Apple

iTunes Pass is now available on the iTunes Store for Depeche Mode fans.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET Networks)

EMI unveiled a new feature on iTunes Tuesday called iTunes Pass, which allows Depeche Mode fans access to the band's upcoming album and other selected goodies.

Apple chose to let EMI make the announcement for iTunes Pass, a new service that will gradually release tracks until the middle of June from the album Sounds of the Universe along with exclusive remixes and videos for $18.99. This is a separate offering from the album itself, which is scheduled to be released on April 21 and can be preordered for $9.99.

At the moment, it appears EMI and Depeche Mode are the only ones trying out iTunes Pass. This appears to be an outgrowth of Apple's decision to allow variable pricing in the iTunes Store for the first time, allowing record companies and bands to offer the digital version of a special-edition CD with extra videos and songs than the regular CD for a premium price.

The Depeche Mode tracks will be DRM-free--Apple's other major change to the iTunes Store this year--and the $18.99 pass won't cost you any more than it would have to buy all the contents of the pass separately, Apple said, although it seems there will be tracks or videos available to pass holders that won't be offered to the general public.

Apple's Phil Schiller discusses DRM-free iTunes music at Macworld 2009, a move that has ended Norwegian opposition to the iTunes Store.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

One of Apple's most persistent European critics regarding the use of digital-rights management technology on the iTunes Store has dropped its complaint following the company announcement that iTunes music would soon be DRM-free.

Norway's consumer ombudsman, Bjoern Erik Thon, said Wednesday that he would drop his complaint against iTunes before Norway's Market Council, telling Agence France Presse "we have no reason to pursue them anymore." Norway has been particularly vocal among European critics regarding the way Apple had used DRM technologies on the iTunes store to limit the use of purchased iTunes songs to iPods.

But at Macworld 2009, Apple announced plans to sell all of its music catalog on the iTunes Store without DRM technology by the end of April. That means songs purchased from the iTunes store will play on any music player that supports AAC files, rather than just iPods.

That move will likely end the various movements against the iTunes Store in other European countries, such as France and Sweden. A few years ago, France had attempted to force companies like Apple to share the secrets of their DRM technology with rivals to force interoperability, but later backed down.

At Macworld 2009, Apple's Phil Schiller revealed that the iTunes Store will now sell DRM-free tracks.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

For all of you who weren't able to follow our live coverage of Apple's keynote address at Macworld 2009 earlier Tuesday from San Francisco's Moscone Center, here's a quick recap of the highlights.

•  DRM-free iTunes: As first reported last night by CNET News' Greg Sandoval, Apple announced plans to lift DRM technology from its entire catalog of 10 million iTunes songs by the end of April. Eight million songs are DRM-free as of today, and labels will be allowed to charge different prices for their songs, in a departure from the previous iTunes Store policies.

We're not exactly sure at the moment how the details will work with this announcement, but it sounds like a big win for iTunes customers. One downer is that you'll have to pay 30 cents to replace existing DRM-laden tracks with the new DRM-free versions, essentially upgrading those songs to iTunes Plus tracks. Check out this story from Greg for more details. The iTunes Store was slammed in the aftermath of the keynote, and service was spotty.

•  New 17-inch MacBook Pro: Apple completed its notebook refresh with this new model, which brings the unibody design, trackpad button, and new displays to the company's largest laptop. It will cost $2,799, the same price as the current 17-inch MacBook Pro.

The most interesting part of this announcement, however, is the notebook's battery. Apple is using a new type of battery that it says will allow the notebook to get between seven and eight hours of battery life, depending on which graphics chip is running.

Photos: Jobs fill-in touts media, MacBook updates

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In order to get that technology into the notebook, however, Apple had to make the battery completely enclosed within the chassis: like the iPod and iPhone, you won't be able to replace it yourself. Apple representatives did not have details on how the battery replacement program will work, although it won't ship until later this month. Apple expects the battery to last five years.

