AppleInsider StaffOne of the pioneers of the alternative rock scene will play an exclusive set next week at Apple's flagship retail store in London. Meanwhile, retailers are attempting to clear out stock of current generation iMacs. And Apple will reportedly disallow third-party iPhone music apps.
R.E.M., arguably one of the most prominent alternative rock bands of the 80's and 90's, will mark the third anniversary of Apple's "iTunes Live From London" series next week with an exclusive performance at the company's Regent Street retail store in London.
Michael Stipe and Co. will perform tracks from their new album Accelerate, due for release at the end of the month. Recordings from the show will later be released exclusively as digital downloads from the iTunes Store.
As was the case with a similar gig featuring Linkin Park at Apple's SoHo flagship shop in Manhattan last month, entry to the event will be extremely limited and not open to the general public. Instead, the show will be made privy to about 450 selected fan club members and winners of competitions run up by XFM and the Evening Standard.
The performance will take place Wednesday, March 26th at an undisclosed time (likely after hours).
Trimming iMac inventories
Several international Apple resellers are offering promotions aimed at clearing inventory of current iMacs ahead of refreshed models that will see the all-in-one desktop systems adopt the same 45-nanometer Intel mobile Penryn processors as the Mac maker's MacBook lines.
In particular, John Lewis is offering current generation iMacs with a free copy of Microsoft Office Student and Home Edition until March 29th. However, the upscale UK-based department store lists two of the three standard retail configurations as being out of stock.
Similarly, Canada-based Future Shop is promoting unusually steep discounts of between $50 and $100 Canadian dollars on the entire iMac line. The retailer held a similar sale on MacBook Pros in the weeks leading up to their most recent refresh.
iPhone's iTunes APIs not open to developers
It's being report that any functionality related to music playback on the iPhone will be off limits to third-party developers using the company's new iPhone SDK.
While the kit allows access to phone, camera, and Internet functions, all components with ties to iTunes are inaccessible, preventing developers from accessing one of the most popular features of the handset.
It's speculated that the restriction may be a means to blocking alternatives to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store which could potentially nibble at Apple's music sales. Alternatively, it could be an unfortunate side-effect of measures aimed at stifling creation of enhancements to music functions, such as native versions of the iLike or Last.fm plug-ins, MacNN reports.
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44 Comments
Sounds great, but after reading about the new Nehalem processors coming from intel later this year, I'm tempted to keep on waiting for a new iMac.
edit: yes, I can wait a year... maybe.
Sounds great, but after reading about the new Nehalem processors coming from intel later this year, I'm tempted to keep on waiting for a new iMac.
Those won't make it into an iMac until 2009. The first Nehalems will likely be high end Xeon chips which Apple could never run inside the iMac's streamlined enclosure. They're just too hot. Notebook and Desktop flavors of Nehalem aren't expected until next year.
Best,
K
Well, later this year when Nehalem comes out, Intel will be detailing what's in store for Spring 2009, etc. The nice thing about the move to x86 is that there is always steady progress. We're no longer in the PowerPC era when there was one big chip update a year or so, and Macs were slightly faster for a month or two then fell behind for the rest of the year.
Hmm well that sucks, I currently use MobileScrobbler on my jailbroken iPhone. I wonder if it will still work after the 2.0 firmware if I jailbreak?
Sounds great, but after reading about the new Nehalem processors coming from intel later this year, I'm tempted to keep on waiting for a new iMac.
That's true.
I also hope it also gets an overhaul in looks and goes back to being a stylish trandsetter it once was when it was white and gorgeous- and as all the models before that were as well.