Filed under: iTS

TUAW reader Gabby tipped us off this morning that Apple has expanded its new browser-based iTunes previews to include App Store offerings. Sure enough, I pasted a standard App Store URL for Apple's Remote application into Safari and was treated to the preview shown just above.

This new preview option is just one of many App Store URL tricks you may want to take advantage of. You can find some of the most useful tricks right after the break on this post. Got another URL trick for App Store? Let us know in the comments.

With less than 24 hours to go before the tablet's likely introduction, the New York Times is reporting that the TV networks are resisting Apple's proposed subscription model of distribution. For $30 per month, Apple would supposedly allow customers all-you-can-eat access to their library of television content. However, TV execs fear Apple's recent stance on individual song pricing in the iTunes Store, which spurred track sales but dampened sales of albums.

AppleInsider suggests that there's a contingency plan in place, in which Apple asks* the networks to change the price of an individual TV episode from $1.99 to $0.99, which jibes with a story on Financial Times this morning.

I'd welcome a subscription model for TV and movies. For $30 per month, I could stream any TV show or movie in Apple's library to any approved device: Apple TV, iPhone, iPod, computer or tablet. This would prevent the last-minute shuffle of files as I prep my machines for a hotel stay and more importantly, eliminate the "You missed your show" tax.

If I miss an episode of "The Office," why should I pay two bucks just to catch up when I can see it on Hulu for free? Sure, I can get a HD (720p) version from iTunes, but I'm willing to go with 480p from Hulu when it's free. I pay $40/mo to the cable company now and the vast majority of shows/networks I never watch. Why pay for them?

When Apple first introduced television to the iTunes Store, only a handful of networks were on board. Now there's a laundry list of participants. I imagine that we'll see a similar growth pattern with the tablet.

*Define "asks" as you will.

Recently, the people of the island republic of Mauritius have been able to purchase the iPhone 3G and 3GS through mobile phone provider Orange, but there's one major problem -- there's no access to an iTunes Store. This brings back memories of the original iPhone, when there was no iTunes Store to tempt iPhone owners with its wares. Can you imagine? No apps, no songs, and no videos for purchase directly from your phone? It boggles the mind.

Here at TUAW, we're doing our part for the "Free the iTunes Store" movement in Mauritius. Reader Marc, who works for Mauritian Apple reseller Paoma, notes "Thousands of iPhones, no Apps! We are hoping to get Apple to take notice and include us. A Facebook page has been set up to document the movement and we have already been featured in many leading French-language Apple blogs."

Well, Marc, now you have a leading English-language Apple blog taking up the cause as well. If you'd like to help iPhone users in Mauritius get their own iTunes Store, consider visiting the Facebook page and joining their group.

The people of Haiti are enduring the devastating catastrophe brought about by this week's earthquake. Relief is finally beginning to arrive but there is an overwhelming amount of work to do.

You can support the American Red Cross by making a donation through the iTunes Store. it's quite easy: Just navigate to the donation page [iTunes link] and select the amount you'd like to send. Donation options range from $5US to $200. The Store confirms that 100% of your donation will go to The American Red Cross.

Your iTunes Store account will be charged as necessary. Please do what you can to support the emergency relief efforts.

Last November, Apple launched browser-based iTunes previews, which gave customers information on a song or artist before pushing them out to the iTunes Store. It's a handy, welcome change. And now this week, they've added 30-second song samples to those preview pages (check it out). Just as you do in the store, you can hear any track's sample by clicking the small "Play" button that appears when you mouse over its name.

There has been speculation about the future of a streaming-based version of iTunes since Apple bought Lala in November. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that LaLa executives have been given key roles at Apple, and that members of the existing iTunes team will report to them. While playing with the new previews today, we explored the page's source for any hints of Lala, but found nothing. However, we did come across something interesting. Turns out you can easily turn any 30-second preview into an iPhone-compatible ringtone, and you don't even need GarageBand.