Update at 2:08pm: Gizmodo reports the battery will cost $179 to replace, and it can be done at Apple stores or Apple resellers.

•  iLife '09: There were some nice improvements with to the components of the iLife suite, such as geotagging support in iPhoto '09, improved editing capabilities in iMovie '09, and rock star instructors in GarageBand '09.

Are they compelling enough to upgrade? That probably depends on the individual. Travelers will like the geotagging, budding musicians will like the lesson plans. One sour note: it doesn't appear that anybody who bought the new MacBooks released from October onward will be able to upgrade to the new software without paying the full $79 fee.

•  iWork '09: Does anybody actually use iWork? Easily the most underwhelming section of the keynote, the latest version of Apple's office software didn't appear to have anything compelling enough to cause a mass upgrade, other than perhaps Keynote Remote, which lets you use your iPhone or iPod Touch to control Keynote presentations.

But iWork.com will be interesting to watch evolve. It's in beta form for now, but if Apple works out the kinks, it could increase the usage of iWork especially if Apple finds a way to hook it into MobileMe.

•  The Philnote: Phil Schiller acquitted himself well in the starring role, usually accustomed to playing the role of Steve Jobs' sidekick at these events. He wasn't Jobs, although to be fair I've been covering technology events for eight years and haven't run into an executive with anything even approaching Jobs' presentation skills. But he engaged the crowd, made the proper offerings to the demo gods the night before, and ensured that the show would go on.

•  The rest: No Steve Jobs sighting. No new Mac Mini. No new iMacs or Power Macs Mac Pros. The line outside the keynote seemed smaller than in years past, although it also seemed that IDG did a better job moving the line along.

And Tony Bennett is the true ageless wonder.

The last San Francisco Macworld with Apple's participation saw Tony Bennett close out the show.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

Click here for more Macworld Expo coverage from CNET News.

It's been a tough morning for the iTunes Store, which seems to be experiencing technical difficulties.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

The wait to access the iTunes Store on Thursday morning is starting to resemble the wait for Guns N' Roses' new album.

If you had designs on purchasing the long-delayed album Chinese Democracy Thursday from Apple, you were in for a long wait. iTunes customers reported long delays when trying to access the store, which appeared to be up but suffering in some way. The problems appeared to affect all parts of the store, including the App Store, and range from pages timing out, to odd pages such as the one above cropping up during searches, to just plain old slowness.

It's not clear what is causing the problems, and an Apple representative did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Let us know if you have problems accessing the store, or if you lost any purchases or application downloads while shopping Thursday morning.

UPDATED 12:35pm - Things seem to be back to normal, pages are loading quickly within the iTunes Store. Apple has yet to comment on what might have happened.

You can't do much more with Koi Pond than feed the fish, but the mesmerizing virtual pond was the top-selling application in 2008 on the App Store.

(Credit: The Blimp Pilots)

It's clear from the list of top applications downloaded from the App Store this year that iPhone and iPod Touch users are looking for entertainment.

Every year around this time Apple releases the most-downloaded songs and videos on iTunes, and this year is particularly interesting because it's the first year of the App Store. Six of the top 10 paid apps were games, including Apple's Texas Hold-Em and the heavily promoted Super Monkey Ball from Sega, but Koi Pond's mesmerizing virtual aquarium led the way as the top-selling paid application for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

On the free side, Pandora Radio took the top spot, followed by Facebook's iPhone application and Tapulous' Tap Tap Revenge. Other interesting apps that made the top 10 in both categories? iBeer (paid) and Lightsaber Unleashed (free).

Apple separates the top applications list into several categories on the iTunes Store, such as entertainment, utilities, social networking, and music. The full list (iTunes link) is worth a look if you've been searching for new applications to add to your iPhone. I added Recorder (ninth overall in the paid category) this morning as a way of finally putting my old digital recorder out of its misery. And check out these graphs from O'Reilly's Radar that take a look at certain stats such as the changing percentage of paid versus free applications.

