.
We have got several tips today pointing us to the fact that many users are unable to log in MobileMe.com with their existing passwords. The problem, also noticed by 9to5mac and Italian blog SetteB, seems to affect users with short and non-alphanumeric passwords. Word is that Apple silently reset these passwords without telling these users that they would need to create a new one before logging in MobileMe. Read more
Back in November we reported that Apple sent notifications out to music labels to tell them that Apple is getting ready to extend iTunes Music previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds for songs that are at least 2 minutes and 30 seconds long.
Today, still unofficially unannounced, Apple has begun to roll out the extended song previews in the iTunes Store. All of iTunes’ current top albums have the 90 second previews, but most songs still have the original 30 second previews. Apple has yet to issue a press release announcing the feature but we can expect one before the week’s end. Keep checking Apple’s PR page or just keep watching on our site.
Ping was launched in September. It recently became available on the iPad. It also got Twitter integration a few weeks ago. I don’t use it and I don’t see many of my friends using it, but I still think a Ping for apps would be great.
Apps aren’t just for geeks anymore. Will Apple ever deploy its own social app discovery platform?
