When Apple kicks off next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference with its annual keynote address, we know that the company will unveil new versions of iOS and Mac OS X. But we don’t yet know the specifics of what those updates will include, or what else will be announced—though, as always, the rumor mill is working overtime to suggest everything from updates to Apple’s existing products to Tim Cook’s announcement of an Apple toaster-fridge with new microwave functionality!

While we’ve already told you what we’d like to see in the next versions of OS X and iOS, as well as in a new Mac Pro, there are plenty of other Apple products and services that we might see mentioned during WWDC.

iCloud, iCloud, go away, come again some other day!

Remember: WWDC is a developer conference. And Apple wants developers to love iCloud—though, more often than not, they don’t. Given that iCloud—and especially its deficient data-syncing—is a source of major concern for developers, that should make it a major concern for Apple, too.

We’re optimistic that Apple will address the developers’ sinking syncing feelings. Expect not just announcements of low-level features (such as improved, more reliable, even rewritten APIs), but user-facing ones, as well: That could mean a revamped iCloud document-chooser interface or maybe—if we allow ourselves to dream a little—an iDisk-like iCloud app for both iOS and the Mac, which might bring a smidgen of Dropbox-like ubiquity to Apple’s online service.

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PlexConnect is a clever project: a free command-line tool that lets you view content from your Plex Media Server on your Apple TV—without jailbreaking Apple’s set-top box. That scratches an itch for me; though I maintain a Mac mini media center, the Apple TV runs quieter and cooler, and generally just works. (And on the rare occasion it doesn’t, I don’t have to fumble around for a mouse and keyboard to troubleshoot it.)

A caveat: If you’re Terminal-shy, then PlexConnect’s probably not for you. While it doesn’t require a lot of command-line expertise, those who have never ventured into that territory may find it a hassle. There are plans to at some point package the software into a friendlier Mac app—it’s part of an ambitious road map—but for now, it’s go command-line or go home.

PlexConnect does its magic by running two small servers on one of your local Macs: a Web server and a Domain Name System (DNS) server. It’s the latter that handles the magical part; you configure your Apple TV to look towards this Mac for its DNS server, and PlexConnect intercepts requests for the URL http://trailers.apple.com and redirects them to its Web server, where it provides a custom version of the Plex interface reminiscent of other Apple TV apps, like Netflix and Hulu. (DNS requests to other addresses, meanwhile, should to be passed through to your normal DNS server, thereby maintaining the rest of your Apple TV’s normal operation.)

On your Apple TV, you can browse or search your Plex content with your remote, as you would any other Apple TV function. Some content isn’t currently available, such as photos from Aperture and iPhoto, and there are bugs here and there. PlexConnect offers only a few configuration options on your Apple TV—you can choose whether you view your listings of movies, TV shows, and TV seasons in list or grid format, as well as tweak some transcoding preferences for video quality and subtitle size, along with some more technical options.

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Apple keynotes have become hotly anticipated events, watched closely by folks both inside and outside the tech industry. Here are just 10 of the most significant presentations from the company’s history.

For a while, Apple has been selling two generations of iPod touch side by side: the 16GB and 32GB, 3.5-inch, Retina display fourth-generation versions and the 32GB and 64GB, 4-inch, Retina fifth-generation models. That confusion finally ended when Apple recently introduced a 4-inch 16GB iPod touch and in the process killed off the older fourth-generation for good.

Did I say the confusion ended? Well, sort of. In most ways, the $229 16GB fifth-generation iPod touch is identical to the 32- and 64GB fifth-generation models released in October 2012. It has the same 4-inch Retina display, the same dual-core A5 processor, the same front-facing FaceTime HD camera (with its 1.2-megapixel photos and 720p video capabilities), the same bundled Lightning cable and remote-less EarPods, and the same dimensions. The 16GB model is in fact notable only for what it lacks: It offers no rear-facing iSight camera, no strap post (and therefore no strap), and no choice in colors (this model comes only with a black face and silver back).

