The latest evidence of the continued trend away from music downloads toward streaming services was provided by Kobalt, a company that collects music royalties on behalf of thousands of artists, reports TechCrunch. Income from Spotify overtook that from iTunes for the first time in Q1 of this year, putting Spotify 13% ahead of iTunes.
While Kobalt operates only in Europe, there is no reason to believe that the trend would be different in the U.S. … Expand Expanding Close
Back in February, Apple and Disney teamed up on a new app called Movies Anywhere that allowed iOS users to access their library of purchased movies—whether bought on the iTunes Store, DVD, or other media (with the appropriate redemption code in the box).
Today, Disney has launched the same service for Android users. Movies Anywhere owners will now be able to access their movie library featuring titles from Disney, Pixar, and Marvel from any of their devices. Because this is a cross-platform solution, movies previously purchased on the iTunes Store will now be available to users on Android devices, and iOS users will be able to watch Disney movies they’ve purchased from the Google Play Store.
We write reviews when a great new app comes out, but there are also older ones that we think worthy of recommendation, and How to Cook Everything is one of those.
I’m a decent enough cook, but not an instinctive one: I follow recipes to the letter. If it says to put something in the oven at 170 degrees for 15 minutes, you’ll find me carefully setting the dial and starting a timer, not casually spinning the dial to roughly the right temperature and glancing in ten minutes later to decide that’s good enough.
But there are times when first I need to decipher exactly what the instructions mean. What’s the technical difference between dicing and chopping? Is sautéing the same thing as frying? And what exactly does it mean when it says ‘prepare the chiles’?
If you find yourself empathising with these types of questions, How to Cook Everything may just be the perfect iPad based cookbook for you too.
It attempts to be the only thing you’ll need in your kitchen when planning and cooking a meal. You can choose a recipe and, with one tap, add all the ingredients to a shopping list, sorted by aisle. If you’re not sure what a term means, you can click on an illustrated explanation. And whenever that recipe tells you to cook something for, say, 15 minutes, you can tap the instruction to automatically start a timer for the correct period.
It’s not the slickest-looking app by a long way – it has a distinctly old-fashioned appearance, especially in the b&w illustrations. But it has a great range of recipes with all the extra help you might need to cook them.
At $9.99 from iTunes, it seems expensive for an app – but it’s a cheap price for a decent cookbook. Recommended.
Apple’s worldwide digital music sales through iTunes have dropped up as much as 14% in 2014, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal citing sources close to the situation. That’s a big decrease, as the report points out, when compared to data available for digital sales last year: Expand Expanding Close
While early Apple Pay experiences appear to have been mostly positive, Eddy Cue’s admission that there is still “a lot of work left to do” has been demonstrated in a number of glitches in the system – some of them resulting in multiple payments being taken for the same transaction … Expand Expanding Close
Apple has released a nice update for the developer-focused iTunes Connect app today. Besides iPhone 6 and 6 Plus support (finally), developers can now login to the app using the Touch ID fingerprint reader on the iPhone and new iPads. This should make it even quicker for developers to check their app submission status and upload new information to their iTunes Store pages. The update is free… on the App Store.
Seth Weintraub|9:53Here’s the streaming URL for You Windows/other users (sorry!) http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14pounqefvoiubefvpiub10/refs/14pijbnoihjb10_sl_ref.mov
Seth Weintraub|9:52Live Stream is up. Only one sang playing at a time this time (cancel the Truck!)
Seth Weintraub|9:49
Having a laugh with Craig backstage. Just a few more minutes.
We’ll be running down the event coverage and pre-coverage right here with this auto-updating live blog so stay dialled in while we’ll do separate posts for new products/services/announcements as they happen… Expand Expanding Close
Apple’s iTunes Store has just made a little bit of a slip-up (and with perfect uncanny timing): screenshots for the iOS 8.1 iPad user guide have just appeared within iBooks and include Apple’s upcoming iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3. Of course, Apple will be formally debuting these devices tomorrow.
The screenshots confirm that both new tablets will include nearly identical designs to their predecessors and the addition of Touch ID sensors in the Home button. Another new feature confirmed by this leak is a new Burst Mode (first introduced with the iPhone 5s) for the iPad Air 2 (image below).
