Apple in the United Kingdom has launched a special offer (with a catch) as part of their Christmas 2010 special giveaway. iTunes’ European customers can download free movies, music, music videos, apps, books, and TV episodes from iTunes.
The “That you’ll never forget” surprise by Apple turns out to be an announcement about the entire The Beatles library, which is now available for download via iTunes.
Sources of MacStories have informed them that Apple will release final version of iTunes 10.1 along with Mac OS X 10.6.5 today, followed by the next major update of iOS (version 4.2) for iPhones, iPods and iPads on Friday, November 12, 2010. The arrival of OS X 10.6.5 and iTunes 10.1 before iOS 4.2 makes sense because they are required by iOS 4.2’s AirPrint and AirPlay functionalities.
iTunes 10.1 Beta has also been released today alongside iOS 4.2 Beta 2. Again, this release is currently meant for developers only, running both Windows and Mac. Except for the support of the new wireless printing feature in iOS, there is seems to be nothing new in this release.
Apple today has released iTunes 10 for both Windows and Mac OS X. This is a major release which brings lots of new feature to one of the most popular software around. Some of these features are highlighted below.
iTunes App Store, which was launched back in 2008 with the introduction of iPhone 3G and iPhone software 2.0 (now iOS) has just passed a quarter million apps mark this Friday, with more than 50,000 developers working on them. As of the time of writing this article, the tally stands at 252,227 apps to date. This includes apps for all iOS based devices like iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. If inactive apps are to be counted, then the number of apps go way above 300,000. The Graph below shows the rapid rate at which the App Store is growing.
An independent Vietnamese iPhone developer by the name of “Thuat Nguyen” currently has 42 of the top 50 books in the iTunes App Store “Books Category”. Most of these books/apps were released back in April this year and have little to no user ratings at all. Well then how are they dominating this iTunes category? It has been reported that a large number of iTunes accounts have been hacked, with as many as $600 dollars being spent from a single account without the consent of the account holder to buy these apps – hence making it to the top of the charts.
As expected, Apple has just announced the availability of iTunes 9.1 for both Windows and Mac. This new version of iTunes brings support for the upcoming iPad on iPhone 3.2, a new “Books” section which replaces the existing “Audiobooks” section in the iTunes Store and improvements to Genius Mixes feature.
Another batch of iPhone apps are, apparently, about to get the axe. Reports are popping up around the net, that "cookie cutter" type apps are starting to be pulled from the App Store. This would include RSS apps, and photo gallery type apps. Any app that just packages an online service, and doesn't offer any other functionality.
A new tweak has been released in Cydia, called "Fake About Screen". It allows you to set whatever firmware, capacity, serial number, etc, that you want, making your jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch look like a future version of the Apple device.