Given that it has no new or improved capabilities over its higher-capacity siblings, your buying choice is nicely narrowed down to just a few factors: Money, storage space, and what you want from an iPod touch’s camera.

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The Journal reads the supply-chain tea leaves, iPod touch sales hit a new milestone, and iCloud is, well, pretty much exactly as secure as you think it is. The remainders for Thursday, May 30, 2013 are the one for you, New England.

Apple Shifts Supply Chain Away From Foxconn to Pegatron (Wall Street Journal)

A bummer, as he was always my least favorite of the Transformers.

Apple sells 100 million iPod touch units (The Loop)

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If the 32GB iPod touch had too much capacity for you, or just too many cameras, Apple’s got a solution: the new 16GB iPod touch, now available at the Apple Store for just $229.

Largely identical to its fifth-generation 32GB and 64GB counterparts, the 16GB iPod touch features the same svelte design, with a 4-inch Retina display and dual-core A5 chip. However, it lacks a few of its siblings’ features: For one thing, you’ll find no rear-facing camera on the model. Apple’s dropped the fancy 5-megapixel iSight camera that the 32GB and 64GB models sport, leaving only the front-facing FaceTime HD camera, with its 1.2MP photo and 720p video capabilities.

For another, the package doesn’t include the iPod touch loop introduced with the most recent generation, or the pop-out hitch for attaching it. And the 16GB model also comes in just one color: silver.

Of course, those changes mean a commensurate reduction in price, too. The 16GB iPod touch will run you $229, $70 cheaper than the 32GB model.

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Writing a script is fun. Formatting a script? Less so. Many an idea can be paused or squashed entirely when you’re focused on making sure your character headers are properly centered. Film industry favorite Final Draft attempts to automate many of these hassles, but the program is still somewhat chaotic for those looking to simply write.

Enter the $20 Highland (Mac App Store link), which uses the Markdown-inspired Fountain syntax to offer screenwriters a simpler, cleaner place to bring their characters to life.

Highland’s big appeal comes not just from its minimalist writing interface, but its conversion capabilities. The app can import a text-based PDF or FDX (Final Draft) file and translate it into editable Fountain text without losing your initial formatting. You can likewise export a Fountain file to a PDF or FDX file once you’re ready for an inital reading or more-advanced formatting.

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Apple refers to the Apple TV as a “hobby,” and though the home-entertainment device has received regular updates, especially over the past couple years, for most of its life that description has fit. Still, the updates have helped make today’s Apple TV a much more capable device than the one that debuted back in 2007. It has improved enough that we regularly use it in our home.

But its remote still stinks.

That remote is essentially the same accessory that shipped with the original Apple TV, except that it looks nicer now. The current iteration has seven buttons—Left, Right, Up, Down, Select, Menu, and Play/Pause—and you navigate the Apple TV’s interface by moving your selection, one line or icon step at a time, using the directional buttons. To choose an option or to delve down into the next menu, you press Select (the center button); to go up a level, you press Menu.

The process works, but it’s clunky, especially when you want to move, say, five items down in a list: The Apple TV interface doesn’t respond quickly enough to five fast Down presses, and if instead you hold the Down button, the selection will move slowly at first, and then accelerate, often skipping right past where you wanted to go.

And that’s the user-friendly part. When you have to enter text—for example, when you’re typing a username or password, or entering the name of a movie you want to search for—you face the dreaded scroll-scroll-scroll-enter-scroll-scroll-enter-scroll-scroll-scroll-scroll-scroll-enter process. For a long time, the experience of using the Apple TV’s remote was frustrating enough to make me reach for my beloved TiVo remote and watch TV instead.

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AirPlay (formerly called AirTunes) is Apple’s technology for streaming media over a local (usually in-home) network. It lets you stream audio from any Mac or iOS device to any AirPlay-enabled audio system, or video from a Mac (of recent vintage) or an iOS device to an Apple TV (also of recent vintage).

