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Apple giving some a second run at WWDC tickets

Apple is giving some developers a second chance at purchasing tickets to its annual developers conference, which sold out in just two minutes on Thursday.

The company has been getting in touch with what appears to be a handful of developers who attempted to make purchases when the $1,599 tickets for Apple's WWDC went on sale at 10 a.m. PT, MacRumors reports. Those developers have a ticket reserved for them, and will be able to make the purchase at a later date.

The purchasing window, which spanned about two hours last year, was brief enough that some … Read more

Apple commemorates 'Decade of iTunes' Store with swag

Apple's iTunes Store doesn't actually turn 10 years old until April 28, but Apple seems keen on getting the party started a little early.

In honor of the occasion, the company has sent journalists a digital keepsake of sorts: 100 handpicked songs and a physical copy of the digital timeline it put up on iTunes yesterday.

The package even comes with a thank you note from iTunes and iCloud chief Eddy Cue:

When Apple introduced the iTunes Store on April 28, 2003, we thought if consumers had a great, legal way to download music they would embrace it … Read more

Bidding for coffee with Apple's CEO hits $210,000

It's now more expensive to score a meeting with Tim Cook than to buy a brand-new Lamborghini Gallardo.

Bids for that meeting, which went on sale yesterday through charity bidding site Charitybuzz, were originally estimated at $50,000, but now stand at $210,000. They even reached $160,000 by the end of the first day.

The "power meeting," which promises half an hour with the CEO of the second most valuable company in the world, is part of a campaign to raise money for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. It's … Read more

WWDC scholarships: There's an app for that

Prodigies, take note: if you're dying to attend Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at Moscone West in San Francisco, June 10-14, but can't afford the steep $1,599 ticket price (perhaps because you liquidated your piggy bank to purchase that shiny, new MacBook Pro with Retina display), we've got some good news for you.

Yesterday, the tech giant announced that it would be awarding 150 scholarships (aka free admission to the highly-anticipated developers conference) to full- or part-time students who are 13 or over and current members of the iOS or Mac developer programs. Apple … Read more

Apple's WWDC 2013 sells out in two minutes

Well that was quick.

After just 2 minutes, tickets for Apple's upcoming annual developers conference in San Francisco are gone.

The show took 2 whole hours to sell out last year. Apple caught many developers by surprise last April when it began selling tickets immediately upon announcing the conference at 5:30 a.m. PT. This time around the company gave developers a little more than a day of advance notice. The event will be held June 10-14 at Moscone West Center.

Apple's WWDC, or "dub-dub" as it's often referred to casually, is a mecca … Read more

What iTunes needs next

The iTunes Store is 10 years old -- and iTunes, even older -- and it often feels like it.

Apple has certainly gone through some efforts to make iTunes look and feel different, but it's the load that iTunes bears that's the real problem. Once upon a time, iTunes was made to work with an iPod. The setup was simple; the software was good. It held MP3s and acted as the bridge.

Then a music store was added. Then, videos. And audiobooks. Now, apps. What started as a simple software-to-hardware relationship became the necessary portal for all software … Read more

Apple's iTunes Store at 10: A visual timeline

Apple's iTunes Store turns 10 years old this weekend. A lot's happened in that time, including a jump from just music to selling nearly every type of content, short of animated GIFs.

We've rounded down some of the key moments from the past 10 years, along with links to CNET News stories that puts them all in context.

You can also take a look at Apple's own timeline, which the company put out yesterday, and requires Apple's iTunes software on computers or an iOS device.

CNET Story links:

January 2001: Apple releases iTunes software for Mac … Read more

The iTunes Store turns 10: It's Apple's empire to lose

THE SPRING OF 2003. Apple was still in the early stages of what became one of the biggest comebacks in the history of business. Steve Jobs, who had returned to the company six years earlier, had already taken bold steps: He had killed off product lines, won Apple great attention with its colorful iMacs, and begun to open retail stores that -- given the lousy, post-tech bubble economy -- seemed like a crazy idea.

Yet sales of personal computers -- and the Mac was Apple's mainstay product -- weren't budging. It was a Windows world, and it sure … Read more

Apple boosts R&D spending

Apple is increasing its research and development spending and is now at 3 percent of revenue compared with 2 percent in recent years.

The R&D spending was detailed in Apple's quarterly 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As Apple's sales have ramped, the company hasn't been able to increase its R&D spending. As a result, Apple's R&D spending as a percentage of revenue was in line with what Dell and Hewlett-Packard spend.

Apple CEO Tim Cook obviously sees the discrepancy. He should, since Cook was a former IBMer. … Read more