MacRumors

Apple announced that in the first week since the release of iTunes 4.5, users have purchased 3.3 million songs from the iTunes Music Store.

In addition, over 20,000 iMixes have been published by iTunes users. Finally, the week long free song promotion has resulted in over 500,000 free songs downloaded from artists Foo Fighters, Avril Lavigne, Courtney Love, Annie Lennox, Janes Addiction, Counting Crows, Renee Fleming and Nelly Furtado.

Apple maintains that the iTunes music store commands a 70% marketshare amongst legal music downloads for singles and albums.

Microsoft released a new version of Mac MSN Messenger yesterday.

The newest version of Microsoft's IM client provides improved file sharing, new emoticons, improved alerts, and Office 2004 integration.

Previous reports had originally placed the 4.0 release in June.

Sony launched their music download service today -- "Connect".

The service, however, appears to be built around supporting Sony's own MiniDisc format, which has not seen significant commercial success over the past several years. Sony is expected to introduce high capacity MiniDisc devices later this year.

While songs are similarly priced to the rest of the industry ($.99/song), Sony will be using the ATRAC song format, making it incompatible with most MP3 players and the iPod.

Sony will be aggressively marketing the new service with cross promotion with United Airlines and McDonald's. Apple and McDonald's were originally partnered to promote iTunes in a cross-marketing deal, but this deal was reportedly changed at the last minute in favor of a Sony/McDonald's deal.

According to a ThinkSecret source, Apple may be considering expanding its direct sales model further.

This move would bring it into direct competition against traditional catalog resellers (MacWarehouse, MacMall) which have historically represented a large portion of the Mac sales market.

At this early stage, it appears that they have simply investigated this plan as a possibility, and it's unclear if they will pursue this option. In light of recent reseller lawsuits, however, such a move may further strain reseller relations.

Apple announced today that they would be previewing Mac OS X "Tiger" at the World Wide Developer's conference.

The event, which starts on June 28th and lasts through July 2 will provide a preview for the next major release of Mac OS X, codenamed Tiger.

The name, Tiger, had been previously reported.

MacObserver has posted a transcript of the April 28th iTunes Conference Call.

The call marked the 1st anniversary for the iTunes Music Store and was hosted by Steve Jobs.

Jobs provides performance numbers for iTunes first year as a music store. Total number of songs available from iTunes now exceeds 700,000 songs across the 5 major labels and over 450 independent labels. Jobs also covers the new features available in iTunes 4.5, which was also released that day.

The question and answer session provides some additional insight into iTunes pricing, burning rights, subscription services and more.

A few anonymous reports hinted at a new iPod ad filmed in New York in the recent past.

Today, the following iPod advertisement (Apple link,Link,Mirror) surfaced on the internet.

The ad appears to be a new Apple advertisement, but reveals no new iPod features as hinted in the Page 2 report.
Update: The new ad has been spotted on a number of television shows tonight.
Update 2: Apple has posted the ad on Apple.com.

Apple released a new security update for Mac OS X:

Security Update 2004-05-03 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components: AFP Server, CoreFoundation, IPSec

It can be found in your Mac OS X Software Update

IBM announced the first in a line of servers powered by the Power5 processor today.

The new server, the eServer i5, is aimed at small and mid-sized businesses.

The eServer i5 systems are powered by IBM's next-generation POWER5 microprocessor, the most advanced 64-bit chip in the world. POWER5 features an impressive 276 million transistors per processor, and is manufactured with IBM's 0.13-micron copper wiring and SOI (Silicon-on-Insulator) technologies. In addition to providing communications acceleration and chip multiprocessing, POWER5 offers simultaneous multithreading (SMT), which transforms a single processor into two processors, essentially allowing the chip to run two applications at the same time and reducing the time it requires to complete a task.

The new server/Power5 will become available starting on June 11, 2004.

Early rumors had hinted that future PowerPC chips may be derived from the Power5 processor.

Apple appears to have taken an active technological stance against the recent emergence of iTunes Digital Rights Stripping applications. Two such applications have been able to effectively strip the Digital Rights Management from Protected iTunes Songs to allow them to play on unauthorized machines and MP3 players.

While Apple's legal team has been effective in shutting down the sites that host some of these applications, Apple's most recent iTunes revision (4.5) appears to furthur thwart these existing applications.

Appleinsider notes error messages when attempting to de-protect the latest files with Fairplay.

Several readers have noted this PowerPC core roadmap announced by Freescale Semiconductor, a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola.

According to the press release, Freescale detailed newly announced e300, e600 and e700 PowerPC cores. The e600 processor is described as "an enhanced version of the high performance G4 core used i nthe award-winning, high performance MPC74xx family of PowerPC host processors" and is expected to scale beyond 2 GHz as well as implement Altivec. The e700 core is expected to scale beyond 3GHz.

Freescale's implementation of these processors appears to be for specific system-on-chip (SoC) implementations, but presumably the technology could find its way into future Apple products as well. Apple presently uses MPC74xx processors to power their portable line.

Cnet reports that Pepsi and Apple gave away 5 million of the potentially 100 million songs during the Pepsi/iTunes promotion.

The 5 million songs given away were included in the 70 million total songs announced today during the iTunes conference call.

Unredeemed codes can still be used by April 30th, 2004.

Amidst the many new features of iTunes 4.5, Apple has also started offering a new free song to be given away every week.

The iTunes Music Store features a new free single every week. On Tuesday of course. So if you want to keep current with all the new releases and newly added exclusives be sure to sign up for the free New Music Tuesdays email bulletin. It's a great reminder to download the free single every week.

This promotion should be beneficial both to the featured musical artists and Apple -- as it will draw more customers to the iTunes music store as well as provide more exposure to the featured artists.
This week's free song is My Hero by Foo Fighers (iTunes Link) (Alternate link)

Update: This week, they will be giving away a different song every day. (View graphic). The artists include: Foo Fighers, Avril Lavigne, Courtney Love, Annie Lennox, Jane's Addiction, Counting Crows, Renee Flemming, and Nelly Furtado

Apple also posted iMovie 4.0.1 updater.

The new version "provides increased performance when working with large projects, such as editing video clips and audio volume. iMovie 4.0.1 provides increased reliability when the application opens, when titles are added to the timeline, and with 3rd party plug-ins that are removed or no longer available to an iMovie project (for example, when you open a project on a different computer). Other improvements include fixes for pixelated video, corrupted Ken Burns clips, and loss of audio, which could occur after editing video or audio and then emptying the trash."

Apple is hosting a conference call today to mark the 1st anniversary of the iTunes Music Store

The following sites are provided live coverage of the event:

MacCentral
MacMinute

Hilights:

- iTunes now lets you play protected songs on up to 5 computers (not just 3)
- 70% marketshare
- 2.7 million downloads/week
- Can burn a playlist only 7 times (used to be 10)
- Price will remain $.99/song
- Jobs still critical of subscription services
- Europe "later this year"

Alongside iTunes 4.5, Apple also appears to be promoting iTunes to educational institutions with iTunes on Campus.

Napster has recently seen some sucess in providing volume licensing to several colleges. Napster's unlimited subscription service allows them to accomplish this -- limiting access to music for the duration of the subscription.

iTunes on Campus does not provide a similar service and appears to be more of a marketing effort with permission for institutions to distribute the iTunes software:

This license agreement will allow you to distribute iTunes as a download from within your campus network or through individual CDs that you create. As a part of this program, Apple will also provide to you the creative artwork (for newspaper ads and flyers) about iTunes that you can use to tell students about iTunes.