AirPlay works over any modern ethernet or Wi-Fi network (for video over Wi-Fi, that ideally means a fast network using 802.11n technology). The sending and receiving devices also need to be compatible with AirPlay.

How you set up and use AirPlay depends on the devices involved and on whether you’re streaming audio or video. Here’s how you can get up and running.

(Note that these instructions assume AirPlay and your local network are working correctly. If not, Apple provides AirPlay troubleshooting information).

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My first Apple TV quickly established itself as an essential addition to my home media setup. I used it primarily to send music from my Mac’s iTunes library to the home theater audio system in our living room. In addition, it let me watch videos purchased or rented from the iTunes Store on the family HDTV.

Over time, our use of the Apple TV has only broadened. One example: My wife invited a group of her friends over to watch a series of video interviews, obtained as free downloads from a website, but she didn’t want to make everyone huddle around her computer to view the shows. Our Apple TV came to the rescue. We imported the videos into her iTunes library, letting her display the videos on the connected television.

As great as having one Apple TV has been, I’ve more recently discovered the benefits of owning multiple Apple TVs, one for each of the three televisions in our home.

The joy of multiple Apple TVs

The most obvious advantage of multiple Apple TVs is that I have access to Apple TV’s features no matter which television or audio system I’m using. As a result, I can now listen to music from my iTunes library just about anywhere in our house.

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While it may not be a full-fledged HDTV, the Apple TV set-top box continues to expand its portfolio. According to a story first reported by Deadline, the CW is bringing its video content to the Apple TV via a dedicated app.

The CW offering would mimic what the network already has on Microsoft’s Xbox; the network confirmed to MacRumors that the app will feature ad-supported full episodes available for streaming the day after they air. And, in a bonus for cord cutters, the app will not require an existing cable subscription to view content. A specific release date for the app has not yet been announced, though it should be sooner rather than later.

This marks the first foray from one of the major broadcast networks onto the Apple TV, though the box already features content from video middlemen like Hulu and Netflix; sports leagues like MLB, NHL, and NBA; video-sharing sites Vimeo and YouTube; and other video sources, like the Wall Street Journal.

Thus far, video content has only gradually trickled onto the Apple TV: Hulu Plus, for example, just appeared last July. But the appearance of a CW app could signal a shift in the winds. With the recent incursion of Aereo into the broadcast space, the networks are sure to be looking for ways to keep control of their content. ABC recently announced that it would begin offering live streaming in its iOS app—but only in certain markets, and only for cable and satellite subscribers. Meanwhile, many of the studios and networks continue to enforce availability windows and device-specific streaming rights.

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Given its stature today, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the iTunes Store launched ten years ago with just a fairly small selection of music. In the intervening time, Apple has added TV shows, movies, podcasts, apps, ebooks, educational content, and much more. But along with those manifold expansions have come problems, too. Here are a few improvements we’d like to see to the iTunes Store as it kicks off its second decade.

Try and try again

App sales have been a huge part of the iTunes Store over the past five years, but one thing that’s still annoying is the lack of demos. Demo software has been a time-honored part of the Mac community since its earliest years—it allows prospective customers try before they buy, letting them determine if the software they’re about to buy will really do what they want. That’s great for consumers, obviously, but it’s also great for developers, since it hopefully avoids dissatisfied customers and the one-star reviews they leave when the app doesn’t do that one thing they needed. Other app marketplaces, like Windows Phone’s, have this capability, so why not the App Store?—Dan Moren

Search and ye shall find (maybe)

There are only a few ways that the iTunes Store has actually gotten worse than it used to be, but one of them is definitely search—particularly on iOS devices. iTunes is never sure what you’re searching for on the Mac, and so, by default, it tries to show a few results across each category of items the store sells. That’s crazy. On iOS, you face the opposite problem when you’re searching for apps: The App Store knows you want an app, but shows you too little in your results: You see just one app at a time. Flick from the first app to the seventh, and decide the first is the best option? Now you have to flick back six times. Search is important, and Apple’s implementation just isn’t good enough right now.—Lex Friedman

