THE APPLE INVESTOR: Has Apple Missed The Social Music Boat?

THE APPLE INVESTOR: iPad Production Fears Overdone, Thinner iPhone Coming And App Store Reaches 500K Apps

Get Free iTunes Music When You Fly Southwest Airlines

Early Consensus: Some Sort Of iTunes Streaming Service Coming Tomorrow

So what has been going on with iTunes and PayPal?

"Users' experience suggests that there is some account cracking going on at the iTunes Store. But why, who and how?"

So what has been going on with iTunes and PayPal?

How to choose a secure password for your accounts

iTunes users should strengthen iTunes passwords following second hack

"It's been a second bad weekend for Apple, following another alleged app-driven hack of its iTunes store. iTunes users should now change the password on their iTunes account as well as switching to a prepaid debit card for the service.

Over the weekend, reports have been coming in that a second developer has been using a similar approach to the Vietnamese group, which appears to have ramped a range of apps with similar names to the top of a section on the App store, said Barmak Meftah, Fortify's chief products officer.

"Over the 4th of July weekend, a Vietnamese group used the same strategy to ramp its apps to the top of the book charts on the App Store. This time around it seems it's the travel section that's been hit," he said.

"The clever aspect of this hacking strategy is that iTunes members will see an app at the top of the charts and download it, if only to see what all the fuss is about, and then open themselves up to a obfuscated malware infection or, more likely, see their iTunes account details being lifted and misused," he added."

iTunes users should strengthen iTunes passwords following second hack

iTunes accounts plundered, Apple's App store needs better control mechanisms

"iTunes accounts have been compromised by money-loving criminals. It all started on Sunday, when The Next Web noticed that the list of the top 50 best selling application in the "Books" category contained 40 applications from the same application developer - one Thuat Nguyen."

iTunes accounts plundered, Apple's App store needs better control mechanisms

Amazon Fires Back At Apple With Kindle App Store

Unlock Any iPhone in Seconds!

Superstar iPhone hacker George Hotz has just released Blacksn0w, an addition to his latest Blackra1n iPhone jailbreaking application. Why would you want it? Because it will take any iPhone or iPod Touch and jailbreak it with one click. It will also unlock any iPhone and allow it to be used on any cell carrier, anywhere in the world. It even restores internet connection tethering for iPhones running the latest 3.1.2 software.

Better still, it does all this in a few seconds flat.

Jobs makes it clear he's back in charge at Apple

SAN FRANCISCO--Though technically he returned to work two months ago, it was as the host of Wednesday's Apple music event that Steve Jobs publicly retook the reins of the company he founded.

Read the full story at CNET

See the video of the event.

Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support

A new report suggests that the next version of Apple's iTunes could carry support for Blu-ray discs, visual management and rearrangement capabilities for App Store software, and integration with social media Web sites.

Citing a "pretty reliable source," The Boy Genius Report revealed Saturday what could become new features in an anticipated upcoming new release of Apple's digital media software.

Read the full story at Apple Insider by Katie Marsal

Apple Threatens iTunes Shutdown

For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the Internet's most successful music store. "If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the ... royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all," Cue wrote. "Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably."But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes.

read more | digg story

Apple rocks out, announces new iPods, iTunes 8

At the highly-anticipated "Let's Rock" event today in San Francisco, Apple updated the venerable iPod.

HD TV shows
"Shows will cost $2.99 apiece (instead of the typical $1.99 for SD episodes), but unlike the handful of HD movies the store already has, HD TV show episodes can be watched on a computer, not just on an Apple TV."

iTunes 8
"Jobs announced a new Pandora-like "Genius" feature that can generate playlists of songs "that go great together." A new Genius Sidebar can also anonymously (and voluntarily) send your library info up to the iTunes Store cloud to make smarter recommendations of new music a customer may like. A new button in the iTunes 8 interface offers easy access to these new Genius features."

