Apple has finally managed to bring iTunes Match to the market. The service made its debut as a part of iTunes 10.5.1. iTunes Match give users the power of iTunes in the cloud. For a low price, Apple customers get to access and download their music from the cloud. iTunes Match works for music that one may have purchased from stores other than iTunes. It is going to set you back $24.99 a year. It searches through your music collection to figure out which one of your music files are available on the iTunes store (matching).

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple is selling a ton of iPhones and iPads these days. With its competitors not able to come up with a revolutionary phone or tablet to kill those devices, that trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Apple’s app business is booming too. iOS apps have been downloaded over 15B times already. According to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, Apple’s app ecosystem will remain strong for the time being:

Smartphone users are showing an increasing appetite to use apps to add features to their phones… and iOS has the leading app ecosystem. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple has some of the most exciting gadgets on the market. iPad 2, iPhone 4, and even iPod Touch are all worth being excited about, especially if one has never tried Apple products in the past. The iTunes is a pretty powerful software and makes working with your Apple products convenient (though Apple could improve it a whole lot). Those who have downloaded music files from iTunes know too well about its restrictions. Apple can’t get rid of all the restrictions, but it seems to be working with music companies to offer iTunes users unlimited downloads on their linked devices.

iTunes is far from a perfect software solution for Apple products. The music and apps that people purchase using this service do have some restrictions. The question is whether Apple can effectively negotiate its way out of some of these restrictions with music companies.

Read the rest of this entry »

In business school they teach people that the whole idea of taking part in lotteries is naive. After all, what are the chances of you winning the big prize. The odds of hitting it big may be very slim but you never know when you may get lucky. You can always try a lottery number picker to see if you can change your fortunes. The good news is there are apps that can do that in iTunes. Some of these apps can help you keep up with lottery results too.

These 5 lottery apps won’t guarantee you a win but they can make your life much easier if you are undecided which numbers to pick:

LottoSuite: a handy app that provides every Powerball and Mega Millions player with up-to-date information on drawings. It can even tell you how much your current ticket is worth.

My Lottos: this company is behind some of the most useful lottery applications around. If you intend to keep up with the latest lottery results, these apps can help.

Lotto Wizard for iPhone: a cool application that uses advanced statistical analysis to select the most popular winning patterns. It won’t guarantee you a win. But if you have had no luck with lottery drawings in the past, you may want to try this one. It supports international lotteries too. Read the rest of this entry »

We are only a few hours away from Apple’s “big announcement” about iTunes. As always, all kinds of rumors are going around about this event. Most people expect this event to be about Apple finally getting a deal done to get the Beatles to iTunes. There are certain clues in Apple’s splash page for this event. “Another Day” is a Paul McCartney song, part of his solo album “Ram.” The clocks on that very page could be another clue for this deal though they could also point to Apple launching iTunes Live Stream service.

Read the rest of this entry »