Listen up, true believers! TUAW is reporting that Marvel Comics, home to the X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and Spider-Man has announced at the New York Comic Con:
their intention to sell “In-Motion” comic books through the iTunes Store. According to Marvel, the In-Motion comics go beyond the paperback books with animated panels and voice-over work from popular actors. Sounds like something that could be a lot of fun on an iPod touch or iPhone.
New stuff? Old stuff? In between? Will we be getting the heights of the Phoenix Saga and Astonishing X-Men or the dregs of Secret Invasion and Ultimatum? The tears of the Boy Who Collected Spider-Man, the cheers of Nextwave, or the jeers of Hulk Red?
Grab your Extremis kit, pop your admantium claws, sling some webs (any size!), and let us know just how exactly Marvel needs to SMASH! it up in iTunes!
iXcelsior!
So today I had a bit of a scare. I went to sync my iPhone 3G with my Macbook and noticed when I’d plug in the phone it would say it is syncing while iTunes simply showed nothing — no kind of response whatsoever. Yes, everything is up to date on my Macbook so that was not the problem. After a few reboots of the Macbook and iPhone the same behavior still continued like clockwork.
Next step was to do some research online and send off an email to Rene for some more ideas. To our surprise this seems to be a bigger than we thought with many people seeing the same issue. I decided it could not hurt to give Apple a call about this and as I was on hold I figured I’d try one more time and shockingly it worked. I had to do a double take at my screens but it worked. To make sure it was not a fluke I unplugged everything and rebooted both Macbook and iPhone, still worked!
This issue seems to be completely random and Apple claims to be looking into it. So, if this happens to you, keep trying to sync, chances are you may get lucky. I’d say avoid doing a complete restore to your phone because if it does lock up during the restore you will be left with a empty iPhone. That’s not good.
Hope Apple updates iTunes fast to prevent this from happening to any of our readers. In the meantime, have any of you had this misfortune?
Let us know!
[Thanks to @Rene for the backup!]
It’s been an interesting road since Apple launched iTunes Plus, originally only offering DRM-free music for EMI and independent labels. Now everyone is on board — or will be by the end of April — and Apple has righted the wrong of requiring every track to be updated all at once. So what else is going on?
Seems like Apple accidentally charged some upgraders $9.99 to take their albums to iTunes Plus, but Macworld says Apple is making it right:
Your request is flagged for follow-up and I will contact you once I can fully refund your order. Please note that processing can take up to five business days from the date of purchase. I also issued 5 courtesy song credits for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
The move to iTunes Plus has also helped get Norway to put its anti-competitive hammer away, according to Ars:
The DRM-free tracks (iTunes Plus) are now compatible with any music player that can play AAC files and are therefore free of the restrictive iPod tie-in that has annoyed so many customers. “We have no reason to pursue them anymore,” Norway’s consumer mediator Bjoern Erik Thon told AFP.
Norway should have, of course, being going after the record labels instead of Apple, but we’ll let bygones be bygones now, won’t we?
CNet takes a look, 6 years later, at Steve Jobs’ 2003 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine and the checklist of predictions — make that accomplishments — is impressive. Then again, Steve Jobs did make his name, and Apple’s, with just that kind of market savvy:
- iPod (and now iPhone) could be more important to Apple than the Mac
- Big media doesn’t understand technology
- iTunes would be non-trivial for others to copy in 6 months (make that 6 years?)
- Copyright is important. Theft corrodes the soul. Apple will provide a legal alternative
- iTunes could sell 1 billion songs a year (now selling 1 billion in 6 months)
What’s even more interesting is seeing how Steve Jobs’ insight not only helped change the face of computers (Apple, Mac), Music (iPod, iTunes), retail (Apple Store), movies (Pixar) but now also cell phones (iPhone). Mostly linked together (Pixar more tangentially), but with the same focus on premium quality, unsurpassed user experience, and utter simplicity of execution.
Makes me even more eager for the iPhone 2,1 (iPhone HD?) to really bring it all together…
[via Daring Fireball]
What finally made Apple and Steve Jobs relent on their previously locked-in-stone $0.99 single price for single songs iTunes business model? Many suspected it was the lure of DRM-free music, which the record labels (except EMI) had been withholding from Apple and providing competitors like Amazon MP3 in an attempt to break the iTunes juggernaut.
