Last month, Amazon rolled out a promotion highlighting 69-cent new release tracks in its MP3 download store, an apparent effort to draw market share from Apple in the digital download market that has long been dominated by the iTunes Store. The pricing significantly undercuts Apple's own pricing, which typically comes in at $1.29 for popular new tracks.
Amazon has made another push today with a "Daily Deal" offering the new Lady Gaga album, "Born This Way", for only $0.99 through the Amazon MP3 Store. The special price is available for today only and compares to the $11.99 price point for the standard album in the iTunes Store, where an expanded edition is also available for $15.99.
Aside from Amazon's bargain basement pricing on what is expected to be a top-selling new release, the company is also using it as an opportunity to promote its new cloud-based storage service that will also be going up against Apple when it rolls out its own service in the near future. As noted on the Amazon MP3 Store and in promotional emails sent to some of its customers, purchase of the new Lady Gaga album, as with any other album, qualifies users for free upgrades to the 20 GB tier on Amazon Cloud Drive.
Amazon Cloud Drive offers 5 GB of storage space for free, with content purchased through the Amazon MP3 Store not counting toward that limit. The 20 GB tier is normally priced at $20 per year, but customers who purchase an album through the Amazon MP3 Store receive a free one-year upgrade to that level. Consequently, customers who do not have any interest in the Lady Gaga album may still opt to purchase the new release simply to receive the Amazon Cloud Drive storage upgrade for only 99 cents.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
I wouldn't spend even 1cent on this kind of so called "music".
Mass media promoted cr@p
Musician, –noun 1. a person who makes music a profession, especially as a performer of music.
She writes all of her own songs. She sings live every time. She's a classically trained pianist and dancer. She endlessly tours, appears, and promotes her songs and brand. She plays instruments on stage. It's pretty safe to say that, regardless of if you buy the albums or listen to it on the radio, she's about 1000x the musician that most "artists" out there are. Who exactly do YOU listen to that you call a "musician?" :cool: That's why she made $90m last year and has fans lining up to get a photo with her (which she spend hours accommodating for people), and why you're here acting like YOU are too good for HER. Just sayin'.
Amazon is scared ****less about Apple's imminent release of iCloud. They know darn well that iCloud will blow Amazon cloud storage away so they are trying to get as many people on board as possible before the announcement. Good luck with that.
What is there to be scared of? What are you basing this on?
Pretty sure he's basing it on Apple fanboy ignorance. Just my two cents. Nothing to be scared of. Cloud storage is cloud storage. Believe it or not, some people hate apple and wouldn't use the service whether it was free or not. Sometimes I hate coming here and reading all the ignorant drivel.
Amazon is scared ****less about Apple's imminent release of iCloud. They know darn well that iCloud will blow Amazon cloud storage away so they are trying to get as many people on board as possible before the announcement. Good luck with that.
What is there to be scared of? What are you basing this on?
Musician, noun
1. a person who makes music a profession, especially as a performer of music.
She writes all of her own songs. She sings live every time. She's a classically trained pianist and dancer. She endlessly tours, appears, and promotes her songs and brand. She plays instruments on stage. It's pretty safe to say that, regardless of if you buy the albums or listen to it on the radio, she's about 1000x the musician that most "artists" out there are. Who exactly do YOU listen to that you call a "musician?" :cool: That's why she made $90m last year and has fans lining up to get a photo with her (which she spend hours accommodating for people), and why you're here acting like YOU are too good for HER. Just sayin'.
I can't stand any of her music but you can't deny her musical talent and her complete adoration and humble nature she has with all her fans. The hate on her is unnecessary and ignorant.
