A recent report by the NPD Group shows that Apple iTunes has moved into the 3rd position for music retailers in the U.S., beating Amazon.com out of the #3 spot.

The report surveyed 40,000 people to find that in the first quarter Apple carried a 10% market share trailing Wal-Mart with a 15.8% and Best Buy with 13.8%. Both Wal-Mart and Best Buy sell a majority of their music as physical CD’s, but the study also noted a decline in CD sales while digital music sales overall continues to rise.

Even though Amazon dropped to the 4th position, its music sales actually increased from previous studies, but just not as quickly as its rivals. The music sales competition will be interesting to see for the remaining quarters of 2007 as Amazon has since started selling DRM free digital music through their …

Doing a great job keeping up their momentum, Apple today announced that YouTube videos will be available on the iPhone when it launches June 29th. A new application for the mobile device will allow users to eventually watch the full lineup of YouTube videos in the H.264 (not Flash) format and access them through Wi-Fi or EDGE.

Of course all the videos on YouTube were not originally coded in the H.264 format so not all will be available right away but YouTube is promising that 10,000 of them will be ready for the launch on the 29th. YouTube will continue to encode the clips until all of them are available in the new format this fall.

Overshadowed by the iPhone portion of the press release, Apple also announced that YouTube videos are now available through Apple TV. Apple TV owners can …

Apple today announced that the iPhone, still slated for its debut on the 29th of this month, will have a longer battery life than originally communicated. Instead of the original promise of up to 5 hours of talk time back in January, of talk time, Apple is now upping that talk time to 8 hours. This also increases the time on other features including 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback, 24 hours of audio playback and introduces 250 hours of standby time.

“With 8 hours of talk time, and 24 hours of audio playback, iPhone’s battery life is longer than any other ‘Smartphone’ and even longer than most MP3 players,” said Steve Jobs, in a press release. “We’ve also upgraded iPhone’s entire top surface from plastic to optical-quality glass …

Many may not remember or had even noticed the tiny Bluetooth headset that Apple announced in January along with the iPhone, but AppleInsider did notice that the headset was recently approved by the FCC to go on sale potentially along side the Apple iPhone launching at the end of this month.

Little has been said about the Bluetooth headset from Apple other than there will be another headset accessory that’s wired to be marketed with the iPhone as well. No information on any pricing or availability has been made public and any photographs and the user manual from the wireless headset were excluded from the FCC report.

It looks like our estimate of thousands of downloads of Apple’s Safari web browser for Windows was a little bit on the conservative side. Apple has confirmed that there was over 1 million downloads of the browser withing 48 hours of its release last Monday. While this may sound impressive for most companies this product has a lot to live up to, even in cross-over world of PC’s since it’s iTunes sibling has had over 500 million downloads for use on Windows machines.

Safari as a whole also has a long way to go in the browser market as well. According to Apple the browser has about 5 percent of the market compared to the 15 percent of Mozilla and the strong 80% lead that IE continues to hold. A rocky start with some security …

It was only Monday that Apple announced and released the Safari web browser for Windows touting unmatched security and speed. While these features may hold true for Safari on the Mac, within hours of the release significant vulnerabilities started cropping up from three different independent researches testing out the browser in the new Windows environment. When all was said and done, eight different security risks were uncovered in the Safari 3 public beta for Windows.

The good news is that Apple was quick to respond in addressing the issues and pushing out a new version of the Safari 3 beta only four days later with version 3.0.1 available to download through the Apple website.

The new version is a recommended update to avoid security risks through using the web browser, but unless you really need the …

Apple has added a few new pages to their site about the upcoming June 29th launch of the iPhone, one of which has some steps to get yourself ready for the ownership of an iPhone.

The page shows information that for the most part has been already released, including the launch date along with information on the integration of the iPhone and its feature functionalities. The page gets your ready to setup your new phone with contacts, email, calendar items and media such as photos, video and music that you can synch up with your iTunes account.

Oh, and by the way; about that iTunes account. You’re going to need one. The last paragraph mentions that in order to set up your iPhone you will need to set up an account at Apple’s iTunes store. So, if you’re planning …

The rumor of Apple looking into offering an online video rental service to download movies was confirmed by a number of sources according to Reuters, although Hollywood executives did not find the rumored terms of the service quite as cool as we did.

Some sources felt there was no rush to get into this type of download rental service, but of course selling music through Apple with iTunes seemed to work out pretty well. Others questioned the rental rate of $2.99 per movie for 30 days which is a darn good rate compared to anything else out there but it would totally undercut any currently competing service.