Just browsing

As with better search, a better iTunes Store browsing experience seems to be in Apple’s own best interests: The easier it is for customers to shop in the store, the more likely they are to spend money there. High-volume Web surfers make their lives easier by using browser tabs, but the iTunes Stores don’t offer that option on any platform. On the Mac, the Web-based iTunes Store experience within the iTunes app often feels slow and clunky, and surfing the iTunes store in an actual Web browser is worse by far (see below). Here, again, is an area where Apple’s competitors actually do it better: Windows Phone and Android allow customers to purchase apps directly via the Web, and the apps get sent to their devices. It’s a shame the App Store can’t do the same.—Lex Friedman

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The great thing about the iTunes Store is that you can buy just about any song you can imagine, cheaply and easily. And the worst thing about the iTunes Store? Sometimes you can buy those songs a little too easily.

Apple’s retail store for digital downloads has been open for a decade now, and in that time, you’ve probably loaded up on a lot of music. And you don’t have to tell us that some of those downloads probably seemed like a good idea at the time. In honor of the 10th anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, I combed through my purchase history to find some of the instances where I could have spent my 99 cents more wisely. Perhaps my confessions of regrettable musical choices will make you feel better about your own iTunes indiscretions over the last 10 years. At the very least, I hope my embarrassing selections serve as a reminder that when it comes to hitting that download button in Tunes, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

More One-Hit Wonders Than I Can Count

Just after the iTunes Store opened its virtual doors, my paymasters at Macworld wanted an article on the depth and breadth of the store’s initial offerings. Among the more hare-brained of my assorted schemes to survey the store’s selection: See how many of VH1’s Top 100 One-Hit Wonders I could download from iTunes. The answer, at the time? 39. The cost to my psyche whenever “It’s Raining Men” has popped up on random shuffle during the ensuing decade? Incalculable.

“Wait, you went ahead and actually downloaded all those songs?” you may be asking. “Why not just keep a running tally and leave it at that?”

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Occasionally, my 1080p Apple TV (ATV) loses interest in connecting to my local network. More specifically, if I go to the Network setting I find no IP address listed. That’s right. The IP address listing is empty. There isn’t even an invalid self-assigned (169.x.x.x) address. Not surprisingly, when this vanishing act occurs, the ATV can no longer access my iTunes Library or any of the ATV’s Internet-based services.

The Apple TV is hooked up to my network via a wired (Ethernet) connection. I had thought this would make for a more reliable connection. Apparently, not in this case.

Some quick diagnostic checks determined that the source of the problem was almost certainly the ATV itself. All the other networked devices—whether connected by Wi-Fi or Ethernet—were functioning as expected. My AirPort Base Station and Internet modem both showed all-systems-go. Even my second ATV, connected to another television, was working just fine.

Even the now troublesome Apple TV had been working for over a year without incident. The network loss popped up only in the last month or two. This made me wonder if the cause might be a bug in a recent ATV firmware update.

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As I write this paragraph, I’m enjoying a playlist that I created from among the thousands of songs on my iPhone, and it’s no big deal. It wasn’t always so simple: Once upon a time, crafting the perfect playlist for your MP3 player felt like an epic project. You had to rip the songs from a CD onto your computer, find sources—legitimate and otherwise—for tracks you didn’t own, and then hope everything was in the right format to play on your portable device. Apple changed all that, thanks to a series of musical moves right at the dawn of the 21st century—not the least of which was the launch of the iTunes Music Store.

It was only ten years ago—on April 28, 2003—that Apple opened the iTunes Store (then called the iTunes Music Store) and changed the way we buy music. The store arrived with just 200,000 tracks; in the ensuing decade, that library has grown to more than 35 million songs, from the Beatles to Jay-Z. You can even download those tracks over your phone if you want—no computer needed. That was not possible before the iTunes Store opened.

