iPod Tracker : iPod News

A Page 2 report over at MacRumors suggests that iTunes 4.8 already features support for the upcoming Motorola iTunes Phone.

Evidence for this claim can be found in a localization pack that ships with the current version of Apple’s popular jukebox. From MacRumors:

“iTunes.app -> Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj -> Localized.rsrc contains the “Eject Phone” phrase as well as later references to ‘Phone’”.

At least Apple have already implemented support for the much-delayed phone. Rumours have been circulating round the Mac web for months that carriers have been reluctant to deal with the new phone, preferring to sell downloadable music direct to their customers using their own home-brewed stores.

According to a MacWorld.co.uk report, Apple and AOL are in negotiations over the revenue share between the companies.

Apple and AOL have been in a partnership since the 15th of June, 2004. The agreement allows Apple to gain customers from AOL Music, a very popular service provided by the ISP.

Problems seem to have arisen around tracking of individuals and what they download from the iTunes Music Store, after clicking through from AOL Music. An AOL spokesman was stated as saying:

“We have never ruled out working with other download services or even adding one of our own, as AOL Germany has.”

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, has revealed that a group inside the company are hedging their bets on the future pricing for the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service.

Currently the service offers unlimited music downloads for $6.99 per month. However, the service uses the Windows Media Audio format and is not compatible with iPod.

Jobs said that he believed the current pricing for the service to be lower than the cost of running - making Yahoo! a loss. He also said his bet is on a price increase in 5 months time.

A ThinkSecret report mentions the possibility of the iTunes Music Store expanding into the Russian market. Such a move makes sense, in terms of the high numbers of tech-savvy users living in Russia.

However, Russian users are already used to super-cheap services such as AllOfMP3.com who are known to offer music downloads at insanely cheap prices - so cheap that Russian police were going to close them down.

Whether the Russian public are as brand orientated remains to be seen. iTunes may simply be too expensive compared to the much cheaper Russian competition.

Steve Jobs has stated publically that the next version of iTunes will support Podcasting.

While speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference Jobs said that he was “high on the podcasting phenomenon, and the excitement that millions of users have displayed about it.”

He told the conference that the new version of iTunes featuring integrated Podcasting support will be available within the next few weeks.

A brief report on Apple Insider has suggested that new and improved iPod shuffles are currently being developed at Apple for release. This follows a price reduction for 2GB and larger chips.

“Several reports indicate that flash-memory production is increasing in the far east, with prices falling slightly for chips of 2GB and higher capacities. Meanwhile, continued demand for consumer products has created a price surge for lower capacity 256MB and 512MB chips. It’s believed that Apple is feverishly working on a more advanced and feature-rich flash-based iPod that will make use of the higher capacity flash chips sometime this year.”

An article in The Chicago Tribune reports that the Motorola iTunes Phone is not meeting opposition from phone companies and say that the phone will launch in a couple more months.

Motorla’s Zander was quoted:

“There is no resistance on anybody’s part, I don’t know where these rumors got started.”

Screenshots from development builds of the Motorola iTunes phone have been posted on Gizmodo. Referring to the availability of offical images of the Motorola iTunes phone, a Motorola spokesman stated:

“We would expect them to be available mid July when the product launches.”

Yahoo! launched their own music download store today. Yahoo! Music Unlimited offers a choice of 1 million tunes for download, with a subscription of $6.99 per month - significantly undercutting similar pricing from both Napster and Real Networks. Currently the service is only available to US customers.

Yahoo! Music Unlimited uses Microsoft’s proprietary Windows Media Audio format and as such is incompatible for playback on the Apple iPod.

Roxio today released Toast Titanium 6.1 for Mac OS X 10.2 or above. This release includes various bug fixes and enhancements to burning.

However, Roxio have disabled the ability for Toast Titanium to burn iTunes downloads. Confirmation from the Roxio press statement:

Customers [are no longer allowed] to create audio CDs, audio DVDs, or export audio to their hard drive using purchased iTunes music store content.

Roxio also commented that this action was taken after discussions with Apple.