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Apple today announced that they’ve added Mexico to growing list of international iTunes Stores. And we say… it wasn’t there already?

“The iTunes Store in Mexico is off to a great start with music from all of the majors and hundreds of indie labels,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “And the revolutionary App Store in Mexico gets bigger and better with great new apps using amazing new features, and we can’t wait to see what developers come up with next.”

So, Mexican Readers, if you liked the App Store, tell us how you feel about music coming your way…

Crazy rumor of the day, courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider, has Apple considering turning iTunes accounts into a Paypal competitor. Though they’re careful to classify it as gossip and not confirmed news (heh), it’s not beyond imagination that someone, somewhere, wanted to gauge a little public reaction to this idea.

Now, TiPb has given Microsoft a lot of negative feedback for losing focus and getting into areas they have no business getting into (pun intended). So, we have to do the same for Apple.

Does iTunes need to become a Paypal competitor? No doubt someone has to, given the more onerous sides of Paypal and the lack of Google Check Out, and still vaporish Pay with Facebook making eBay sweat enough to straighten up and behave properly, but Apple?

The link above suggests maybe Apple is interested in using the iPhone platform itself as a real-world payment system (they’ve only been doing that outside North America for years, after all), or they wish to diversify a la General Electric and this may be an easy and logical way to do it.

If it’s the former, and it works with typical Apple magic, then yes please and now. If it’s the latter then Apple should likely remember that focus, not diversification, has led them to tremendous success so far, even as their competition has floundered.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Sibling site PreCentral.net tells us that yes, indeed, iTunes 8.2.1 looks like it kills Palm Pre Sync. A new cat and mouse game is born?

Apple has released a minor update to iTunes, version 8.2.1 available via pop up when you open iTunes, or when you launch Apple Software Update:

iTunes 8.2.1 provides a number of important bug fixes and addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.

If you notice any other changes or new features, drop us a comment!

[Thanks Doug for the tip!]

Apple has just released yet another new pricing model onto the iTunes Music Store: D45s [iTunes link]– two songs for one lower price ($1.49 to $1.99).

Confession: I’m old enough to remember the original 45s, those lovable little vinyl (Google it!) records with a hit song on one side, and something ranging from awesome to ridiculous on the other.

Those days are gone, as are the days of $0.99 fixed pricing (though admittedly albums were alway a volume discounted exception), but Apple’s hoping the Digital 45s prove to be as popular as the record companies no doubt hope they’ll help move more music through the age old bundling scheme.

Apple Insider reports that D45s will be exclusive to iTunes only through July 27, at which point other digital music retailers will be able to offer them as well (which, until Amazon MP3 bothers to roll out internationally, means they’ll likely stay exclusive to iTunes in most countries outside the US and UK…)

So, if you’ve been dying to get your jukebox fix, 2009 style, head on over and drop the needle hit the buy now button…

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: AppAdvice spoke to an Apple dev at WWDC and found out:

all of this was just a simple bug in the system. We decided to not just take their word for it, we tested all the possible scenerios we could think of and in all cases we were presented with the pleasant “You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK” message. We can confirm that repurchase option no longer appears in any instance.

Um, yeah, no. Although it’s great that the restriction on re-downloading directly to the iPhone appears to be completely removed from iPhone 3.0 GM, the mere presence of the new dialog disallows anyone from playing the “bug” card. In any event, end users are now saved a good deal of confusion, so kudos.

ORIGINAL: Just over a week ago, TiPb reported that Apple had made a change to their re-download policy for iPhone 3.0 Beta 5. Previously, if you’d already bought a paid app, going to the App Store and hitting the Buy button again popped up a text alert saying you could download it for free.

With iPhone 3.0 Beta 5, which allowed for multiple iTunes account login, that message changed to “You can redownload it for free on your computer, or tap Buy to buy it again.”

We guessed this was to prevent app-sharing. If you logged in to 2 or more accounts, Apple didn’t want you to be able to download your buddies apps free of charge as well. Not the best trade-off, but understandable.

