Updated at 10:44 a.m. with a comment from Apple.

Apple's notes on iTunes 8.1, an update released Wednesday, as was a new iPod Shuffle, promised a list of new and improved features.

Among them is an update to the Genius feature that makes recommendations based on favorite music that users select from their own library, and lets them play clips of those recommended songs from a sidebar.

It's a neat and convenient feature, which is why the Internet was abuzz when it was rumored, and then Apple's iTunes 8.1 release notes confirmed, that … Read more

Apple released an update to its iTunes music management software on Wednesday, adding a host of enhancements as well as support for a new line of iPod Shuffles it released earlier in the day.

In addition to some security fixes, iTunes 8.1 adds new features to Genius--a feature that lets you put songs together in your library that somehow "go great together"--and support for CD imports to iTunes Plus.

Among the other enhancements Apple made:

According to Outdustry, iTunes gift cards have been pirated, and China's biggest C2C online shopping site, Taobao, is the platform used to sell the cards.

Chinese hackers have figured out a way to generate iTunes gift card keycode numbers and help themselves to songs from Apple's music store. The hackers have been selling pirated $200 iTunes gift cards on Taobao for as little as 17.9 RMB, or just $2.60--a savings of almost 99 percent!… Read more

More Apple tablet/Netbook rumors surfaced Wednesday as one Apple watcher wonders what the company is doing with all those books.

Reuters is reporting that Apple has ordered 10-inch touch screens from Wintek, a contract manufacturer in Taiwan that makes the touch screens used in the iPhone and iPod Touch. The screens are expected to be ready by the third quarter of this year, setting the stage for a possible late 2009 introduction of the long-rumored Apple tablet and/or Netbook.

But one interesting possibility for that rumored device comes from longtime Apple writer Andy Ihnatko, who is wondering if … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices worries that lingering issues--both real and speculative--with Apple MacBooks are giving laptop graphics a black eye.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Stan Ossias, director of marketing, mobile graphics, at AMD, began by asserting that my March 11 post "overstated" the case about heat and the instability of graphics processors in laptops and that some readers may interpret heat issues too broadly.

"In the case of Apple's product, I don't know what happened with Nvidia's GPU but we'd like to avoid having the negative aspects taint the entire industry," he … Read more

Updated at 6:22 a.m. PDT with more details and new images, and 8:45 a.m. PDT with comments from Apple.

Apparently the tiny iPod Shuffle wasn't tiny enough. On Wednesday, Apple unveiled a 4GB Shuffle that's half the size of its predecessor.

The new device is smaller than a AA battery yet holds up to 1,000 songs, Apple said. The preshrunk Shuffle also adds a new VoiceOver feature that can recite song titles, artists, and playlist names, as well as provide status information, such as battery life. Speaking of which, Apple said the gadget's battery life clocks in at 10 hours.

Priced at $79, it comes in silver or black. The aluminum body of the third-generation Shuffle stands 1.8 inches tall and is 0.3 inch thick. The navigation and volume controls are in a small protrusion on the right earphone cord.

With the new Shuffle, users can organize songs by multiple playlists. The VoiceOver feature can speak in 14 languages: English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

VoiceOver is Apple's term for the text-to-speech engine built into Mac OS X Leopard in order to let blind people use a Mac more easily. The "Alex" voice generated by that software is the one that Leopard users will hear, while Windows users and Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) users will hear a different voice, said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod and iPhone marketing.

The first time you sync one of the new iPod Shuffles with iTunes, Apple will install software on your Mac or PC that makes the voice feature possible. This isn't speech recognition; you can't speak into your iPod headphone and order up Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks," but the voice feature is more useful than just reminding you of the name of that song you downloaded three years ago but had forgotten about until it randomly came up on your Shuffle.… Read more

Apple has apparently had a change of heart about a Twitter iPhone app that sometimes presents users with language some might find objectionable.

The popular Twitter app for iPhone and iPod touch--called Tweetie 1.3--was apparently rejected because it gives users access to the Twitter Trends section, which displays the most frequent topics or words on Twitter at any given moment. This section sometimes lists swear words--including a particular four-letter word that begins with the letter F--that apparently raised Apple's disdain.

In an e-mail earlier Tuesday, app developer Loren Brichter said Apple quoted this part of the company's … Read more

Since this report was published, Apple has decided to approve the app for the App Store. Read the updated story here.

Updated at 3:10 p.m. PDT with comment from Tweetie developer.

Remember the time your mom withheld your dessert because you said a bad word? Apple is doing something along those lines, with one major difference: it's because a bad word has been heard in the neighborhood.

According to iLounge, Apple has rejected version 1.3 of Tweetie, the popular Twitter client application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The reason? An offensive word appeared in Twitter's Trends data.

Somewhat similar to Google Trends, Twitter's Trends is a list of the most frequently used topics or words on Twitter at any given moment. This means this live list of words/topics changes constantly (I checked it just now and the offensive word--which starts with an "F," by the way--has gone). Yet, somehow it still bothers Apple enough to take action.

It seems that Apple, as a matter of policy, does not comment on the approval process for Apple applications. We have, however, contacted the company, and will update this post if we hear back.

In an e-mail to CNET News, however, Tweetie developer Loren Brichter said Apple quoted this part of the company's guidelines as a reason for the decision:

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive, or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod Touch users."

"The question then becomes whether is it an individual app's responsibility to censor everything it gets from the Internet," Brichter said. "Twitter themselves create the "top trends" list; Tweetie just displays it. The consensus is pretty much that it would be ridiculous to expect that.

"At the same time," the developer added, "this could have been just a goof on Apple's part. The App Store is still very young, they're working out the kinks."

Here's the long list of improvements in Tweetie 1.3 that all you naughty Twitterers with iPhones and iPod Touches are gonna miss out on--at least for now:… Read more

Just to get this out of the way up front, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did NOT make an appearance earlier Tuesday at Disney's annual shareholder meeting.

Marketwatch's RealTime Headlines section reported Tuesday that Jobs did show up at Disney's meeting--which would have marked his first public appearance since announcing a six-month medical leave of absence--and the Internet was off to the races. ZDNet's Sam Diaz captured screengrabs of the original headlines here. Marketwatch did not correct its headline for over an hour, posting the headline at 1:12 p.m. EDT and not posting a correction … Read more