These images also indicate that the new tablets will be named “iPad Air 2” and “iPad mini 3,” which means that Apple will bringing the numbering scheme for names back to the iPad lineup. Of course, the presence of this user guide means iOS 8.1 (with Apple Pay) is likely to drop tomorrow, too.
Rovio’s latest game in the Angry Birds series, Angry Birds Transformers, has rolled out worldwide today after its earlier soft-launch last month in New Zealand, Finland, Canada and Australia.
Angry Birds and Transformers collide in this action-packed, 3D shoot ’em up adventure! The EggSpark has transformed the eggs into crazed robots who are destroying Piggy Island, but who can stop them?! Autobirds, roll out!
Gamers have been waiting for quite some time as the Transformers mash-up game was first announced back in June …
iTunes customers who didn’t watch Apple’s iPhone keynote last month were a bit surprised to discover that they suddenly owned a copy of U2’s new album “Songs of Innocence,” even though they’d never bought it. The band had partnered with Apple to add the album to every single iTunes account for free in what they called the largest album debut ever.
iTunes users were less than thrilled at the arrangement, noting that the album was being automatically downloaded to their devices in many cases and there was no way to remove it from their purchase history. Apple responded soon thereafter by releasing an online tool to remove the album, but thus far U2 has remained quiet on the issue… until today.
At your own risk, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NX53H2W/ref=tsm_1_tw_s_dm_ndg14u?tag=n003f1-20" target="_blank">stream U2’s album for free from Amazon Prime Music</a>
Now that Apple has finally wrapped up its U2 album giveaway to iTunes customers, a promotion that warranted its own removal tool named after the “Songs of Innocence” album, Amazon is picking up the record and giving it away to Amazon Prime subscribers through Prime Music… but not without taking a shot at Apple first.
While Apple rather aggressively added the U2 album to every iTunes library automatically (prompting automatic downloads if the setting was enabled) and upsetting many customers, Amazon took to Twitter today to promote their copy of the “deluxe” version of the album while taking a shot at Apple in the process. “Add it to your library—we won’t do it for you,” Amazon said in a tweet followed by a teasing winky face.
Apple has started rolling out a redesigned version of the iTunes Store for users running iTunes 12 less than a week ahead of what’s expected to be the launch of OS X Yosemite. The new storefront takes design cues from the iTunes and App Store home pages on iOS devices, featuring a flattened, side-scrolling carousel at the top of the page in place of the old “card”-style header. This new header can be scrolled horizontally using two fingers or even dragged around with a mouse.
Individual pages for albums, TV shows, and iOS apps have also been redesigned and now feature more iOS-like controls throughout. Download buttons have been reduced to simple outlines. Shadows and textures have been removed throughout the store, putting the content directly on a stark white or dark gray background.
Apple has pushed out the fourth pre-release version of iTunes 12 to users running the developer preview or public beta of OS X Yosemite. The update weighs in at 214 MB, but the seed notes don’t list anything new in this build. There do appear to be some new icons in the preferences screen, but for the most part it’s the same as the other betas we’ve seen.
Apple has announced that for the month of October it will be accepting donations through the iTunes Store on behalf of City of Hope in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. City of Hope is a research facility that focuses on prevention and treatment of not only cancer, but many serious diseases such as lymphoma.
The Cupertino company has previously collected donations on behalf of organizations such as the Red Cross following catastrophic events such as typhoons and hurricanes. This is the first time Apple has collected donations for City of Hope or Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Now that we’ve established that Apple is not “shutting down” Beats Music, the streaming service that Tim Cook in May lauded as the “first music subscription service that really got it right,” and we’re all agreed that it makes far more sense for the company to dump the Beats Music brand and integrate the service into an offering of its own, we can move on to another more interesting question: When will Apple show off the new version of its subscription service and its new brand? Here’s a guess backed up by some industry scuttlebutt: February — presumably timed to the Grammy Awards, which will be held Feb. 8.
With Apple currently maintaining a streaming music service branded as iTunes Radio and a separate on-demand music service branded as Beats Music, it’s not hard to believe that the service is due for some reworking under Apple’s ownership.
