The iTunes LP idea hit a bump in the road late last week. It was being reported by Gizmodo that iTunes LP would only be available to bigger record companies and the small guys would be left in the cold. The reason being is that a small time company was claiming that Apple was charging $10,000 for production fees. The company is called Chocolate Lab Records. And according to Apple, everything they claimed is actually false.

Apple made a comment concerning iTunes LP:

“We’re releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own. There is no production fee charged by Apple.”

iTunes LP is an idea of bringing a “record” type feel to iTunes downloads. There will be original cover art, and extras you can download along with the music. There is behind the scenes videos, animated lyrics, and photos.

If you own the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3Gs, then you should have received a text from AT&T stating that MMS would be ready 09/25. Now that the date is upon us, AT&T is scrambling to make sure that there’s plenty of bandwidth to handle the new feature.

The amount of work that it takes to launch something like MMS with such a user base is staggering. AT&T has been working on their systems for months now, and it looks like they’re still nervous about the launch.

Hopefully, everything will run without a hitch when Friday rolls around.

iTunes 9 Features

- iPhone App Organization

- More media sync options

- Home Sharing and Genius Mixes

- Redesigned store

- iTunes LP

SAN FRANCISCO—September 9, 2009—Apple® today introduced iTunes® 9, the latest version of the world’s most popular software application to purchase, manage and play media, packed with innovative features such as iTunes LP, Home Sharing and Genius Mixes, as well as a redesigned store and improved syncing. iTunes 9 makes it easier than ever to discover, purchase and enjoy your music, movies, TV shows, and apps for iPhone™ and iPod touch® from Apple’s revolutionary App Store. Plus, Home Sharing now lets you easily transfer songs, movies and TV shows to other computers in your home.

“iTunes 9 is a great iTunes release, with innovative features that make using iTunes better than ever and iTunes content richer than ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iTunes LP, for example, lets artists share more of their creativity with fans and gives music lovers the feeling of being immersed in an entire album with art, lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos.”

iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more. iTunes LP debuts today with albums including Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me,” The Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty” and Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King: iTunes Pass.” The new iTunes Extras provides a similar experience for movies on iTunes with features including documentaries, deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes Extras is now available for select movies including “Twilight,” “Batman Begins,” “WALL-E,” “Iron Man” and “The Da Vinci Code.” Customers can enjoy iTunes LP and iTunes Extras on a Mac® or PC.

iTunes 9 also introduces Home Sharing, which lets you easily transfer music, movies and TV shows among up to five authorized computers in your home. Family members can now view up to five iTunes libraries on their home network, see only the portion of these libraries they don’t already have, import their favorite content directly to their own libraries, and automatically add new purchases from other computers into their library.

The incredibly popular Genius feature gets even better with Genius Mixes which are created using the results of over 27 million music libraries with over 54 billion songs that have been submitted and analyzed by Genius. The new Genius Mixes feature is like having a “Genius” DJ that automatically generates up to 12 endless mixes of songs from your iTunes library that go great together.

With improved syncing in iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, you can now organize your iPhone apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone with the same layout. Plus, syncing music, photos, movies and TV shows is easier than ever with the added ability to sync music by artist and genre and sync photos by Events and Faces. The iTunes Store on iPhone now features precut ringtone downloads with over 20,000 ringtones priced at just $1.29.

Unfortunately, not all Mac users are gleeful. Although the news is just now breaking on the topic, Mac OS X 10.6 is confirmed to be incompatible with over 100 Mac software applications. The recently developed (and quickly growing) Snow Leopard Compatibility site keeps a running trail of apps that work, apps that don’t work, apps with problems, and apps whose status is currently unknown. The site, with hundreds of entries, contains a one-stop check for your favorite software.

While many of the apps are unimportant or extremely small, others certainly warrant a serious look by Apple. Some of the following applications either do not work with the new operating system or they have serious malfunctions: 4th Dimension, Filemaker’s Bento Database, Cisco UPC Client, some versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Apple Server Admin Tools, Boxee, Canon iPF printer drivers, Carbonite, Evernote, some versions of Filenote, Norton Anti-Virus 11.0, Norton Internet Security 4.0, Plaxo, QuickBooks 2009, and Symantec AntiVirus for Mac.

Some of the problems are being worked on by the software developers, but the blame for most of the glitches lies squarely at the feet of Apple. While some of the software problems will be solved, other companies say “no way.” Adobe refuses to correct the Creative Suite 3, since Creative Suite 4 is the version currently being used by most designers and artists.

Overall, Snow Leopard is enjoying popular praise. For one, it has a smaller size—much smaller. The skinny footprint on the hard drive is a welcome change to bulky operating systems of the past. One co-bonus to the smaller size is the faster speed. Apple is great at making things happen fast, and it looks like Snow Leopard has made some surprising strides toward a faster speed. The built-in QuickTime player gets a refreshing facelift and more trademark simplicity. Some praise the upgraded Finder as the best aspect of the upgrade. With a new 64-bit engine, the Finder is faster, more intuitive, and much more effective. The apps in the new OS also have been tweaked, most notably Preview, Apple’s PDF reader. An application-wide spell corrector (Substitutions) helps out with the occasional finger burps we all make when rapidly typing. All in all, most are raving over the new operating system.

