Are you an iTunes customer who bought a season pass to Mad Men? Have you not been able to download Sunday’s episode yet? Lulu hasn’t, and neither have a lot of other customers. Apple is doing a poor job of supporting customers who have ditched cable, but still want to pay for content. [More]
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Free iPhone 4 Cases Available Now
By 7.23.10
Looks like Apple’s Tim Cook meant it when he told shareholders that most programs submitted to the company’s App Store are approved within a week. Just seven days after CEO Steve Jobs promised to put together a program to allow iPhone 4 customers to get a free case, the iPhone 4 Case Program app is now available for download. (Yeah, Apple probably could have come up with a better name for the app, but what do you want for free?)
An iTunes Thief Ran Up $200 On My Card, Customer Service Won't Help
By 7.19.10
Don was robbed by a thief who went on a $200 iTunes spree. Determined not to let something like this happen again, he called Apple’s customer service, which took days to respond before giving him no useful help. [More]
iTunes Hackers Raid Accounts, Charge Untold Amounts
By 7.5.10
While iTunes users were barbecuing and preparing for fireworks this weekend, hackers smoked their accounts, buying apps with stolen money to drive specific apps up the sales charts. [More]
Apple Won't Let Me Re-Download My Lost Movies After Hard Drive Crash
By 6.22.10
Adam is frustrated that his hard drive crashed and took out $15 worth of downloaded Apple movies with it. He writes: [More]
Google Really Wants To Sell You Music
By 6.22.10
Not content with being in the search engine, browser, advertising and operating systems business, it looks like the bean bag-loving people at Google have their hungry eyes set on the music industry. A new report claims the internet giant plans to launch its own music download service in the coming months. [More]
Apple Shuts Down Lala Music Service, Saddens Customers
By 4.30.10
It’s official, Apple is shutting down Lala.com, a streaming service where users could pay for the rights to steam songs or buy and download them. After May 31, 2010, however, the web music will stop streaming and customers will be given iTunes credit. [More]
Report: iTunes Pressuring Record Labels Away From Amazon
By 3.4.10
Looks like the potential for Amazon’s mp3 store might have some at Apple’s iTunes store a little worried. A new report claims that iTunes has been using its leverage to keep the record labels from making potentially high-profile deals with Amazon. [More]
Steve Jobs Doesn't Trust Consumerist
By 2.16.10
Rob emailed Steve Jobs to tell him that until Apple fixed reader Joel’s account that had been billed $50,000 for iTunes purchases, he wouldn’t buy another Apple product. Replying via iPad, Steve Jobs told him, “I wouldn’t believe everything you read from places like this.” Ohhhh snap! But it wouldn’t be Jobs who had the last laugh… [More]
Revolutionary New Apple Service Bills Your AMEX Card For Nearly $50,000 In Music
By 2.9.10
I think we can all agree that Jobs and his crew at Apple are a bunch of visionaries when it comes to gadgets, online stores, and now getting really, really screwed by an iTunes purchase. Joel writes, “I just got a call from American Express stating that my recent purchase for iTunes plus for my entire library (cost $146) has been charged to my account over 300 times and is currently still being charged. I have called Apple to have them stop charging me and they told me the only thing I can do is cancel my card. There is no number for iTunes and I have sent multiple messages to them without response via email.” [More]
Customer: iTunes Left Corrupted Tracks On Sale For Nine Months
By 1.8.10
In March Daniel downloaded two tracks from iTunes that wouldn’t play. He re-downloaded them several times and complained to customer service, getting several free downloads as a result, but the problem persisted. It took nearly the entire year for iTunes pull the tracks offline, he says. [More]
Star Trek Blu-ray Digital Download Codes All Used Up?
By 12.30.09
Nero, the Romulan villain who was driven mad by lens flares in the latest Star Trek movie, found a way to travel forward in time and use up a bunch of authorization codes included in special edition Blu-ray sets. For now, until Paramount’s support staff get back from the holidays, all you can do with that third disc is flash light into the eyes of people around you and call yourself J. J. Abrams. [More]
Apple And Audible Refuse To Sell Author's Audiobooks Without DRM Or Abusive Licensing Agreement
By 12.11.09
Cory Doctorow is self-publishing a book and documenting the process for Publishers Weekly. His latest column is about selling audiobook versions of his past works, and how both Apple and Audible have refused to budge on their anti-consumer policies when it comes to digital rights management (DRM) and end user license agreements (EULAs). Even though both companies get paid the same either way, and even though both Doctorow and his publisher, Random House, want to sell the content without these restrictions, Apple and Audible have said no. [More]
Apple Buys Lala
By 12.7.09
Lala, the music streaming/backup service that’s also a reasonably priced mp3 store, has been purchased by Apple. Does this mean Apple may introduce some sort of streaming service in the future? On Lala, you can pay 10 cents per song to stream it as much as you want, or $.99-1.29 to own it outright. At any rate, if you buy from Lala now, you’re buying from Apple. [More]
You Will Probably Never See A Blockbuster SD-Card Kiosk
By 11.10.09
Here’s an idea: When your top rivals are renting dirt-cheap DVDs from ubiquitous kiosks, or streaming thousands of films as a free bonus to customers who rent mail-order rmovies, what do you do? If you’re Blockbuster, you start a trial run of kiosks that will allow consumers to rent DRM-protected videos on SD cards, and play them back using a proprietary box that will do nothing else. Yeah, that’ll show ’em.
Man Loses All His iTunes, But Apple Gives Them Back
By 11.2.09
When Nathan switched computers he lost all the music he bought off iTunes, but he got it back by e-mailing Apple’s iTunes support at iTunesStoreSupport@apple.com.
Google's New Music Search Launches, But Your Buying Options Remain The Same
By 10.29.09
The new music search capabilities that Google introduced today will make it easier to quickly find a song you can’t remember the name of, or sample some tracks from an artist you’re interested in. But it’s not so much a new service as a more efficient combination of a bunch of services already scattered around the web.
Sony Adding All Songs Over Two Years Old To EMusic; EMusic Raising Prices
By 6.1.09
Although eMusic is a great service—for a flat monthly fee, you get a set number of downloads per month of DRM-free music tracks—it’s about to get better. Or maybe worse, depending on the breadth of your musical tastes. Today eMusic will announce that Sony is adding its back catalog of songs to eMusic’s library. The bad news is that eMusic also plans to slightly raise prices and/or drop the number of downloads per month. Even if it works out to between 50-60 cents per track, though, that’s still far less than iTunes Music Store or Amazon, and probably the cheapest way to grab music from Sony artists without resorting to piracy.