Apple isn’t bragging on its iOS 8 adoption numbers like it has in years past because it appears uptake has been slightly slower. The reason? The much bigger iOS 8 download doesn’t fit on many people’s devices which are often stuffed to capacity with music, movies, photos and apps.
Apple’s latest numbers are for Sunday September 21, 2014 and show that from people who visited the App Store on their iOS device, 46% were already on the new iOS 8. On one hand this number is skewed higher because most of the early adopter nature of frequent App Store visitors but on the other hand many people visit the App Store from older devices that can’t be updated to iOS 8.
Apple’s own numbers show something else slightly troubling. App Store app submissions are being delayed slightly as of iOS 8 launch with only 74% of app updates and 53% of new apps being reviewed. Apple is usually in the high 90% range on iOS as it is with Mac.
As for 9to5Mac readers’ iOS adoption, the numbers are much much higher than the general audience as you’d probably expect. This morning, we’re close to 80% iOS 8 adoption. The pie chart from Google Analytics taken at 5:30 am ET is below:
When Apple quietly pulled the iPod classic from its online store the day of the iPhone 6 event earlier this month, it meant the last iPod click wheel from Apple had finally been retired in place of touch screens and voice input. Tony Fadell, CEO of Google-acquired Nest Labs who is most known for his work in the iPod division at Apple through late 2008, spoke with Fast Company to discuss the death of the last click wheel iPod:
“I’m sad to see it go,” Fadell admits in a phone interview. “The iPod’s been a huge part of my life for the last decade. The team that worked on the iPod poured literally everything into making it what it was.” […] “Products just don’t come around like that often,” laments Fadell. “The iPod was one-in-a-million.”
In an Irish radio interview, Bono discusses his various collaborations with Apple, as transcribed by TUAW. Interesting, Bono claims Apple now has 885 million iTunes accounts (up from 800 million as officially announced in April). With his work on a mysterious new music format, he aims to help Apple cross the billion accounts mark. The new medium has apparently been underway for a while, spanning back to a conversation with Steve Jobs in 2009. Expand Expanding Close
According to TIME, U2’s partnership with Apple goes far beyond a free album in your iTunes library, much to the chagrin of some users. The group is reportedly working with Apple on a ‘secret project’ to rejuvenate digital music scales.
Details, however, are thin on the ground. Bono is quoted as saying he is developing a new music format that will somehow inspire consumers to buy complete albums once more. Without more information, it’s impossible to tell whether this is a silly pipe dream or an actual possibility. In the age of streaming music, the sales potential for individually bought songs is waning.
With iOS 8 launching later today, it’s worth taking a look at how you should prepare your device for the new operating system. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This how-to is going to walk you through backing up your iOS 7 device and transitioning it over to iOS 8:
Apple has informed iCloud users via email that the company will begin rolling out an app-specific password feature. The feature allows users with iCloud two-factor authentication enabled to use third-party apps.
It’s been reported that Apple will not make access to the NFC chip in the iPhone 6 generally available to developers in the first year. A new report says that an Apple spokesperson has confirmed that the chip is for use with Apple Pay only. But that’s likely only temporary…
While iTunes supports a way to “hide” previous purchases, the complaints and confusion apparently grew loud enough to warrant a dedicated support site for permanently removing the free U2 album from iTunes purchase history. Apple says once you remove the free album from your iTunes purchase history and library, you will need to “get it again” if you decide you want it. The U2 album is available for free until October 13th next month when the album will then be available for sale at various retailers. View below for information on how to remove the free U2 album… Expand Expanding Close
While we’d all expected plastic bank cards to be replaced by apps eventually, the CEO of mobile banking startup Moven is suggesting that Apple’s backing could mean the end of physical bank cards within 2-3 years.
The additional sweetners here are three fold. Firstly, tokenization will avoid much of the type of breaches we’ve seen at Target and Home Depot because the token is only a one-time use thing. Secondly, the move to tokens and the combination of biometrics, etc allow for the emergence of a ‘cardholder present’ approach to interchange rates that will potentially give mobile payments a competitive merchant rate. Lastly, the US might effectively jump straight from magstripe to mobile, especially if issuers can figure out how to reduce the cost of card replacement by moving straight to mobile SE and tokens …