Apple’s not fond of reminiscing, but even the company has taken note of iTunes’s anniversary. The store “revolutionized the distribution of digital content,” Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts when announcing Apple’s quarterly earnings earlier this week. In addition to those 35 million songs, which are available in 119 countries, the store sells 60,000 movies in 109 countries, and 1.75 million books in 155 countries. By Oppenheimer’s math, the $4 billion in quarterly billings recorded by iTunes in the most recent quarter makes it the largest digital content store in the world.

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Part of Apple’s campus is delayed until after a spaceship launch, iTunes sales aren’t on the grow, and German iPhone users may once again be notified of their email schnell! The remainders for Thursday, April 25, 2013 speak a dozen languages, know every local custom—they’ll blend in, disappear, you'll never see them again.

Apple Campus 2: Project Description (Apple)

Apple’s updated the plans for its “spaceship” campus, adding information about parking, bicycle and pedestrian paths, and public art. But it also signals the delay of building the so-called “Tantau Development,” a series of buildings on the edge of the campus, until after the main building is opened. Perhaps most interesting of all is Apple’s report that its current campus contains 4,506 trees. So, well, at least we know what they’ve got Scott Forstall doing until he’s free to leave.

iTunes Sales Are Huge! But Growth May Be Slowing. (AllThingsD)

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From the moment it debuted for iOS, the free Netflix video-streaming app has been a must-have for nearly all owners of Apple’s tablet. The streaming and DVD rental service offers a large library that can be streamed over Wi-Fi and 3G, in addition to several original programs financed and produced by the company itself.

The concept behind the app is fairly simple: those with Netflix accounts (which start at $8 a month) can stream any of the company’s movies, television shows, or documentaries available via its Watch Instantly service to an iOS device. (Depending on your country, available programming varies.) The iPhone and iPad versions differ slightly in their implementation and extra features, but if you’re looking to watch a Netflix television show on the fly, this app will allow you to do it on either device.

You can stream films or shows on your iPhone’s Wi-Fi or cellular network. Wi-Fi is—without argument—the easiest way to watch a program; I rarely ran into glitches when watching over that connection. In contrast, cellular is decidedly trickier: the videos take a longer time to load, image and sound quality can suffer, and weaker signals can cause the feed to cut out.

If you encounter a stall, Netflix does provide a recall button within the viewer for moving the feed 30 seconds back, so you can theoretically catch up with the stream. You can also pause and scrub through video, toggle between full and widescreen modes, enable captions, and exit back to the Netflix browser at any point. The Netflix app also supports Video-Out and AirPlay, so if you happen to have an Apple TV or one of Apple’s AV cables on hand, you can send video from your iPhone to your television.

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The third-generation Apple TV wasn’t a huge update from the generation prior: Its major addition was support for 1080p video. But reports suggest the one other significant add-on included in that third-gen Apple TV is the introduction of Wi-Fi networking issues—at least for a small subset of the set-top boxes sold.

9to5 Mac published what it says is official Apple retail correspondence, indicating that “a very small number of Apple TV (3rd generation) products might experience one of these Wi-Fi related connectivity issues,” which include an inability to see networks, connect to them, or stay connected to them.

The screenshot provided by 9to5Mac also states that Apple will replace affected Apple TV units for up to two years from the original date of purchase, free of charge.

According to the document, affected units will have a serial number ending in DRHN, and the third and fourth characters of the serial number must contain one of these pairs: H9, HC, HD, HF, HG, HH, HJ, HK, HL, HM, HN, HP, HQ, HR, HT, HV, HW, HX, J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, J6, J7, J8, J9.

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If it’s an alternative Netflix or iTunes app you’re looking for, the free Amazon Instant Video for iOS provides you with lots of great streaming content over Wi-Fi—provided you have an Amazon Prime membership or you have already purchased content from Amazon.com.

