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Apple officially lowers cost of DRM-free tunes in the UK to 79p

Apple has announced that it has expanded its iTunes Plus offering to over two million tracks and lowered the price of all iTunes Plus tracks to 79p in the UK, with similar reductions in the States.

The iTunes Plus catalogue (the largest DRM-free catalogue in the world, according to Apple) now includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others, along with EMI's digital catalogue.

"iTunes Plus has been incredibly popular with our customers and now we’re making it available at an even more affordable price", said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes.

"We're adding over two million tracks from key independent labels in addition to EMI’s digital catalogue and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus."

iTunes and EMI only began offering their DRM-free music in the UK in May this year, leading to speculation that the sales figures have not been good for songs (which did cost 20p extra per track) for them to have seen a price cut so soon.

No figures have been released on how many DRM-free tracks have sold, EMI did comment earlier this year, but only to say to initial results were "good".

The main reason attributed to this price cut is the launch of Amazon's strong rival DRM-free MP3 service in the States.

Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

There are mobile phones with Internet capabilities and then there are Internet tablets. Then there is the new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Building upon its predecessors, the Nokia N810 tablet is being touted as a new phase in portable internet communication. Whether you are near a Wi-Fi hotspot or have your Bluetooth-capable mobile phone, you can take advantage of the N810 to make internet calls. The N810 features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a touch-scren interface. There's also a VGA camera for video conferencing.

One of the big plus-points of the N810 is the integrated GPS receiver and pre-loaded maps. It comes with tons of POIs, and you have the option to upgrade to Wayfinder's voice-guided navigation. You can easily carry it in your pocket or in the car. The large 4.13 inch , 800x480 pixels resolution widescreen is great to fit in your palm, and with an optional 10GB memory card you can carry up to 7500 songs. Nokia claims up to 45 hours of music playback on the device.

Powered by maemo Linux based OS2008, the Nokia N810 has a customizable UI and support for Adobe flash 9, Bluetooth headset, Skype, and Video Gizmo. Priced at US $479 (excluding tax), the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet will be available starting mid-November.

800 Apple Store Employees joining the unemployment line

So let’s say that you worked at one of Apple’s retail stores roughly around the time when the iPhone was released. If you were so lucky, you, and all of your co-workers, got a free iPhone courtesy of your employer, Apple.

I’d be as giddy as a little school girl if I got a free iPhone. What I sure as hell wouldn’t do is try and cash in on the $100 rebate that came out a few months later when they dropped the iPhone price.

Apparently there were at least 800 people with far less decency than me. Did they forget the part where they didn’t pay for the iPhone in the first place? Its ok, I consider it much like the gene pool, occasionally it needs a good colonic to clear all the crap out.

iPhone/iPod Touch have water seals on them

You know how sometimes companies who sell electronics and give them a good warranty or guarantee they do little things so that if whatever you come in needing fixed was caused by accidental damage done by you, instead of a hardware failure they can make you pay? Like for this example, cell phones that you have dropped in a puddle will show it with a little sticker that changes colors, usually next to the battery cover.

Well the iPhone and iPod Touch have those too, its just a lot harder to find unless you know where it is. Look down your headphone jack on either of those devices, and at the bottom of that well, you’ll see the sticker.

I am sure there are ways to circumvent it, but at the same time, its kind of crappy of them to put it in a place where a single drop of rain could cause it to change, but not cause any damage to the rest of the phone. Maybe if they hadn’t sealed the rest of the phone away from easy access they could have put it somewhere more practical. Regardless, you now know you can’t play off that canoe trip you took with your iPhone as a hardware malfunction, so don’t try it.

Apple: "we plan to have an iPhone SDK in developers' hands in February"

That's right folks. You read it correctly. Cats & dogs are living together, and in other news Steve Jobs has, via Apple's 'Hot News' page, announced that Apple will, FINALLY, support third-party development of native applications for the iPhone.

The SDK will arrive, for iPhone and iPod touch (!), in February 2008 after MacWorld San Francisco. Apple "[is] excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users," but they are taking the time to do it properly "because we're trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once -- provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc."

I think I can speak for everyone here at TUAW, and of course our loyal readers, when I say that this move is so incredibly welcome and WOW. All I can say to Steve is: "What took you so long to let us at your beloved devices?" Now the only question is whether the various iPhone dev teams can sit on their collective coding hands until Valentine's Day...

T-Mobile USA Announces Highly Anticipated New Sidekick LX

T-Mobile USA, Inc., today announces what Sidekick fans have been craving - the next evolutions of the T-Mobile® Sidekick® family. Two newly designed devices – T-Mobile Sidekick LX™ and
T-Mobile Sidekick Slide™ – will hit the streets this fall and both feature the must-have assets that make Sidekick the ultimate messaging device, including the newly launched, custom-designed MySpace application.*

While Sidekick enthusiasts await the new devices, T-Mobile kicks off Sidekick Nation, a user-generated video contest hosted by MySpace where fans have the chance to show their creativity and win a grand prize that includes $10,000 and a trip to Hollywood to see his/her video highlights aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live!