iTunes Match Officially Launches Internationally

After what some are calling an “accidental” launch on Wednesday, Apple has now begun rolling out its iTunes Match service around the world. Reports suggest the service has already reached the UK, Australia, Canada, France , Spain and Ireland as well as Brazil which received the service earlier this week.

Customers who signed up prematurely on Wednesday soon encountered problems using the service and were notified via email that they would be receiving refunds. Today the service appears to be officially available via iTunes in Windows or Mac OS X.
iTunes Match scans personal storage for music and delivers it across a range of devices, offering up streaming and downloadable options. If iTunes detects a song it recognises then a DRM-free 256kbps AAC file is made available. If iTunes fails to recognise a song then that file is uploaded and made available instead.

Audiophiles around the world can find the iTunes Match service in their “Quick Links” bar on the right-hand side of iTunes if the service is available. Users should also be aware that the scanning and uploading process can take a while, especially when it comes to particularly large collections.
Current pricing from around the world puts a year’s worth of iTunes Match at €24.99 in Europe, £21.99 in the UK, CAD$27.99 in Canada and AUD$34.99 in Australia.
Have you subscribed to iTunes Match yet? Happy with the price in your country or territory? Talk about it in the comments.

Tags: information iTunes mobile software

Disable iTunes Ping Service

Apple introduced a new social network in the latest version of iTunes called Ping that allows you to "follow your favorite artists and friends to discover the music they're talking about." If you are a music junkie that does not use Facebook you will love the service, for everyone else, almost all of the features already exist in the Facebook world. Although using Facebook may not be as elegant as using Ping, it is worth the few extra clicks to avoid another separate list of friends and likes.
If you were curious and signed up for Ping, don't worry it can be disabled with a few clicks.
Turning off Ping will delete your Ping profile and all activity on the service immediately.  Apple says they permanently delete the data from their servers after seven days. Any reviews that you have written will not be deleted. Follow the steps below to get started:

Tags: hacking iTunes windows

Improve sync performance in iTunes for Windows

On my PC the longest part of the sync process in iTunes with my iPhone or iPad is the device backup. Taking up to an hour at times I can live without a backup. Especially since I jailbreak my devices which makes ever restoring a backup after an OS upgrade a bad idea.
There are two methods to disable the device backup feature. First, I'm going to show you the manual tweak.
Manual Method

Tags: hacking iTunes windows

Disable and Remove iTunes Ping Button

The most annoying feature in iTunes 10 for many users is the new Ping social network. For those that have chosen not to use the service, Apple has made it difficult for users to disable the service buttons polluting the interface. In the latest version of iTunes 10, Apple took it a step further and displays a Ping button next to every selected song.

Tags: hacking iTunes windows

Apple has released iTunes 10.5.1 to fix a potentially dangerous man-in-the-middle vulnerability. According to the iTunes 10.5.1 security advisory a hacker using a man-in-the-middle attack could offer software to end users that appears to originate from Apple. This is course would be a way to infect a computer with malware. The vulnerability exists in iTunes for Windows and for OS X.

Tags: downloads information iTunes software