The account conundrum

Like Netflix, you need an account with the company in question to use Amazon Instant Video. Amazon offers two options: Sign in with your normal Amazon.com purchasing account and have access to any online video content you’ve purchased, or sign up for Amazon Prime.

Amazon Prime is the company’s $79 per year two-day shipping and streaming video service. Sign up, and you’ll gain access to the entirety of Amazon’s Prime streaming library, which includes a large number of videos and TV shows. You’ll also receive free two-day shipping on a large number of Amazon.com catalog items. It’s comparable to Netflix’s similar streaming plan, which at $8 per month shakes out to $96 per year.

Unfortunately, if you don’t sign up for a Prime account, you’ll need to make all your TV show and movie purchases outside of the app: Due to Apple’s terms and conditions, Amazon can’t let you purchase TV and movie content without it being set up as an in-app purchase, and the company can’t even list or link to the Amazon.com URL to send you out to Safari.

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Hulu Plus lovers, rejoice: Apple’s Apple TV 5.2.1 software update, released on Tuesday, brings a redesigned interface for the premium TV and movie streaming service. The update also patches a number of bugs involving the execution of unsigned code and security holes in the Apple TV’s kernel.

According to a blog post from Hulu senior product manager Dave Herman, the new app was redesigned, ground-up, by the company’s in-house engineering team. Its interface provides a list of content categories and links along the top of the screen, with several carousels below that offer new releases, shows you watch, and recently popular items.

Hulu’s also thrown in a bonus for its hearing-impaired customers: Hold down the Select button on your Apple TV remote while a show is playing, and you can activate closed-captioning for that video. (Netflix implemented the same functionality in its Apple TV offering late last year.)

You can download the update by turning on your Apple TV, then going to Settings > General > Update Software.

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Marvel Comics was an innovator when it launched its Digital Comics Unlimited subscription service in 2007. But sometimes being an innovator can burn: The company built that initiative on top of Adobe Flash just as the iPhone arrived on the scene and made Flash irrelevant to a new generation of mobile devices.

With Saturday’s release of the new Marvel Unlimited iOS app (an Android app is forthcoming), Marvel’s subscription service has a new name and a home on mobile devices at last.

Marvel Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital, Peter Phillips, admits that his team has been anxious to get the service off of Flash for some time. “We wish we could’ve done it a little bit faster,” Phillips said. “This app offers a much better user experience and provides access to a lot more digital comics.”

Marvel, like most comics publishers, has been selling a la carte issues via its own app and Comixology’s Comics app. But the new Marvel Unlimited app gives fans of the publisher of such characters as Spider-Man, X-Men, and Avengers access to a Netflix-style library of more than 13,000 comics. Like Netflix, subscribers to Marvel’s service (it’s $10 per month or $60 for a year) can read as many comics as they want—but also like Netflix, the offerings don’t include the latest issues. Instead, Marvel Unlimited offers a catalog of classic issues (dating back as far as the 1960s) as well as issues from the recent past, roughly six months to a year ago. For example, in early March Marvel posted the first issue of AvX, which was originally published in April 2012.

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Tablets, led by the iPad, have the potential to shake up the comic-book industry even more than ebook readers have begun to change the world of prose books. Large, portable color screens are perfect for reading comics. They’ve got a portability that desktop and laptop PCs can’t match, and of course they show off the source material in a way that small black-and-white Kindle screens can’t.

The original iPad started the revolution, and the Retina display on both the third- and fourth-generation iPad provided dramatically improved image quality. Larger Android tablets such as Google’s Nexus 10 have also joined the party. And tablets running Windows 8 offer some distinct size advantages of their own.

When the iPad was first released, I found it to be an excellent (albeit imperfect) comic-book reader. A few years of hardware and software iteration later, it’s a lot harder to spot imperfections. The only problem I have is that I’m now buying several comics a week on my iPad, with the credit card bill to prove it.

Flimsy “funnybooks”

There are a few different options when it comes to reading comics on the iPad or other tablets, and in some ways they parallel the choices that comic readers face in the printed comic market.