First, find a snippet you're interested in. Then view the page's source. Scroll down until you see something that starts:

audio-preview-url="http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/016/Music/3a/7b/83/mzm.ekrigiqi.aac.p.m4a"

Copy the URL (minus the quotes) and paste it into Safari's Downloads window. You'll get a file with a name similar to:

"/mzm.ekrigiqi.aac.p.m4a"

Now, replace ".aac.p.m4a" with ".m4r," drop it into iTunes and sync. You've got a new ringtone! Of course, you can't choose the 30 seconds you hear, and that use probably isn't intended by Apple. But if the preview happens to be what you want, there you go.

[Via Mac Rumors]

The iTunes Store and App Store have mastered the art of the impulse purchase. "Only two bucks? Sure, why not?" The good news is that you can send a song, album, movie or TV show to a friend just as easily.

Let's start with music. First, find the album or song you'd like to send. If you're sending a song, you'll see a drop-down arrow next to the track's "Buy" button. Click it to reveal the menu at right, then select "Gift this song."

You're brought to a new screen (in the gallery below). From there you only need to enter some information, click continue and you're done! Your recipient will receive a nice email message with a download link. The process is the same for albums, individual TV shows, audiobooks (though the "Gift this audiobook" looks different) and movies.

Note that you can't gift entire TV seasons (bummer) or iPhone/iPod touch apps. However, you can opt to share a link to an interesting app. With the app selected, click the same drop-down button to reveal the "Tell a Friend" option. The same is true of Podcasts - hit that "Tell a Friend" button to let everyone know what you're listening to. With just a few clicks, you can share your favorite content with anyone you want!

The WSJ and the New York Times, among other outlets, are reporting that Apple is in preliminary discussions with ABC and CBS (at a minimum) about a possible subscription plan arrangement for broadcast and cable TV channels. This idea was noted by All Things D in November, which cited a target price of $30 a month for subscription access via iTunes. If the company can get content providers signed up, the service would be likely to launch next year, say both papers.

It's also possible that Apple's Lala purchase could play into this new model, with 'shows in the cloud' and micropayment options that would improve the user experience for TV-watching. Meanwhile, the NBC-Comcast deal might throw a wrench into the works for Apple, and it's not clear that the other broadcast and cable networks are inclined to make a deal at this point; while CBS has few cable assets to protect, and ABC/Disney have a powerful vote in favor of collaboration with Apple, the other companies may have more to lose by throwing in their lot with the iTunes juggernaut. NBC, in particular, has a hit on its hands with the ad-supported Hulu site, now the second-biggest programming provider according to comScore. If only there were some kind of portable viewing device that could play back your videos...

Apple's iTunes U has broken the 100 million download mark. iTunes U is a part of the iTunes Store featuring free lectures, language lessons, audiobooks, and more from over 175 higher education organizations including Princeton University, UCLA, Harvard University, MIT, NYU Medical School, Oxford, Cambridge, Georgetown, DePaul, Duke, and Yale University.

According to Apple, one of the most popular universities on iTunes U has been Open University (iTunes link), the UK-based educational organization dedicated to distance learning whose programs include Arts and Humanities, Business and Management, Childhood and Youth, Health and Social Care, Law, Psychology, and Science. OU says they have around 150,000 undergraduate and more than 30,000 postgraduate students.

In related news, if you've never watched Steve Jobs' Stanford University commencement speech give it a download [iTunes link]. It's emotional, it's raw, and it's when he revealed to the world he had cancer. You can also read the text of his speech here.

We're not sure how Apple plans to utilize its recent acquisition of Lala, but BusinessWeek reports today that Apple does plan to let Google keep utilizing the service. Google unveiled its own music search service in late October, which is backed by Lala.

"We have enjoyed a good relationship with Apple for many years, and that continues to be the case," R.J. Pittman, Google director of product management, told BusinessWeek. "We are agreeing to continue to leave the service as it is."

An Apple spokesman declined to comment to BusinessWeek regarding the issue. There is already speculation that Apple's Lala purchase could lead to a web-streaming model for iTunes, which would directly compete with Google's service.

The iPhone Blog reveals that Movie Bundles [iTunes link] are now available through the iTunes Store. This sort of feature has been available for years in brick and mortar stores, where you can buy two more more related movies packaged together at a discount. They start out at $9.99USD with the most expensive being $34.99USD for an HD action pack of Jason Statham movies. The bundles are also available in the Canadian iTunes Store as well.

