Let's face it, when you have Macworld and the Consumer Electronics Show in the same week, it's an overwhelming amount of news to deal with, even (maybe especially) for a technology journalist like myself who gets paid to follow the latest and greatest and report back to you. I've been picking my... (Read More)

It has been a long time coming, but Apple has finally announced that iTunes is going DRM-free. As in, all songs on the iTunes site will ditch DRM. That's everything from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI along with thousands of indie labels. All with their musical... (Read More)

The iPhone App Store has been open for just five months, since July 11th to be precise. Yet in this time, so an Apple advert running in the New York Times informs us, no less than 300 million applications have been downloaded. Now those are two hugely important numbers, 300 million downloads in... (Read More)

Yeah, look, a good definition of 'workaholic' is probably someone who sees something he likes on the Internet while he's supposed to be on holiday, logs onto his blog and tells everyone about it. I know, I know, I'm supposed to relax. But when the iTunes store starts censoring harmless song titles... (Read More)

Apple seems to be getting a lot of media attention lately; and not the good type. Apple has released several updates to their products recently; and almost all of those updates have some big bugs. Let’s start off with what I would call the worst update that is currently affecting the macbook... (Read More)

Earlier this week Apple was adamant that it would close the iTunes Store if the Copyright Royalty Board raised the royalties paid to music publishers, rather than be forced into either accepting smaller margins on the music downloads it sells or be forced into hiking prices. The way these things... (Read More)

Researchers tell us that, in the UK market, there were some 1.5 billion 'legal' music downloads last year. That's covering all bases, different devices and download services, but discounting the illegal file sharing trade. The Goddess alone knows how big the figure would be if you factored in dodgy... (Read More)

Some people, I have concluded, just have way too much time on their hands. Steve Jobs is probably not one of them, but I suspect that 'Grammar Girl' most certainly is. I also expect that this posting will fall victim to the grammatically correct squad, so have dropped a number of gaffs into my... (Read More)

A few months ago News Corporation announced that it was taking on Apple in the music downloads marketplace. Chris DeWolfe, the CEO of MySpace, said it would be starting up a one-stop music shop by spinning out the existing MySpace Music service to become an independent joint venture. The... (Read More)

The other day I downloaded the latest version of iTunes and discovered the much-heralded Genius feature is a not-so subtle way to sell content on iTunes. When I heard about the Genius feature, I mistakenly thought it was like Peter Gabriel's Filter tool, a very cool utility for iTunes, which... (Read More)

The game that people waited to be released for over a year 'Spore' is now available to the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I don't think the iPhone needs any more parasites it has enough bugs already. Spore Origins is the iPhone and iPod touch game which is currently $5.00 to purchase on iTunes. I... (Read More)

There's been no shortage of speculation about apple CEO Steven Jobs has up his sleeve for the media event he's about to give today in San Francisco at 10 am local time. There's even been a leaked photo of a new "taller"iPod that's also thinner and less costly. Apple today also is expected to make... (Read More)

Kid Rock, The Beatles, AC/DC and Garth Brooks would make for a bizarre and unlikely concert line up, yet they share something in common: they are the last men standing as far as making their music available on iTunes. In the case of Kid Rock, he is apparently refusing to put those albums over which... (Read More)

Itunes has a hidden clause which Happygeek revealed in one of his latest blogs that Itunes can not be used for mass destruction and that he did not see why itunes put that disclaimer in the EULA. I know it sounds stupid an IPOD of mass destruction but with the technology that companies such... (Read More)

According to the New Scientist it appears that Apple has decided to cover all bases when it comes to how iTunes is used. Apparently, buried deep within the iTunes End User License Agreement is this little gem of a clause: "Licensee also agrees that Licensee will not use the Apple Software for any... (Read More)

According to UK IT magazine PC Pro the Mozilla CEO has accused Apple of coming close to using malware tactics to install the Safari browser on Windows PCs via the iTunes updater. It reports that the latest version of the Windows iTunes updater, designed to make upgrading to the latest version of... (Read More)

According to the Guardian newspaper, the much publicised reports circulating online and in the global print media that Sir Paul McCartney has struck a deal to put the Beatles back catalogue up for download on iTunes this year is simply not true. The story is that Sir Paul has agreed a £200 million... (Read More)

Who could forget DVD Jon, the Linux guru who was co-author of DeCSS? This Linux application 'unlocked' DVDs with content otherwise protected by Content Scrambling System (CSS) encryption and landed DVD Jon in front of a judge. Which did not stop him from continuing his quest to free audiovisual... (Read More)

Everyone was excited about the launch of a new range of iPods, everyone apart from Linux users of course. In its wisdom, Apple decided to prevent media players other than iTunes from syncing with the MP3 devices, and in so doing locked out Linux users for whom there is no compatible iTunes version.... (Read More)

The dust has settled. The rumor mill is quiet. The masses are sated. If you've been under a rock today you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but I'll assume for the majority you've at least vaguely kept up on the slew of iPod announcements put forth by Steve Jobs and company today. As... (Read More)

Cory Doctorow, he of Boing Boing fame and one of the most well known proponents of the Creative Commons scheme, has rather surprisingly attacked Steve Jobs and Apple over DRM. Whoa, hold on a minute there, surprising that someone who speaks out in favor of Creative Commons should be arguing against... (Read More)

File under ‘well it would say that’ you might think, but nevertheless the fact remains that Apple has issued a statement on its support website warning iTunes users not to upgrade to Vista. This due to a number of known compatibility issues with iTunes 7.0.2 and earlier versions, although you... (Read More)

While the iTunes store traffic is at its high point, rising more than 400% this holiday season, Apple is getting faced with several federal lawsuits, according to Associated Press. Among those is one targetting the copy-protection system that content purchased from the iTunes store are encoded... (Read More)

If previous reports of iTunes music store sales lulling were worrying analysts, they've got nothing to worry about now –– the iTunes store sales have more than quadrupled during the Christmas season, according to a report made by E-Commerce. People using their iTunes gift cards and new iPod... (Read More)

As of late, many conflicting reports are saying that altough iPod sales continue to rise, iTunes store music sales are decreasing. They go on to state that sales now are 65% lower than in January, with average transaction sizes dropping by 7%. I think this is really crazy. Why? Apple never... (Read More)