It’s about time Apple’s super-restrictive control over its ITunes store actually work towards the benefit of its users. It was recently announced that Apple shut down Khalid Shaikh and his legion of spam-happy Pakistani programmers, tossing out more than 900 of his useless apps from the store.
Khalid and his gang, operating under the company name “Perfect Acumen”, had generated over 943 apps in a span of just nine months, most of which were either useless, overpriced, and/or infringements on other peoples’ intellectual property.

943 apps in just nine months? What was Apple thinking? While they are busy oppressing fart-knockers and photo wobblers, they somehow manage to let some sleaze bag spam their entire store in, as Khalid himself describes it, an attempt to “minimize value and maximize monetization”. Hey, Steve, what’s up with that?

The newest iPod classic saves up to 160GB of storage, good for up to 40,000 songs, 200 hours of video, or 25,000 photos. You also get 36 hours of battery life so you can enjoy your music and movies for hours on end. The new iPod also features 6 hours of video playback when fully charged.

The iPod has a crisp and clear 2.5-inch display which makes video come alive. You can purchase or rent movies, buy TV shows, and download video podcasts from the iTunes Store, then sync them to your iPod classic to watch anywhere you wish. Finding what you want to watch or listen to is as easy as a click of the wheel. You can use it to browse by album art with Clover Flow or navigate your songs and videos by playlist, artist, album, and much more.

Apple iPod classic 160GB also comes equipped with classic games, Vortex, iQuiz, and Klondike and you can purchase games from the iTunes Store. The iPod classic uses iTunes to sync the photos you have in iPhoto on a Mac or PC. You can view photo slideshows complete with music and transitions on iPod classic, or play them on a TV using an optional Apple component or composite AV cable. It comes with a limited one-year limited warranty with single incident of complimentary telephone technical support. It measures 2.4 x 0.4 x 4.1 inches and weighs a mere 5 ounces.

Apple’s Steve Jobs has just announced the long-anticipated tablet iPad, here is what we know so far about the much talked about device.Â

- 0.5″ inches thin
- 1.5 lbs.
- 9.7″ IPS display
- 16GB, 32GB, 64 flash drive
- 1GHz Apple A4 Chip (silicone)
- Supports Accelerometer, Multi-Touch, and Compass
- Built in Speaker, Microphone, 30-pin connector
- WiFi enabled for 802.11n connectivity
- Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
- Available in Black with aluminum casing
- 10 hour battery life, 1 month standby time
- Photo and video geotagging with MAPS (new application)
- Greener materials: Arsenic-free, BRF-free, Mercury-free, PVC Free system, recyclable
- Watch Movies and TV including YouTube and YouTube HD
- Runs all iPhone and iPod Touch apps, natively
- $ for 16GB Flash version. ($600)
- $ for 32GB Flash version. ($700)
- $ for 64GB Flash version. ($800)

The iPad is 13mm (0.5 inches) thin and weighs 1.5lbs.  It sports a 9.7-inch IPS capacitive touchscreen.  It isn’t 16:9, despite showing widescreen high-definition films and YouTube videos.

Apple’s uses it’s own A4 1GHz chip.  There’s 16, 32 or 64GB of flash storage built-in. Interestingly, Jobs made no mention of 3G, with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR built-in, but were sure it’s there.  Jobs pulled up his own location, suggesting the iPad has GPS, but that could just be via Wi-Fi.

Other features include an accelerometer, compass, speaker and microphone, but no cameras?!  Jobs claims 10 hours of battery life, and over a month on standby.

The iPad is slated to go on sale sometime in March.

Look familiar or should I say similiar [iPhone]?  It’s the new user interrface for Nexus One, aka Google Phone, store pages. These confirm that “Google will sell it unlocked and unsubsidized for $530, and that Google will sell it by themselves.” Like most smartphones you’ll have to sign a 2-year contract with T-Mobile to get it for $180.

There’s only one rate plan: $39.99 Even More + Text + Web for $79.99 total, [Sound familiar?] Family plans, Flexpay, SmartAccess and KidConnect subscribers must buy the phone unlocked and unsubsidized for $530.

It has been reported that Apple is buying the website LaLa.com. LaLa is a site devoted to streaming and downloading music. This is a move that would help flesh out Apple’s music division, but whether it is a good move for the company is yet to be seen.

LaLa currently charges about 89 cents to download a song, or just 10 cents for a streaming only version. An entire album can be streamed for a dollar. Apple admits that the company isn’t expected to be especially profitable in the beginning, but stresses that the purchase was made to get the “brains” behind LaLa more so than the website itself.

In the meantime, they face some stiff competition from the likes of Pandora, Grooveshark, and Rhapsody, just to name a few.

As predicted earlier today, Apple have pushed out their latest firmware for the Apple TV.  Version 3.0 brings with it a newly redesigned GUI, along with compatibility with iTunes Extras and iTunes LP as introduced in iTunes 9.  There’s also support for Genius Mixes and internet radio playback, and the whole set-top box experience is apparently smoother and quicker.Apple’s reworked menus for the Apple TV now put recently rented or purchased movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube at the top level.  There’s also now support for iPhoto Events and iPhoto Faces, while internet radio stations can be browsed and saved to favorites.

The update is available now, free of charge, and it’s likely your Apple TV unit will pop up a download option to let you know.  One word of caution: it’s unclear what Apple TV 3.0 might do to Boxee and other hacks, so it’s probably worth holding off on the upgrade if you’ve modified your box.

iTunes, Apples music store, is a great way to download music to your iPod or just for your pleasure. iTunes has required an update for awhile. Although iTunes has received minor upgrades. In the new iTunes 9 the status bar has been “polished” and given a 21st century look. The new Genius feature has also been redefined. It offers suggested playlists with their album covers. Genius has also been added to the AppStore to help you pick out of thousands of apps.

iTunes remains to be lagging and a little slow, but Apple has taken a necessary step to keep iTunes at the top. Another feature on the new iTunes 9 is application rearranging. On your iPod Touch have you ever felt that it’s a little aggravating to move your apps directly on the iPod. Well now you can do it on your computer. Overall iTunes 9 is “better”, but not perfect. Keep going Apple, hopefully in the future the “slowness” problem will be solved.