Apple have launched announced launched the next major update of their iTunes software: iTunes 10.
Alongside some minor streamlining and UI tweaks, Apple have developed their own built-in social network called Ping.

Ping is 'a social network for music', a place where artists, listeners and friends come together to share their musical interests and tastes. The network resides within the iTunes store on your iPhone, iPod Touch or computer, and allows you to post statuses and other media to your feed, whilst 'following' your friends and favorite artistseses updates.

At a glance, the whole concept sounds completely un-original. Steve said himself "it's sorta like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes" but the more you think about it, and the sheer number of people who download and rate music on iTunes every day, it's even more surprising that they haven't tried something like this before.

It's September, Apple are out to play and their wielding a rather fruity looking guitar. That's right, it's music time!

As per usual the tech world is a-buzz with a smorgasbord of 'leaks', rumours, wish-lists and predictions. One thing not so usual is Apple's decision to live video stream the entire event, so catch yourself up on the latest and join us back here for our live Twitter commentary of the september music special, or head over to @Gigabyt3 for more of the same, starting:

06:00PM - London
01:00PM - Eastern
12:00PM - Central
10:00AM - Pacific

 

Reports have been coming in over-night that Apple is set for a September event in which it will release its Tablet Device, a new range of iPods, and extra features in iTunes. The iTunes project is reportedly codenamed 'cocktail', and plans to include 'interactive books' with album purchases, thought to spur the market forward in digital downloads. This makes sense as iTunes isn't famous for selling albums as it is individual tracks, but would creating this kind of incentive really make a difference? No doubt they have something up their sleeve.

 

So yesterday Apple seeded the fourth Beta iPhone 3.0 software to developers, along with a pre-release iTunes 8.2 in order to activate the new firmware. 

Although there is no news on anything new from 3.0 yet, there’s much-a speculation regarding the above image, and many reports that iTunes may soon be able to recognize Blu-ray disks.