Apple is getting more prudish and pulling sexy apps from iTunes. One of the new rules is no more bikini apps, unless you happen to be Sports Illustrated (or FHM or Playboy). Sports Illustrated, for instance, just released its 2010 Swimsuit app on iTunes on February 9, before the ban really started. The SI Swimsuit app is filled with pictures of bikini-clad models.
If you fire up iTunes right now, you will see the SI Swimsuit app being promoted on the main App Store homepage. It is currently the No. 1 Sports app, the No. 13 free app, and the No. 35 Top Grossing app (you have to pay $1.99 to unlock all the free photos and videos). FHM’s $1.99 app is also filled with bikini and panty pics via its “Girl of the Week” and “Non-Stop Honeys” features. It also offers videos with titles such as “Young and Hardly Innocent” and “Lucy in Naughty Nighties.” The Playboy app is similarly salacious. Yet other non-name-brand bikini apps such as Bikini Blast are nowhere to be found on iTunes anymore.
If you are one of the millions of people who use Meebo to bring together all of your buddies from different chat services across the Web, you can now do that on your iPhone as well. Meebo’s iPhone app is now available on iTunes The iPhone app lets you chat via AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, MySpace IM, ICQ, Jabber, Facebook, and other chat services, delivering new messages vis push notifications.
Leading up to its January event, rumors were swirling that Apple was talking to the TV networks about offering possible subscriptions to their shows through iTunes. Of course, that never happened. While reports had CBS and ABC interested in such a deal, the other networks apparently were less enthusiastic about it — perhaps out of fear of repercussions from the cable companies. But that doesn’t mean that Apple is giving up.
A new report today in the Financial Times indicates that Apple will begin testing the sale of $1 U.S. TV shows this year. Specifically, the new pricing could launch around the time that the iPad does, which will be March/April, FT notes citing people familiar with the discussions. Apple currently sells its shows for $1.99 (standard definition) or $2.99 (high definition) through iTunes. These $1 would be the standard definition variety, apparently, as they will play on the iPad.
In November 2009, Apple launched a feature dubbed iTunes Preview, which essentially enabled people to see what music is available on iTunes from their Web browser without the need to fire up – or install – the desktop software program.
At the time, you weren’t able to actually listen to a sample of music tracks from your browser, but that changed earlier this year when Web-based audio previews were quietly added (paving the way for the imminent roll-out of iTunes.com).
This morning, Apple activated the iTunes Preview feature for iPhone / iPod Touch applications in addition.
As you may have heard by now, Netflix has agreed to movie studio demands that they not rent new movies until 28 days after their DVD release. The idea is that this will help drive DVD sales, which have been plummeting in recent years, taking billions out of the pockets of the studios. Right now, this deal is only in place with Warner Brothers, but you can be sure that the other studios are going to want the same deal. Netflix says it’s going along with this because most of its customers care more about catalog (older) releases than newer ones. But the popularity charts suggest otherwise.
Each month, Netflix releases a list of the top 25 rented movies for the previous month on its Facebook page. This week, they gave out the data for January 2010, and guess what? Of the top 25 rentals, over half (13) would not have been fully available to rent for the month under the new 28-day rule. And some wouldn’t have been available at all. Clearly, this new policy is going to have a bigger effect on Netflix users’ rental habits that the company wants you to believe.
Buried all the way at the bottom of the Wall Street Journal’s latest piece about the Apple Tablet is a very interesting nugget of information. Apple is apparently gearing up to launch a cloud-based iTunes replacement called iTunes.com as soon as this June, WSJ states citing sources familiar with the matter.
Yesterday, we ran a guest post by Michael Robertson, the former CEO of MP3.com, who laid out Apple’s cloud-based media strategy going forward. An iTunes-in-the-cloud offering is the central part of this, and could happen “almost over night,” as Robertson laid out. And late last year we wrote about how a move to the cloud was inevitable for iTunes. The planets seem to be aligning for this to happen sooner rather than later. Apple’s recent purchase of the music startup Lala has potentially made this possible, because of that team’s talent, if nothing else. But there’s more.
A new movie came out on DVD this week called The Invention Of Lying. It’s co-written, co-directed, and co-starring Golden Globe host Ricky Gervais and looks mildly entertaining enough that I want to rent it. So I load up Netflix to add it to my queue — but wait, according to Netflix, it’s not available until February 16. Why? Because it’s a Warner movie and as such is subject to Netflix’s idiotic new 28-day rule (they can’t rent Warner new releases on Netflix until after they’ve been available for purchase in retail store for 28 days). Well that’s just great. So all hope is lost, right? Nope. iTunes has it available for rent today.
Because Apple did not agree to enter into a deal with Hollywood that restricts them from renting movies during this 28-day window, it was available not only to buy but also to rent this past Tuesday on iTunes, the same day it was released on DVD. While iTunes has its own series of somewhat convoluted rules with regard to rentals (for example, some movies are restricted from being rented when airing on premium cable channels like HBO), in this instance, they hands down beat Netflix at their own game: rentals. And thanks to this new 28-day window, which the other major studios will undoubtedly have interest in getting from Netflix as well, this is something we could see a lot more of: iTunes, Amazon, Xbox Live, and yes, even Blockbuster Online being the go-to sources to rent new releases.
This is a guest post from Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business. He is the founder and former CEO of digital music pioneer MP3.com. He is currently the CEO of music locker company MP3tunes. Robertson is also an adviser to Google Voice.
For years there’s been speculation that Apple would supplement their $1/song (now $1.29) iTunes business with a monthly subscription service, but their upcoming plans are quite different and once again are positioning them to lead the digital music industry into a new era. Leveraging their ubiquitous iTunes software Apple plans to upgrade their users almost over night to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service. Record labels are wary to give Apple even greater dominance which is why Apple’s new strategy is designed to sidestep new licenses from the major labels.
Regular readers may know my affinity for Pearl Jam. The band, which released a new album, Backspacer, last year had a series of promotions with MySpace to promote the album. Now they’re turning to Twitter for some more.
The band has teamed up with the digital media house Culture Jam to launch a new site that easily allows you to tweet about about the Pearl Jam song “Just Breathe.” This site is actually a simple application that gets your Twitter credentials via OAuth. In exchange for the tweet, you’ll receive a code that will allow you to download the song on iTunes for free. Specifically, it’s a live version of the song that was recorded at Austin City Limits this year.
With the launch of iTunes 9, Apple revamped many of the areas of the iTunes online store so that they were rendered with WebKit, the open source web layout engine (which browsers like Safari and Chrome also use). Alongside this, the whole store was redesigned. But one area that remained untouched were the pages for individual apps in the App Store. Today, those are finally starting to be revamped as well.
While the new layout isn’t live for all apps yet, it is for plenty of them. As you can see below, the new pages look much nicer. Instead of being text-heavy by default, the new pages have much of the text area collapsed, and the emphasis is clearly on the images. Instead of just one app screenshot being shown, there are now 3. It’s just much, much nicer.