[Via MacRumors]

A reader has tipped us off that Apple's Movie Trailer site has gotten an iTunes Store-style look. Well, for the Iron Man 2 Exclusive Trailer page anyway. Right now the rest of the site seems to have retained its old look. Is this a slow rollout, or is Iron Man just that cool that he gets his own design? Either way, the trailer for Iron Man 2 looks amazing!

We'll let you know if any other trailers get the iTunes Store treatment.

Thanks Space Taker!

Our eagle-eyed blogger David Winograd sent out a breaking news post Friday night to let all of you know that there were changes afoot in the iTunes App Store. Sure enough, those changes appear to have migrated through most, if not all, apps by now.

In my opinion, the new design makes more sense in the overall iTunes 9.0.2 layout than the "old" design did. The app icon is now very large (blue highlight in above screenshot), so apps with poorly designed icons will need to be retooled by developers in order to create something that grabs potential purchasers with one glance.

The app screenshots in the old version of iTunes were apparently confusing to a surprising number of users. The new design now shows two or three full screenshots of each app in action (see yellow highlight above), with a visible scroll bar at the bottom of the screenshots indicating whether the user can scroll to the side to see more. The old version simply showed one screenshot and required clicking on the picture to move to the next screen image.

Hard to believe anyone who does the Christmas thing would be lacking in basic music like Silent Night or We Wish You a Merry Christmas, but do you have Sarah McLachlan or Weezer singing your carols? Now's your chance to pick up those classics for the low, low price of nothing on the iTunes store now. Here's the link to the iTunes store and here's a nifty web-based page to peep the list. Go, download, drink some eggnog, warm your toes by the fire and try to have a happy holiday!

Update: yeah, US-only, it seems. Update 2: commenter below says UK also! The rest of you get a virtual lump of coal.

[via Holy Kaw!]

There's an interesting article at The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) today (subscription required) suggesting that Apple's recent acquisition of LaLa could mean a web-streaming model for a future version of iTunes. The speculation began last week, and today more information has emerged.

Quoting a source "...who has been briefed on Apple's plans," the WSJ reports that LaLa executives have been given key roles at Apple, and that members of the existing iTunes team will report to them. The article also reiterates the $85 million price tag, which TechCrunch recently disputed.

While a streaming model makes sense for both Apple and consumers -- Apple could sell music through search engines, etc. while customers could eliminate space-hogging libraries from their computers -- such a move would be a radical departure for Apple, which has insisted that customers want to "own" a physical copy of their music.

Lala's service scanned your hard drive for songs you own to stream at will (think a web-based version of Apple's Home Sharing). Songs you don't own could be streamed for $0.10 each with a download "upgrade" available. All of this would require huge amounts of storage and bandwidth from Apple. Perhaps that's what the new North Carolina server facility is for.

As for Apple, mum's the word. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.

[Via Mac Rumors]

It's December, and that means list season. Early this morning, Apple released the top sellers from the iTunes stores across several categories. The top music, television shows, movies, audiobooks, podcasts and apps sold in 2009 are displayed on a special page in the store [iTunes link], called "iTunes Rewind 2009." Here are some highlights.

The top three songs sold were "Boom Boom Pow" by Black Eyed Peas, "Right Round" by Flo Rida and "Poker Face" by Lady GaGa. I've never heard the first two, but "Poker Face" is a huge hit with my 6-year-old. It's nice to see kids music do so well. As for podcasts, I'm very happy to see my beloved Adam Carolla podcast [iTunes link] among the most popular.

The top-selling games (note that apps and games were separated) included The Sims 3, The Oregon Trail, Need for Speed: Undercover and Madden NFL 10 (Boom!). Top-selling apps included ReelDirector, which we reviewed here, Star Walk, MLB.com's app and a number of GPS apps.

For some insight on this year's winners as well as the editor's picks, check out the latest episode of the iTunes Weekly Rewind podcast [iTunes link].

[Via the Loop]