itunes

iPhone ringtones will cost you

MacRumors has confirmed that the forthcoming version of iTunes will contain a built-in ringtone creation utility for songs purchased via the iTunes Music Store. Users will be able to right-click on purchased songs and select "Make into Ringtone," which will give them a small audio workspace to select the 30 seconds they want to use as a new ringtone. According to MacRumors, the use of this feature will cost $.99 per track--a fee which goes toward licensing the music for your mobile phone. That means the total fee for a ringtone is $1.98.

There's no confirmation … Read more

Fool me once

New York magazine's John Heilemann's magnum opus on Steve Jobs is the kind of turgid, operatic flight of fancy technology and business coverage could really do without.

He saunters out onstage...

Which is to say he walked out onstage.

Well into his forties, Jobs appeared to have pulled off some kind of unholy Dorian Gray maneuver.

Huh? Here's a picture of Jobs in 1998 when he was 43.

Now, the Macalope doesn't know about you, but if Jobs traded his soul for eternal youth, he must have gotten it back for breach of contract.

The senescence … Read more

New iPhone video shows home activation, e-mail support

In addition to revealing the prices for iPhone data plans Tuesday, Apple also released another video showing how iPhone customers can activate their new phones from home.

With long lines expected outside Apple and AT&T stores on Friday, some analysts had expressed concern that the process of setting up an iPhone could turn into an all-night affair. But the companies are letting customers activate their iPhones over the Internet using iTunes. The video shows how plugging the iPhone into a Mac or PC steps the user through the signup process, which of course works flawlessly on the demo.… Read more

News Roundup: AOL, CircleUp, MediaMaster

AOL relaunches its news service. AOL relaunched its news service with an all-new design earlier this morning. In addition to adding an extra column, it now features some Web 2.0 goodies such as a tag cloud of popular story headlines, and the most-read stories and comment threads. The service will also aggregate news from other sites. Read more about it here.

CircleUp launches embeddable widget. CircleUp [ review], the social-planning service has a new widget called MyQuestions that lets people add their questions and subsequent list or responses to blogs, Web sites, or social-networking profiles. Users can interact with these … Read more

Apple's iTunes overtakes Amazon in overall music sales

Strong holiday sales helped Apple's iTunes push past Amazon and take third place in overall music sales during the first quarter, according to a new report.

A spike in iPod sales over Christmas drove new device owners to iTunes, and helped Apple grab 9.8 percent of the overall music market, according to the report, issued Friday by the NPD Group.

Amazon came in fourth with a 6.7 share, according to NPD's figures. Wal-Mart was tops in the quarter with 15.8 percent and runner-up Best Buy snagged 13.8 percent.

Apple managed to capture a larger … Read more

HeyCast: Put YouTube on your iPod

HeyCast is a new service from the folks that made HeyWatch [review], the online video conversion service. It lets you grab videos from popular hosting sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and Apple's Quicktime movie trailers site, and clump them together into a handy RSS feed you or anyone else can subscribe to in iTunes or other feed readers. The feed isn't just your standard RSS though--HeyCast grabs the Flash videos, converts them, and makes them available for offline viewing on your computer or portable devices.

I gave it a go this morning and came across a few … Read more

The iPhone requires an iTunes Store account

One of the first things you'll need to do with your new iPhone is register with the iTunes Store in order to activate the handset.

Apple revealed the requirement in an e-mail sent Tuesday to those who had registered to receive e-mail updates on the TMHGIH (The Most Hyped Gadget In History). Presumably, most of the iPhone early adopters will be Apple devotees with current iTunes Store accounts, but for those who don't have an account already, have your credit card ready during the iPhone setup process.

Why would Apple do this? For one thing, iTunes is the … Read more

EMI licenses DRM-free catalog to PassAlong Networks

The U.K.-based EMI Group continues its campaign to provide its digital music library free of DRM restrictions: it just announced that it has licensed the entire catalog to PassAlong Networks, which operates the StoreBlocks music retail technology used in online stores like F.Y.E. and BreakthruRadio.

The songs will be sold in MP3 format at a 320 kilobit rate--more than typical digital music bitrates of 128 to 192kb, and more than the 256kb premium songs offered by Apple's iTunes Store--but pricing has not yet been determined.

In April, EMI announced in conjunction with Apple that it … Read more

Report: Apple to sell iTunes songs through Bebo

The Financial Times reported Tuesday that Apple is poised to announce a deal in which it will sell iTunes store tracks through social-networking site Bebo. At first, it appears that this applies only to Bebo's 8.8 million users in the U.K. and Ireland, where the service is most popular, but the story hinted that it may expand to the rest of Bebo's 33 million-strong user base if successful.

According to the Financial Times article, any band or artist with a Bebo profile--there are approximately 500,000 of them--that's already part of the iTunes catalog will … Read more

Mac apps on Windows suck. Here's why.

Apple has pulled off a remarkable feat: it's released crappy software for Windows that only makes users want more of it.

iTunes is a bad Windows app. It's slow and it's a horrible resource hog. On the Mac, though, it's another story. The app taunts Windows users.

And now, Apple is going to bundle a redundant Windows browser, Safari, with iTunes. Who cares? Users won't--or shouldn't. Safari may be faster than IE, but it has no plug-in support, as Firefox (and even IE) does. It does have tabs. Big deal.

Safari is a runtime … Read more