Maybe not, however, according to Ars Technica (referencing the Associated Press):
the key negotiating component was over-the-air downloads for the iPhone. The record companies held out on allowing users to download songs on the 3G and EDGE networks (instead of just WiFi) until Apple relented.
While this might seem strange, technically many users probably don’t care (or don’t even know about DRM) unless they run into the old 5-machine limit or try to move their protected music outside the iPod ecosystem. However, anyone hitting the iTunes icon on the iPhone and getting the message to switch to WiFi likely suffers a bad user experience. Then again, strange is normal in a strange industry filled with strange old media dinosaurs, innit?
Higher prices, according to the article, are also intended to make discounted song bundles seem like better values.
How important is 3G or EDGE downloads to you? Worth the potential cost bump for premium “hot” singles? Mitigated at all by the thought of cheapo bundles of the same? Let us know!
Apple has made upgrading your iTunes library to iTunes plus easier than ever! So to share the good news, we have created this post to show you the steps involved. Ready? More after the break!
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Posted on Tuesday, Jan 6, 2009 by Dieter Bohn
File Under:Featured, News; Tags: drm, drm-free, iPhoto, iTunes, keynote, macworld, macworld 2009, remote
You saw the epic liveblog, now see the photos.
We have the deets in photo on the new 17″ MacBook with the ridiculously large 8 hours of battery life, the fact that iTunes is going 100% DRM-Free, the new iLife with GarageBand Music Lessons, iMovie’s stunning upgrades, and iPhoto’s geo-tagging and face-recognition, and also the new iWork with Keynote — which now has an iPhone-based remote for switching slides and reading your notes.
Um, yeah, this was a huge Macworld for Mac people — and the iTunes DRM news and the Keynote news were incredibly great upgrades for iPhone owners.
Makes you weep that Apple will never go to a Macworld again, don’t it?
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Pre-Macworld rumors are flying with CNet reporting that Apple has finally succeeded in getting Big Music to allow iTunes to sell DRM-free (non-copy protected) music, something long ago granted to competitors like Amazon MP3.
The cost? Variable pricing. Apple has tried to hold the line at a consistent $0.99 per song pricing (briefly flirting with a premium $1.29 for iTunes Plus’ higher bit-rate, DRM-free music before dropping it back down to $0.99 as well). Now, the same rumor holds that Apple will let Big Music sell the latest, hottest hits at a much higher rater, and older, catalog titles at a reduced $0.80 price point.
The best news for iPhone owners? The iTunes Store App currently only allows music downloads via WiFi, but that might also be changing — to direct downloads via EDGE or 3G.
Would you be willing to pay more for the Top Tens and less for the oldies? Or did they have you at iPhone 3G downloads?
I have a 160GB iPod Classic that is almost filled to the brim with media: songs, podcasts, movies, tv shows, and photos. Just in music alone, I could fill my 16GB iPhone 3G many times over. I wish my iPhone had 32GB or, heck, since we’re wishing, I’ll go for 120GB or the equivalent of my iPod. Alas, I have 16GB to work with and I want to carry plenty of apps, photos, podcasts, and videos with me and there’s little room around the edges to squeeze in some of my favorite tunes. However, there is a way to keep your music fresh and updated so it seems like you are carrying far more music on your iPhone than you may have thought. Read on to find out how!
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Another countdown to Macworld, another rumor! This one says that Apple is developing a turbo-boosted version of Time Capsule that would offer HP Media Smart Server-like capabilities. Some of the more nifty, iPhone related features, according to 9to5Mac, could include:
The device will tie in MobileMe with an Apple built-in Dynamic DNS system. For instance, if your MobileMe account was “9to5mac”, your domain name would be “9to5mac.me.com”. This is how you’d reach your filesystem throughout the Internet. Your media would also reside here. [...] Sharing media with iPod Touch and iPhones both over the Internet and while at home. AppleTV as well.
Hey, if multiple drives and RAID-5 (RAID-6!) are in the cards, it might even be a viable Drobo alternative — something that’s already the darling of the Apple community…
