Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Apple iTunes

Apple Adds Editors’ Choice and App Of The Week To Mac App Store and iTunes

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:26:15 +0000

Finding some of the best apps on the Apple App Store can be rather difficult. This is why Apple acquired Chomp. Apple has also launched a new section called for iTunes and the Mac App Store called “Editors’ Choice.” The current Editors’ Choice on the iTunes is Cobook, Facebook Camera, Extreme Skater, Air Mail, and Sketchbook Ink. As part of the “app of the week” series, Apple has made Cut The Rope: Experiments free. The Amazon Appstore is known for offering apps for free at a heavy discount, promotional discounts for iOS and the Mac App Store are up to the developer. To my understanding, if a developer significantly reduces their price as requested by Apple, they would be given 100% of the revenue rather than the typical 70-30 split.

Rumor: iTunes 11 To Have iOS 6 and iCloud Integration

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:31:12 +0000

Apple is rumored to have started internally developing the major release of iTunes 11. The work iTunes 11 started before iTunes 10.6 was shipped. iTunes 11 is believed to support the upcoming iOS 6 release and future devices. The iTunes Store and App Store is expected to be revamped between summer and fall. Apple’s acquisition of Chomp will help the company organize apps and media better. iCloud will have a dedicated settings panel within iTunes 11 for syncing data stored on your iOS devices.

How To Fix iTunes Error 3194

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:15:26 +0000

If you have an iPhone and encountered a problem when trying to update or restoring your device called error 3194. This error is especially common if you are using Cydia. You can fix the problem by removing the Cydia SHSH caching server from your host file.

You can do this either by removing the Cydia IP address from your system host file manually or by using a program called TinyUmbrella (Windows / Mac).

After you open TinyUmbrella, click on the “Advanced” tab and uncheck where it says “Set Hosts To Cydia On Exit.” After you apply the changes, restart your computer. You should be able to update your iPhone to the new operating system now.

iTunes Trailers App Gets Updated To Support Retina Display

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:08:56 +0000

Apple has updated the iTunes Movie Trailers App to support Retina Display for the new iPad. The trailers app has the same content on the Apple Movie Trailers website. This is a great way of seeing how sharp the iPad screen really is. Above is a screenshot of the movie Brave. The app works on WiFi and LTE, but your LTE bandwidth allotment would be consumed rather quickly if you are a movie trailer fiend. [MacRumors]

Apple Announces “Mastered For iTunes,” Songs Tuned For Higher Fidelity Sound On Your Computer

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:33:45 +0000

Apple has announced a new feature that will differentiate their music store from other online music stores. The feature is called “Mastered for iTunes.” Songs on Mastered for iTunes were put together using high-fidelity, processed with a set of guidelines and tools that maintain as much of the sound quality of the original and uncompressed file as possible.

Most modern music tracks are recorded using 24-bit samples at 96 kHz or 192 kHz depending on the processing power and storage space. The iTunes files are compressed to a 256 kbps AAC iTunes Plus format, which loses 97% of the data contained in the original and uncompressed recording.

Apple’s new “Mastered for iTunes” tries to minimize the lost data by downsampling the original and high-quality music file to 44.1 kHz using a 32-bit floating-pointing intermediary file. The file is then converted to AAC. This process uses “every bit of resolution available, preserving all the dynamic range of the 24-bit source file.” To learn more details, visit Apple’s “Mastered for iTunes” website.

Jeff Robbin Believed To Be Spearheading The Rumored Apple HDTV Initiative

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:48:34 +0000

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) vice president of consumer applications Jeff Robbin is best known for developing iTunes and helped create the iPod. According to sources with Bloomberg, Robbin will now be spearheading the development of an Apple television set. Before Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away, he told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he had “finally cracked” how to build an integrated TV set with a simple user interface that could wirelessly synchronize content with Apple’s other devices.

Apple’s only foray into the TV market thus far has been the $99 Apple TV, which plugs into a TV and gives users access to content from iTunes, Netflix, and YouTube. Jobs called Apple TV a hobby rather than being a serious money-maker. Robbin was hired by Apple in 2000 when they acquired the SoundJam digital music player that he developed. According to his biography, Steve Jobs did not allow a Time magazine reporter to meet him without agreeing not to print his last name out of fear that Robbin would be poached by a competitor.

Robbin is also known for convincing Jobs to allow computers running on Microsoft Windows to use iTunes. Now iTunes has 225 million registered users and generated about $1.5 billion last quarter.

Apple iTunes Match Will Download and Stream Your Music

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:32:53 +0000

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has released a beta version of iTunes Match. iTunes Match allows you to store your entire music collection on iCloud so you can stream it on your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Mac computers.

Below are a couple of walkthroughs by Insanely Great Mac. The cost of iTunes Match is $25 per month. iTunes Match will scan your iTunes music library and allow you to access it from iTunes-linked iOS devices and Mac computers. Songs that that exist from Apple’s iTunes music store will be streamed at a 256kbps bitrate without having to upload it yourself. The limit is 25,000 songs.

iTunes Match is expected to launch as part of iOS 5 this fall.

How Kanye And Jay-Z Prevented Their “Watch The Throne” Album From Leaking

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 05:04:47 +0000

Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch The Throne” was one of the most anticipated hip hop albums of the summer. One of the advantages of launching their album exclusively on iTunes before distributing compact discs was that leaks were prevented. Often times music stamping and compact disc shipping employees hi-jacks the tracks and uploads them to the Internet. Perhaps the leak prevention may encourage other artists to launch exclusively through iTunes now too. Another cause for the decline of the compact disc. [Gizmodo]

Apple iTunes Replay Not Coming Any Time Soon

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:08:01 +0000

Rumors were floating earlier about how Apple may be rolling out a new service called iTunes Replay. iTunes Replay was a service that would provide the ability to re-download and stream movies and TV shows on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, and iTunes from iCloud in an effort to compete directly with Netflix.

Currently Apple has music and TV available for re-download, but they have agreements with only about 4 out of 6 of the big movie studios. Below is a report from CNET about the bottleneck:

One reason is the HBO window. During specific periods of time–often referred to in the film industry as windows–HBO owns the exclusive electronic distribution rights of films from three of the six top films studios: 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. Any retailer that wishes to sell physical DVDs from these studios during HBO’s window is totally unrestricted. But online retailers are legally prevented from delivering movie downloads from the three HBO-restricted studios during HBO’s window and they also can’t stream titles from those studios. This means that right now iTunes can’t stream a movie to a customer during the HBO window that the customer may have purchased outside of the window.

Amazon.com Drops Price Of Top-Selling MP3 Songs To $0.69

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:18:33 +0000

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has declared a price war with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) by lowering the price of top selling music in a further effort to compete with iTunes. Now the average price on hit songs on Amazon are $0.69. Some of the hits songs that Amazon.com lowered the price on as of right now includes Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and Katy Perry’s “E.T.” Amazon.com has around a 10% market share and Apple has about 70% for the digital download music market according to the NPD Group. Apple is selling top selling songs for $1.29, almost double of what Amazon.com charges now. [LA Times]