The iTunes Store is still the top destination for U.S. music shoppers, according to new data.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple is still the No. 1 music retailer in the United States, but Amazon.com's online store is coming on strong.

More U.S. music buyers are getting their music fix through iTunes than from any other source, according to data released on Tuesday by NPD Group. Earlier this year, Apple took over the top spot from Wal-Mart Stores, and it maintained that lead during the six months from January to June, NPD said.

Wal-Mart is still in second place, followed by Best Buy. Taking fourth place from Target was Amazon, whose own music store has been growing in popularity since it launched last September, perhaps in part due to its DRM-free stance.

Apple has confirmed data leaked from an internal memo showing that it has become the largest music retailer in the U.S.

The iTunes Music Store is now the leading music retailer in the U.S.

(Credit: Apple)

Earlier Thursday, Ars Technica reported that certain Apple employees had received an internal e-mail with the results of a study conducted by The NPD Group. NPD initially declined to comment on the data, citing the fact that it was leaked from Apple, but Apple distributed a press release Thursday afternoon confirming the data from NPD's MusicWatch survey.

Apple didn't include its market share in the release, but Ars reported that Apple had 19 percent of overall music sales in the U.S. during January, compared with Wal-Mart's 16 percent. Apple did say that its achievement was based on two months of data, from sales in January and February of this year.

One interesting note about NPD's MusicWatch survey is that it equates 12 tracks with the sale of one CD. iTunes generates a lot of one- or two-track purchases as compared with the purveyors of physical CDs, where you either buy the whole thing or you don't. All those 99-cent transactions apparently add up.

The Hollywood writers' strike might have shortened the television season, but iTunes customers will get some compensation for their losses.

iLounge noticed that Apple has started sending notices to iTunes Store season pass subscribers with good news: they'll be getting a two-episode credit from Apple to make up for the writers' strike.

Apple is also promising to provide partial refunds for shows that won't be delivered as a result of the strike. For example, if 20 episodes were promised when the season pass was purchased, but only 17 wind up getting made this year, it sounds like Apple will issue a credit for the missing three episodes. It's not clear whether the two-episode credit applies to that difference.

The Writers Guild of America went out on strike for about four months in hopes of negotiating a better compensation package for Internet downloads of writers' works. That forced the television-watching public to miss its daily dose of digitally delivered drugs and watch reruns and reality TV instead. The strike ended last month.

Buying a season pass to a particular show over the Internet is a relatively new way to watch TV, and this is a relatively interesting way of dealing with the strike. So far, my cable company has not offered me anything back for forcing everyone to watch The Moment of Truth.

Apple fell far short of its goal of rolling out 1,000 movies for rent through the iTunes Store by the end of February.

Macworld's Christopher Breen checked in Friday on Apple's promise, and found that just 351 titles are available to rent through the latest version of Apple TV. If you check the iTunes Store from a Mac or PC, there are 399 movies available to rent. Breen notes that even if you include all the movies available through the iTunes Store, for both purchase and rentals, there are only 770 available.

Apple missed its target of having 1,000 movies available for rent by the end of February.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

At Macworld, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the rental service, the company promised to have 1,000 titles available for rent by the end of February. Apple TV owners seem pleased with the rental service so far, but a limited selection will slow its growth.

For example, Netflix says it has over 6,000 movies and television shows available for downloading through its Web site. Still, there's an awful lot of filler there. Netflix counts the 2005 NCAA men's lacrosse championship game (Go Johns Hopkins!) as a selection, as well as "Learn Yu-Gi-Oh!: Level 2: Advanced," where you gain insight on how to deploy your Continuous Spell Cards.

Apple also missed its goal of shipping a software development kit for the iPhone by the end of February, although we'll learn details about that SDK for the first time later this week during an event at Apple's headquarters. It will be interesting to see as well what Apple shareholders have to say to Jobs on Tuesday during the company's annual meeting.