We’ll keep watching as some type of video rental service does seem to be in the works, but probably not as sweet of a deal as initially thought.

Shortly after the iPhone was announced questions rose by many about the ability to write 3rd party applications on the OS X platform similar to what is done for the Mac. In a couple of interviews Jobs let us know that OS for the iPhone would not be open to developers to the dismay of many.

Today at the WWDC 2007 Jobs released some information and demonstrations of Apple’s new Leopard OS along with news to developers about the iPhone. Opening up the platform while still maintaining a secure environment has been a challenge for Apple, but they made what Jobs described as a “sweet” compromise. They didn’t open up the OS, but will let developers build applications that run on the Safari web browser engine on the iPhone.

This will allow developers to build web …

The Financial Times has just reported that Apple has been in talks with major movie studios about launching an online movie rental service. Currently Apple allows users to download movies through iTunes to own, but only has agreements with Disney and Paramount as most studios have been reluctant due to the hit the service could have on regular DVD sales.

Studios may be less hesitant with an online download rental service since it’s less likely that it would affect the sale of DVDs. The rental term of each film would be for 30 days at $2.99 and the file would come with a DRM that would prevent the films from being copied but would let it be transferred from the computer to at least one other device such as a video iPod or the upcoming …

Apple has added a 4th commercial to the list of advertisements for the June 29th release of the iPhone, this one titled “Watered Down” where it shows off the Safari web browser. The Safari browser will deliver a “true” web browsing experience through the iPhone which is a hard thing to come by in smart devices.

This commercial however, unlike the previous three, does not show that the iPhone requires a 2 year contract with the carrier. This led to some internet buzz speculating that Apple and AT&T may have dropped the 2 year contract requirement allowing the purchase of the iPhone outright with no agreement.

The missing text was apparently missed due to some confusion between AT&T and the ad agency making the commercials, and as you would expect the 2-year contract requirement still stands.

Check …

Just in case you missed it earlier, three new commercials are now airing for Apple’s iPhone showing off what will likely be this year’s killer app for the masses. Unlike Apple’s “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” ad campaign, the three iPhone clips show off the device in full and in operation answering calls, flicking between watching movies, thumbing through song files and even showing off how easy it is to find a good seafood place to eat at. The bon mot comes at the end of the commercial when the date of release, June 29, is given.

Apple will be pricing the phones at $500 for the 4GB version, and $600 for the 8GB, available exclusively through online and physical stores of Apple and AT&T.

Apple is also planning an iPhone launch for Europe and Japan in the …

Apple always loves to keep things interesting. As iPod fanboys await the launch this month of the iPhone Apple continues to update other product lines. The latest case in point is the refreshed MacBook Pro notebook computers announced today.

The latest Apple MacBook Pros, priced between $2,000 and $2,800, sport the newest Intel Core 2 Duo processors as well as up to 4GB of RAM. You also get nice add-ins like an iSight video camera for video conferencing, a power adapter which disconnects the computer when under strain and built-in 802.11n wireless networking.

Three models are available in the new MacBook Pro line up - 2.2 GHz and 2.4 GHz 15-inch MacBook Pros and a 2.4 GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro. All come housed in a lightweight, aluminum enclosure one-inch thick. Apple is touting that “the 15-inch …

It looks like Apple did get the EMI catalog out by the end of the month, but barely. Today Apple launched iTunes Plus along with the iTunes 7.2 version release, which is now offering DRM-free music downloads.

For now the songs that are available without the DRM restrictions or only from EMI’s catalog (excluding the Beatles, but including Paul McCartney), but hopefully more labels will follow suit in the near future. The songs cost slightly more without the DRM at a price of $1.29 each, and any existing songs that you previously purchased for $.99 can be upgraded for $.30 if they are from EMI. Songs purchased for this higher price have no restrictions on what MP3 player, the number of MP3 players or the number of computers that the song can be transferred to. Once you buy it, just …

Remember back in the beginning of April when Apple announced that it would be offering a DRM-free catalog from EMI in May? Well May is almost over and we haven’t seen it yet, but the French site MacBidouille (translated) has a source that’s saying the catalog is only a few days away and could be available by the end of the month.

When the catalog does roll out on iTunes, the music from EMI (aside from the Beatles songs) will be available with no Fairplay DRM restricting the number of computers or MP3 players the music can be transferred to. It will also be recorded at a higher bit rate, which according to the report may be part of the reason that the release is taking so long. The only small catch with this deal …