tune

Finally, the iPhone's first major update!

My optimism for this 1.1.1 update was muted as, after a couple of months of waiting, I was excited for the ringtone feature that has ultimately proven lackluster. If my iPhone is in my pocket, I honestly cannot hear the ringtone portions of songs I've picked - even the jarring ones! The only reason I know I'm getting a call is because of the vibrate feature. So, with yesterday's major update, I was cautious. It should follow, however, that the speaker adjustments in the 1.1.1 update … Read more

Writing for the BBC, Bill Thompson asks the question "Time for Apple to face the music?" (tip o' the antlers to Dominic Bassett.)

Forgive yourselves if you think you've heard this one before. You have.

The recent launch of the new range of iPods, including the video Nano and the iPod Touch, has shown just how far Apple is willing to go to make life difficult for its users in order to shore up its dominant position in the market for music players and downloads.

Do tell, Bill.

First...

No! Wait! Don't! That was rhetorical!

Remember when Amazon.com was just a bookstore? On Tuesday morning, the online retailer launched the public beta of its much-anticipated rival to Apple's iTunes Store: Amazon MP3, which features over 2 million songs free of digital rights management copy protection, which means they'll play on any computer, music player, or music-enabled cell phone.

Because of Amazon MP3's DRM-free focus, that means the selection isn't as wide as the iTunes Store's. Several major-label conglomerates, like Sony BMG and Warner Music Group, have not jumped onto the bandwagon and hence aren't offering their music for … Read more

When the iPhone first hit store shelves, Apple was on top of the world. Not only did the company enjoy the biggest product release of the year, its stock price was on the rise, Mac sales were soaring and, for the first time, it looked like Apple might be able to supplant Dell and HP as the proven leader in the hardware business.

But just a few months later, it's amazing how quickly things have changed. Mac sales are still strong, but the iPhone has become the topic of heated debate, Apple has come under fire for dropping the iPhone price too early and too substantially, and its iTunes Store is under attack from content producers and new, formidable competitors.

Could it be that Apple has lost its touch and is doomed to follow the path of Microsoft--loved, highly regarded, then utterly hated? Will the Mac faithful finally lose confidence in the company it feels so strongly about? Even worse, will Apple's two big moneymakers--the iPhone and iTunes--meet an early demise? It could happen.… Read more

With NBC and ABC both making free downloads of their shows available this week, Fox jumped on the trend with free downloads of new shows available on iTunes.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Fox and Apple have reached an agreement to offer free downloads of the shows Fox is trying to promote this sweeps season: that is, the ones people aren't watching as much as they'd like. No Simpsons or Family Guy clips are among the five shows currently available for free on the iTunes Store. But episodes of shows sure to be forgotten in the … Read more

College football is back, and so is fall television. If you're looking to pick up some free TV shows (legally), the Internet is your friend and is a great place to go for digital versions of TV shows, sans a TV or the need for a VCR or DVR to watch shows when you want to. Note that several of these sites are walking a fine line of what's legal and what's not, which was outlined in yesterday's post about legal suicide for start-ups. We don't condone piracy or encourage it; this guide is for entertainment purposes only.

Free (and paid-for) downloads:

iTunes. iTunes is worth mentioning here because you can often get the first and last episode of any show for free. You can then put it on your iPod, iPhone, or watch it full-screen on your computer. While the iTunes Store is now lacking shows like The Office, because of NBC pulling out of its renewal deal, you can still find shows from ABC, CBS, and Fox--which incidentally is offering free pilots of all of their series, which you can find here (link opens up in iTunes).

Editor's Pick: Kitchen Nightmares--it's like Dinner Impossible, but with more volatility and endive.

Amazon Unbox. While we may not have had the best experience using this service in the past, if you're looking for legal digital copies of NBC's newest shows, you're stuck with Unbox until Hulu launches next month. Like the iTunes Store, you'll find all the big players here, although keep in mind that you can't watch these shows on any portable media players, which makes the $1.99 price tag a little harder to swallow.

Editor's Pick: MythBusters

Joost. There is an absolute ton of content on Joost, including entire seasons of the original Transformers from the 80s. The only catch? You've gotta download and install the client, and get a private beta token, which these days is about as easy to get as it was to get a Gmail invite a few years back.

Click the "read more" link below to continue reading, and find out about free, streaming options.… Read more

Without a doubt, the reverberations of a European court's decision to uphold stiff remedies for Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior were felt in more than one legal office in Silicon Valley. But which ones?

The top three candidates? Intel, Google and Apple. Intel is facing antitrust scrutiny all over the world, and Google is so ubiquitous that it has become a verb. Apple has raised the ire of European regulators for some time with its iTunes/iPod juggernaut.

The Google era is relatively young, and since I don't cover that area, I'm not going to opine on the … Read more

Josh's iTunes Album Art Grabber is a pretty good resource for those of us who like getting their album art from one place. It's not perfect, but it's simple in both form and function, despite being tied to the iTunes Store at the same time it helps users free themselves from it.

… Read more

Online music retailer eMusic launched their 'eMusic Remote' application today, which is currently downloadable for PC, Mac, and Linux. While Remote doesn't exactly revolutionize the eMusic customer experience, it does consolidate the eMusic online store and and eMusic download manager application into one space and increases support for syncing eMusic content to jukebox applications like iTunes, Windows Media Player, or Winamp.

We still wish there was a way to preview tracks without getting kicked over to another application, but this is definitely a step in the right direction for eMusic. It's a much better strategy than trying to … Read more