This increase will raise on average increase prices from 9 cents to 15 cents a track. Apple is greatly opposed to this deal stating if this would happen they might close the iTunes Store all together.

“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.”

[Via Macrumors]

The owner had his iPod Touch crushed by a pickup truck to the point of no return. To his surprise he picked up the device and it still worked. (The kind of still working as “I can plug it into my commuter and listen to songs) he might not want to “Slide to Unlock though).

For story and gallery click here.

Some of the most popular Apps with price change include…

Trism ($4.99 -> $2.99) Puzzle Game [App Store]

Band ($5.99 -> $1.99) - collection of virtual instruments [App Store]

Pianist ($5.99 -> $1.99) - virtual piano [App Store]

Guitarist ($5.99 -> $2.99) - virtual guitar [App Store]

We expect to see many more price shifts as the iTunes App Store continues to grow.

The President of Atari Phil Harrison spoke highly of the iPhone platform:

“It’s very exciting to be bringing these influential and timeless games in their redesigned form to the iPhone and iPod touch, devices which are leading the global charge in innovative handheld technology and changing the way we consume and interact with media,” he said.

Atari has been trying the best they can to fore the removal and flag the breakout copiers from the iTunes App Store. They also state that they will continue to develop for the Mobile Os X platform in the “Near future”.

[Via 9to5Mac.com]

You that 2G iPod touch that Apple was all excited about, being that it’s the thinnest iPod touch ever (despite being only the second one ever made)? We figured you guys might be interested in having us take a bunch of unboxing images of the one that just got delivered here to Gear Live HQ. Yeah, this thing is thin, and if you don’t already have a first-gen iPod touch, you should seriously look into this model if you’ve been waiting one. It’s a nice improvement over the original. Check out the rest of the images over at our iPod touch 2G unboxing gallery.

Check out the Gearlive gallery here.

Apple has updated their Remote application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to version 1.1 [App Store]. The free application adds remote control capabilities for both iTunes and your Apple TV through your local Wi-Fi network connection. For the Apple TV, it acts primarily as a media browser, allowing you to search, browse and playback both music and video.

Existing features includedl:

- Control the music on iTunes or Apple TV
- See the album artwork on your Remote
- Search your whole iTunes library
- Control your AirTunes speakers

The 1.1 update adds:

- Create Genius playlists
- Create and edit playlists in iTunes

[Remote App Store Link]

The good:
The second-generation Apple iPod Touch has it all: music, videos, photos, podcasts, e-mail, Web browsing, Internet radio, games, Nike+, Wi-Fi music downloads, and an App Store for adding thousands of custom features.

The bad:
The second-generation iPod Touch may be overwhelming to users looking for a simple music player; audio quality is average; and iTunes software is required.

The bottom line:
The second-generation iPod Touch includes features that are light-years ahead of the competition, its design has improved, and its price has finally come down to earth.

These new headphones have a built in mike that were demonstrated on the iPod Nano for recording voice notes. But a MacRumors forum user has confirmed that it will in-fact work on the iPod Touch.

We had previously reported that Apple’s new microphone headsets were listed to be compatible with the 2nd Generation iPod Touch, although we had initially expressed some skepticism as this feature was not listed in any other location.

Allowing users to conveniently add an external microphone to the iPod touch opens up the possibility of using the iPod Touch as a telephone over Wi-Fi connections (VOIP).

[Via MacRumors]

That hardware fact is still true. But one way they can try to combat Pwnage for existing hardware is to program iTunes to detect and prevent the Pwnage exploit. In fact, they’ve already done that in iTunes 8.

The nice thing about iTunes decisions is that we can provide you with patches to counter them. We have one such patch already for Mac iTunes 8 for iPod touch. We’ll be working out the full suite of patches for all the combinations over the next week.

[Via Slashgear]

The official list of changes for this firmware include…

- Genius playlist creation
- dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
- improved email reliability, notable fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
- faster installation of 3rd party applications
- fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
- faster loading and searching of contacts
- other bug fixes

Members of the MacRumors forums have been listing what they have noticed in the new firmware..

- Faster App updates and installation
- When viewing songs it says Artist And Album underneath the Song title.
- Podcast has more descriptive information
- Can now selectively mute certain sound effects (new mail, key taps)
- More responsive
- Much faster backups

The 2.1 Firmware is available for free download if you have purchased the 2.0 and is only 9.95 if you have 1.x software.

[Via MacRumors]