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The HBO Go app for iPhone and iPad scored a long-overdue update on Tuesday. As HBO’s co-president Eric Kessler promised at the Dive Into D conference, the app—along with Cinemax’s Max Go app—can now stream video wirelessly to the Apple TV.

HBO Go is a free offering included with a paid subscription to HBO, though it’s not available in all cable markets. When your cable company does support it, you can use the service to stream HBO’s catalog of television shows, including its current lineup, along with a selection of movies. The iOS app works great for watching HBO content, but up until now, it has blocked the use of AirPlay or AirPlay mirroring to send that premium content to your Apple TV-connected television.

That changes with version 2.0 of the app, which makes good sense. Mountain Lion users could already use AirPlay mirroring on recent Macs to get HBO Go content on their televisions, and HBO also offers an HBO Go app on the TV-connected Roku.

One wonders whether an official Apple TV channel for HBO Go may be in the offing—“We will get on Apple TV, as we’ve said all along,” Kessler said at the Dive Into D event—but maybe one shouldn’t get too greedy, either.

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The Macworld/iWorld show never wants for cool products—just a glance at the winners of our 2013 Best of Show awards will prove that. But there are cool products that didn’t appear on the show floor at Moscone West this month, and that’s what this Macworld Live session focused on.

In this four-minute clip from our Cool Products session, senior editors Christopher Breen and Dan Frakes talk speakers—specifically the B&W MM-1 speakers and Audioengine’s 5+ speakers. You can also read Chris’s review of both the MM-1 and 5+ speakers elsewhere at Macworld.com.

Chris and Dan are joined by Macworld senior writer Lex Friedman and TechHive editor Jason Cross to talk about some of their favorite products. You can watch the full Cool Products session on Macworld’s YouTube channel.

Apple has sold its 25 billionth song through the iTunes Music Store, the company announced Wednesday.

The record-setting track, “Monkey Drums” (Goksel Vancin Remix) by Chase Buch, was bought by Germany’s Phillip Lüpke—a display of Apple’s dominance in the worldwide music download market: The iTunes music store is available in 119 countries, while rival companies Google, Microsoft, and Amazon make tunes available in a fraction of those markets.

Lüpke will receive a €10,000 iTunes gift card. At current exchange rates, the price works out to roughly $13,525—enough to keep him in music downloads for a very long time.

The iTunes Store originally opened in April 2003, meaning the company is on pace to sell more than 2.5 billion tracks per year during the service’s first year in existence. But that once-disruptive service increasingly faces challenges from streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, and a music industry still struggling to deal with the changes that Apple wrought may find itself in further turmoil as a result.

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I had it all planned out. Inspired by Macworld contributor Joel Mathis’s recent piece on the subject, I was finally motivated and ready to cancel my cable television subscription. It didn’t work.

The research phase

I’d done my homework. I’d calculated that I was paying $60 per month for a relatively basic cable package. Once I canceled cable, I’d still need the same company for my VoIP phone service and my Internet. Because my cable provider, Optimum Cablevision, employs a “triple play” bundle, I knew that I’d lose the $5 monthly discount that subscribing to all three services afforded me. So, by canceling cable, I’d save $55 per month on my bill.

To make up for the loss of cable television, my plan was to keep my family’s Netflix streaming subscription and add in two other services: We’d pay $79 a year for Amazon Prime, which includes instant streaming of many TV shows and movies, including a variety of kids shows that Netflix doesn’t yet offer. And we’d pay another $8 per month for Hulu Plus so that we could continue to watch current-season television programming from the major networks.

Because I concurred with Joel’s argument in his piece a few weeks back, I’d also invested about $90 in a new Roku box, since—to Joel’s point—the Apple TV just doesn’t offer support for enough services. Having a single set-top box to stream Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu Plus struck me as a superior offering to the Apple TV, especially when you factor in other channels you can add to the Roku for live 24/7 news programming and the like.

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