New iPod nano
"The new iPod nano can create Genius playlists on the go, without having to connect to iTunes, and it also gained the accelerometer from the iPhone and iPod touch for viewing Cover Flow album art, photos, and video when turned sideways. The iPod nano is also gaining a number of new hardware and software features that typically could only be had through third-party accessories (if at all), such as a built-in voice recorder and the ability to shake it to shuffle. Other new iPod nano features include an iPhone-like headphone set with a new clicker, volume control, and microphone."

New iPod touches
"The new iPod touch has the same 3.5" display but gets thinner with a tapered, stainless steel back (probably to differentiate it from the iPhone). The iPod touch will gain the iPhone's integrated volume controls on its side, and gains a built-in speaker like the iPhone which Jobs claimed was "really hard for something this thin, for casual listening." Genius playlist creation will also be built into the iPod touch. nother unique feature of the new iPod touch is the integration of the Nike+iPod system for tracking running statistics. Unlike the iPod nano, the hardware receiver has been built into the iPod touch."

New iPhone OS 2.1
"The major update should "significantly" improve battery life, problems with droppped calls, fix a lot of bugs, and backing up to iTunes should be "dramatically" faster. New iPod touches ship with the 2.1 OS update, and it should be available to download for free for all other iPhone and iPod touch owners running iPhone OS 2.0 this Friday."

read more | digg story

Apple's new 3G iPhone is selling like hot cakes!

The process all started July 10 when you could obtain iPhone Software v2.0 early. I did and I must admit I spent a fair amount of time trying out some of the new features like the Apple iPhone Application Store. However it appears that when everyone started to update their phones firmware from 1.x to 2.x Apples servers were overloaded (iPocalypse) because unlike updates in the past this update requires you to reactivate your iPhone. Even InformationWeek called the new software upgrade really sweet!

I have to say one of my favorite new Applications in the America online instant messenger (a.k.a AIM chat). Because I must admit I am not a fan of SMS texting at all.

Apple fans have been flocking to Apple stores all over the world snapping up the new 3G iPhones. The New York Apple store had over 150 people lined up this morning as early as 5:00 AM.  Buyers have been storming stores in Asia and queues forming in European cities. In New Zealand people queued in freezing temperatures for around 60 hours to be the world's first to buy the iPhone at a minute past midnight on Friday. "Guards in kevlar vests and helmets brandished shotguns and stood guard over 500 devices on sale in Hong Kong, a city that has seen its share of unruly crowds at major product launches." "Softbank Corp, which sells the iPhone in Japan, said over 1,500 people lined up outside its flagship Tokyo store. " 

There is good news from the business front as well because O2 said there's been a lot of interest in the iPhone now that it supports Microsoft Exchange. Yet there are always the iPhone haters and Windows fan boys with us who would complain about any success that Apple might have. The hackers have been rather busy so there are already reports that the iPhone OS 2.0 has been unlocked!

.Mac has also transitioned to MobileMe but not without serious downtime and many users were fuming mad at having the service unusable for over 12 hours.

Updated: Apple Sells One Million iPhone 3Gs in First Weekend" ["'iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,' said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. 'It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.'"

iTunes Store turns 5: Can anyone break its dominance?

Cupertino (CA) - Apple's digital music store just celebrated its fifth anniversary and had a Cinderella-like run so far. More than four billion music tracks and more than 125 million TV episodes have been sold since launch. The market share is estimated at or above 70% worldwide. Earlier this year, iTunes was believed to briefly have been the nation’s largest music retailer. TG Daily took a look at the store’s history, the environment and competing landscape to sum up its five years of business and look at difficulties it may be facing.

read more | digg story

Leopard spanks Vista!

Today Computerworld wrote that  "There's really no contest. Tiger is a better OS that Vista, and there are no long-term downsides to Leopard. Vista doesn't measure up. " I also found and interesting article about the myth that buying a Apple costs more then a PC. The author explains how that PC you are thinking of buying really will cost more then the an Apple Macintosh would. Looks like Apple is also working on 10.5.1 and it's said to have at least two dozen fixes. Also included are updates to Leopards FireWall. iLounge talks about the secrets & features of iTunes 7.5.  My odd bit of interesting news for the day was a Digg Story the spooky side of Scientology.