iTunes

iTunes has a number of great hip-hop albums on sale right now

If you're a fan of rap music, or just like to listen to a little bit of everything, you'll want to check out these deals Apple is offering in iTunes right now. For a limited time, more than 200 hip-hop albums are on sale for $5.99.

The albums come from a wide variety of artists, ranging from newer faces like Kendrick Lamar, to old school legends like Big Daddy Kane. There's even some from mainstream heavyweights like Eminem, Jay-Z and Ludacris.

All Star Wars movies now available on iTunes

Monday, The Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox announced bringing all six Star Wars movies in their high-definition digital form to Apple's iTunes Store, Google's Play Store and other services, including Amazon's Instant Video and Microsoft's Xbox Video.

Having been available for pre-order on iTunes at $19.99 each, all six movies became available for download across platforms today, April 10.

The six-movie saga is comprised of the “Star Wars,” “Return of the Jedi,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith” films and includes new bonus extras and can be bought or all at once as part of the “Star Wars Digital Movie Collection”.

Apple releases iTunes 12.1.2 with better support for new Photos app

Apple on Thursday morning released a new version of iTunes, bringing the media manager to version 12.1.2. The update is a minor one, but important for those who have updated their Macs to the new OS X 10.10.3 software that was seeded yesterday.

More specifically, iTunes 12.1.2 brings about enhanced support for the new Photos app in 10.10.3. The app, which essentially replaces both iPhoto and Aperture, features a new, lighter design and deep integration with Apple's new iCloud Photo Library.

‘Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection’ coming to iTunes on April 10

While we're sure you Star Wars fans have every copy in your man cave, you'll soon be able to add the George Lucas-made films to your iTunes.

The makers of Star Wars announced on Monday the entire, six movie collection is coming to iTunes on Friday, April 10. The App Store on Twitter promoted the link, containing the ability to purchase each movie separately or as a collection when the content goes live in a few days. 

NY Times: Apple/Beats music streaming service to rival Spotify, iTunes Radio overhaul coming

Stating what's pretty close to the obvious, the New York Times reports the teams at Apple and Beats are working on a digital music service to directly compete with Spotify, one year after the Cupertino-based company paid $3 billion for the headphone maker. It won't bring lower prices than its competitors, the publication says, and is currently being planned for launch this year.

Users reporting problems accessing App Store and iTunes (update: back up again)

A growing number of users are taking to Twitter this morning to complain of yet another outage affecting Apple's App Store and the iTunes Store. Several folks around the world have reported problems purchasing new applications, with the App Store and iTunes returning a "The item you've requested is not currently available” error message.

Others complain about not being able to conduct searches for content on the iTunes Store and App Store and download apps and other content.

UPDATE 11:35am ET: all systems seem to have become operational again following a brief outage that lasted about an hour or so.

New in iOS 8.3: download free apps and iTunes media without entering Apple ID password

A new 'Password Settings' section has been discovered in the Settings app of the current iOS 8.3 beta which will permit users to set up their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad so that downloading free iTunes apps and iTunes media won't require an Apple ID password.

The new option is only exposed to users when Touch ID is disabled, reports 9to5Mac. With Touch ID enabled, the new option is unavailable.

This is understandable to an extent, because approving purchases — free or paid — with the tap of a fingerprint is a frictionless experience.

How to unlock the Apple Watch Activity app on iOS 8.2, no jailbreak required

A few days ago, we showed you a detailed walkthrough video of iOS 8.2's Activity App. Today, we'll show you how you can go hands-on with this brand new app.

In the tutorial that follows, we'll walk you through each step needed to get the iOS 8.2 Apple Watch Activity app running on your iPhone today, even though the Apple Watch is still weeks from releasing. No jailbreak required.

Review: create iTunes affiliate links with Blink for iPhone and iPad

Whenever you click or tap on a link which leads to an iPhone/iPad/Mac app in the App Store/Mac App Store, or a movie, TV show episode or electronic book carried on iTunes, we earn a very small commission fee on each sale coming from that link.

Though not much, these things add up and anything that helps us run the site and keep the lights on for you guys is worth the effort from our standpoint.

For those not in the know, anyone can sign up to become an iTunes affiliate partner. Too bad Apple's web application for generating affiliate links is so tedious and a pain in the you-know-what.

Introducing Blink (or Better Affiliate Links) from Squibner, a nifty little iPhone and iPad application which eliminates the hassle of manually creating iTunes affiliate links with your own tokens and campaign tags.

Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ keynote video posted to iTunes as downloadable podcast

Following yesterday's “Spring Forward” media event which brought us new Apple Watch details and pricing, an exclusive HBO Now launch on the now-discounted Apple TV, some interesting medical research news and a Retina-enabled twelve-inch MacBook with USB-Type C, Force Touch trackpad and silver, space grey and gold finishes, now the whole presentation can be downloaded and kept on your computer in the form of a video podcast.