Now AppAdvice has figured out more of what’s going on:

In the final release of iTunes 8.2 last week, Apple included some logic that tells a device what iTunes accounts are authorized on the computer. Many users that were using the beta releases of iTunes were not prompted with an available update and found no reason to upgrade. Those users’ devices were never getting the authorization information to pass on to the App Store when they tried re-downloading apps.

So bottom line: if you have more than one legit iTunes account, authorize them all on iTunes 8.2 on your computer, then sync with your iPhone (running 3.0) and you should be good to go.

SInce we here at TiPb expect our buddies to buy their own apps anyway (and support developers so we get even more great apps!), that’s just dandy with us.

(Thanks to Jay and Trevor for the tips!)

When iTunes 8.2 debuted in prerelease form (for developers running the iPhone 3.0 beta firmware), one of the more exciting features from the back-end perspective was crash logs being made available via iTunes Connect.

Well, Hassan from Inside Redbox Mobile reminded us that, with iTunes 8.2 going into general availability — and into the hands of consumers — developers now have access to the full range of crash logs from their full base of installed customers. Bug. Fixing. Goldmine. (See the Inside Redbox Mobile crash log report, above.)

From the consumer standpoint, the information looks to be as anonymized as anything else sent from iTunes to Apple — Genius info, for example — and in exchange for sharing, users will likely get more stable apps.

Sounds good to us!

[Thanks Hassan!]

Available to developers in pre-release form to coincide with iPhone 3.0 Beta 4 and Beta 5, Apple has just pulled the switch on iTunes 8.2 for everyone. At the same time, they’ve also released QuickTime 7.6.2. Since QuickTime is a core technology to many Apple and Mac components, no doubt other updates (like GarageBand for Mac, pictures above) will follow.

If you notice anything new we haven’t already covered, let us know in the comments!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in! Check the TiPb iPhone Forums for updates on what's new]

nanocr.eu (via MacRumors) has a theory on how the Palm Pre is managing to sync so seamlessly with iTunes. Read the full post for details, but their conclusion is a tad concerning:

• When you select “Media Sync” on the Pre, it will switch its USB interface to use Apple’s Vendor Id and the Product Id for a specific iPod model
• The Pre exposes a filesystem through Mass Storage Class that mimics the structure of an iPod
• The Pre responds to Apple’s custom USB command and returns XML info about the device

They warn — like we have — that this will be pretty simple for Apple to intentionally prevent, uncaringly break, or accidentally bug up (they’ve done all three to jailbreakers in the past, after all, and expecting Apple to devote time and engineers to maintaining compatibility for unlicensed devices is just this side of silly).

Their advice? Anticipate Palm Pre iTunes sync to go the way of the dodo and fast. Then get a copy of DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist and sync your hearts out that way…

Fortune scoop’let’ed the story: the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes. No, not like a dumb USB disk. Not even like a 3rd party-enabled BlackBerry on the PC. Somehow, when Jon Rubinstein joined Palm, someone at Apple forgot to frisk him for iTunes keys.

Our friends over at PreCentral.net, of course, are all over this:

If the Pre does indeed just show up as a standard device on iTunes, it would be big news — but it wouldn’t be unprecedented.  Apple has allowed other OEMs to license the necessary APIs to talk directly to iTunes so they can show up as a device.  If you take a gander at the list of compatible players on Apple’s support site, you’ll see that Rio players, Nomad Players, and others will all work with iTunes directly (not to mention various Motorola phones).

Still, the level of integration purportedly available to the Pre makes us feel more than a little violated. Did Apple really license them that deep a hook into the system? Given the existence of one Steven P. Jobs, we somehow doubt that. But if not, which 3rd party hook did Palm embed, is it all nice and legal, and how — if at all — will Apple react?

We know! At WWDC Phil Schiller will announce — iPhone compatibility with Palm Desktop!!

Ahem