But problems still exist. Still, the Mac faithful simply point a finger toward problem-ridden Windows operating systems, and go right on enjoying Snow Leopard.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission has stated that Apple is describing these reports as isolated for now.

The first case happened in France, when a teenager reported being slightly injured after his iPhone made a hissing noise then shattered. He has made no comment of hit contact with the EU Commission.

Apple Europe has only made a broad statement as of now: “We are aware of these (media) reports and we are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers. Until we have the full details, we don’t have anything further to add.”

[via: Reuters]

Fast forward to now and there has been an update in the iProd hype. With the iPhone OS 3.1 beta, the identifier has increased to ‘1,1′. This progression basically means that it has gone from prototype to an active product inside of Apple. Along with the progression, a productID has been attached as well.

Of course all of this information has led to speculation as to what the physical product actually is. There are rumors of an Apple Tablet PC that could be announced soon, that has also been rumored to run the iPhone OS. Along with that there are rumors of a camera-equipped iPod Nano could be the device. Unfortunately no one except a few at Apple know the truth. Luckily, with the recent updates it shouldn’t be long before we see a public release.

Enjoy. Also, provided by MacRumors is the new Quicktime X Icon…

When a developer creates an app they have the option to create ‘promo codes’ which they use to send to sites for review. Or they can give them away in a contest. This can sometimes lead to creating brand awareness and creating a buzz online.

Apple has decided to take this ability away from developers who’s apps are rated 17+. The reason is that when you use iTunes or the App store, promo codes don’t prompt a parental warning when completing the transaction.

You can see how developers would find fault in this process. I actually agree with them, as I’m left confused as to why Apple would take this approach. Why not instead beef up the parental controls of the App Store as it pertains to promo codes. What’s the positive outcome by taking away an option for developers that bring in business to the App Store?

Did Apple forget that their success banks on the developers abilities to sell their products? Or do you find this to just be a temporary solution to the promo code problem?

Not wanting to take two years to select the handful of apps I would probably use, I went a different route. I e-mailed my tech-savvy friend, also an iPod Touch user, asking for his recommendations. An iTunes screen shot and a few minutes later, I had his recommendations.

There is an easier way. AppsFire, launched just today, offers iPod Touch and iPhone users an easy way to share and recommend apps. According to the introductory video, “AppsFire is a new iPhone service that will allow you to share your favorite iPhone apps with your friends.” The way it works is simple.

First, you must download AppsFire onto your computer. Right now, the program is only available for Mac users. After installing the program, AppsFire will immediately take inventory of all the apps that you have installed on your device.

From there, you go to your own personal AppsFire page—the page where you can both see your applications (on a virtual iPhone), chose the applications that you want to tell your friends about (or select all of your apps), and notify them.

To notify friends, there are four share buttons. The buttons are “social networks,” “e-mail,” “widget,” and “links.” The process is simple. E-mailing is a mere matter of titling your selection, inserting your friend’s e-mail address, and sending the e-mail—right from the AppsFire page. Social network shares are just as easy. Virtually all it takes is one click—and instantly a link to your favorite iPhone apps is available for all your friends and followers to check out on Twitter, Facebook, or Delicious. If a simple link to e-mail or share is what you prefer, that is also possible within mere clicks.

When you send the AppsFire notification to your friends, they will see the same image of an iPhone, loaded with all of your recommended apps. Remember, that you can control which apps your friends see. Thus, any proprietary apps that you own and would like to keep confidential, need not be included in your initial selection. Friends browsing your apps can click on any of the apps to bring up the download page in iTunes, and download it right to their own device. (No, they don’t get them for free, just because you “shared” them.)

The process and idea behind AppsFire is much like social networking customized for your iPhone. This will prove to be a simple, fast, and convenient way to get the apps you need, as long as your friends jump on board, too.

CUPERTINO, California—June 12, 2009—Apple® today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari® 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows. Safari 4 is the world’s fastest, most innovative browser and is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.*

“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”

Starting with the development of the open source WebKit browser engine, Apple has been leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, enabling an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari 4 includes Top Sites, for an incredible visual preview of frequently visited and favorite pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; and Cover Flow®, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks. Other innovative features include Smart Address Fields for automatically completing web addresses from an easy to read list of suggestions; Search Fields, to fine tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches; and Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text.

In Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™, available later this year, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent.** Snow Leopard makes Safari more resistant to crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process, so even if a plug-in crashes, Safari continues to run and the user simply has to reload the affected page. Safari running on Snow Leopard also delivers HTTP streaming, making it easy to deliver high-quality audio and video in industry standard formats from any web server without the need for browser plug-ins.